There was no reason for me to do this. I just felt like attaining an arbitrary goal that made me feel clever. Do I still have more than 30 books checked out from the library? Yes. Do I have multiple ARCs that I’m supposed to be reading and reviewing and they’ve piled up and I’m starting to worry I’ll never catch up? Yes. But January Jenny read one book per day this entire month. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOALS. So here comes a lightning round of all the books I read in January.

There are thirty-one of them.

I’m a goals genius.

Week One

Noor, Nnedi Okorafor – A heavily augmented woman called AO is attacked in the marketplace, after which — she is extremely strong due to all the augmentations — she goes on the run across Nigeria with a Fulani herdsman she meets. A whole world of surveillance follows.

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, Tamsyn Muir – What a weirdo Tamsyn Muir is. I say it with love! Princess Floralinda is the story of a princess imprisoned in, yep, a forty-flight tower. On every flight there is a different monster, and at the bottom there is a dragon, and none of the princes make it very far. With the help of a horrible little fairy, Floralinda slowly begins to make her way downward. But as she’s changing the state of things in the tower, she changes the state of things in herself as well.

Where the Children Take Us, Zain Asher – This was a Booklist read! It’s Chiwetel Ejiofor’s sister’s memoir. Did you know poor Chiwetel Ejiofor was in a horrible accident with his father when he was a kid? He and his dad were on a road trip around Nigeria to help Ejiofor connect with his heritage, and there was a car accident, and the dad died and the son was very badly injured; and anyway, then Zain Asher’s mum raised them all by herself while running a pharmacy in London. The book’s a love letter to Asher’s mother, although I am not personally a huge fan of memoirs.

The Thief on a Winged Horse, Kate Mascarenhas – I got this for Christmas! The author of The Psychology of Time Travel, which I was so in love with, wrote another book that only (curses!) got published in the UK and not in the US. It’s about a dysfunctional family that makes magic dolls, a young dollmaker who comes to town and insists on joining them, and a daughter of the family who wants to learn her family’s dollmaking secrets too, despite family traditions that reserve those secrets only to the men. It’s a slightly chillier book than The Psychology of Time Travel, but fascinating and enjoyable anyway.

Silence Is a Sense, Layla Alammar – A sort of literary Rear Window, from the point of view of a Syrian refugee with post-traumatic mutism. From her window in a council flat, she watches her neighbors and writes essays, anonymously, about refugees and Muslim identity. When her local mosque is the victim of a vicious attack of vandalism, she’s drawn further into the community. The writing in this was gorgeous, although the ending was maybe just a little pat.

Just Last Night, Mhairi McFarlane – My first time out with Mhairi McFarlane! Recommended by my lovely pal Katie, McFarlane’s a Scottish author who writes lovely books about friendship and romance. Just Last Night follows Eve and her group of friends in the aftermath of one of their deaths. As Eve grapples with the loss of Susie, she’s also forced to reckon with her feelings about Ed — which everyone in the group has known about for years. The romance in this one is slightly back-burnered, and I’d more call it women’s fiction, much as I hate the term?, because it’s really more about Eve’s journey of self-acceptance.

The Dating Playbook, Farrah Rochon – I read this out of order! Which is a shame, because the inciting incident of the series sounds delightful: Three different women discover they’re dating the same man. They ditch the man and become the best of friends, and each of the books in the series focuses on the romance of one of them. The Dating Playbook follows Taylor Powell, a personal trainer who gets her big break when NFL player Jamar Dixon hires her to get him in shape to rejoin the league after a major injury. It’s funny and sweet and contains fake dating: everything you want in a romance novel! I can’t wait to read the others in the series!

The Perishing, Natashia Deon – This one’s a literary fantasy novel about a girl who shows up in 1930s Los Angeles with no memory of how she got there or who she was before. She heals with inhuman speed and — later on — realizes that she seems to possess memories from former lives. Lou’s story, which is vivid in its depiction of the time and place, is interspersed with glimpses of a woman called Sarah in the 2100s, who reflects on her past relationships and the generations-long struggle for equality. The novel’s light on speculative elements and is definitely more on the literary fiction side of things, which suits its plotting (uneven), characterization (wonderful), and writing (gorgeous).

Week Two

Assembly, Natasha Brown – A short novel about refusal.

The Days of Afrekete, Asali Solomon – I read and enjoyed Solomon’s first novel, so I thought I’d pick this one up! It was fine though perhaps not quite my thing. It’s a novel that alternates chapters between a rather fraught dinner party (delicious) and the protagonist’s college career and tumultuous relationship with one of her exes. Both bits were interesting, but I’d actually have loved it to be just a dinner party book. Y’all know my feelings on bottle episodes!

Diary of a Provincial Lady, EM Delafield – A very long time ago, all the cool bloggers were reading this. It is perhaps not surprising that it took me like ten years to get to it. I found it tiresome when I started, but then I realized that the trick was to read it as it was written — in brief installments, like a newspaper column. Once I caught wise and started reading it like that, a few entries at a time, I quite enjoyed it. Not to reread, but it was an amusing entertainment of an evening.

Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville, Akash Kapur – Only once ever have I been so intrigued by the book featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review that I’ve read that review in its entirety, the front page bit and the rest of it that you have to skip to, before reading the rest of the book review. This is because I am fascinated by cults. Auroville wasn’t a cult, but it was, at least, cult-adjacent. Kapur and his wife both grew up in Auroville, and his wife’s parents died there under troubling circumstances. Better to Have Gone tells the story of the founding of this intentional community outside of Pondicherry in India and the deaths of the two people who raised his wife. (Whiskey Jenny and I went to Pondicherry when we were in India, but not to Auroville. I did buy a comforter for my bed, though, that was made in Auroville!)

The Road Trip, Beth O’Leary – Remember how I said a minute ago that I love bottle episodes? Beth O’Leary’s The Road Trip is one, and it was great. Addie and her sister and a stranger who’s hitching a ride with them are on their way to their friend’s wedding when she’s in a car crash with her ex-boyfriend Dylan and his horrible posh friend Marcus. They all pile into the car to go to the wedding (it’s a bank holiday weekend, so! no trains!), and everyone is mad at everyone, and I, obviously, loved it. Easily my favorite of Beth O’Leary’s books thus far. Par for the course with her, it deals with some heavy issues, including alcoholism and sexual assault. But also: ROAD TRIP.

Peter Cabot Gets Lost, Cat Sebastian – I mean! As I was already on the road trip theme! It just made good sense to read Cat Sebastian’s latest, Peter Cabot Gets Lost, in which a rich queer Cabot boy goes on a road trip with a (not rich) former classmate he doesn’t have a crush on. As they make their way across America, they’re forced to reassess their initial ideas about each other and also sometimes there is only one bed. Great stuff. Classic. It’s a very very soft book, as Cat Sebastian’s books always are these days, mainly comprising conversations and sex and occasional stops to check out weird Americana. Also, is it a journey to California or a journey to self-acceptance? YOU DECIDE.

Our Wild Farming Life, Lynn Cassells and Sandra Baer – Another memoir for Booklist! This one about farming. My God, farming sounds hard; equally, I bet James Herriot would have liked these two women and their animals. Food for thought.

A Lesson in Vengeance, Victoria Lee – omg so fun. This is the lesbian witch YA dark academia book you’ve been dreaming of. It’s got similar vibes to Hannah Abigail Clarke’s The Scapegracers, except for it’s more focused on academia — our protagonist, Felicity Darrow (they all have names like this), is studying but pretending she’s not studying a bunch of dead witches who once attended her school. She’s also grieving her girlfriend’s death the previous year, a death in which Felicity and witchcraft may or may not have been complicit. Ellis Haley, for her part, wants to write a book about the dead girls, for which she needs to research how to get away with murder. Setting aside the question of whether anything in this book makes sense, it was fucking fun as hell and I will certainly read more by this author.

The Eternal Audience of One, Rémy Ngamije – I loved this! It’s about a Rwandan Namibian guy and his family and his friends. Actually I have a pretty hard time describing what it’s about! But what I will say is that it made me laugh out loud several times, and I am n o t a person who typically laughs out loud at books. Also, love to see Namibia getting its flowers for welcoming refugees from other parts of Africa that were experiencing unrest in the late twentieth century. What a great country.

Week Three

Subtle Blood, KJ Charles – This is the third in a romance series I generally liked but also felt kind of weird about because it’s set in England between the wars, and the Big Bad is a giant international conspiracy of all-knowing people who are highly placed in government and they want to hoard all the wealth. JUST FELT WEIRD. Anyway, Subtle Blood was my favorite in the series because there is the least amount of the giant international conspiracy, and moreover, Kim’s really excellent former fiancee shows back up and I love her.

The Flatshare, Beth O’Leary – Delighted by my success with The Road Trip, I tried the final Beth O’Leary book I hadn’t read yet, so I read The Flatshare. I loved it more than The Switch but less than The Road Trip, and I was very touched by the friendship between Tiffy and Richie.

Mr. Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater – After my absolute adoration of the Raven Cycle, the first book in Maggie Stiefvater’s new Dreamers Trilogy kinda left me cold. Mr. Impossible is just a way way way better book (it contains the following sentence, which I loved: “She was dressed in a cocktail dress that said, Look at me, and also said, Now that you’re looking, did you notice I think you’re stupid? It was a good dress.“), but I still did not feel emotionally connected to it. Everyone is mad at everyone else! The only bits where I felt emotionally connected to the book were when two characters liked each other, so it was pretty much just when Matthew was helping out Jordan and they were bonding. I’ll read the third book though!

A Lot Like Adios, Alexis Daria – I maybe loved this a scootch less than Daria’s prior book, mainly because the previous one was about a telenovela and that’s my jam. This one was still really fun though. It’s also a solid entrant in the “people with jobs” genre, so there was a lot of stuff about the central couple achieving professional satisfaction. I love that shit.

The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales, Yoon Ha Lee – I am not 100% convinced that I’m smart enough for flash fiction. That’s all, that’s the review.

Lore Olympus, vol 1, Rachel Smythe – Maybe Lore Olympus was too hyped up for me to love it and/or maybe I needed to have read further into it. As I was reading it, I kinda had no idea why the characters were Greek gods at all? Readers please weigh in: Should I press on? Does it take a little while to form a true emotional connection to this book and these characters?

Once More Upon a Time, Rokshani Chokshi – I really should have paired this with Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, as they are both novella-length twists on fairy tales. This is about a couple who were once in love, but because of magical shenanigans, they no longer are. In order to get the life they want, as non-married not-in-love people, they have to go on a road trip to do a favor for a witch. You’ll never guess what happens over the course of the road trip! Never ever once will you ever guess!

Week Four

School Days, Patrick Chamoiseau, trans. Linda Coverdale – Look at meeeee I picked up a book while browsingggggg at the libraryyyyyy! I do this all the time, but usually only from the new book shelves. Doing it from the old book shelves felt very smart of me. I have been meaning to read something by Patrick Chamoiseau for ages, and this story about a young boy attending an extremely colonial Martinique school that does all sorts of colonial things. It evoked a really vivid sense of place, despite being overall way too slow-paced for me.

Don’t You Forget about Me, Mhairi McFarlane – Another repeat author in January! I liked this one more than Just Last Night, because the romance was more central, plus there was a pub. It weirdly also had a lot of similarities to The Road Trip. Reading synergy? It’s about a woman leaving an emotionally abusive relationship, and she gets a job in a pub that turns out to be owned by her first love. Great stuff. Plus there is a dog.

Radha and Jai’s Recipe for Romance, Nisha Sharma – I love this type of YA romance, but this specific one didn’t work for me. The central characters were constantly blowing up at, lying to, or misunderstanding each other, so it didn’t feel like a satisfying or coherent relationship arc. I loved all the stuff about cooking and dance though!

Deaf Utopia: A Memoir — and a Love Letter to a Way of Life, Nyle DiMarco with Robert Siebert – Why am I suddenly reading so many memoirs for Booklist? I was not familiar with Nyle DiMarco, but reading the book caused me to get to watch a bunch of quite cool performances on Dancing with the Stars. Also I love that he represented ASL conversations with the structure and syntax of ASL. I haven’t seen that before!

Future Feeling, Joss Lake – For such an allegorical story (I don’t like allegories) with at least two daddy-kink-heavy sex scenes (I am from the South, where adults call their fathers Daddy, so therefore I cannot with it as a sexual thing), Future Feeling was unexpectedly enjoyable for me. It was funny and heartfelt, and also I loved the escapist fantasy of a global network of trans minders looking out for all trans people.

L.A. Weather, Maria Amparo Escandon – I am actually not sure why this has been getting such a huge marketing push! It’s enjoyable, but I expected there to be more there there, somehow. One thing I did love was the representation of Jewish/Catholic syncretism within this Mexican American family. Apart from that, it’s a perfectly fine family novel! It’s everywhere because publicity decisions were made that it should be everywhere!

The Annual Migration of Clouds, Premee Mohamed – OH how skin-crawly this book made me, in a good way! It’s set in a post-everything-disaster world, and its protagonist, Reid, gets an acceptance letter from a university, her ticket out of the life that keeps her and her family and everyone she knows working flat out to just barely get by. Her mother doesn’t believe the university is even real, but Reid is determined to take her chance at a better life. The truly special thing about this book, though, is Mohamed’s depiction of the Cad, an infection that lives under the skin of Reid and her mother and numerous others, and it might be semi-sentient. The Annual Migration of Clouds is about hope and choice in the most fascinating ways, a very very strong book to end the month on.

WHEW that was a lot of books. I feel like that song “88 Lines about 44 Women.” How was your January?

The post The Thirty-One Books of January appeared first on Reading the End.

The Ex Talk, Rachel Solomon

Here’s a twist on fake dating I’ve never seen before: Fake exes. In order to save their small public radio station, Shay Goldstein has to team up with the pretentious hotshot at her work, a man named Dominic Yun who’s beloved of their sexist boss and can’t stop talking about his master’s degree in journalism. They’ll be working on a podcast called The Ex Talk, where two exes discuss the world of relationships and dating, as well as their own unsuccessful relationship. Except Dominic and Shay have never dated; they’ve barely even talked.

For as silly as this premise is (I say that with affection; I love a ridiculous romance novel premise), Solomon brings real emotional weight to bear, exploring Shay’s history of too-early declarations of love, Dominic’s insecurity about how to date after the collapse of his longest-slash-only relationship, and Shay’s widowed mother’s pursuit of romantic happiness with her new husband.

I’ve talked in the past about my fondness for romance novels that build a network of supportive relationships around their leads. The Ex Talk doesn’t exactly do that — it’s closely focused on Dominic and Shay — but it has a really smart twist on the isolated romance protagonists: Dominic and Shay are lonely. Both of them have struggled to build networks of friends in Seattle, and part of their budding relationship is the pact they make to go out on more (separate, unrelated-to-each-other) friend dates. It was so lovely to see a romance novel acknowledge how hard it can be to make friends as an adult, and I finished the book with the feeling that Dominic and Shay were now much better positioned to have happy and fulfilling lives — with each other, yes, but with their friends-and-relations as well.

Apart from all of that, this book was just fun. Solomon does some great banter, and the relationship is a very satisfying slow burn that hinges on a great deal of forced proximity of the “we have to get to know each other so our fake history of dating will seem more realistic to the podcast audience” genre. Shay and Dominic have lots of terrific, thoughtful, bantery conversations before they ever get down to boning, which is obviously A+ to me, a slow burn fanatic. This book was a ton of fun, and I am grateful to my lovely mum for pushing me to read it ASAP.

Sweet on the Greek, Talia Hibbert

Speaking of variations on a theme, I recently interviewed Talia Hibbert (that podcast will come out next week, in concert with her amazing new book Act Your Age, Eve Brown), and she mentioned that she has a particular fondness for one of her lesser-known books, Sweet on the Greek.

The premise is that there’s this very hot Greek retired footballer¹ who falls in love at first sight with a very gothy woman who won’t give him the time of day. Afraid that she’ll get away, Nik tells her that he needs a fake girlfriend for a week away with his teammates; he’ll pay her a hundred thousand pounds. Aria agrees. Nik does not need a fake girlfriend at all; it has all been a tangled web of lies. This makes me giggle every time I think about it.

While Sweet on the Greek doesn’t feel quite as substantial as some of Talia Hibbert’s more recent work, her strength as always is in crafting characters you have no choice but to adore. As in The Ex Talk, our heroine here tends to give her heart away quickly, and she has suffered for it in the past. A former boyfriend of Aria’s turned out to be her best friend’s stalker, using Aria to gain access to Jen, whom he kidnapped and nearly killed; and Aria’s terrified not just of getting hurt again, but of placing her loved ones at risk.

(This is a great reason for me to read the previous books in the series. I love a romance series with this kind of operatic drama; see below wherein You Had Me at Hola.)

To Have and to Hoax, Martha Waters

After oodles of people on Romance Twitter had recced me To Have and to Hoax and I had checked it out of the library after much impatient waiting, I very belatedly realized that it’s about an estranged married couple that does a prank war on each other and eventually realize they are still in love. I almost returned it to the library out of hand at this news! I am not a woman who has any truck with pranks. Even very kind, gentle pranks can end with the prankees feeling foolish and duped. Don’t do pranks!

However, in the case of To Have and to Hoax, the two main characters are both terrible at doing deceptions. While Violet and James each come up with one or two ways to trick and pester each other, there isn’t anything that I would say rose to the level of a prank — whether because they were so incompetent at executing the pranks they came up with, or because the other person immediately twigged what was happening and foiled the prank. Really it was more of your very classic second-chance romance! It’s also one of those romances where if you try to put too much real-world morality on the things the characters are doing, it all falls apart. So just do not do that! Accept the book on its own terms as a Jolly Madcap Romance! If so, you will enjoy it.

As with Bringing Down the Duke or, frankly, any first romance in a series, about 30% of my fun while reading To Have and to Hoax was inspecting the other characters to see who else was going to get their own romance. I was maybe not quite so excited about a few of these couples, but at least one of them made me perk up very much and look forward to more books by Martha Waters, even though like, Jolly Madcap Romances are probably not my top-tier romance subgenre. There was just enough true feeling and emotional honesty in this one to keep me on the hook for future books.

You Had Me at Hola, Alexis Daria

Oh my GOD I loved this book. Alexis Daria has carved out the funnest niche² in the funnest genre, writing romance novels about performers (dancers, actors) who have to navigate their public and private lives while finding love. I live for it.

This one — an absolute gem, an unbelievable treasure, I adored it — is about tele!novela! stars! Soap star Jasmine Lin Rodriguez has resolved never to show up in the tabloids again, following a messy public breakup. This is all well good until she gets cast on a TV show opposite telenovela darling Ashton Suárez. Both of them see their current show as their best chance to save their careers — it’s a bilingual romcom for Not!Netflix — so they agree to practice privately to ensure that their chemistry is the best it can be. SPARKS FLY.

I’ll be honest: I was so thrilled about the premise that I kept having to put the book down and shriek quietly to myself. Alexis Daria writes a damn good romcom, with enough soapy elements to satisfy the heart of a woman who came up watching Guiding Light and has no regrets.³ Daria’s clever about using social and psychological obstacles to keep her leads apart, including in the Big Misunderstanding moment (which is not so much a Misunderstanding as it is that one character has kept a giant secret from another character, but it’s for really sympathetic reasons), most of which arise from the very success they’re courting with their show, Carmen in Charge. I enjoyed every minute of reading this book and can’t wait for the sequel.

Two Rogues Make a Right, Cat Sebastian

When Will discovers that his oldest friend Martin is holed up miserable and sick in a London garret⁴, he promptly kidnaps him and takes him to the country for some fresh air. Prickly, broke, and unwilling to be dependent on his old friend, Martin is determined to go through with his aunt’s plan of marrying for money — no matter how much it breaks his and Will’s hearts.

Cat Sebastian fears neither death nor pain, and I know this is true because she has come on this very blog to say she loves that there’s a genre of fanfic where a character helps another character feel better about their dick. That said, her books are on a career-long trajectory of becoming softer and softer (see also her contribution to He’s Come Undone), and I think with Two Rogues Make a Right she has finally achieved a softness singularity. I, a noted angst fiend, was no proof against this much softness. In one sense there’s a plot, but the plot is mainly “how okay can things become after a very not-okay past?” and the answer is “with kindness and help to fend off structural inequities, things can become very good indeed.” It is a good message for These Times — especially because Cat Sebastian’s not ignoring the corrupting influence of money and power, nor the necessity to have some measure of those things in order to thrive.

It was also great to see a chronically ill protagonist grappling with the ways his sickness has shaped his life and will go on doing so. One of the emotional problems the book has to solve is that Martin’s awful, abusive father spent years telling him he was a burden, and it’s left Martin a) convinced he’s a burden; and b) desperate to not be a burden on Will, the person he loves so dearly. But though the narrative of burden weighs down the character quite a bit, the book gives it no quarter. There is a happy life available to Martin, in which he’s supported by kind people who care about him, and the thing he has to overcome is not his poor health but the societal narratives around poor health that have made it hard for him to accept love and support.

Which is, in fact, fundamental to my love of this book and also Cat Sebastian. The obstacles that Will and Martin must overcome for their HEA have nothing to do with whether they love each other, want the best for each other, or know that the other one wants the best for them. Some of their problems really can be solved by having a conversation, but they have to first become the person who’s able to have that conversation, and Cat Sebastian shows the hard work of reaching that point. And then they also need some source of income to live, and enough people around them who can be cool about their queerness, which are things that the author can swoop down and give them. Which she did. Five million stars.

Conventionally Yours, Annabeth Albert

Conrad and Alden have been longtime rivals at playing Odyssey for their mentor’s YouTube gaming channel, Gamer Grandpa, and they’ve both been given the opportunity to attend a massive con for their beloved game, and even compete in the big tournament. Alden is struggling to discover what he wants his future to be, while Conrad is holding on by the skin of his teeth to even have a financial future. They’re each willing to do anything to win the tournament — even take a cross-country road trip together to get there.

I! Love! A road trip! Conventionally Yours is a glorious enemies-to-friends-to-lovers road trip story, hitting all the beats you want it to (they get lost! they exchange confidences! there’s only one bed!) while delicately building up the relationship between these two characters. Alden is neurodivergent in a way that nobody’s ever been able to conclusively diagnose, and his moms have always been certain that he’s destined for great things (category: doctor or similarly prestige career). Conrad is handsome and popular and charming, but secretly he’s barely getting by. Ever since his father found out he was gay, he’s lost his family’s financial and emotional support and is working several jobs at once just to make rent. As the road trip goes on, the two begin to soften, learning more about each other’s lives, working out how to take care of each other, and giving themselves permission to be taken care of.

While a dual-POV is kind of a norm in romance novels, I find it particularly satisfying in enemies-to-lovers stories. Annabeth Albert excels at depicting how Alden and Conrad look from the outside vs how they experience their own lives and interiority. At the beginning, as you’re seeing Conrad through Alden’s eyes and vice versa, you’re well able to believe the unpleasant versions of the other person. I fucking love this kind of reminder that people look different on the outside than they really are on the inside, and honestly when it’s done well, it is one of my favorite things about the romance genre. I enjoyed this a lot (despite not understanding the Odyssey game, like, at all) and will definitely look for more in the series!

WHEW that was so many romance novels! What romances have y’all been reading?

The post Just So Much Fake Dating: A Romance Novels Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Either way, NO MORE. In 2018 I am going to get back to reading my romance novels, because I love them and they are a blessing in my life. Here is a small round-up of some of the romance novels I’ve been enjoying lately.

A Princess in Theory, Alyssa Cole

HOW excited have I been for this new series from Alyssa Cole? Very, very, very, very, and that was even before I discovered that the fictional country this prince is from is basically Lesotho. I love Lesotho! It’s small but it’s plucky.

Prince Thabiso has come to America to track down the girl he was betrothed to in childhood, who disappeared long ago. Naledi Smith is just trying to get herself through grad school — but she’s very taken with the new guy who showed up at her day job (well one of them) and appears to have coincidentally sublet the apartment across from hers. (Surprise, the new guy is Thabiso using a fake name so he can get to know her.) Excellent sex, longstanding trust issues, and epidemiology ensue.

A Princess in Theory is such a charmer of a book, with a hero sweet and swoony enough to make up for the (many) lies he’s telling Naledi, and a prickly and ambitious heroine with no interest in becoming a princess. I am not one to get emotional over romance novels, and I teared up a few times reading this one: Alyssa Cole puts so much heart into all the characters and relationships, not just the romance at the center of the book. I loved spending time in this world and in Not!Lesotho. I can’t wait to read the other books in this series.

(Does Likotsi get a book? Seemed like she had some stuff going on, and I’d like to know what that stuff is, and also Likotsi is a doll and I want her to find happiness.)

I received an electronic copy of A Princess in Theory for review consideration from the publisher.

Dance with Me, Alexis Daria

Aaaaaah okay so Dance with Me is the second in a series about dancers on a Dancing with the Stars analogue reality show. This one is about professional dancer Natasha Diaz, who suddenly experiences a wave of misfortune: Her apartment floods, and her super tells her that she has to move out while the apartment deals with a bug problem. Reluctantly, she moves in with her friend-with-benefits, show judge Dimitri Kovalenko, just as their show cracks down on intra-cast relationships. Natasha vows that she will keep things platonic between them, but it is a romance novel sooooooooo.

In a lot of ways, Dance with Me is right up my alley. I love the details about a dancer’s life, and the different ways Natasha and Dimitri plan for the inevitable end of their work as active dancers. It’s also one of those romances where the two principals each believe that they are more into the other than the other is into them, which leads to plenty of that good angst. They’re each well integrated into a network of support, a thing I love in romance novels, and not just because it means that there are more stories to tell in this world.

My big gripe is that Natasha vows not to have sex with Dimitri, immediately has oral sex with him, and then is like “Wow I almost broke my vow.” This is one of my hugest pet peeves. Penetrative sex is not the only or even the main kind of sex that exists in this world, and it frustrates me no end to see characters talking as if it is.

The Wedding Date, Jasmine Guillory

Having seen The Wedding Date garner praise from Roxane Gay as well as the Fug Girls, I had every confidence it would charm me, and it absolutely did. After getting stuck in an elevator with Drew Nichols, Alexa Monroe agrees to be his date (and pretend girlfriend) for the wedding of his ex to his best friend. I won’t tell you if Alexa and Drew end up real-dating but — well, of course they end up real-dating. Come on.

The Wedding Date reminded me of the things I love about contemporary romance novels, even though I sometimes forget and only read historicals for a bit. It’s fun and rom-commy, and parts of it feel exactly like a falling-in-love-montage in a movie, and I love those montages. I don’t care that they are cheesy, I love them. There’s a degree to which the problems between Alexa and Drew could have been solved with an honest conversation, but I didn’t tremendously mind. I just enjoyed watching them go to parties and make jokes and care about each other. The Wedding Date was exactly the confection I wanted.

Also: I am starting a new thing called IS THIS ROMANCE WRITER ALSO A LAWYER, because for some reason, oodles and oodles of romance writers seem to be lawyers. I don’t know why!

ARE THESE ROMANCE WRITERS ALSO LAWYERS: Alexis Daria and Alyssa Cole, so far as I am able to discern, are not. Jasmine Guillory is! Lawyers love to write romance novels!

What’s next?

All you who read romance novels, please rec me some good ones that you’ve read lately! These are three contemporaries, which has been lovely, but now I would like to read some historicals or perhaps even some sci-fi or fantasy ones. Leave your recommendations in the comments, please!

The post Epidemiology and Elevators: A Romance Novels Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.