The mainstreaming of fandom has created some deeply weird ripple effects in terms of fan/creator interactions (my hot take is that we should never have wanted this, at least for the large franchises), but one of the best things about it has been that more and more authors are speaking openly about their fannish influences. All the Feels and A Marvellous Light each feel like books that couldn’t have existed without fanfiction, partly because of subject matter, but mostly because they draw so deeply from the well of joy that makes the fannish engine run.

All the Feels is a companion to Spoiler Alert, a romance novel I have recommended prolifically and at loud volume. Like its predecessor, All the Feels follows a lead actor in the television show Game of Thrones Gods of the Gates, which had some good years but is now kind of a mess because its showrunners lack vision and are mean, superficial jerks. In a mean, superficial jerk move, one of the showrunners has hired his very put-upon cousin, an ER therapist named Lauren Clegg, to follow star Alex Woodroe around and make sure he doesn’t get into trouble. This has become necessary after Alex got in a bar fight, but also because he is an agent of chaos. By contrast, Lauren is relentlessly sensible and self-effacing, though like Alex she’s trying to figure out her next moves as her life’s work implodes around her.

A Marvellous Light is a queer fantasy romance set in an alternate version of Edwardian England where everything’s the same except, unbeknownst to most, there is magic. The sunshiney, athletic, slightly laddish Robin Blyth takes a job for which he is numerously unqualified; the most pertinent of his unqualifications is that he has no idea magic exists and it’s kind of a magic-forward job. The job turns out to be its own hotbed of intrigue and murder—as Robin discovers when he meets the magical (but not nearly magical enough to suit his judgmental, Daisy-Fay-from-Gatsby-careless family) bureaucrat Edwin Courcey. Together they uncover a conspiracy that threatens the very foundations of English magic.

A Marvellous Light is notable for its inclusion of explicit sex scenes, which have always been common in romance novels (A Marvellous Light is a romance novel) but whose presence in mainstream commercial SFF is a pretty clear result of having editors, writers, and decision-makers who came out of fandom. As various genres (honestly including tradpub romance novels! and certainly including things like SFF movies; fuck you, Marvel) have become more squeamish about including sex and makeouts, it’s been refreshing to see SFF publishers shift in the opposite direction. A Marvellous Light is the latest of many recent books from Tor, Harper Voyager, and others that have included frank discussions and portrayals of sex. Yay! (Kit Rocha and Jessie Mihalik’s books are, like this one, romances, but recent books by authors like Rivers Solomon and Nghi Vo have also included sex scenes.)²

A Marvellous Light feels especially fannish in the unfussy queerness and careful building of the romance (despite being set in a historical era that was less than friendly to queer love). Marske dispenses quickly with the necessity for Robin and Edwin to conceal their sexual orientation from each other, which allows for her to explore the far more interesting question of what sort of relationship they each want from the other and–crucially–how much of themselves they’re willing to give away. The possibility of romantic and sexual attraction is flawlessly twined around the plot (plant imagery used advisedly): Robin has to spend time with Edwin if he wants his curse lifted (Robin’s under a viscerally nasty curse; I heart folk magic), giving them both plenty of time to gaze yearningly at each other’s hands and dislike each other’s unsatisfactory families.

Freya Marske is open about her background in fandom, and the DNA of fanfic and specifically fanfic sex is all over A Marvellous Light. Her sex scenes, and the scenes leading up to sex, are funny and frank (the two guys realize each other are queer because one of them finds the other one’s, like, porny pamphlet, which is extra funny if you’ve ever read any Victorian or Edwardian porn, all of which is goddamn absurd), and they do this thing that feels inestimably fanficcy to me: Marske’s sex scenes—and the book as a whole—are tender toward the realities of embodiment.

Outside of romance and fic, literature often treats bodies as pure grotesquery, a distraction from the loftier life of the mind. In the first place, I will have no truck with dualism, for it is nonsense. Secondly, this sort of thinking inevitably leads to heightened contempt for bodies perceived as unruly or transgressive, which somehow always belong to marginalized people. An amazing coincidence! And C, hating your body, and bodies generally, really sets a bitch up for failure. We do not actually possess the technology to convert you into a being of pure thought, so you’re kind of stuck with your meatsack, and you might as well be kind to it, even if you do insist on thinking of it as nothing more than the squishy, annoying vehicle that hauls your brain around.

All the Feels is similarly tender about its protagonists’ bodies, which would be par for the course in the romance genre, except that Olivia Dade’s work most wonderfully features protagonists who aren’t cast in one of the, like, three acceptable romance novel heroine physical types. Lauren is petite and round, with sharp features and a beaky nose that makes her look like a bird. As in Spoiler Alert, it’s never suggested that this makes her undesirable to Alex, nor is her body ignored or glossed over during sex scenes. It’s part and parcel of a bigger theme (in both books) of finding within yourself the ability to celebrate your own gifts and strengths, rather than constantly finding fault with your weaknesses.

Lauren is accustomed to people trying to make her feel small, and she no longer reacts to it and doesn’t want Alex to, either. All well and good, until you realize—as Alex does, almost immediately—that she’s fully internalized the idea that she deserves and should expect nothing better than the contempt and snottiness of people who will always, always put her last. On his side, Alex is perpetually terrified that he’ll disappoint the people around him, and perpetually certain that he already has. It’s easy for him to see his flaws and failure, particularly those that arise from his ADHD, but much harder for him to recognize how those same traits make him special, fun, helpful, kind.

A driving impulse of fanfic—though certainly not the only one—is the sense that it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s the source of so much joy in fic, this simple idea to look at a piece of media or, you know, the world, and say, “Actually, I think we can do better than that.” Everybody can be gay! Everybody can have therapy! Everybody lives! For good and ill,³ there’s a critique baked in to what fic writers keep from canon and what they leave behind, a Marie Kondoing of the elements that don’t spark joy in favor of the ones that do.

The major characters arcs of All the Feels and A Marvellous Light are about finding ways to make use of your existing qualities and competencies in a world that’s not set up to find them, or you, valuable. The broader critique, of course, is that it’s all a trap anyway. There’s no middle ground you can find, no level of adherence to the desired standards that can exempt you from being made to feel small. Alex’s ADHD is met with contempt by—mostly jerks, sure, on page, but jerks who have power over him and are trying to persuade him to be less chaotic. Yet on the other side we have Lauren, a person defined by her ability to bring order out of chaos (that’s why she gets this job!), and it’s clear she’s been conditioned to think of herself as kind of a dumpy killjoy. The system has been set up for both of them to fail, and their emotional journeys are about carving out space for themselves and each other to thrive.

In particular, both books treat the gaze of the beloved as a kind of… I don’t know, splint? braces?, a small refuge within which the characters can begin to see themselves the way their love interests immediately saw them. As the least powerfully magical member of his family, Edwin has been subject to near-constant bullying from his siblings. He’s been convinced that his powers are inadequate, and that induced certainty prevents him from recognizing the areas in which he excels. Robin—new to the world of magic—brings a fresh perspective that Edwin allows himself, slowly, to share.

“You invented this system? You applied it?” Robin looked around them at the hundreds, thousands of books. “And you carry the whole thing around in your head?”

“I made a catalogue.” Edwin indicated a small hand-bound volume he hadn’t once touched. “And if you’re going to suggest that I was a very dull child, let me assure you that it would by no means be an original insult.” …

“Remind me not to make an enemy of you, Edwin Courcey,” he said, smiling to show he meant no sting. “I think yours is probably the kind of brain that could run a country.”

IT’S BEAUTIFUL TBH. I too would be very impressed with someone who had deduced the entire Dewey Decimal System from first principles.

I’ve been pretty critical this year of fannish spaces and racism in fandom, and I stand by those critiques. At the same time, it remains true that fandom contains a lot of beauty and tenderness and also thoughtful critique of inequitable social structures. It’s why I keep coming back to fanfic and why I probably always will. All the Feels and A Marvellous Light are both deeply engaged with the best of the fanfic ethos, and it was a pleasure to get to read them.

The post Fandom Got Its Cooties All Over Your Profic appeared first on Reading the End.

Never doubt that if there is a good article about The Westing Game, I will include that article in my links round-up. The Westing Game 5ever! (link)

Someone has to stop Paul Hollywood. Brian Phillips has a plan. (link)

The bind of being first. (link)

A fact: I will virtually ALWAYS pick up a whodunnit set in India & written by an Indian author. (link)

Catullus is a wonderful, rebellious, vulgar mess. Also, Cy Twombly. Because why wouldn’t Anne Carson write about both? God, I love Anne Carson. (link)

Talia Levin wrote about white supremacist online spaces, and the results are… expectedly horrifying. She talks about it here with ZORA‘s Anjali Enjeti. (link)

Rediscovering women authors from the heyday of ghost stories. (link)

This piece about anonymous Republican critics of Trump is a biting indictment of its own genre. (link)

I am Second Murderer but I did quietly disapprove of Macbeth’s policies. (a companion piece to the above) (link)

DOLLY PARTON. That is all. (link)

An appreciation of Witch Week. (link)

Nisi Shawl is very smart on the topic of what to think about when you’re considering writing a story about a marginalization you don’t share. (link)

This is a wonderful interview with two wonderful romance authors, Olivia Dade and Rebekah Weatherspoon! (link)

And this is an also-wonderful interview with some of my favorite SFF editors, talking about how SFF has changed and where it’s headed. (link)

Dwight K. Schrute kinda typifies our Political Moment, which makes it hard to watch him. I personally stopped my The Office rewatch sometime in season four because I couldn’t take Dwight OR Jim OR Michael, so ban men, basically. (link)

I guess “ban men” is not a bad note to leave things on! Stay safe out there, friends!

The post Fixing the Great British Bake-Off: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Are you salty as fuck about how Game of Thrones ended? Have you spent time surfing the “Pegging” tag on AO3? (sorry Mom that I am talking about pegging on the internet again) Do you yearn for more fat romance heroines? Cease your peregrinations, your search is at an end! Olivia Dade is here for her you with her latest novel Spoiler Alert, which is all about a fat fanfiction-writing geologist who goes on a date with the star of the biggest fantasy show of our time (who secretly also writes fanfiction). It’s not Game of Thrones! But it’s definitely Game of Thrones! Please someone page the burn ward, as I will be delivering Benioff and Weiss to them posthaste!

I am very excited about this book but will endeavor to calmly ennumerate the reasons for my joy. A of all, I loved the representation of fanfic writers. Olivia Dade is obviously a woman with a healthy Marked for Later list on AO3 if you know what I mean,¹ and it was wonderful to see not one but two protagonists for whom fandom is a joyful escape. Is it realistic? TO HELL WITH REALISTIC. I have not lived through half a year of pandemic to answer your quibbling questions about whether Oscar Isaac writes Finnpoe fanfic in his spare time (he does). April and Marcus Caster-Rupp write Aeneas/Lavinia fic for fun and I loved both that general premise and also the specific thing of the fandom believing that one specific character on the show enjoys pegging. This is the kind of fandom specificity I am here for in fiction.

Secondly, the romance was extremely lovely. Marcus and April are two people who, for vastly different reasons, have a hard time letting their guard down around new people. April has recently moved from a job that makes her miserable to one she believes will make her happy, and she’s resolved to be open about her interests, including fanfiction, but that doesn’t mean she’s not nervous about it. Marcus will, of course, risk losing all his future jobs if it comes out that he’s a fic writer, let alone one who’s been openly critical about the direction the last few seasons of his show have taken. So it’s extra great to see the characters being open and vulnerable with each other, even though you do know there is going to be a Reckoning when April eventually finds out that Marcus has an alternate identity as a close fandom friend of hers.

I also loved Dade’s depiction of one protagonist who’s fat and another who’s dyslexic. Both of them are adults who have officially figured out where they stand on weight and disability, and April in particular refuses to allow fatphobia into her life. It was great to see such a clear depiction of the fact that fatphobia and ableism are often/?always? rooted in the other person’s own issues. When April and Marcus talk about their parents’ disappointment in them, it’s clear that the parents aren’t responding to the children they have, but rather to some idea of what they wanted their own lives to be. It’s not about whether April and Marcus are happy or healthy or professionally satisfied — it’s about how they differ from what someone else, for reasons of their own, thinks they should be like.

Notably, this also means that Spoiler Alert is on the pro side when it comes to familial estrangement. I reviewed another romance novel recently that was more equivocal about the Regrets You Might Have around cutting off contact with shit family members, but Spoiler Alert comes down hard on the side of not hurting yourself by spending time with people who are supposed to love you but instead perpetually undermine you. That is my position as well! Feel free to set boundaries, beloved friends, and if your familial relationships are consistently more harmful than healing, it is a-okay to stop expending effort on them. April and Marcus know this on behalf of each other, but struggle to know it for themselves.

Furthermore, if like me you derive at least 20% of your enjoyment of romance novels from the hints that the author drops about other books in the series, you will not be disappointed in Spoiler Alert. Marcus’s co-star Alex is a loose cannon who has been assigned a minder called Lauren whom he finds very annoying OR DOES HE??? Alex also writes secret fic about his character, Cupid, getting pegged. Can’t say enough about the majesty of this character choice by Olivia Dade. I say again, TEN THOUSAND STARS, can’t wait for the sequel.

Run, do not walk, to your local book purveyor to purchase Spoiler Alert. I truly truly loved it.

Note: I received an e-ARC of Spoiler Alert from the publisher for review consideration. This has not affected the contents of my review.

The post Review: Spoiler Alert, Olivia Dade appeared first on Reading the End.

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:

1. Praise me for reading four entire books (wow!); or
2. Let me know what romance novels you’ve been enjoying lately.

The post People with Jobs: A Romance Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

So like, if that is your thing? Very buttoned-up gentlemen finding themselves in situations where they have to let go of some of their buttoned-up-ness? Hoo fucking boy have I got a novella collection to commend to your attention.

I have been known to be picky about the novella romance! I admit this freely! But He’s Come Undone features not one but five nearly perfect examples of the novella form. Every one of these stories is weighty and substantive to the point that the resolution of the romance felt satisfying in every case. Plus as a bonus, there were all these super uptight dude protagonists being slowly unraveled by feelings. Let’s run through them real quick to give you a sense of what you’re in for, shallllllllll we?

“Apassionata,” Emma Barry

Kristy Kwong used to be a wildly talented and famous pianist, until — in baseball terms, she got the yips. Now she is returning to the stage, and Brennan is the piano technician tasked with setting up the instrument she’ll play for her first performance in two years. She’s struggling against stage fright as she tries to recapture her mojo, while Brennan — who was never able to play at her level in the first place — considers his life in the world of music and his role in setting Kristy up for success in her comeback.

This is my first Emma Barry story, and I loved it! She gets into the nitty-gritty of piano mechanics but also touches on the indefinable magic of musical performance. Better still, her story is ineffably kind and compassionate to its characters, which is one of my favorite things that romance — or any fiction! — can do. For all his restraint, Brennan is keenly aware of the prejudice, sexism, and general undermining Kristy has faced in her career, and he’s determined not to contribute to it. “Apassionata” is a perfect example of a shared-project romance, and it’s just the cherry on top that the shared project is “let the heroine shine the way she deserves to shine.”

“Unraveled,” Olivia Dade

OH THIS GENTLEMAN IS BUTTONED-UP AS ALL HELL. Mmmmm this is the good stuff. Okay so Simon is a veteran math teacher, and he’s been assigned to mentor a new art teacher called Poppy, but SHE — and try not to clutch your pearls when you hear this news — sometimes wears CASUAL CLOTHING. With PAINT on them, and Simon does not like this because being an art teacher is no excuse for SLACKENING ONE’S STANDARDS.

(And yet. Oh, and yet, my friends! And yet, one thing leads to another, and they end up boning in the art studio. Also he hotly defends her when one of the other teacher says a mean thing.)

In addition to all this jeans-wearing and laxity of standards, Poppy’s particular form of art is making tiny murder dioramas a la the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. So alongside the romance is a running subplot in which Simon is trying to solve one of the diorama murders, paying keen attention to every one of the tiny, specific details in Poppy’s murder diorama. Oh, and a teacher recently left the school under suspicious circumstances. PERHAPS ALSO MURDER???

It is very fucking fun. Romance authors should always write romances about the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. In my humble opinion.

“Caught Looking,” Adriana Herrera

In the category “romance authors who are also social workers,” ie two of my favorite professions at the same time, Adriana Herrera has rapidly become one of my go-to authors. “Caught Looking” is about two longtime best friends, Hatuey and Yariel, waking up to a startling morning after. For years Yariel has been in love with Hatuey, but he has been unwilling to risk ruining their friendship by making a move on a best friend he knows — thinks he knows — is straight. Now he just wants to put it behind them and get back to normal, because the alternative carries the risk that their friendship won’t survive, and Yariel can face anything but that.

BUT OH NO QUEL DOMMAGE because right at this very instant, this fortuitous very instant, they have a commitment where they both have to spend a long weekend in the Dominican Republic doing fundraisers and photo opportunities (Yariel’s an MLB player) and flying on private jets and staying in nice hotels. Many are the opportunities for Hatuey to pine whilst gazing at Yariel being delightful with young children who admire him; many the friendship memories that flood Yariel’s mind like that one time Hatuey’s dad was all “you are a good kid but don’t bone my son, cool?”

As is typical for Adriana Herrera, “Caught Looking” hinges on the genuine love and respect the characters have for each other. Yari and Hatuey’s friendship is the core of this story, whether or not they decide to change the parameters of their relationship, and every move they make is predicated on ensuring that the other one is comfortable and confident. It couldn’t be more lovely.

(Actually that is consistent throughout this collection: It’s about partners building each other up, even in moments when life leaves them vulnerable. Another good thing about this collection! Gosh I like romance novels.)

“Yes, And…”, Ruby Lang

If you come to Adriana Herrera for searing mutual respect, you come to Ruby Lang for banter and family relationships. “Yes, And…” does not disappoint. Darren is among the more uptight of these uptight protagonists, but he’s taking a meditation class to help himself unwind — not because he wants to unwind, but just because his blood pressure’s high and he’s trying to lower it. (This is very relatable to me, an outcomes-focused tightly wound lady whose blood pressure has been fucking with her lately.) But due to a scheduling mix-up, he finds himself in the exact opposite of a meditation class — an improv class, led by Joan Lacy on her one night off from caring for her mother, who has early-onset dementia.

If Darren won my heart for not wanting to do any goddamn meditation, Joan won it for having a panic attack because she’s so worried about her mom. I couldn’t not want these humans to be happy, particularly after Darren takes care of her during her panic attack, drives with his hands at nine and three, and apologizes for hurting her feelings. THESE ARE TRAITS I AM SOFT FOR. Their courtship is gentle and careful (and sexy!), with both of them trying hard to believe that they are enough. It’s a romance about the way a partner can help you to fill the entire space you are meant to occupy, even when you struggle to believe in yourself in that way. This one’s a scootch more melancholy than the foregoing two, but it makes the happy ending that much more satisfying.

“Tommy Cabot Was Here,” Cat Sebastian

This story is dedicated to Sirius Black and Bucky Barnes, and I just think it’s worth contemplating that fact for a moment. Yes? Have we all given due consideration to the good and glorious world in which we are now privileged to reside? Great. Onward.

In a move very characteristic of Cat Sebastian, “Tommy Cabot Was Here” is about two people who have been parted for years and years due to misunderstandings, and are now awkwardly, anxiously reunited. Everett stopped speaking to Tommy Cabot after Tommy’s marriage, and now it’s fifteen years later in 1959, and Tommy’s son is attending the school where Everett teaches math — the same school at which, long ago, he and Tommy used to fool around, and at least one of them fell in love.

This one’s wall to wall feelings, just a whole lot of two people negotiating with each other about what their past together meant then and means now, and what they want their present and future to look like. Though the central misunderstanding — Everett’s certainty that Tommy has moved on to a golden life of heterosexual bliss and political glory — does power some of the conflict, the bigger issue is and always has been the characters’ own struggles to identify what they want. Everett wasn’t wrong to think that Tommy wanted his wife over Everett (though he was deceiving himself about what his life could be); Tommy wasn’t wrong to think that Everett turned away from their friendship (though it was an act of self-protection). The romance is a gentle, careful navigation of what they each want now and what they are able to offer. It’s immensely sweet.

As a bonus, Tommy’s wife Patricia rules? I would read a whole other Patricia book where she’s just taking over California with Harry. So that was nice too — side characters are one of the great joys of romance novels, and it was a pleasure for Tommy’s ex to be a source of support and joy rather than additional conflict.

Note: I received an ARC of this book for review consideration. That has not impacted my review. My review has, however, been heavily impacted by how much I enjoy buttoned-up heroes, which is very, very much.

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