A relatively short Regency novella, with a f/f match that’s a spin-off from an existing m/f series. It’s lovely to see more entries into the f/f Regency field. (Pro tip: there are other ways to make your Regency heroine stand out as non-conforming than to give her scientific interests.
Reviews
Blog entry
Considering what it takes for a book to make it from my TBR list to actually being read, it’s fairly rare for me to choose not to finish a book. Here are two that I closed unfinished.
(I'm going to try to get caught up on reviews, which means the reviews may be briefer than I usually prefer to do.)
Not only did my reading get thrown for a loop this year, but I still have a bunch of reviews to write for things I finished in the past. This one is jumping the review queue because I just finished it and figured it was best to write something while fresh in my mind. I know, I know, I'm the one who made the rule about reviewing everything I read. But I know how important community reviews can be to a book, so I do my best.
I think I have enjoyed every single thing I’ve read from Stephanie Burgis, though I haven’t real any of her middle grade series. When preparing to recording an interview with her for the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast on the occasion of the release of Moontangled, I read the entire series leading up to it. Herewith are some briefer-than-usual reviews of the component parts.
I had no idea what to expect going into this book, and if I’d had expectations they would have been wrong. Based on the cover copy, what you have is a Neolithic murder mystery with intimations of queer romance. But Between Boat and Shore is neither a murder mystery nor a romance in terms of genre. The story opens with both a violent death and the arrival of two traveling strangers in the small community of Otter Village, motifs that would ordinarily suggest a classic whodunnit plot.
Contemporary romance isn’t usually my thing, but I’m so desperate to get another f/f historical romance out of Alyssa Cole (having loved “That Could Be Enough”) that I decided to triangulate by picking up “Once Ghosted, Twice Shy” for the f/f side, and her Loyal League series for the historical side. I still want more f/f historicals but at least I get more Alyssa Cole.
The second book in O’Dell’s near-future Sherlockian thriller series takes the reader on a game of cat-and-mouse where our protagonist, Dr. Janet Watson, struggles in the midst of chaos and danger to continue trusting her colleague/housemate/friend--I would say “partner” except that word carries some erroneous implications when you’re talking about two queer women--Sara Holmes.
Sometimes I stumble into reading a book that isn’t in my usual target zone at all. I’ve read some short fiction by El-Mohtar that I rather enjoyed, but “epistolary time-travel secret agent romance” isn’t something that would necessarily pique my interest until you insert the word “lesbian” into that phrase. Reading the book set me ruminating on questions of what even is gender in a post-human society, but that’s a different discussion.
This Edwardian country-house murder mystery follows the usual script of assembling an odd assortment of family, friends, and what-the-heck-are-they-doing-here characters, identifies certain characters (ideally more than one) as worthy of murder, establishes murderous motivations for most of the cast, with a handy storm to pen everyone in at the crisis. The mystery here is solid and even--if you haven’t read the book this is a prequel to--carries just enough doubt regarding the motivations and guilt of some of the more likeable characters to keep one on edge.
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