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lady_ragnell) wrote2024-04-28 08:40 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2024-04-28 08:40 pm
2024 Books, Post 5
A bit of a slower one this time, though as always with me that's relative! And a mixed group this time, though there were three that I liked very much indeed and a few others that weren't bad. There was another DNF (I have such tragically mixed luck with fantasy romances that bill themselves as cozy. This particular one billed itself as cozy but Wasn't in ways that stressed me out, and others are so cozy as to be practically anaesthetic), and a few disappointments, but that's just the vagaries of this reading year!
Hearts on Hold by Charish Reid
A contemporary romance that's not one of the current wash of trendy romcoms that I've decided I'm heartily sick of! A librarian and a professor, some fun chemistry, some hot sex, just a nice relaxing read (other than the book dealing somewhat with academic racism and sexism, so fair warning, you can't turn your brain entirely off with this one). There are a few background characters I was hoping would get their own romances, but tragically Reid does not seem to have done that yet! Still, a fun start to the group.
The Widow's Modiste by Renee Dahlia
A bit of dandelion fluff sapphic novella. It wasn't bad! Just didn't capture me, and I really don't have anything else to say about it.
The Admiral's Penniless Bride by Carla Kelly
I liked this one, though it was definitely contrived in the way Harlequin-type romances so often are, with messy miscommunications I have little patience for. But I liked the characters renovating their house and getting to know their neighbors and generally building a happy marriage, in between all the sadness of the heroine's backstory (and to a lesser extent the hero's). Again, not much to say, but it was a relaxing read for the most part.
Stargun Messenger by Darby Harn
This had the bones of something really cool and interesting! And I did like it, but the writing felt messy (the problem with writing a narrator with memory problems is that then sometimes pieces don't get connected), and a few things didn't come through as well as I wished they had. This one very much feels like it's meant to be a TV season more than a book, I think a lot of what was meant to come through would have been clearer while filmed. But still, interesting ideas, it was worth the read for me! Though it did take most of a week, and is a large amount of the reason why this list is a bit later than usual.
Letters to Her Love by Katherine Grant
I'm going to keep trying with the historical sapphic novellas, but this too was a bit of dandelion fluff that did very little for me. Other than the conceit! Love epistolary, and even more than that love epistolary that's framed as an archive, with people implied to be reading reading it some time later. (Consider this foreshadowing.)
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
I've been wanting to read this one for ages, and I quite liked it! I love a first contact story, and combining it with climate fiction was a really neat idea. Plus there were politics, and I love fictional politics as much as I am stressed out by real politicis. I think it you liked A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet more for the world than the found family and want a bit more depth in it, this one's worth a look! There are definitely worldbuilding elements I had questions about (like how exactly the interplay of world governments and watersheds and corporate aislands works, it seems like an absolute mess, and how the world gets so optimistically queer-normative in so relatively little time, particularly the corporates), and a few dropped threads I'm unsure about, but overall, really liked it!
Remember Me by Mary Balogh
Unfortunately not one of Balogh's better outings! Usually Balogh hits the spot perfectly for me, but this one missed the mark. Barriers to them being together that seemed promising at first were dealt with weirdly early, and it had a lot of featuring one of my least favorite tropes, where people around the couple are trying to force them to be together, don't listen when they say they don't want to be, and are proven right. It works for me when it's arranged marriage, but not when it's Well-Meaning Matchmaking, and it was the substance of a huge portion of the book, unfortunately. And to add injury to insult, Balogh's handling of a disabled character (who is the heroine of the next book) was winceworthy and leaned really hard on inspiration porn. I don't usually expect that from Balogh, who I feel like had more respect for disabled characters when she wrote them in the Survivors Club series, and I was not excited to see it.
Carving a New Shape by Rhiannon Grant
Oh, I wanted to love this one so much. I've been saving it for months hoping it would be precisely what I wanted. Because it's a sapphic historical set in Neolithic Orkney! Neolithic romance!! Deliver me 18,000 of them at once, I am so starved for historical romances that don't take place in the very few same times and places. And the world here really worked for me, my favorite parts of the story were about the characters' everyday lives and their traditions and their art, that was really fun. It's just that the relationship between the characters didn't feel as fun to me, it was two people who barely met and decided they were into each other and dramatically misunderstood each other and had wildly different priorities for most of the book. And part of that was the point! Grant was clearly choosing to write about a character who was some type of neurodivergent, probably autistic, and what life would have been life for her thousands of years ago, and I respect that! It just felt sad and a little wearying to read, and that's not what I read the romance genre for. I don't know, I think the problem is once again my expectations making me like a book less than it deserves.
A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall
Remember that foreshadowing from earlier? I heard about this book last year and could not pre-order it fast enough. Epistolary fantasy with romance set in and by the ocean with a mystery and that delightful archival element I mentioned earlier! This was immersive and enjoyable and I'd like to shake it until the sequel falls out, please. If I were to make a criticism, I would admit that there was less arc to the romance than I tend to prefer (which I can't blame the book for, it was doing a lot of other things too), but overall it was a debut novel extremely to my taste. Rocketed up into my top three books for the year.
Forever Your Rogue by Erin Langston
This one got recced around in a lot of author circles on twitter last (? time is fake) year, which can either mean a book is genuinely good and enjoyable to a wide variety of people or the author is popular in those circles. While the latter may be true, I don't keep up on these things and wouldn't know, I am relieved to tell you that the former is definitely true! There are good character and relationship arcs, good characterful sex scenes, a plot that kept me engaged, child characters who felt true to being children, just generally very enjoyable. There were a few small things that threw me out of the story: a small bit of grammar I know to come from a certain part of the US and not England, the assertion in the epilogue that the heroine had her wedding ring reset with the birthstones of her children (maybe that's right? But it seems like SUCH a modern thing) and, last and most appallingly, the mention that the heroine had chosen not to wear stays to a ball, which was bad enough, before she asserted instead that she was wearing a boned chemise. NO SHE WAS NOT, THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT. Wild that the last got through when Langston did so much research on 19th century English custody law. But other than those quibbles, if you're looking for a historical romance to sweep you away, you could do a lot worse than this one.
Okay! Like I said, definitely some good ones in there, just a few rough or thin ones as well. Still, I could do much worse, and in fact have so far this year!
Hearts on Hold by Charish Reid
A contemporary romance that's not one of the current wash of trendy romcoms that I've decided I'm heartily sick of! A librarian and a professor, some fun chemistry, some hot sex, just a nice relaxing read (other than the book dealing somewhat with academic racism and sexism, so fair warning, you can't turn your brain entirely off with this one). There are a few background characters I was hoping would get their own romances, but tragically Reid does not seem to have done that yet! Still, a fun start to the group.
The Widow's Modiste by Renee Dahlia
A bit of dandelion fluff sapphic novella. It wasn't bad! Just didn't capture me, and I really don't have anything else to say about it.
The Admiral's Penniless Bride by Carla Kelly
I liked this one, though it was definitely contrived in the way Harlequin-type romances so often are, with messy miscommunications I have little patience for. But I liked the characters renovating their house and getting to know their neighbors and generally building a happy marriage, in between all the sadness of the heroine's backstory (and to a lesser extent the hero's). Again, not much to say, but it was a relaxing read for the most part.
Stargun Messenger by Darby Harn
This had the bones of something really cool and interesting! And I did like it, but the writing felt messy (the problem with writing a narrator with memory problems is that then sometimes pieces don't get connected), and a few things didn't come through as well as I wished they had. This one very much feels like it's meant to be a TV season more than a book, I think a lot of what was meant to come through would have been clearer while filmed. But still, interesting ideas, it was worth the read for me! Though it did take most of a week, and is a large amount of the reason why this list is a bit later than usual.
Letters to Her Love by Katherine Grant
I'm going to keep trying with the historical sapphic novellas, but this too was a bit of dandelion fluff that did very little for me. Other than the conceit! Love epistolary, and even more than that love epistolary that's framed as an archive, with people implied to be reading reading it some time later. (Consider this foreshadowing.)
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
I've been wanting to read this one for ages, and I quite liked it! I love a first contact story, and combining it with climate fiction was a really neat idea. Plus there were politics, and I love fictional politics as much as I am stressed out by real politicis. I think it you liked A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet more for the world than the found family and want a bit more depth in it, this one's worth a look! There are definitely worldbuilding elements I had questions about (like how exactly the interplay of world governments and watersheds and corporate aislands works, it seems like an absolute mess, and how the world gets so optimistically queer-normative in so relatively little time, particularly the corporates), and a few dropped threads I'm unsure about, but overall, really liked it!
Remember Me by Mary Balogh
Unfortunately not one of Balogh's better outings! Usually Balogh hits the spot perfectly for me, but this one missed the mark. Barriers to them being together that seemed promising at first were dealt with weirdly early, and it had a lot of featuring one of my least favorite tropes, where people around the couple are trying to force them to be together, don't listen when they say they don't want to be, and are proven right. It works for me when it's arranged marriage, but not when it's Well-Meaning Matchmaking, and it was the substance of a huge portion of the book, unfortunately. And to add injury to insult, Balogh's handling of a disabled character (who is the heroine of the next book) was winceworthy and leaned really hard on inspiration porn. I don't usually expect that from Balogh, who I feel like had more respect for disabled characters when she wrote them in the Survivors Club series, and I was not excited to see it.
Carving a New Shape by Rhiannon Grant
Oh, I wanted to love this one so much. I've been saving it for months hoping it would be precisely what I wanted. Because it's a sapphic historical set in Neolithic Orkney! Neolithic romance!! Deliver me 18,000 of them at once, I am so starved for historical romances that don't take place in the very few same times and places. And the world here really worked for me, my favorite parts of the story were about the characters' everyday lives and their traditions and their art, that was really fun. It's just that the relationship between the characters didn't feel as fun to me, it was two people who barely met and decided they were into each other and dramatically misunderstood each other and had wildly different priorities for most of the book. And part of that was the point! Grant was clearly choosing to write about a character who was some type of neurodivergent, probably autistic, and what life would have been life for her thousands of years ago, and I respect that! It just felt sad and a little wearying to read, and that's not what I read the romance genre for. I don't know, I think the problem is once again my expectations making me like a book less than it deserves.
A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall
Remember that foreshadowing from earlier? I heard about this book last year and could not pre-order it fast enough. Epistolary fantasy with romance set in and by the ocean with a mystery and that delightful archival element I mentioned earlier! This was immersive and enjoyable and I'd like to shake it until the sequel falls out, please. If I were to make a criticism, I would admit that there was less arc to the romance than I tend to prefer (which I can't blame the book for, it was doing a lot of other things too), but overall it was a debut novel extremely to my taste. Rocketed up into my top three books for the year.
Forever Your Rogue by Erin Langston
This one got recced around in a lot of author circles on twitter last (? time is fake) year, which can either mean a book is genuinely good and enjoyable to a wide variety of people or the author is popular in those circles. While the latter may be true, I don't keep up on these things and wouldn't know, I am relieved to tell you that the former is definitely true! There are good character and relationship arcs, good characterful sex scenes, a plot that kept me engaged, child characters who felt true to being children, just generally very enjoyable. There were a few small things that threw me out of the story: a small bit of grammar I know to come from a certain part of the US and not England, the assertion in the epilogue that the heroine had her wedding ring reset with the birthstones of her children (maybe that's right? But it seems like SUCH a modern thing) and, last and most appallingly, the mention that the heroine had chosen not to wear stays to a ball, which was bad enough, before she asserted instead that she was wearing a boned chemise. NO SHE WAS NOT, THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT. Wild that the last got through when Langston did so much research on 19th century English custody law. But other than those quibbles, if you're looking for a historical romance to sweep you away, you could do a lot worse than this one.
Okay! Like I said, definitely some good ones in there, just a few rough or thin ones as well. Still, I could do much worse, and in fact have so far this year!