LADIES IN HATING (Belvoir's Library #3), charming sapphic Regency romance

LADIES IN HATING (Belvoir's Library #3)
ALEXANDRA VASTI
St. Martin's Griffin (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A pair of Gothic novelists trade rivalry for love in this swoony, steamy, sapphic Regency by USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Vasti.

Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she’s also acquired an enemy: the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana’s own manuscripts. What’s a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course.

But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.

Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real danger: the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.

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My Review: Anyone need an enemies-to-lovers sapphic romance? This one will fill the need with verve and enthusiasm. I'm pretty sure the fact that the enemies are both lady novelists in Regency England is the biggest fantasy leap in the book. I suspect the family dynamic, the class dynamics, while all massaged for our twenty-first century sensibilities really did occur in some form. In reality, families usually find a way to heal where there was a solid foundation of love underpinning them.

As the third of a trilogy I've not read the first two of, I expected to be at sea. I was not. I assume that's down to the nature of romances, but it could easily be the author's real intent to make this a standalone that might convince one to go back and pick up the first two. (They're cishet so that's a firm no from me.) It did lend the story a richer background in that I felt I was coming into the action where everyone knew everyone else and I needed to figure that web of relationship out. I'm okay with that. If you are not, I'll reassure you that the author was careful to supply the kind of details that an experienced reader puts together readily. The picture created is a rich tapestry of emotional relationships that felt very realistic.

Immersed in this story was a very agreeable place to be in a news cycle so filled with horrifying and unnervingly personal murders. I live in the same world as some people with guns who hate me across multiple identity axes. It pays to put your mind into a better place, one where conflict exists but is not going to lead to lethal outcomes but resolutions and HEAs for its lovely people. I'm sure any of my QUILTBAG siblings could find comfort in this story of two of our forebears finding love and healing generational wounds. It should only happen for all of us in this vale of tears.

CAPITANA, not quite a success, not quite a flop

CAPITANA
CASSANDRA JAMES
Quill Tree Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$8.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Prepare to set sail with this riveting romantasy—the first in a duology—that’s filled with complex characters, sizzling romantic chemistry, and page-turning action. A must-read for fans of Daughter of the Pirate King, Together We Burn, or Fable!

Ximena Reale has spent most of her life at La Academia training to become a Cazador, a seafaring hunter who tracks down pirates. But her future is uncertain, thanks to her parents’ reputation. They were pirates, traitors to the Luzan Empire, and though they were executed when Ximena and her sister were young, they permanently damaged the Reale name.

Ability alone won’t earn Ximena the coveted Cazador cloak. So, when the legendary pirate Gasparilla returns and captures the Empire’s queen, Ximena offers to bring her back and capture the notorious pirate in exchange for a cloak. But there’s a catch: There’s only one cloak, and Ximena’s competition is Dante deLeon, an infuriating yet handsome classmate.

With their futures on the line, Ximena and Dante set out on a dangerous quest across the high seas. But can Ximena sail far enough to escape the legacy of her family, or will her relationship with Dante thwart her success in more ways than one?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Anarchy versus authoritarianism, in simplest terms. Neither side is presented in a terribly positive light. Reality having this extremely disagreeable habit of not being binary, I thought I'd like this book.

Not quite so much.

Ximena is far too impulsively sure she's Right, then remorseful when she's wrong, then back to impulsive action because she's Right...the cycle isn't going much of anywhere. No resolution makes recursion into repetition. That gets old fast. When it comes to the love interest, the cycle of assumption/acting on assumption/learning she was wrong should have consequences but it never does. It felt as though this character was impervious to learning. Kind of a drawback when you've set your story in a literal school. That it was basically a police academy, instilling authoritarian principles, was deeply unpleasant to me. You've encountered One Piece if you're interested in this story. That series of tales is 180° from this one in tone, in construction (One Piece hangs together), and society building.

Dante is described as handsome. In what way? Why is Ximena susceptible to his particular handsomeness? As it is, it seems as though Ximena is simply fixated on him, without reason or evidence we are able to see. His character, in the old-fashioned sense, is reprehensible. He lies and cheats to get what he wants...too much of that in the world already...and he spends zero time trying to engage with rule-loving Ximena for me to believe he sees her as any kind of person. She's just whatever he thinks she is, to him, and what kind of message is that to send to a YA-age girl?

So why did I bother to keep reading it? I'm a sucker for Hispanic-inspired cultures having grown up on or near La Frontera. I think the use of Spanish in the text is well done, coming at times that felt narratively natural. I enjoyed the school setting being presented as a positive even though I don't like or promote the authoritarian values it teaches.

The thing you should know about the author is, it seems she is in sympathy with the present US administration...thus explaining the positive presentation of authoritarianism...and, if huge amounts of gossip is to be believed, has regressive views about women's autonomy. I can't say I'd be all that surprised if I ever saw the evidence used to reach that conclusion. It *feels* like that would be her choice, from the manners and mannerisms given to different characters. I myownself have no direct evidence to support or refute the gossip.

I don't like the somewhat unsympathetic values asserted by the story, I have big issues showing the kind of "romance" that's in here to young women as a positive not a series of red flags, so I'm not recommending it. I'm also not angry I, an adult male, read it. If you're willing to see the positives I saw, or of you're culturally supportive of authoritarian stuff (what you're doing reading my reviews is beyond me in that case), it's okay. Please don't give it to an impressionable teen girl.

IF I STOPPED HAUNTING YOU by COLBY WILKENS

IF I STOPPED HAUNTING YOU
COLBY WILKENS
St. Martin's Griffin Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An enemies to lovers romance with a spooky twist where two feuding writers end up on a writers retreat together at a haunted castle in Scotland

It's been months since horror author Penelope Skinner threw a book at Neil Storm. But he was so infuriating, with his sparkling green eyes and his bestselling horror novels that claimed to break Native stereotypes. And now she’s a publishing pariah and hasn’t been able to write a word since. So when her friend invites her on a too-good-to-be-true writers retreat in a supposedly haunted Scottish castle, she seizes the opportunity. Of course, some things really are too good to be true.

Neil wants nothing less than to be trapped in a castle with the frustratingly adorable woman who threw a book at him. She drew blood! Worse still, she unleashed a serious case of self-doubt! Neil is terrified to write another bestselling “book without a soul,” as Pen called it. All Neil wants is to find inspiration, while completely avoiding her.

But as the retreat begins, Pen and Neil are stunned to find themselves trapped in a real-life ghost story. Even more horrifying, they’re stuck together and a truly shocking (extremely hot) almost-kiss has left them rethinking their feelings, and… maybe they shouldn’t have been enemies at all? But if they can’t stop the ghosts pursuing them, they may never have the chance to find out.

Full of spooky chills and even more sexy thrills, If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens is the funny, fast-paced romp romance readers have been waiting for!

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My Review: Spooky castle...enemies forced into proximity...sparks flying left and right...bingo! #Deathtober read card filled.

One star off for heterosexualizing a perfectly good plot.

Author Wilkens does a fine job of entertaining her readers with a ghost story inside Gothic-novel trappings. Her domestic-violence opening...the woman throws a book at the man hard enough for the injury to bleed, and to leave a scar, and it's...somehow okay...? Like, a woman injuring a man isn't a problem but if he'd done the same to her the howling banshees would be all over it!


I was not thrilled by this.

I just barely got to a three-star rating because Author Wilkens made me chuckle many times *in*spite*of* my existing irritation. That is some serious talent! Causing an irked old curmudgeon to chuckle is a feat!

I really don't know what to tell you about the violence. You know your own tolerance for the abuse passed off as humor trope.

BEST MEN, gay-male romcom light on rom but very well supplied with com!

BEST MEN
SIDNEY KARGER
Berkley Books
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When two best men in a wedding party fall for each other, they realize love isn't a piece of cake in this hilarious and heartfelt romantic comedy debut by screenwriter Sidney Karger.

Max Moody thought he had everything figured out. He's trying to live his best life in New York City and has the best friend a gay guy could ask for: Paige. She and Max grew up next door to each other in the suburbs of Chicago. She can light up any party. She finishes his sentences. She's always a reliable splunch (they don't like to use the word brunch) partner. But then Max's whole world is turned upside down when Paige suddenly announces some huge news: she's engaged and wants Max to be her man of honor. Max was always the romantic one who imagined he would get married before the unpredictable Paige and is shocked to hear she's ready to settle down. But it turns out there's not just one new man in Paige's life--there are two.

There's the groom, Austin, who's a perfectly nice guy. Then there's his charming, fun and ridiculously handsome gay younger brother, Chasten, who is Austin's best man. As Paige's wedding draws closer, Max, the introverted Midwesterner, and Chasten, the social butterfly East Coaster, realize they're like oil and water. Yet they still have to figure out how to coexist in Paige's life while not making her wedding festivities all about them. But can the tiny romantic spark between these two very different guys transform their best man supporting roles into the leading best men in each other's lives?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Max, 35, is Old. He tells us so himself. As I am damn near twice that age, I got right tired of hearing that nonsense. Max has a disastrous love-life. Max has one friend, Paige, for most of his life, and she is what I would call a collector: someone who gets a lot of people into her orbit and then keeps them there without paying a lot of attention to them. Max himself points this up by mentioning their friendship habit of going to a specific diner and Paige does the same trick of focusing all attention on herself with even the waitstaff...who, like Paige, basically ignore Max.

I am familiar with this kind of "friendship." It happens to a lot of gay guys I know, not the best-looking, not the most outgoing, but who still crave affection and settle for this dark twin of it because it's obvious that the friend is doing them a favor. It's so pervasive in Max's life that he has a friends-with-benefits deal going with his ex...who literally makes the booty call and then tells Max he just needed to get off before his date with the new guy in his life so he wouldn't come across as too sexually demanding!

It's all Max knows, being second-best, so he rolls with witty sarcasm as his defense mechanism. There are lists and texts and all sorts of not-story documents larded in to this too-long but very relatable story of modern friendship among the generation where gay is just a thing you are. These are the people who piss off the old white men who wear traitorous flags to show what patriots they are the most. It's not important that anyone is gay until Paige gets among the older people she needs to make herself different from.

I liked the snark, I liked the honesty about Max's Paige-provided employment and its soul-sucking banal cruelty...which Max is a big part of delivering!...and I liked the scene on Fire Island with Max as the very, very obvious fish out of water. I got no chemistry to explain why Max and Chasten were into each other, it seemed to take forever before anything happened and then it was as though they'd never been at odds or felt aggrieved by the other's presence in Paige's court of admirers. Shall we say there's no real tension resolved and be as discreet as Max himself is about details of his more lurid energies. The narrative is all-Max all the time and for over 300 pages it's a kind of strange thing that we never once see anything but the barest surfaces of Max's responses to anyone.

Self-loathing ≠ introspection.

I'd've preferred a shorter version of the story, or more delving into the real feelings behind Max's witty, bitchy narration. It's okay as a com, but the rom part left me wondering what more there was to all these characters. What makes the read fun is the snark; what needed moe thought was the length. I'll be on the lookout for Author Karger's next book with high hopes.

LOVE, HATE & CLICKBAIT, fake dating in the political sphere with added gayness

LOVE, HATE & CLICKBAIT
LIZ BOWERY
MIRA Books
$15.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Shake some hands. Kiss some coworkers.

Cutthroat political consultant Thom Morgan is thriving, working on the governor of California’s presidential campaign. If only he didn’t have to deal with Clay Parker, the infuriatingly smug data analyst who gets under Thom’s skin like it’s his job. In the midst of one of their heated and very public arguments, a journalist snaps a photo, but the image makes it look like they’re kissing. As if that weren’t already worst-nightmare territory, the photo goes viral—and in a bid to secure the liberal vote, the governor asks them to lean into it. Hard.

Thom knows all about damage control—he practically invented it. Ever the professional, he’ll grin and bear this challenge as he does all others. But as the loyal staffers push the boundaries of “giving the people what they want,” the animosity between them blooms into something deeper and far more dangerous: desire. Soon their fake relationship is hurtling toward something very real, which could derail the campaign and cost them both their jobs…and their hearts.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sarcastic psychopath meets delusional dork (probably on the dyspraxic spectrum), picks on him mercilessly until they fall in love after becoming a cute internet meme that helps their tin-eared sociopathic boss in her presidential campaign. Except hijinks ensue and the boys get together. Oh...the psychopathic one? He starts out using/abusing women, this is his first sexual anything with a man. So there's that, too.

It's mean-spirited a lot of the time, which I honestly count in its favor. Author Bowery obviously knows real people like this, she's way too good at both guys' pathologies not to. And the campaign staffers are just *perfect* in their utter and complete soulless indifference to things like others' feelings. It isn't like I have to spend time with them in real life so I can enjoy the terribleness of their callous uncaring ways.

Clay, the delusional dork on the dyspraxic spectrum, is the butt of many jokes and always has been, as we're made aware. I'm not advocating the treatment Clay receives as a come-on or a stay-away quality. I think a lot of socially awkward people would cringe in recognition but I don't know exactly if it would be cathartic or traumatic. It's that much of a toss-up in my mind whether the author's also laughing or making the laughing clods look even worse by not shoving her own reaction at us readers. I actually give points for that. You are left to make up your own mind. I approve of this.

Thom the psychopath, though, isn't played for ambiguity. He has this complex of symptoms, acts out, and is held up as an awful person...until he isn't. Because he's falling ever so slowly in love with a certain tall, dark, and dorky dude. Who seems to be leaning in to their fake wedding (don't ask, just go with it) and the way Thom can make his archenemies freeze to the floor with some truly sick, volcanically hot burns.

Mostly, the beginning of the story is there to set the stakes in romantic fiction. There are enough stakes to go around as these two unappealing people peel off their mannerisms to get to the man inside the ever-baggier suits of fakery. There's a guitar-and-waffles moment when it's all coming together, and they're really connecting over the ordinary stuff of life. Of course Something Happens, and their little moment is lost. I got honestly invested at that point.

The leisurely path to the real relationship is, to my surprise, through the bedroom. There's no little authorial squickiness, either, just two eager, horny men. Sex between men who won't, can't, or don't identify as gay is (as I trust y'all who've been here more than once to know) no news whatever. Been goin' on forever. But these two, in this situation? It's hard for me to figure out why Author Bowery didn't pull the veil over the events but instead she chose the direct path. Did herself proud, too. Her characters don't shy away from the physical responses that real people have, like Thom having a moment's ickiness over the aftermath of sex. It was handled right. It didn't interrupt the story's flow but channeled it closer than ever to the goal of getting these guys past their initial misconceptions about themselves, and therefore each other.

Every step of the way, as Thom felt himself feel for someone else what he's never felt for himself, he fell a little lower in my estimation. He kept being horrible! Truly terrible! And, well...that fall from a height that pride goeth (and pride goeth) before? Pride wenteth. Thom and his belovèd Clay each lost illusions. Clay gained so much self-respect and honest power from losing them! Thom, sad little naked waif huddled in the rain, won much more when he finally realized that standing up means laying down the weapons that defended your badly designed walls.

It's a romance! There's HEA in the social contract of reading them! The wonderful part of *this* HEA is getting there. How it looks? Who knows if this could happen or not...but I'm willing to say it should happen.

THE BARBARIAN DUET, two gay fantasy romances telling one couple's

WED TO THE BARBARIAN
KEIRA ANDREWS (The Barbarian Duet #1)
KA Books
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Will an innocent prince forced into marriage choose passion?

Sheltered in the palace with his books, Jem’s life is peaceful. Even if he’s lonely and yearning for romance, the big, strong men he wants don’t crave small, timid princes.

Then he’s forced to marry a mysterious barbarian.

Jem must do his duty—even if it means being stuck with Cador, a brute who dismisses him as weak. Even if it means a fake marriage in name only for the sake of their homelands. Even if he must leave behind everything and everyone to journey to a forbidding island of ice and stone.

Even if there’s only one bed.

Alone with this wild—yet tender?—man, Jem discovers desire that burns hotter than he ever imagined. Can two strangers learn to trust, or will dangerous lies tear them apart?

Wed to the Barbarian by Keira Andrews is a gay romance fantasy featuring enemies to lovers, an age gap, forced proximity, first times, and of course a happy ending (eventually). This is the first action-adventure romance in the Barbarian Duet and must be read before The Barbarian’s Vow.


I RECEIVED THE DUET FROM AN EXCITED ELF. YOU WERE SO RIGHT: CAN’T BE WITHOUT BOTH!

My Review: I don’t recall reading anything by Keira Andrews before this duology, which honestly I think is best called a “Duet”...a choral piece for two voices, invoking lovely, layered harmonies and rich contrapuntal passages of musical intensity. There are things about it I didn’t enjoy, but on balance, this secondary-world fantasy is enjoyable and well worth reading.

Twenty-year-old Prince Jowan of Neuvella, in the land of Onan (!), is small, slight, and shy. He doesn’t particularly like his big, butch older brothers who have a history of playing pranks on him and making him feel picked on and targeted. His non-binary older sibling Santo is more to his taste, being artistic and far less hearty-big-guy. Jem, as he’s called by one and all, is very much a dreamer, a soft-hearted animal rescuer, a romance-fantasy-novel reader, and a deeply unwilling virgin. He’s at a seasonal summit meeting with his parents, the Queen of Neuvella and her consort; he’s bored out of his mind by the politicking and the ceremonial stuff. He decidedly is not bored by the barbarian hotties from newly-returned-to-the-fold Ergh to the north...he’s been eyeing one of them up pretty thoroughly, tall broad and handsome in his leathers and furs blond god Cador.

Unrepentant horndawg Cador can’t be arsed to look at anyone from Onan, effete little weaklings whose dark skins and eyes are signs of soft, luxurious living impossible in cold, northerly Ergh. But he, too, is bored out of his mind, and dreading his inevitable fate: Marrying one of the weakings, a Prince apparently called Jowan. Whichever one he is. But his tas, the Chieftain of Rusk and leader of Ergh, has made this marriage a duty he can not avoid...he doesn’t want to marry anyone, still less a foreigner, but he must or there will be dreadful, dreadful consequences, things that are bad will become terrible, unbearable.

And so the reindeer games begin! The culture of Onan (!) is sex positive, identity fluid, and clearly set for a major conflict. The royal alliance that’s being formalized here between Ergh and Neuvella (the one that’s about to be sprung on uninformed and unsuspecting Jem) is meant to solidify ties with the newly reunited with their polity “barbarians”. They’ve all come seeking trade, and other advantages that are revealed slowly over the course of the two stories. The cost is to be borne by Jem and Cador, unwilling husbands bound by the gods to serve their parents’ aims for their peoples.

What happens is a good story of young men who love their families and their ways of life, and whose sense of duty impels them to behave with all the honor and honesty they can in every situation. The obstacles to the pair becoming more than political mates are, bit by bit, overcome, climbed over, or worked around. They’re very, very compatible in bed. Their sex life is vigorous, once it begins. I don’t happen to like that kind of sex, not finding humiliation at all erotically enticing. Lots of flippity-flippity-flip until the “dirty talk” ended.

What I was invested in was these men’s world. I think their culture was interestingly drawn, with its clear and unambiguous rejection of binding gender roles and abundantly evident sexual freedom. The cultural conflicts over religion were framed interestingly...the clerics, male and female, are not particularly welcome in Ergh, whose people’s long-ago exodus from Onan (!) included leaving “the gods” behind. Now that there’s a major crisis in Ergh, the clerics have sought to use it to bring these lost folk back into the fold...and under the clerics’ power. This is not to Cador’s taste, nor to Jem’s, as it turns out. Neither man is eager to see the clerics expand their power over the people.

The time Jem spends in Ergh, where he and Cador live together in a rough unprincely manner, changes him. He is eager to be part of Cador’s world once their initial wary hostility is overcome, once they begin to accept and love each other for their unique selves. But there are secrets, ugly, terrible secrets, at the heart of his marriage to Cador. These come to light in hurtful, painful ways that re-open Jem’s barely healed trust wounds inflicted by his hearty dudebro brothers during his childhood. And then, as the true depths of the secrets is revealed, Jem’s new and fragile love for Cador is shattered.

That’s where this book ends, and my gift-giving friend said to me in giving me the second book, “can’t leave you without book two!” I protested then that of course, getting any gift was great!

I meant it. But, you see, I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about because I would’ve gone *stark*staring*MAD* if I hadn’t had book two to dive into the very second I finished book one. The story has a great hook for my readerly interests. Religious folk being the bad guys? Say hallelujah! But not being the bad guys because they are persecuting gay people for being gay? Bring the jubilee! This world, this secondary world of “love who you love and be who you are,” is one I’d read about all day long. The fact that the religious establishment is gender blind, solemnizes marriages between people with any plumbing whatever, and is *still* evil...well, it’s like the author ripped my convictions about the nature of religion out of my head and wrote them into this story.

It’s reasonably clear that there is some kind of interesting history to this world, permaybehaps one of colonization from Earth in a past not remembered. How else are there dark- and light-skinned people, living separately, but not divided along “racial” lines? The conflicts in this story are no less bitter and hateful, I grant you, but there’s no sign that the differing skin colors of Jem and Cador feature in any way in their societal conflict. That’s something I approve of, and of course the absence of sex-based or identity-based phobias is much to my liking as well. No sooner did I finish this read than I went on to book two.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE BARBARIAN'S VOW
KEIRA ANDREWS
KA Books
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: He claimed an innocent prince—and surrendered his heart.

Cador only married a pampered prince from a faraway land to save his people. He never expected he’d grow to respect Jem. He never expected to find comfort with him. He never expected to want him with a fierce passion.

He never expected to fall in love.

Now Cador must secure his people’s future and win Jem’s heart. For without it, he has no future at all.

The Barbarian’s Vow by Keira Andrews is a gay romance fantasy featuring enemies to lovers, an age gap, forced proximity, first times, and of course a happy ending. This is the second and final action-adventure romance in the Barbarian Duet. Wed to the Barbarian must be read first.

I RECEIVED THE DUET FROM AN EXCITED ELF. YOU WERE SO RIGHT: CAN’T BE WITHOUT BOTH!

My Review: Finishing Jem’s and Cador’s story...after the ending of book one, I was wondering how the hell the author was going to get the necessary HEA out of the place she left us! And had my sweet elf not gifted me both of these books, I think I’d’ve behaved like Jem does in this book, scratching at my scalp until it bleeds just to distract myself from the awful agony within.

Luckily this was not necessary.

As the book opens, the badly betrayed Jem and contrite, desperate-to-reconcile Cador are embarking for Onan (!) to meet with Jem’s mother, the Queen of Neuvella, and the clerical hierarchy to solve the pressing issue that’s driven the entire plot. Cador’s initial reasons for marrying Jem have come to light and, as they were truly terrible reasons, base and cruel reasons, Jem is understandably not well disposed towards Cador. He is his husband...he is absolutely not Cador’s friend just now.

As this is a perfectly reasonable response to the things he’s discovered, the hurts that have been inflicted on him, there’s no blame attached to him for being as cold, withdrawn, snarky, and/or unkind as he’s got a mind to be. Yet here he is with Cador and several other of the Erghians who conspired to cause him serious harm. He’s actively working to solve this terrible problem. He’s got all the Good Boy Points in this scenario.

What transpires from the moment the ship lands can only be described as a clusterfuck. There is not a single, solitary moment when Jem (still angry at all the Erghians) and Cador (trying, trying hard, to make up with Jem) actually communicate. I get it, Author Andrews! Jem’s angry and hurt...but the number of silly and frankly incredible excuses made for them to stay away from having a real conversation stopped working around halfway through the book. It became ridiculous and repetitive.

There were a few other problematic things...Cador’s tas, the chieftain, being absent from his post while the place is in a crisis, for example...but honestly it’s just the silliness of the inner excuses and rationalizations (“I’m so tired, we’ll talk in the morning”) and external obstacles (...and then {someone} came pounding on the door! Or “the Queen commanded us to…”) put in the way of these men having a simple conversation that wore on me. The more there were the less credible they were.

Worldbuilding issues were present as well. Why, for example, are there maple trees and horses and chickens and goats and boars...but also sevel fruit and tew trees and dillywig birds? Speaking of sevel fruits, there is a reason that these are precious that is made obvious to us. But how the effect these fruits have could simply have gone unnoticed by humanity for so long is utterly unclear, unexplained. The issue of the condition sevel fruits prevent is one that has haunted humanity for millennia. It’s unlikely that people have forgotten it, given its horrors. And the moment Jem has his realization about the implications of the sevel fruit’s effects being known to some, withheld from others, really demands a lot more story space!

The ending of the tale was, to my mind, about the most encouraging part. For Jem and Cador, their prayers were answered, and for Ergh and Onan (!) as a whole, the best possible changes came about. With the leaders changing, the generations rolling into new grooves, it sounds to me like their futures are indeed bright. I was so enrapt in the story, so invested in its telling, that I am sure I’ll try more of Author Andrews’ stories soon. This duet being over, however, I bid my farewells to Cador and Jem and their families with a happy, wistful smile. If, by some good chance, I see there are new stories set in this world, I am so there!

Just stop with the revolting w-bombs.

THE QUEER PRINCIPLES OF KIT WEBB, sheer delight and big big fun from Cat Sebastian

THE QUEER PRINCIPLES OF KIT WEBB
CAT SEBASTIAN
Avon Impulse
$10.99 ebook editions, available right now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Critically acclaimed author Cat Sebastian pens a stunning historical romance about a reluctantly reformed highwayman and the aristocrat who threatens to steal his heart.

Kit Webb has left his stand-and-deliver days behind him. But dreary days at his coffee shop have begun to make him pine for the heady rush of thievery. When a handsome yet arrogant aristocrat storms into his shop, Kit quickly realizes he may be unable to deny whatever this highborn man desires.

In order to save himself and a beloved friend, Percy, Lord Holland must go against every gentlemanly behavior he holds dear to gain what he needs most: a book that once belonged to his mother, a book his father never lets out of his sight and could be Percy’s savior. More comfortable in silk-filled ballrooms than coffee shops frequented by criminals, his attempts to hire the roughly hewn highwayman, formerly known as Gladhand Jack, proves equal parts frustrating and electrifying.

Kit refuses to participate in the robbery but agrees to teach Percy how to do the deed. Percy knows he has little choice but to submit and as the lessons in thievery begin, he discovers thievery isn’t the only crime he’s desperate to commit with Kit.

But when their careful plan goes dangerously wrong and shocking revelations threaten to tear them apart, can these stolen hearts overcome the impediments in their path?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I've been able to write harsh reviews before. It should be a doddle to write a happy one, right?

Wrong...when I'm happy, where I expected to be and really almost was, ecstatic.

First and foremost, however, let me assure anyone who likes historical fiction featuring men who get it on with other men that this is a very satisfying example of the genre. Despite the W-bomb dropped at the 17% mark. (At least it was just the one.)

I was utterly delighted by the odd-couple pairing of the future Duke with the highwayman. I was even glad that the couple took a goodly time getting down to business...I'm sure the rational side of an author of M/M romantic novels knows the inflection point of first sexual contact between men is likely to be the source of a sizable, um, payoff for their readers. Knowing it's, erm, coming and being teased to wait for it can be a lot of fun!

Until the magic moment slips by...and it becomes a Thursday-night fuck.

I was 95% there by the time the deed got done, and was fairly resigned to the men having an old-fashioned "the fire flickered and died" fade-to-black coupling. That's not really Author Sebastian's métier, but people are allowed to change and try different things. Going over half the story without the act of consummation was almost too long. It was risky to use alternating PoVs in the story, given the lateness of the sex, because it really risked disinvesting the reader in the when-will-they. There was no question that they wouldn't, of course, but waiting so long to give us the reward when we weren't able to follow one character's perspective on the cost of delay resulted in a certain distancing and detachment...we had no sense of why the particular choice that was made in the final analysis was made. It felt as surprising to me as it must've felt to the men themselves. And yet we dwelt on it not at all!

Webb frequented neither church nor tavern nor anywhere even remotely interesting. Percy had become momentarily intrigued when he realized how often Webb went to the baths, but the man seemed to spend his time there actually bathing, so Percy resumed being unimpressed.
–and–
Kit was usually very good at controlling this sort of urge. Hopping into bed with attractive strangers had never appealed to him very much anyway. It always seemed like a lot of hassle {anachronism; coinage not attested until 1945} and risk for pleasure that never quite lived up to one's expectations. And that was with women; with men things were even more complicated because a heaping great dose of danger was thrown into the bargain.

And yet this monadnock of reticence chooses the loss of virginity that most men quail before! This didn't square with what I'd been told, nor was I privy to anything in the cross-talk of the book that would let me think anything other than, "do what now? where'd that even come from?!"

There are Author Sebastian's trademark delightful aperçus, of course, like this delicious pair:

“I used to think that revenge was about defending one’s honor, but it turns out that honor is just spite dressed up for Sunday.”
–and–
Percy realized he had had it all wrong when he told Kit that honor is just spite dressed up; spite was honor when it was the only weapon you had against someone more powerful.

Thesis, meet antithesis...and both are equally true. Inarguably so. Doesn't something in you resound with the truth in each of these?

Then came a serious issue I felt really didn't get anything like the time it needed to build up to: the return of the wanderer, and the foreshadowing of the real stakes in what I feel sure now is going to be a series. I can't really say more, and was encouraged to say even less (ie, nothing at all) but there's a reason I want to tell you that you're going to need to brace yourself.

In life, as we live it, there are no unmixed emotions, no purely experienced peak moments. We drag the past with us and chuck it up as a screen to avoid looking into the nothingness of the unlived future. The present is almost never enough to really distract us from the blank wall we can choose what to project onto, but more often choose to see in all its void-of-glory through a ragged curtain of life as it was.

When that happens in fiction, it's of necessity a surprise. What stakes there are, however, are utterly and totally on the line for the author. One false step, one gesture misplaced or misused, and the trust between reader and author can crumble. It almost did for me when the past came to haunt the future.

If this is the first time you're reading one of Author Sebastian's books, put it down and pick up The Turners series or the Seducing the Sedgwicks series here and here. They lack this authorial high-wire act, and building your trust in Author Sebastian's landings being solid, if not precisely the one you're expecting, is necessary not to experience disorientation.

The fact that this will be a series is worth noting as well, since there are people whose actions and inactions we need to know more about before they make full sense. And there are some actions that are, to put it mildly, aren't easy to gloss over...and I don't mean the one many will blench at.

So take this as a solid encouragement to pick up and savor the book for existing fans, with the note to set aside some established patterns; and a shove in the direction of the previous reads by Author Sebastian for new readers. For here be pleasures you should definitely not deny yourself or remain without. We need happy distractions from ugly reality...what better way than to see love conquering the many barriers folk decide to allow there to be in its free and complete exercise.