This month’s reading definitely made up for the months when I wasn’t able to focus on anything. I kind of can’t believe these were all in March, but they were, indeed, all in March.
Books
Feast of Sparks
Sierra Simone
Erotic Romance (?)
The second Thornchapel book. Where the first book was Imbolc, this book is Beltane. The six friends, who are reconfiguring their relationships to one another rapidly, are investigating the death of Poe’s mother, whose body was found in the ruined chapel in the woods. Poe, Auden, and St. Sebastian are attempting to build a threesome through complicated histories, while Rebecca and Delphine circle one another and Beckett keeps on being a priest. Sexy, powerful, rich imagery.
Harvest of Sighs
Sierra Simone
Erotic Romance (?)
Third Thornchapel book. While this book, which centers on Lammas, has more of a focus on Rebecca and Delphine, we’re still seeing all of the other characters develop and fight and fuck and investigate both what their parents were doing all those years ago, how the mythology of the valley comes into play, and what the ruined chapel really is. Honestly, these books are complicated to try to summarize.
Door of Bruises
Sierra Simone
Erotic Romance (?)
Fourth Thornchapel book. This book focuses on Samhain and Beckett, while still following the other five. Here’s why I’m unsure of the genre, though — every one of the first three books has a happy resolution right before introducing something that breaks everything all over again, and the last book in the series kind of has an HEA? But only kind of? I can’t say more without spoiling the book. Somehow these books are deeply, deeply resonant and satisfying while also not being exactly happy even at the end.
Something Fabulous
Alexis Hall
Historical Romance, M/M
Valentine has been promised to Arabella since they were children, only she doesn’t want to marry him and keeps running away. Her twin brother, Bonny, is gay and helps Valentine chase her and also recognize that he is also gay. This book was a sensation when it dropped, and it turns out that I’m just not the right audience for it. I loved Boyfriend Material, but Something Fabulous is like a romance novel written by Lemony Snicket, and while I get why that would delight many people, I tend to run out of interest in that kind of sustained farce.
Into the Sound
Cara Reinard
Contemporary Suspense
When Holly’s sister Vivian disappears into a storm on Long Island, she has to fight her husband, Vivian’s husband, the police, and their own past to find out what happened. This book was well-plotted, but I’m realizing that, for me, the difference between a fine book and a great book is how much sensory detail I get, how much I’m transported into the main character’s experience no matter what voice is being used. This book was fine.
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma
Stephanie Foo
Memoir
I love memoir and have a fascination with complex trauma for reasons. I went into this with high hopes and was not disappointed. It combined personal experience with evidence-based research so while it was about Foo’s experience, it provided applicable takeaways. Also? It was funny and had a happy ending. I love anything that takes trauma seriously while also not assuming that trauma will Ruin Your Life Forever, Sucks To Be You.
The Family Plot
Megan Collins
Suspense
Part of me loves suspense novels, and part of me gets cranky when it feels like they’re trying to come up with The Worst, Creepiest Thing when the worst, creepiest thing they can come up with is pretty out there but it’s the horror of the everyday that really gets me. That being said, this had a lot of great twists and turns and a narrator I really liked, and the title was perfect for this book.
Love, Comment, Subscribe
Cathy Yardley
Contemporary Romance, M/F
I fell in love with Yardley’s books when I ran across her Fandom Hearts series. It had a perfect blend of geekiness and deep feeling, and I pretty much gobbled them up. It took me longer to get into this series, which is based around a group of people who were high school friends, perhaps because it’s supposed to be 10 years later but somehow doesn’t quite feel it. But once I did get into it, I loved this book about two very different YouTube influencers (one gamer, one beauty) who annoyed the crap out of each other back in the day and now end up collaborating to solve their very different problems.
The Love Hypothesis
Ali Hazelwood
Contemporary Romance, M/F
As a former academic, even from a very different discipline, I found the grad school/academia parts of this book deeply familiar. A grad student lies to her BFF about having a date, and when she’s accidentally caught up in the lab when she was supposed to be on said date, impulsively kisses the person passing by — who happens to be the crankiest professor in the department. Good thing he needs a fake relationship to convince the university he isn’t a flight risk. Featuring my favorite trope, grumpy/sunshine.
The Lady Tempts an Heir
Harper St. George
Historical Romance, M/F
Third book in a series featuring a rich American family and the British nobility they talk their way into marrying. This book involves the family heir, whose father is forcing him to marry on pain of disenfranchising his sister, who has been instrumental in the family business. He starts a fake relationship with a widow who helped him when one of his sisters eloped, who is attempting to start a home for widows and orphans, but whose own father has been dissuading people from donating to her cause because the “immoral” women she’s helping might in turn corrupt her in her unmarried state. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t inspire me to pick up the earlier books.
Dating Dr. Dil
Nisha Sharma
Contemporary Romance, M/F
A retelling of The Taming of the Shrew without the insults or shaming, this one features a doctor who doesn’t believe in true love — a companionable match is what he’s looking for — and a woman who wants the love she saw in her parents’ marriage before her mother died. Featuring interfering Aunties, lots of amazing Indian food, the complications of family, and old cars. It’s the first book I’ve read by Sharma but it won’t be the last.
Ramón and Julieta
Alana Quintana Albertson
Contemporary Romance, M/F
A retelling of Romeo and Juliet (apparently it’s the month for Shakespeare retellings) where the feuding families are separated by class. Julieta owns a restaurant in the barrio that is her passion; Ramón’s family owns the company who just bought the block and plans to raise the rents and develop it to be more tourist-friendly. Add in the fact that Ramón’s father, who built his empire from one taco stand, stole the original recipe from Julieta’s mother many decades earlier, the neighborhood being vehemently opposed to gentrification, and some odious corporate behavior, and you have star-crossed lovers.
Gouda Friends
Cathy Yardley
Contemporary Romance, M/F
The second book in the Ponto Beach Reunion series. When Tam’s entire life implodes — her job is exploiting her, her boyfriend is cheating, and, worst of all, he threw away her cheese — she immediately calls the best friend she’s drifted away from, the best friend who’s life she helped get back on track many years ago. Josh is immediately on board with helping her do the same, and their old closeness reappears. In the course of figuring out Tam’s life, long-buried sexual chemistry reemerges, but they have to figure out how to each have the career they want while also having each other.
TV
Bridgerton, S2
Netflix
Goddess, I love this series. There are legit criticisms — just changing the race of characters doesn’t really address everything — and I acknowledge them while also? This season was a slow burn of the first order and I loved it. Where the costumes in S1 tended to the pastel, this season they edge more jewel toned; where S1 was full of sex, this season just built and built and built. If you love romance, it’s worth watching. (If you’ve read the books, note that there are a lot of changes, many of which very much improve things.)
The Gilded Age
HBO
Shenanigans continued apace. Mr. Russell deals with a train accident that could take him and his company down. Mrs. Russell challenges the primacy of Mrs. Astor. Marian considers running away to elope with her Mr. Raikes. Electric light gets added to a building. Basically, this is a frothy, beautiful costume drama that plays with a period that we see a lot in the UK but not so much here.
Brothers & Sisters
Nighttime soap opera of the highest order. William Walker, patriarch, dies unexpectedly, and his wife, Nora, and five adult children have to cope with everything that emerges, including a long-standing affair, fraud, and complicated alliances between the children. With Sally Field, Callista Flockhart, Balthazar Getty, and more, this one packs a punch. Also, we’ve seen it before and there’s something comforting in fake drama when the world is melting down.
Rereads
Neon Gods
Katee Robert
Contemporary Romance, M/F
In the modern city of Olympus, Persephone is just trying to make it through until her trust fund kicks in, but her mother, Demeter, unexpectedly maneuvers her into an engagement with Zeus, whose previous wives have, shall we say, died under mysterious circumstances. When she runs away to the lower city, she discovers that Hades is, in fact, real, despite what the rest of The Thirteen say, or even believe, and his realm is something much better and brighter than she expected. The combination of modern life and well-worn mythological underpinnings delight me. Also, there’s really good sex, because Katee Robert.
Electric Idol
Katee Robert
Contemporary Romance, M/F
Persephone’s sister Psyche is the next sister Demeter is trying to marry off to Zeus, but she hasn’t reckoned on Aphrodite — who claims the right to matchmake for herself. She sends her son and fixer, Eros, to kill her. The problem is that Eros can’t bear to kill her, so he decides to marry her instead — but that doesn’t stop Aphrodite from trying to take her down. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: I love Katee Robert’s books. I love the mythology and the world building and the cross between this alternative world and our own.
The Attenbury Emeralds
Jill Paton Walsh
Historical Mystery
Jill Paton Walsh was hired by the Sayers estate to finish Busman’s Honeymoon, and she went on, with their blessing, to add four more books to the Wimsey canon. Peter and Harriet are living their lives after the war, Harriet writing books and Peter running his affairs, when Lord Attenbury comes calling to ask for Peter’s help with a family jewel that has been mixed up with another. The story goes back to the 20s, and Peter fills Harriet in while also investigating in the present. The book is also notable for being the book when Peter ends up becoming the Duke of Denver.
The Late Scholar
Jill Paton Walsh
Historical Mystery
Peter is called to Oxford because, in his role as the Duke of Denver, he is the official Visitor for one of the colleges, which is tearing itself apart with the question of whether they should sell an old manuscript to buy a tract of land that could become valuable. Only various of the Fellows start dying in ways that Harriet has written into her books, many of which were based on cases Peter investigated in earlier books.
Act Like It
Lucy Parker
Contemporary Romance, M/F
Lainie Graham, beloved West End actress, agrees to pretend to be in a relationship with fellow lead and stony asshole Richard Troy to save his reputation and get donations to the charity she started to honor her dead sister. They have to spend time together outside of the show to sell it, and the antagonism between them slowly morphs into something much more congenial. For whatever reason, I’m fascinated by celebrity and how public personas intersect with the personal, and this series delivers in spades.
Pretty Face
Lucy Parker
Contemporary Romance, M/F
Lily Lamprey wants to escape the nighttime soap she stars on for the West End; Luc Savage is trying to cast his next show. Lily’s trying to be taken seriously beyond her blonde bombshell looks and Minnie Mouse voice, but she’s facing an uphill battle with the critics. Luc is committed to serious theater, but that’s his whole world, as his recent ex and frequent leading lady can attest. The only problem is that they can’t keep their hands to themselves. I love a book that makes a very beautiful woman extremely smart, and I love a good Grumpy/Sunshine.
Making Up
Lucy Parker
Contemporary Romance, M/F
Trix Lane, pink-haired aerial performer, and Leo Magasiva, makeup artist, have hated each other for years. They tend to run in the same circles, so they can’t avoid each other, but everything gets ramped up when Leo is hired on to Trix’s show just as she’s forced to take on a much more difficult role. Anxiety rep, recovering from intimate partner abuse, foster care rep. I love the details in this one: there’s a hedgie named Reggie, there’s an ongoing hand-drawn comic strip, there’s fandom.
The Austen Playbook
Lucy Parker
Contemporary Romance, M/F
Freddy Carleton is a rock-solid West End performer and latest scion of the Carleton theater family, but she’s starting not to enjoy the serious theater she’s supposed to want. James “Griff” Ford-Griffon is a feared critic who once called her duller than a pair of safety scissors. They’re thrown together when she signs on to an audience-participation, one-night-only televised play at his falling-down family estate while he’s trying to solve the financial conundrum. There’s a delicious literary mystery sub-plot, and more grumpy/sunshine.
Headliners
Lucy Parker
Contemporary Romance, M/F
Rival evening presenters Sabrina Carleton and Nick Davenport are thrown together when their networks are acquired by the same the owner. They have one month to save the morning show — something neither has ever been interested in — and keep their jobs, but everything keeps going wrong.