What what? What’s that you say? I READ SOME BOOKS? Yes, wow, we are all correctly very impressed by this news. I read some books! In this economy! As two hurricanes barrel down on me at one and the same time! Wow! (I also read Not the Girl You Marry and definitely want to read more by Andie Christopher, but I did not immediately write down my thoughts on it and now I remember nothing about it.)
Bringing Down the Duke, Evie Dunmore
Annabelle Archer can stay at Oxford under a few, conflicting conditions. To be permitted to study outside the family home, she must send two pounds a month home to her cousin Gilbert. And in thanks to the benefactors supplying her scholarship, she must work to advance the cause of women’s suffrage — in this case, by targeting the Duke of Montgomery. The Duke, for his part, has just been tapped by the queen to map out a strategy for the Tories’ electoral victory in the next election. If he’s successful, Queen Victoria has promised that he can win back the ancestral home his father lost in a hand of cards.
(Sidebar: Bringing Down the Duke doesn’t have home reno, but home reno is one of my favorite things in a romance novel. Any time any historical romance mentions an Estate, I’m immediately recasting the book as an HGTV show in my mind. I want! To hear! About the furnishings! Oh, are there just so, so many cobwebs in this room? Let’s yeet those motherfuckers outta here and replace them with ELEGANT SATIN DRAPERIES in whatever the latest fashion is that the authors learned about in their researches. God, when will Rose Lerner write me a home reno book?)
Bringing Down the Duke is a delightful debut, with all the tropey nonsense your mother warned you about. Annabelle gets sick one time and has to stay at the duke’s house longer than expected! There’s attempts at smooching (and more??) during an elegant ball! She gets arrested for doing too much suffrage stuff, and he has to bail her out! Some good groveling! I wasn’t maybe as wild about Sebastian as a romantic lead, as he skews a teeny bit too autocratic for my personal tastes, but I am for sure on the hook for more books in this series. At one point Annabelle is dancing with a Noted Rake and she’s thinking, like, ugh, this guy’s such a rake, he’s going to try and bone me, and the Noted Rake is like “Oh so um do you know Lucie?” and Annabelle’s like “Lucie the very prim leader of our entire suffrage group, who never takes any nonsense from anybody?” and the Noted Rake is like, “Yeah, does she still have her cat?” So. You know. We have that to look forward to. I am a woman of simple tastes.
American Sweethearts, Adriana Herrera
I scarcely had time to be said that Adriana Herrerra’s Dreamer series was at an end before she announced a new book series about Afro-Latina heiresses finding love in nineteenth-century Paris. Though this links round-up can attest that I’m currently in a pendulum swing towards contemporary romance, historical romance is my first love, and it’s hugely exciting to see one of my favorite contemporary authors turning her attention to histrom.
The Dreamer series has been a real classic in the romance subgenre People with Jobs, and American Sweethearts is no exception. Juan Pablo (the last of the four best friends who came up together in the Bronx) is a baseball player, but really this story focuses on Priscilla’s career, rather than his. She’s a police office with a side hustle writing a blog and producing a podcast about race, gender, and sexuality; and her dream — though she knows it’s too impractical to pursue — is to open a community space where she can hold classes on sexuality for queer, trans, and older Black and brown people. Though she loves parts of her job on the NYPD, a lot of it exhausts her, but she’s fearful of sacrificing stability and taking risks.
Juan Pablo and Priscilla were each other’s first everything, and over the years they’ve fallen in and out of each other’s beds. But in the past few years, they’ve grown apart a little, due mostly to a huge blow-out break-up resulting from Priscilla’s unwillingness to let people take care of her and Juan Pablo’s resistance to respecting Pris’s choices when he thinks he knows better. (He wants her to leave the NYPD. I also want her to leave the NYPD, for it is terrible.) After a few years of therapy (therapy! yay!), Juan Pablo believes he can be what Priscilla needs, and he just wants to give her the space to see that.
My primary feeling about the People with Jobs subgenre is that it’s fun to see what People’s Jobs are like. However! I also like it a lot in romance because it’s awesome to read love stories about people who are very successful in their field, yet their partners are not threatened by that fact. Especially if — as here — the very talented people are women! I loved Juan Pablo’s support for Priscilla’s dreams, and of course it’s a lovely fantasy that she (or any of us) could escape the hellscape of capitalism and achieve both 1) her dreams and 2) financial security with the help of a wealthy, woke friend. Imagine such a world!
My one wish for American Sweethearts was that we could have seen more of Priscilla’s work on her blog and podcast. Juan Pablo honestly talks and thinks about it more than she does! Which, you know, I have a blog and a podcast, and they are a very lot of work. I’d have just loved to see Priscilla thinking about her writing and what she wants to say, or editing the podcast, or whatever. People! with! Jobs! Apart from that tiny gripe, American Sweethearts is a marvelous, boundary-respecting romance and the perfect cap on this wonderful series. I can’t wait for the heiresses in Paris series.
Sweetest in the Gale, Olivia Dade
After getting screamy about Olivia Dade’s contribution to the entirely marvelous romance novella collection He’s Come Undone, I was delighted to be contacted by the author with an e-ARC of her own novella collection, Sweetest in the Gale. It collects Simon and Poppy’s story from He’s Come Undone, along with two others set in the same world. The short version is that Olivia Dade has a real gift for writing romance stories that are both tender and heartbreaking. Whereas many romance novels steer clear of unfixable sadness, Olivia Dade leans into it, reminding her readers that happy-ever-afters are possible in the face of grief and struggle.
The title story follows two English teachers, Candy and Griff. Candy has always been passionate about her work to the point of throwing puppet shows to make sure everyone at the school understands that Frankenstein Is Not the Monster — but when she comes back to school after summer break, she’s muted and sad. All Griff wants is to buoy her up a little, and he has the chance to do it when they’re assigned to work on a Poetry initiative together. Poetry becomes the language in which Griff is able to support Candy through her obvious grief. “Sweetest in the Gale” is so kind about grief and its many indignities, and I loved watching Candy and Griff learn to open up to each other.
I have already nattered on about the second novella, “Unraveled,” so you may repair to my post about She’s Come Undone for my further thoughts on that. The final one, “Cover Me,” is a romance between two long-time friends who marry for convenience because one of them has breast cancer and no insurance to cover it. This is a… horribly relatable problem to have, and our country is a hellscape. Elizabeth and James have known and loved each other (as friends) for years, which is one of my favorite set-ups for a romance novella — the shorter length can be challenging if the principle characters are brand new to each other! Here, though, they have decades of history, which makes their gentleness with each other all the more lovely.
Sooooo yeah! I loved this and I would now follow Olivia Dade anywhere! I have rarely encountered a romance author who writes in such an open-hearted way (and I say that with the full understanding that romance as a genre wears its heart very much on its sleeve). It was a treat — albeit a rather emotional one — to get to read these stories.
Can’t Escape Love, Alyssa Cole
I’ve been an Alyssa Cole fan for years, and her Reluctant Royals series is my probable favorite of all her stuff (A Prince on Paper is my fave!). Can’t Escape Love is a novella in the series, and it follows Portia (the protagonist of A Duke by Default)’s twin sister Reggie. Owner of the geeky website Girls with Glasses, Reggie’s suffering from insomnia of a type that can only be cured by the voice of her online pal, the puzzle expert and live-streamer Gustave Nguyen. When she calls on him for help sleeping, he has a problem of his own: He’s been asked to create an escape room based on a romance anime show she loves and he knows nothing about, so they make a deal. He’ll talk her to sleep when she needs it, and she’ll help him plan his escape room in a way that honors the great things about the show.
As always with Alyssa Cole’s work, I enjoyed the hell out of this one! Reggie is prickly and smart and a really good sister, which are three of my favorite traits in a fictional heroine. Despite the complications of her relationship with Portia, she’s quick to leap to her defense, and the love between them is so important to her, even in a book where Portia never appears in person. I also loved the way Gus pays attention to Reggie and her needs. Any time she expresses a boundary, he respects it; and beyond that, he spends their time together observing her and anticipating what she might need or want from him. The first time they meet in person is at her house, and Gus is careful to walk next to Reggie as they enter the house, so she won’t have to worry about him being behind her. Legit, I really wish guys would be cognizant of this type of thing more often. Be mindful of the space your body occupies!, as I am constantly saying to Toddler Godson.
While I can’t speak to the accuracy of Alyssa Cole’s portrayal of Reggie’s ataxia and wheelchair use, or of Gus’s — I want to say autism?, both were handled with tremendous grace and respect. She depicts requesting and supplying disability accommodations unfussily, and both protagonists are careful to tailor their behavior to the other one’s needs. I loved it and would love to see that more often in romance novels (and all novels, frankly!).
If I had one teeny complaint, it’s that I still rarely see books that incorporate geekiness about real properties in a way that feels natural. I don’t know why that should be! It’s like, you know how animation has gotten so astonishing and we all gasped when we saw the animated water in the trailer for Frozen 2? But then as soon as a character starts running, they might as well be in an Atari game from 1993? And you’re always like, Good LORD, how have we not cracked this yet? That’s me and characters in books watching and loving TV shows or movies or books or whatever. It invariably feels a little awkward, and Can’t Escape Love was no exception.
….Also I just realized that the title is in reference to the escape room. Nice. I love it. God I love romance novel titles.
Drop a line in the comments to either:
- Praise me for reading four entire books (wow!); or
- Let me know what romance novels you’ve been enjoying lately.