November & December Reading Notes

I realized a week before Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, that Diwali was next week and I had a children's picture book on Diwali. I hurriedly emailed my editor and asked that if I could have the review to her by that evening, would she pretty please cherry on top print it in the newspaper next week? She was immensely kind and said she would squeeze it on to the paper. And she did!

I am really enjoying doing author interviews. Here are the ones for November and December: interview with Sarah MacLean and interview with Cat Sebastian. I also interviewed a picture book author, Rajani LaRocca, Lucy Parker, and Marguerite Kaye earlier this year. In the new year, I plan to interview a prominent Asian American author, which will be challenging because I'll be stepping out of my realm of expertise with that piece into the world of K-pop!

HERE is the list of my best romance novels for this year.

On to the reviews for November and December...

Love at First Spite by Anna E. Collins
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a debut fast-paced novel set in Seattle. The opening scene has an unforgettable image of the heroine in a paintball-splattered white wedding gown. She's just been dumped, weeks before the wedding. But instead of wallowing in grief, she decides on detailed revenge against her ex. She buys a plot of land next to her ex's house and plans on ruining his peace and view by building a monstrosity, peopled with loud people. Only the stick-up-his-backside architect at her firm agrees to design her this house. There are plenty of laughs in this book and some outlandish doings in the heroine's "hastily decided upon but refined upon at leisure" plan. [CW: Meniere’s disease, an inner-ear disorder]

The Fastest Way to Fall by Denise Williams
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This a story of someone falling in love with a person who helps them feel strong and want to be stronger. This is not a story about weight loss or a paradigm shift to find love, but about learning to love who you are. He is the CEO of FitMe Fitness, a hugely popular, individualized, body positive lifestyle app. Through its clever matching algorithm, FitMe teams up each client with a professional coach who helps them meet their goals. She is a curvy woman whose goals are to jump out of a plane and to look and feel good naked. She refuses to allow being fat to define her. She teams up with a coworker to write immensely popular, dueling blog posts for the lifestyle magazine she works for about the entire fitness experience with two competing apps, FitMe and HottrYou. [CW: eating disorder, fatphobia, one instance of disordered eating and over-exercising putting someone in the hospital]. [My review is here.]

Someone Perfect by Mary Balogh
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: This is Balogh’s last novel in her fabulous Westcott series. The story is about two people, coming from very disparate backgrounds, who connect at an unanticipated and deeply emotional level. It is a master class in trust and fairness and honesty. How do you trust uninhibitedly, even in the face of opposing, seemingly true, facts? What does it mean to continually strive to bring light and joy to the other’s soul? Heart-to-heart, frank conversations is how their relationship develops, even when he proposes to her, and she refuses, and then he warns her he is planning to propose to her again. Their relationship is bracketed by the two proposals. [My review is here.]

Somewhere Above It All by Holli Fawcett Clayton
Category: Contemporary Romance Adventure
Comments: This is a debut book on grief and the indomitable courage it takes to come to terms with it. Even scaling Tanzania’s 19,341-foot treacherous Mount Kilimanjaro feels easier for the heroine. Writing with an assured hand, the author charts the emotional landscape as well as physical landscape with deep sensitivity and poignant detail. Ravaged by grief at the death of her dream of married life by the suicide of her opioid-addicted husband, the heroine is determined to put herself first after many years of despair. She is resolute in doing something that she could’ve never imagined herself doing—a grueling climb up to the oxygen-deprived Roof of Africa, Kilimanjaro. He is lead counsel for a pharmaceutical company and a rugged outdoorsman. He is grieving the suicide of his beloved older brother, who was also his best friend. Challenging the mountain is a way for him to get a grip on his grief. Leaving the past behind isn't easy for either of them. Yet, the mountain brings them closer together. This is not strictly a romance, more a heroine's journey, but the romance is a huge sub-plot. [My review is here.]

Once Upon a Winter's Eve by Tessa Dare
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: Dare's Spindle Cove series is touted by fans as her best, so I decided to dip my toes into Dare's writing with this novella. Her writing style is reminiscent of the old Julia Quinn novels: frothy, fun, with modern sensibilities, requiring large dollops of suspension of disbelief, but ultimately, satisfying and entertaining. Like Quinn, Dare quickly became very popular with readers, and now is a huge name in romance. Her Twitter presence has also garnered her more fans. I remember when she was a fledgling aspiring author. We were on the same Eloisa James message board and participated in a writing contest by Avon, possibly, the only contest they did. Many of today's current authors participated in that contest and were on that message board, including Courtney Milan, Jackie Barbosa, Manda Collins, Elyssa Patrick, and so many more. Many known readers and bloggers were also there. I don't know where Eloisa James found the time to manage her teaching career, her book career, and a message board, not to mention house and family. She did have some help from an author's assistant and a research assistant, but still, she made her presence felt on the board, and she was generous with her advice. I loved that board.

Spindle Cove is a place for bluestockings, spinsters, and those women with unusual interests. The heroine in this book is a talented linguist, speaking six languages fluently with the knowledge of others. She had been thwarted in love by her childhood friend who'd made love to her and departed England's shores with a curt note and no further communication. Now at the Christmas Ball a stranger crashes at her feet speaking a Celtic language that only she can decipher. As the night wears on, she realizes that he is a spy and her long, lost lover. What is she to do? Aid him or turn him in?

Royally Ever After: The Jilting of Lord Rothwick by Loretta Chase
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: As with all Chases, the minute you start her book, you sink into familiar Regency milieu of cultural and societal norms as established in the traditional Regencies. This short story is an oldie but a real goodie. He has been refused by her. For him, it is destitution with the baggage of his father's debts, the estate, and all the dependents upon his shoulders. For her, it is the heartache of loss of love. She loves him; she assumes he doesn't love her; but he does love her. The story takes place in the course of a day. The backstory is that they met when he decided that she was rich enough to tow him back from River Tick, so he started paying serious court to her, in the process defeating all her other suitors to win her hand. In the process, they both fall in love with each other, but each is certain their feelings are not returned. The story in the present is how they discover their feelings. Beautifully written!

The Earl Who Sees Her Beauty by Marguerite Kaye
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Another author whose books feel true to the historical feel of the traditional Regencies I enjoy. And this one is beautifully written like the Chase above. She was heavily scarred as a young child diagonally across her back and diagonally across one cheek from forehead to mouth. She is considered an abomination by one and all, and she lurks in the shadows, covering her face with her hair and wearing a wide-brimmed bonnet and, sometimes, even a veil. She is mechanically brilliant and built a number of improvements in the former earl's house. The new earl wants nothing to do with the earldom; in fact, he wants to divest himself of all his responsibilities, sell everything, and donate the monies. When he spies her, he is struck by her beauty and she, by his. He truly always only sees her and the scars as part of her, not as obscuring a nondescript face, but as part of who she is. He accepts her wholly. The backstory to the earl is set in Greece and unusual. Impeccable research by Kaye and superlative writing. [I have to say that my fulsome praise is not coerced by my friendship with her by any way, but there you have the information anyway.]

Two Houses by Suleena Bibra
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Bibra’s debut is an immensely fun enemies-to-lovers story of two auctioneers at rival art auction houses in New York. One of the best books of this month. My full review is on Booklist.

Christmas in Rose Bend by Naima Simone
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: In this book, prolific author Simone returns to the small, charming Massachusetts town of Rose Bend, the close-knit Dennison family, and their Kinsale Inn. A little less hyperbole, fewer pop culture references, and deeper emotional analysis would’ve made for a more powerful book. My full review is on Booklist.

Lizzie & Dante by Mary Bly AKA Eloisa James
Category: Mainstream Fiction
Comments: Like the kiss of a butterfly’s wings on a flower, Mary Bly has written this book with such tenderness. So much of the story mirrors Bly’s lived experience as a Shakespearean professor at Fordham University in New York, marrying an Italian man, and suffering the pain and indignity and fear of cancer. [CW: disordered eating, cancer, dying, death, funeral] This is not a romance, despite the title, but the novel has a large romance sub-plot. This novel is about Lizzie deciding how to live given her diagnosis of terminal cancer. Should she give up? Should she try one more round of experimental treatment? Should she do it for the men in her life? For herself? This book is all about asking deep, searching questions and discovering for herself who she wants to be. A beautiful, beautiful book. [My review is here.]

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: This is the best book I read this year. It won a Pulitzer prize, and I can see why. Erdrich brings her Native American heritage to bear in crafting a story where no detail is spurious, no emotion extraneous. It is based on an Indian (Erdrich uses this word) reservation and the driving force is the white government's desire to evict the residents and bring settlers in. The poverty on the reservation is horrifying and the lives lived are so desperate and so out-of-step with the rest of American culture and society. And yet, the beauty and dignity in the Native American culture and beliefs are not to be found elsewhere in the larger America.

According to this WaPo review: "Erdrich read a cache of letters written in the middle of the 20th century by her grandfather Patrick Gourneau. He had been chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Advisory Committee during the tribe’s modern-day fight for survival. The threat at that time was legal but as potentially disastrous as earlier assaults: In 1953, the U.S. House passed a resolution declaring that a number of tribes should be rapidly “freed from Federal supervision.” Beneath that glorious promise of emancipation lurked the government’s true plan: the unilateral abrogation of treaties, the wholesale termination of tribes’ rights and the abandonment of Native Americans already impoverished by centuries of genocidal policies. Reminded of that dark era and her grandfather's heroic role in saving the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, Erdrich knew she had found the inspiration for her next book."

Mangoes, Mischief, and Tales of Friendship by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy
Category: Children's Chapter Book
Comments: Replete with humor and drama, this book is a collection of short stories reminiscent of stories of the 16th century Mughal Emperor Akbar and his advisor and confidant Birbal. The protagonists are two 10-year-old mischievous and precocious boys who courageously use their intellect to solve tricky problems in the king's court. The book is divided into two previously published smaller books: A Dollop of Ghee and a Pot of Wisdom and A Jar of Pickles and a Pinch of Justice. Each book has four stories of the boys' adventures in meting out justice and reprimands when the king is busy tending to other matters of his kingdom. [My review is here.]

Binny's Diwali by Thrity Umrigar, illustrated by Nidhi Chanani
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: Bright fairy lights, warm oil lamps, colorful powder designs, new clothes, sparkling jewelry, delicious sweets, savory snacks, and firecrackers...all make the season of Diwali a joyous occasion. While the multiday festival has Hindu religious notes, it is also a secular cultural celebration in which Indians of all faiths participate. Diwali, known as the Festival of Lights, celebrates the victory of good over evil, of hope over darkness. It is a reminder to observants to be good, kind, and brave. There are many legends associated with Diwali with roots deep into Indian mythology of thousands of years ago. Binny’s Diwali celebrates an Indian American girl’s desire to share her culture with her classmates, none of whom know about this festival. [My review is here.]

Category: Children's Picture & Board Books
Comments: A comfortable chair. A warm fire. Hot chocolate. Cuddles. And the perfect book. Here are stories perfect for cozy reading over the holidays. [My reviews are here.]
Sheepish (Wolf Under Cover) by Helen Yoon
The Smile Shop by Satoshi Kitamura
If I Were a Tree by Andrea Zimmerman, illustrated by Jing Jing Tsong
David Jumps In by Alan Woo, illustrated by Katty Maurey
From Maybe to Forever: An Adoption Story by M.L. Gold and N.V. Fong, illustrated by Jess Hong
The Little One by Kiyo Tanaka, translated by David Boyd
Baby Raccoon illustrated by Yu-Hsuan Huan
Baby Fox illustrated by Yu-Hsuan Huan
Paper Peek: Animals by Chihiro Takeuchi
I Can Be Anything: Guessing Game Book by Shinsuke Yoshitake

Review: Lizzie & Dante by Mary Bly

Like the kiss of a butterfly’s wings on a flower, Mary Bly has written Lizzie & Dante with such tenderness. So much of the story mirrors Bly’s lived experience as a Shakespearean professor at Fordham University in New York, marrying an Italian man, and suffering the pain and indignity and fear of cancer. And yet, the heroine emerges from this story a fully formed person in her own right.

Lizzie Delford is on the island of Elba in Italy living at the ultra-fancy Hotel Bonaparte (naturally!) with her best friend, Grey Thuston, and his lover, Hollywood megastar Rohan Das. Lizzie has stage three, incurable cancer and has been invited by Rohan on a luxurious vacation that she could’ve never afforded. In the midst of all her pain and pills, Lizzie enjoys the pampering, the beach, and the warmth of the sun on her skin. And she feels alive like she has not for a very long time. Bly has done an extraordinary job of showing Lizzie’s relationship with her illness. How the fear of pain and the irrevocable slide into further and further deterioration of quality of life are causing her to refuse experimental treatment and to give in to death waiting in the shadows. She exists in the liminal space between living and dying, a stasis of waiting. And yet, she is charmed by a man, voraciously attracted to him, uninhibitedly making love to him, falling in love with him—all life-affirming actions.

Dante Moretti is the father of a twelve-year-old girl. He is also a world celebrity chef whose private life is shrouded in mystery in the wider world. On the island of Elba, everyone knows Dante and his nondescript restaurant where one eats what one is served and dinner reservations, for even the wealthiest yacht owners, are many months out. Lizzie is unimpressed with Dante’s creations, though everyone with a pulse extolls their virtues. He is charmed by her refusal to kowtow to his talents. For a chef who refuses to make substitutions to his dishes, he makes a hamburger for her at her very first meal—his plebian American.

Unlike what the title implies, this is not a romance novel with a happy ever after—this is the heroine’s journey—but the romance between Lizzie and Dante is a large part of the story and the novel hums with the joy of their love. Right from the beginning when they meet on the beach, Lizzie and Dante exist on the verge of being in love. It takes tremendous courage for anyone to love someone, and especially for Lizzie to love Dante. As Lizzie says, “Pity is a terrible reason to start a relationship” and so she does not share her illness and its prognosis with him...until he eventually guesses. For her, there is no “falling in love”—love is an act of valor. You choose it by saying, here is someone I want to share a pillow with and smile across a candlelit dinner table with for all my days. For as Hannah Arendt has said, “Fearlessness is what love seeks.”

Lizzie and Grey met in their teens at their last foster mother’s house, and they have been an item ever since. Their love is intense and soul-binding. For a while, Lizzie thought they would even marry. But the evening when she thought he would propose, he came out to her as being gay. She was utterly devastated. And ran away from him to Europe for further studies. Grey, in turn, was devastated thinking she was rejecting his being gay and hence threw him away. He had thought they would continue as before, and nothing would change.

With great finesse, Bly lays out the complexity of Lizzie’s and Grey’s relationship and how, on Elba, it is compounded by Rohan’s presence in his life and Dante’s presence in her life. Lizzie and Grey are ex-lovers and love each other and yet are not in love with each other. There is a difference that Bly makes you appreciate—this is her skill in writing romances as Eloisa James coming to play. Grey argues that sex is not a definer of love and that his love for Lizzie is purer and all the more valuable than his for Rohan or Dante’s for her. He is fighting for her life and she, by refusing further treatment, was rejecting him all over again. She was not fighting for him.

The issue of further treatment is a complex conundrum for Lizzie. Part of her wants to reject it out of fear of having her hopes repeatedly dashed and out of fear of continued pain. Part of her wants to undergo it because of her love for Grey and Dante. It’s her decision. They don’t get to coerce her to do it. But should she do it for them? Does she owe them? These questions tease at her conscience all throughout the book. It is only when she decides to do it for herself that the decision feels right. As Lizzie says to Grey, “I’ll fight. I will do it all. Everything. And if...if it doesn’t work, it won’t be because I didn’t try to stay here. I promise.”

Lyrically spare and thematically lush, Lizzie & Dante is a sprawling yet intimate tale, rich in detail and images. Bringing her own rich life to the page, Bly has crafted a fictional story that stands on its own. Nobody could better understand Lizzie than Bly—her despair, her laughter, her singing, her very appreciation and sheer gratitude in being alive. There is a wise Shintō saying: “To be fully alive is to have an aesthetic perception of life because a major part of the world's goodness lies in its often unspeakable beauty.”

[Content Warnings: disordered eating, cancer, dying, death, funeral]

My Best Romance Novels of 2021

Here are my best romance novels of 2021 (in alphabetical order by the authors' last names):

The Brightest Star in Paris by Diana Biller
This book was a wow book for me. In this gorgeously written romance, Diana Biller provides a fascinating view into the psychological makeup of two haunted lovers, where one is literally haunted. Yes, there are ghosts in this book. This is a stunning novel of tender emotions amid harsh circumstances. The romance is set in 1878 France, seven years after the horrific events of the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. It’s an unusual setting for a romance, full of great strife and turmoil, and Biller provides readers with a fabulous immersion into that place and time. The heroine is a prima ballerina with the Paris Opera Ballet. The hero and heroine met 12 years ago in a whirlwind summer romance, but she broke it off. Now he is back and determined to rekindle their romance, yet she sends him away again. He realizes that he has to let her go so she can decide if they are meant to be together. This book is very much her journey from living a rigid life of conformity and denial into one of acceptance and courage and in charge of her happiness. (Review here.)

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles
KJ Charles continues to write book after book of near perfection. She is a courageous writer who doesn’t shy away from morally ambiguous characters, where a protagonist can hold positive and negative traits in balance; sometimes one takes precedence over the other. The end is always positively sound while still retaining some of the ambiguity. Sir John Hartlebury “Hart” is a baronet, a prosaic member of the Upper Ten Thousand with a good-sized property, and also a tradesman efficiently managing his sister’s brewery. He is a large man with a large voice, who cannot be bothered to temper his views or mind his manners when in company. He retains an avuncular interest in the future of his niece, wanting her to acquire some town bronze, while safeguarding her fortune from the hands of fortune hunters. Robin Loxleigh is a gazetted fortune hunter. He and his sister, Marianne, make no bones about them being down on their luck and from a small village in Nottinghamshire, here in London to make advantageous marriages. They charmingly cozen everyone into thinking them to be harmless, so Society casts a benign eye over their machinations. Robin and Hart meet when Robin inveigles himself into the notice of Hart’s niece, and Hart is instantly suspicious of him. (Review here.)

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron
There is food and friendship, vulnerability and defenselessness, affection and aloofness, birth family and found family, betrayal and the requisite expiation. And above all, there is love and laughter. Heron draws on her own Indian Tanzanian Canadian Muslim heritage to authentically write about her culture in the dishes where the Gujarati Indian food has an East African twist, in the occasional comments about what is allowed or disallowed in Islam, in the Canadian-ness of the heroine’s outlook to life, in the longing the hero has for the beauty of Dar es Salaam and the spices of Zanzibar. Reena works in finance, a field she despises. It is a field she chose in defiance of her parents’ wishes to work in their real estate business. She wants to be independent. Nadim has come to Toronto from Dar es Salaam via a graduate degree from the London School of Economics. A big stumbling block for Reena is that Nadim works for her dad and is the chosen one "from the Muslim Bachelors 'R' Us warehouse" for her hand in marriage by both sets of parents. (Review here.)

The Sweetest Remedy by Jane Igharo
This is a lovely women’s fiction tale set in Nigeria. The country comes alive from Igharo's personal experience as a Nigerian-Canadian author. Hannah is biracial and writes for an online magazine. She is very close to her loving Caucasian American mother. Her wealthy entrepreneur father abandoned them when he returned to his family in Nigeria when Hannah was little. Lawrence runs one of her father’s companies in Nigeria. By the terms of her father’s will, Hannah is invited to Nigeria for his funeral. The heart of the story is of Hannah stepping away from constantly feeling unwanted by her father, to forgive him, and to allow his family to embrace her as one of their own. She lost her father, but gained a family.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin
A touch of a hand. Warmth. A cupping of the face. Tenderness. Glances and long looks. Mesmerizing. There is a wealth of meaning in small, small things. Relationships are spun out of romanticism like this, infused with the weight of regard and understanding and care. Such is the beauty Jalaluddin brings to to this book. Hana is a young first-generation immigrant woman, living in the Golden Crescent region of Toronto. She dreams of working in radio, telling stories of people and how they live in the world. To make that dream a reality, she interns at a radio station, while honing her skills on a secret podcast with a deeply loyal following. The Golden Crescent is made up of first- and second-generation family-owned stores, such as Hana’s family’s Three Sisters Biryani Poutine restaurant, a halal fixture in the area. Aydin is a newcomer to the Golden Crescent, brash and wealthy. He is a first-generation immigrant as well and comes from faraway Vancouver. He has come to open his own halal restaurant and is determined to put Three Sisters out of business. To Hana, even if Aydin’s restaurant were to fail, he would always have his father’s wealth and contacts to fall back upon, but if her mother’s restaurant were to fail, her family would be bereft, their very survival at stake. (Review here.)

Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
Awash in tenderness, with limitless care, Emiko Jean leads with her heart. This YA contemporary romance is a story that is American and Japanese and neither and both. Like the delicate sakura, the protagonists’ love is essential to them, the very air they breathe; whether like the blossoms it will be impermanent or endure is for the future to know. This is the story of Izumi Tanaka becoming... A senior at Mount Shasta High School in California, Izumi often feels like an outsider in the place of her birth. As a single child of a single parent, she has often felt lonely, but her questions about her father have gotten instantly shut down. Naturally, she has wondered if he even knows she was born; would he accept her if he knew she existed; does he care—these are questions that circle her mind obsessively. A chance glance at a book reveals a name, expert Googling later there is a contact, a letter is sent...and highly polished Japanese officials show up in her kitchen with its cracked yellow linoleum floor. Her Imperial Highness Princess Izumi, they call her. She’s the illegitimate daughter of the Crown Prince of Japan and he wants her to visit him at his residence, Tōgū Palace, in Tokyo. Izumi shows up at Narita airport in leggings and a faded sweatshirt and is greeted by Akio Kobayashi, a gorgeous Imperial Guard with a stick up his backside. (Review here.)

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
How do you romance someone on your subway commute? Especially when, she is lost in time and trapped on a train? And especially, especially when you want to help her return to her time in the 1970s? One Last Stop is a new adult, queer, magical realism spin on Kate & Leopold. Life circumstances have made Caucasian American August Landry a cynic. She arrives in New York with her entire life in a few boxes. She moves into an apartment with people who are wildly different from each other. And yet, they meld together in one close, wisecracking family. August meets Asian American Jane Su, in her ripped jeans and leather jacket, on the Q train. From the first, August is entranced and hopes she can meet Jane again and again. And she does...until she realizes that Jane is actually a time traveler from the 1970s stuck on the Q train. The book cover is fabulous and has such tiny-tiny details from the story. (Review here.)

Reckless by Selena Montgomery AKA Stacey Abrams
This was my first book by Stacey Abrams. I keep meaning to read her hugely popular mystery, but I have been a bit leery whether the book is popular because of the contents of the book or Abrams' name. However, this book has convinced me that she is an excellent writer. I am hoping Avon plans on publishing other of her Selena books. Reckless has a mystery as well as the romance, and both are very well paced. The heroine is a high profile celebrity defense attorney in Atlanta and he is a small-town sherriff in a small town in Georgia, who moved there from Chicago and finds that the small town suits him better. This small town is also where the heroine grew up, and moving back here to defend a client has her questioning her high-stress job in the big city. (Review here.)

First Love, Take Two by Sajni Patel
The story is set in the same circle of friends as Patel's debut book, The Trouble with Hating You. An Indian American woman fell in love with a Black American man back in college, but pleasing her parents and his father's disdain caused her to repudiate him. He was devastated. Now they're back in touch and sharing an apartment and just as much in love. Will they fight their parents for their right to love each other or will they continue to let their parents dictate who they should be with?

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Nearly fifty years ago, Joni Mitchell sang, “we are stardust” and Carl Sagan famously said that we are made of “star stuff.” The protagonist in this book by Morgan Rogers is indeed the child of the cosmos. The universe conspired to make her. And inspired her to dream of becoming an astronomer.Grace Porter has a newly minted doctorate in astronomy from Portland. Eleven years of dogged hard work and weekends and summers sacrificed to research and achieving new and newer heights in her pursuit of perfection have left her burnt out. Job search has been heartbreaking as she realizes that the field of her dreams is rejecting her Black heritage. In a bid to shore her spirits up, Grace goes off to Las Vegas with her dearest friends. And there, one night, she meets a girl with stars in her eyes and roses in her cheeks; they get drunk; they get married; and they buy a lock together with matching keys and rings. After a night together, the girl leaves behind a love note to her Honey Girl with a calling card and a photo. Yuki Yamamoto is a Japanese American child of immigrant parents living in NYC. She is a medieval history major who waitresses for her living needs and assuages her lonely soul and those of others in a late night radio show called Are You There? (Review here.)

Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian
An m/m story set in the 1960s, unfolds over the course of a cross-country journey by car from Boston to LA. Peter is the son of a super wealthy Massachussetts family of politicians, with his father running for president. All his life, he has been considered the family's disappointment. He never measures up to their drive and ambition; and they don't yet know that he is gay. Throughout his four years of college, he has lusted after his classmate Caleb, the one who has it all together. Or so it seems. Caleb comes from poverty and through dint of scholarships and sheer hard work has made it through an Ivy League university. Now, he has landed a prestigious job at LA Times as a journalist. But he just has to get there, and he has very little money left, and his ride skipped out on him, and he is stuck...and in tears. Spying Caleb on the side of the road, Peter jumps to his aid and offers to drive him to LA—mentally consigning his father's campaign to the flames. His family thinks very low of him, and he just plans on pleasing himself from now on. Peter is all laconic charm, bending over backwards to please. Caleb is grumpy, prickly, and has a chip on his shoulder about money and paying his share. The heart of the story is how they grow together and become more of themselves through the belief and support of the other in them. They each believe that the other is wonderful in every which way. And a journey that was supposed to take days becomes a life-long committment. Tender and fierce, this book is what romance is all about.

Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words by Annika Sharma
Tender, attentive, thoughtful...this book is what true romance is all about. Kiran Mathur is a Type-A biomedical engineer who moved to Duke from India and on to New York City. Nash Hawthorne is a child and adolescent hospital psychologist from Nashville. They connect over chai, philosophy, and the vibrant city around them. This is the first South Asian multicultural book I have read where one set of parents is based in India, so the clash is between conservative Indian Indian values and Southern Caucasian American values as opposed to Indian American and Caucasian American values in nothern cities, which are easier to meld. Sharma's work is pitch perfect here as she has her protagonists walking the tightrope between what their hearts desire and what their cultures demand of them. (Review here.)

The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon
An excellent enemies-to-lovers book. Shay Goldstein is Caucasian Jewish American and a producer at a public radio station in Seattle. She secretly yearns to be a host of her own show, but in ten years of taking crap from her sexist boss, she hasn’t made much progress in that direction. Dominic Yun is Korean American and has a degree in journalism from Northwestern University. He is intent on making his mark in serious journalism. Inexplicably, he chooses to do so at a radio station despite his fear of public speaking, because he sees that as a springboard to journalism greatness. Shay and Dominic’s animosity towards each other fuels great banter between them. (Review here.)

The Fastest Way to Fall by Denise Williams
This book delves deep into the psyche of a woman struggling with body image and sense of self. It is not a story about weight loss, but about learning to love who you are and about falling in love with someone who helps you feel strong. Britta Colby is a curvy Black woman whose goals are to jump out of a plane and to look and feel good naked. Britta refuses to allow being fat to define her. And yet, rejection from a crush about her looks causes her to doubt herself and wonder if she’s good enough. Wes Lawson is the CEO of FitMe Fitness, a hugely popular, individualized, body positive lifestyle app. Through its clever matching algorithm, FitMe teams up each client with a professional coach who helps them meet their goals. FitMe’s cardinal rule is that neither the client nor the coach should know each other outside the confines of the text-based coaching experience of the app. However, early on, when Britta’s emotionally miscalculated crash dieting and over-exercising cause her to put out a frantic call for help, Wes breaks confidentiality to rush her to the hospital. (Review here.)

September & October Reading Notes

There are different types of editors. Some let your words stand for themselves, some pick and choose here and there and polish it up but leave most of it alone allowing your voice to shine through, some ask questions to force you to think deeper and more critically, and then there are others, who take your words and rewrite the piece in their own words while retaining some of your phrases and ideas/information. I was used to the first, am really appreciating the second and the third because they make me a better writer, and am bemused at the fourth because the end result doesn't sound like me; not my voice, not my style. Writing for different outlets is making me aware of such different editing styles.

Reckless by Selena Montgomery AKA Stacey Abrams
Category: Contemporary Romanctic Suspense
Comments: [A Starred Review for Booklist.] This was my first book by Stacey Abrams. I keep meaning to read her hugely popular mystery, but I have been a bit leery whether the book is popular because of the contents of the book or Abrams' name. However, this book has convinced me that she is an excellent writer. I am hoping Avon plans on publishing other of her Selena books. Reckless has a mystery as well as the romance, and both are very well paced. The heroine is a high profile celebrity defense attorney in Atlanta and he is a small-town sherriff in a small town in Georgia, who moved there from Chicago and finds that the small town suits him better. This small town is also where the heroine grew up, and moving back here to defend a client has her questioning her high-stress job in the big city. [My review is here.]

Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words by Annika Sharma
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [A Starred Review for Booklist—it was on the cover of the Sept 15 issue and also a Review of the Day!] A strong cultural clash between a woman from India and a white man from Tenessee set in NYC and New Delhi. This is the first South Asian multicultural book I have read where one set of parents is based in India, so the clash is between conservative Indian Indian values and Southern Caucasian American values as opposed to Indian American and Caucasian American values in nothern cities, which are easier to meld. Sharma's work is pitch perfect here as she has her protagonists walking the tightrope between what their hearts desire and what their cultures demand of them. [My review is here.]

The Brightest Star in Paris by Diana Biller
Category: Contemporary Paranormal Romance
Comments: This book was a wow book for me. My first Biller, and I plan to pick up her first. In this gorgeously written romance, Diana Biller provides a fascinating view into the psychological makeup of two haunted lovers, where one is literally haunted. Yes, there are ghosts in this book. This is a stunning novel of tender emotions amid harsh circumstances. The romance is set in 1878 France, seven years after the horrific events of the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. It’s an unusual setting for a romance, full of great strife and turmoil, and Biller provides readers with a fabulous immersion into that place and time. The heroine is a prima ballerina with the Paris Opera Ballet. The hero and heroine met 12 years ago in a whirlwind summer romance, but she broke it off. Now he is back and determined to rekindle their romance, yet she sends him away again. He realizes that he has to let her go so she can decide if they are meant to be together. This book is very much her journey from living a rigid life of conformity and denial into one of acceptance and courage and in charge of her happiness. [My review is here.]

Battle Royal by Lucy Parker
The Royals Next Door by Karina Halle
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [This was a double review for BookPage.] In Battle Royal, the pastry chef heroine and the princess bond over her wedding cake. In The Royals Next Door, the school teacher heroine befriends the royal duchess, whose character is greatly influenced by Meghan Markle, as a neighbor. Both pairs of women quickly become bosom bows. Both books are enemies-to-lovers romance stories. Parker's hero is a competing pastry chef, whereas Halle's hero is the royal couple's chief bodyguard. There is much angst between the couples and much tenderness from the heroes. All four characters have had traumatic pasts that are sensitively portrayed. I really enjoyed both stories. Be prepared for a new direction in Parker's style from her London Celebrities books. [My review is here.]

Meet Me in London by Georgia Toffolo
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [Reviewed for Booklist.] Toffolo, known as Toff, is a big British TV personality. This book was previously published in the UK and is Toffolo's debut book for the US market. It was very well-received in the UK. Set in London, it's a heartwarming story about love between a barkeep, who moonlights as a fashion designer, and the reluctant heir to a billion-pound department store empire. This is a fake fiancée story where she serves as his conscience to pay his privilege forward and he serves as a deep, abiding support in her struggles with her inability to have children. An immersive London setting would've made this story better.

Never Fall for Your Fiancée by Virginia Heath
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: [Reviewed for Booklist.] Fans of Heath’s Harlequin Historicals will enjoy this first installment in her Merriwell Sisters series, a historical rom-com. This is possibly my first historical rom-com written in the modern style. Of course, it displays the deep period knowledge that Heath has. The heroine is a woodcut engraver and illustrator barely eking out a living for herself and her two sisters. Enter a nobleman thinking her perfect as her fake fiancée to bamboozle his mother and get her off his back about marrying.

Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This short novel is a sequel to Sebastian's novella Tommy Cabot Was Here. This is an m/m story set in the 1960s and unfolds over the course of a cross-country journey by car from Boston to LA. Peter is the son of a super wealthy Massachussetts family of politicians, with his father running for president. All his life, he has been considered the family's disappointment. He never measures up to their drive and ambition; and they don't yet know that he is gay. Throughout his four years of college, he has lusted after his classmate Caleb, the one who has it all together. Or so it seems. Caleb comes from poverty and through dint of scholarships and sheer hard work has made it through an Ivy League university. Now, he has landed a prestigious job at LA Times as a journalist. But he just has to get there, and he has very little money left, and his ride skipped out on him, and he is stuck...and in tears. Spying Caleb on the side of the road, Peter jumps to his aid and offers to drive him to LA—mentally consigning his father's campaign to the flames. His family thinks very low of him, and he just plans on pleasing himself from now on. Peter is all laconic charm, bending over backwards to please. Caleb is grumpy, prickly, and has a chip on his shoulder about money and paying his share. The heart of the story is how they grow together and become more of themselves through the belief and support of the other in them. They each believe that the other is wonderful in every which way. And a journey that was supposed to take days becomes a life-long committment. Tender and fierce, this book is what romance is all about. Highly recommended!

Rescuing Lord Inglewood by Sally Britton
Category: Traditional Historical Romance
Comments: This was a Saturday Book Club read, and it wasn't very successful. I wonder whether "middling" books become "not great," because of the slow reading, the deep attention to detail, and the discussion with multiple people, thereby sundering the magic from the book. Maybe if I had read it all in one gulp, I would've enjoyed it more because I would've become caught up in it. The book started out well enough with our intrepid heroine rescuing the hero by bodily throwing herself over him to protect him from a falling statue. The hero tries to save her reputation, but circumstances, rumor, and innuendo means they have to marry. MOC!! My favorite trope...only when both the protagonists are mature. In this case, the hero decides to make the best of it. He is officious and a bit high-handed, for sure, but his heart is in the right place and his intentions are kind. She, on the other hand, is stuck in her childhood and makes the hero pay for his slights over and over again with immature and inexplicable behavior. It was understandble for a bit, but quickly became tiresome. I was #TeamHero.

The Lovely And Dangerous Launch Of Lucy Cavanagh by Stacy Peterson
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [Reviewed for Foreword Reviews. Foreword Reviews magazine goes out librarians and booksellers and carries reviews of indie books.] I don't know how much I am allowed to say here about it, so I won't say much other than the book was a bit of a mess in terms of storyline, characters, plot, pacing, and writing craft. Pity. It started out strong with a heroine taking a courageous step in leaving her wealthy home in New York City and heading out on a perilous journey by herself to her aunt in San Francisco. It is a story set in 19th century Wild West Americana and is a tale of the heroine's journey, physical and emotional.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: This was a chapter sample. I wanted to see what the brouhaha was all about because this book received 67 (!!) reviews in reputable outlets before two weeks post publication were out. An Observation: From reading LitHub and now this piece, I realize that tiny, particular details are so important these days. To me, they seem like persnickity details that probably don't matter; but there is "literary" value these days to detailing everything and juxtaposing non-coherent details one on top of the other. As far as this book goes: I enjoyed the writing. I am intrigued by the premise. And I have FOMO. It's on my list to read over the Holidays.

The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyer
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: Pico Iyer is one of the greatest of writers and philosophers living today. (He'd be the first to disavow this approbation.) He has written countless articles, essays, reviews, books and so on, edging ever closer to philosophy. His book about His Holiness the Dalai Lama is one of my treasured books. So I was really curious about his thoughts on stillness—periodic pauses in one's life. From His Holiness, Leonard Cohen, Thoreau, and the masters at the temples in Kyoto, Iyer has come away with a deep and vast knowledge of self that is integrated in all that he is and does. His writing is the easiest way for outsiders to observe this. This book came from the TED Talk he gave on this subject a few years ago. It's a slim hardcover—only 70-odd pages—but it is packed with wisdom.

—The Unexpected Friend: A Rohingya Children’s Story by Raya Rahman, illustrated by Inshra Sakhawat Russell
—Sugar in Milk by Thirty Umrigar, illustrated by Khoa Le
Category: Children's Picture Books
Comments: Children suffer the most when people are displaced from their homes through natural means and/or human depredations and violence. Without their volition and against their wishes, they are uprooted from the safety and security of their homes and made to undergo harsh circumstances in faraway lands. And yet, their trauma and their stories often go untold. These two books seek to redress that disregard. [My reviews are here.]

—Where Three Oceans Meet by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan
—Seven Golden Rings by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan
—Bracelets for Bina’s Brothers by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat
—The Secret Code Inside You: all about your DNA by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Steven Salerno
Category: Children's Picture Books
Comments: This year is a banner year for author Rajani LaRocca. She has two middle grade novels publishing as well as four picture books for children. I was highly curious how LaRocca does it all given her busy career as a doctor. All four of her picture books are Indian-themed and range from tales for the very young to older children. Her repertoire is large in terms of the stories she tells and the writing style. Her favorites are books where math and science are embedded into the stories. I cannot wait to see what she has in store next year. This is one author to watch. [My interview and reviews are here.]

My Summer Reading Notes (Long)

I moved this summer. As a result, my time was not my own. Between all the culling, donating, packing, shipping, moving in, unpacking, and arranging my worldly goods, not to mention selling our house and renting a new one, I was exhausted from morning to night and had no energy to do any writing. I did do some reading and reviewing, as you can see below, but that was it. I stopped writing my Morning Pages and had only short updates for my journal. But now, I feel I have a better handle on things, so, hopefully, I will be able to return to writing Morning Pages and detailed journaling.

It is mindblowing to me how people move every few years. Perhaps, you acquire fewer things, only those you absolutely need and absolutely love, rather than so many things that look interesting in the moment but turn to crap long-term. I was in my old home for 21 years. I still remember how few things I brought into that home from my apartment. And I regret, how very many things I brought into my current home. Given that this house is much smaller, and despite the innumerable donations (and literal junking of things), right now, there are quite a few boxes in the garage. Luckily, the garage has storage. Given that I am renting right now, there are more moves in my near future. Woe! Perhaps I should donate boxes wholesale if I haven't opened them in this next year. But, oh, I loathe to part with my books—many of those boxes are of books. As it is, I reluctantly gave away hundreds before I moved, and that was wrenching. The only consolation was that out of the many boxes of books I donated, a close friend of mine got four.

In reviewing news... Frolic Media changed its direction at the end of June to mostly audio-video contribution as opposed to written. As a result, my 2.5-year-old review column Book of the Week went bye-bye. They had given me all the freedom in choosing the books I wanted to review, and I was allowed to develop my own style of reviewing. I'm incredibly grateful to them for believing in me and supporting me all these years. As a result of my departure from Frolic, in the midst of the move, I was frantically DM-ing people I know and cold-writing to editors. Luckily for me, American Library Association's Booklist, BookPage, Washington Independent Review of Books, and Foreword Reviews took me up on my promise to be able to write for them. I will, of course, continue to write for the Independent Examiner.

Interview with author Lucy Parker
Ever since Carina Press published Act Like It, I have been a fan of Lucy Parker’s books set in the theater world, and the her fans are legion. Parker pairs keen observations about modern London life with a quirky sense of humor and spicy language. Her latest published this month, Battle Royal, is the first in a new series centered around the monarchy.

Interview with author Marguerite Kaye
Her Heart for a Compass, which came out earlier this month, was the most anticipated royal historical novel of the year. Authored by Sarah, Duchess of York, in collaboration with Marguerite Kaye, the story is a fictional account of the life of the duchess’ great-great-great-aunt Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott, who was a close acquaintance of Queen Victoria. The book is Ferguson’s first adult novel. The Scottish Kaye, however, is an award-winning romance author of more than 50 books.

The Layover by Lacie Waldon
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments: On some level, this is a rom-com where two protagonists meet on a plane and discover that they have much in common with each other than they had previously thought. Spending time together with periods of intense self-revelatory explorations convinces them that they’re compatible on multiple levels. However, such a breezy précis does this introspective book a disservice. There is psychology at play in this story. It is a wonderful meditation on the conscious and subconscious mind, traumas of childhood, and the separation of the adult from the child. And Waldon does it all with the light hand of a rom-com. My review is here.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: prejudice and violence against queer people, death, homophobia, anti-Asian hate crimes] How do you romance someone on your subway commute? Especially when, she is lost in time and trapped on a train? And especially, especially when you want to help her return to her time in the 1970s? One Last Stop is a new adult, queer, magical realism spin on Kate & Leopold. Life circumstances have made Caucasian American August Landry a cynic. She arrives in New York with her entire life in a few boxes. She moves into an apartment with people who are wildly different from each other. And yet, they meld together in one close, wisecracking family. August meets Asian American Jane Su, in her ripped jeans and leather jacket, on the Q train. From the first, August is entranced and hopes she can meet Jane again and again. And she does...until she realizes that Jane is actually a time traveler from the 1970s stuck on the Q train. The book cover is fabulous and has such tiny-tiny details from the story. My review is here.

First Love, Take Two by Sajni Patel
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: racism, colorism] This was my first review for Booklist. The story is set in the same circle of friends as Patel's debut book, The Trouble with Hating You. An Indian American woman fell in love with a Black man back in college, but pleasing her parents caused her to repudiate him. He was devastated. Now they're back in touch and just as much in love. Will they fight their parents for their right to love each other? Since my review was published for the magazine, I don't have a link to the full review.

The Sweetest Remedy by Jane Igharo
Category: Contemporary Women's Fiction
Comments: This was for Booklist as well, and I don't have a link to the full review. I loved Igharo's debut, Ties That Tether (review here), so i was eagerly looking forward to her next book. While the first book was more romance, this is more women's fiction with a strong romance sub-plot. The heroine is biracial and had been abandoned by her Nigerian father because he already had a family of his own in Nigeria. Upon his death, his will stipulates that she travel to Nigeria and meet up with his family. And she discovers a new family there and a new love. Igharo is Nigerian Canadian, and her Nigerian setting feels authentic and well-researched.

A Duke Worth Fighting For by Christina Britton
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This is the last book in Britton's Isle of Synne series. It is a classic Beauty and the Beast tale, where the circumspect widow of a Waterloo veteran is challenged with aiding a battle-scarred, socially inept, virginal duke with his matrimonial prospects. Unknown to them, their meeting on the Isle of Synne has been engineered by a Machiavellian matchmaker, the dowager viscountess who is the widow’s grandmother. My review is here.

The Scoundrel's Daughter by Anne Gracie
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This is an excellent start to The Brides of Bellaire Gardens series by Anne Gracie. The book does an excellent job of developing both of its romances equally, which is rare. Usually the secondary romance is tied up in a quick, neat bow. But here, Gracie gives sufficient page time to interleave the development of the two romances, while retaining the primacy of one. There's an abusive husband, handsy lords, army discipline and integrity, widowers, cute girls, cuter kitten, curricle race, a bold goose and a bolder goose girl, young love, old love, hard-to-get prickly women and patient loving men, and Gracie's lovely writing. My review is here.

Division Bells by Iona Datt Sharma
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments:This book was fabulous! I read it on KJ Charles' recommendation, so I went in with the hope of a good read, and it did not disappoint. It is set among the politics of the British House of Lords and is a clash between a senior civil servant attached to a baroness "Minister" and her special advisor whose father is a peer of the realm and former member of the Lords. I loved, and wallowed, in all the political details of getting their alternative energy items attached to a bill through the committee and full vote in the House. There is a ton of politics, and I was surprised to find myself a political wonk. Their relationship starts out adversarial, moves to attentive, then sexual, then loving. And the progression is gradual and organic and the characters are memorable. The book may only be 80 pages, but the story is much larger than that. Sharma is a gifted writer, and I wish she would write more.

Special Interests by Emma Barry
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I really wanted to like this book. I really like the author, and folks I know on Twitter really like this book. But I didn't. It is a debut book, and it shows. It needs more introspection and character growth from that introspection. For the most part, the heroine is static. Her inexplicable reactions to the hero swing wildly between being pissed at him and wanting to jump his bones and nothing in between. I understand wanting to show conflicting feelings in a character but the extremes didn't work for me. However, it was the hero who sank the ship for me. It is a case of opposites attract. She propotions him. Twice. Both times he turns her down with a "it is not you, it is me" line. She is humiliated but every time he gives her a crumb of attention, she comes to him. He's patronizing, self-absorbed, and not very nice to her in thoughts and comments. Other than his looks, I don't see what he has going for him. The political details, unlike the book above, are light—they do convey a sense of DC but not in the depth that would've made the story shine. I read Barry's mission statement about her books with interest. Special Interests follows that definition of the basic structure of all her stories accurately. I wonder how Barry can make book after book original give these guidelines. (This book needed a copyeditor. I am surprised Carina Press put out a book with elementary errors.)

Mr. Hotshot CEO by Jackie Lau
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments:[CW: depression] I have read four of Lau's books, and the first one made it to one of my Best Books of the Year list. But upon reading this book, I realized that Lau has one story to tell, and she rehashes it in every book I have read. Yes, the meet-cutes may differ and some of the turning points or crises may as well, but the bones of the stories are the same. While this is an interesting exercise in how an author can craft seemingly news stories from a confining structure, I was disappointed with this book. What lifts the book up from mediocrity is Lau's depiction of the heroine's depression. Lau discusses it with a degree of authenticity and depth that speaks of personal experience. She is open about it on Twitter, so I never questioned her depiction of it as I read along. How the heroine handles the illness, her role in it, other people's roles in it, and how she relates to other people is where the story is. This can be very triggering for some readers, uplifting for some, and fascinating for some. It is handled sensitively.

Marian's Christmas Wish by Carla Kelly
Category:Historical Romance
Comments: I loved this book. Vintage Kelly is always a hit for me. It is a typical Christmas story where good things are wished for and succeed in occuring as part of the spirit of the season. However, the characters elevate the story from the ordinary to memorable. Marian's father, a squire, has just died from an ill-advised ride in the countryside after he had been drinking. As a result, Marian and her family are about to lose their family home. Given how eccentric Marian is, all hopes for a lucrative match to save their family rest on her beautiful sister. Trouble is, her sister is in love with a poor curate. Enter an earl with who has had an arid life and is charmed by Marian's madcap schemes and unconventional foibles. She entertains him and he rapidly falls for her; she takes a while to arrive at the conclusion that she has loving feelings for him and that he feels likewise for her. This is a delightful traditional Regency.

The Duke's Regret by Catherine Kullman
Category:Historical Romance
Comments: The Saturday Book Club finished discussing this book with a flourish. Lovely, quiet book of second chances for protagonists in their mid to late thirties. This author is such a find! I talked about this book in some detail in my May review roundup. The biggest discussion of our club centered around why and how does the duchess decide to move forward with her relationship with the duke after two decades of neglect by him? How much and how does he atone in order to move forward in their relationship? Has he done enough? Is she too forgiving? And what about his relationship with the children he has neglected? This is a novella, and while at times it felt a little more exploration would've been warranted, overall, the pacing and details were very well done. A book to definitely pick up.

A Comfortable Alliance by Catherine Kullman
Category:Historical Romance
Comments: Given how much I loved Kullman's book above, my anticipation was high for her latest book. So I was crestfallen when I was underwhelmed by it. Frankly, I was bored. There were no stakes in the book. They meet. They like each other. They have a good intimate life and get along very well outside of it. While their marriage was based on respect and tepid affection, they fall into deep affection and into love from the get-go. Their life together is good—each does their part to make their marriage and their external life work well. The only fly in the ointment is that she constantly compares him to her lost youthful love; she is convinced that what she felt then was love with a capital 'L,' and what she feels for her husband is only affection. And she ruminates on it on and on. The book keeps bowling along as though narrated by an omniscent narrator, and frankly, I was bored. No stakes, no story. And it has the unsexiest sex scene I have ever read. Kullman should stick with closed door.

An Embroidered Spoon by Jayne Davis
Category:Historical Romance
Comments:This is the third book of The Saturday Book Club read. The author was recommended by Willa. Alas! Our book club decided to abandon this one part way through. The story started out bold and interesting. There is a stuck-up, rich beauty banished to a small village in Wales to live with her supposedly poor spinster aunt as a punishment for not accepting eligible suitors that her father put forward. She is spoiled and mistakes the hero for a local yokel and treats him as such. He's a tradesman from the Borders who ventures up there to buy the goods necessary. He's a sharp businessman and is fluent in Welsh and English. So the book starts out strong, but the heroine's about face from imperious to easygoing, from uppercrust to aweshucks was too sudden. There was no story left partway through the book, and I felt like the author was pulling the characters along, rather than the story being organic to the characters.

Miss Lattimore's Letter by Suzanne Allain
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: I loved Allain's Mr. Malcolm's List (review here) last year. Filming is under way with screenplay by Allain and Sam Heughan as Mr. Malcolm. The day my review published, Heughan RT'd my review!!!!!, thus, making my day/week/month/year. Miss Lattimore's Letter is likewise excellent. Allain has a keen ear and eye for conveying an immersive Regency setting. The book has two interweaved romances—one is Miss Sophronia "Sophie" Lattimore's with Sir Edmund, and the other is her cousin Cecilia's. While the secondary romance does not overshadow the main one, it does get sufficient page time to not be a pat thing that Allain wraps up in a cute bow. Sophie is a matchmaker by happenstance. She spies two unhappy couples and pairs them up through an anonymous letter, which becomes public, thereby raising Sophie's status from an unwanted spinster relation to a young woman worthy of notice. She then proceeds, reluctantly, to aid other couples with their troubled relationships and finds she has a knack for it. The heart of the story is Sophie's jilted past informing on her present choice of Sir Edmund's laidback and cautious courtship and her old beau—who rejected her for a woman with money—actively and ardently pursuing her. Who will she choose? Allain has done a good job of making the choice equitable, and not one the obvious non-choice.

The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a second-chances romance with lovely prose and tender feelings. Rita runs a furniture refurbishing business that is getting noticed more and more. But she is also perennially cash-strapped. Her boyfriend, Neil, is handsome and successful and a mama's boy who talks big about settling down but will never ever oppose his mother's will. The Bollywood-style plot twist is that Rita's mom had been rejected by Neil's grandparents as a bride for Neil's father. Rita's mom is still miffed about it and would never, ever, over-her-dead-body consider Neil for Rita. Enter Rita's old fling whom she had loved, loved, loved from when she was fifteen till their senior year in college. He had loved her back just as much...till, he broke them up over his grades and parents and...Now, Milan is back, just as handsome and cocky as ever and rich and successful to boot and wants Rita back in his life in her professional capacity (as interior decorator and stager for his realtor business) and on personal terms as well. Rita is CONFLICTED! The word "shaadi" means "marriage" and comes from the fictional Indian American matrimonial/dating site MyShaadi.com where Rita, Neil, and Milan have profiles. Rita tries to wrangle hers and Neil's profiles so they can be matched as fated mates to be presented to her mom as fait accompli, but instead, she and Milan get matched up. Oops! While the beginning half is stellar, the other half gets bogged down by rehashing of Rita's old feelings and not enough development of their second-chance "new" relationship. I wanted to see what the grown-up Rita and Milan brought new to the table and not merely as a continuation of their "never fell out of love" relationship.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
Category: Nonfiction Essays
Comments: As mentioned in these blogs before, I belong to an antiracism book club in one my kids' schools. We started reading this book last month because it was AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) month, and until then, we'd read books by Black Americans but hadn't branched out to other marginalized authors. From the premise of the book on Amazon and reviews of the book, I was excited to read it. However, I ended up being disappointed by the poor writing. The essays were incoherent. I am used to personal essays being tightly formatted with thoughts (ideas, theories, and annecdotes) laid out in orderly thoughts with an overarching theme and progression towards an understanding. These essays meandered all over the place and at the end I was not sure what the points were. In our group discussions, we were all befuddled and didn't know how to critique the book. We didn't want to be prejudiced against the essence of the book despite the writing and especially because it was so touted by respectable review outlets. However, I feel no such caution. Bad writing is bad writing because bad writing does not convey what the writer thinks they're conveying and confuses the reader.

May Reading Notes

This month, I read more historical romance than contemporary, which is an unusual departure for me. It's becoming harder and harder to find new historicals that appeal to me. Also a departure for me, I read only two diverse books this month.

Forbidden by Jo Beverley
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Our Saturday Book Club finished reading this book this month. Our first book, and I'm so glad I joined up with Janet Webb (@JanetETennessee), Willa (@Willaful), Growly (@GrowlyCub), and Joanne Smythe (@regency_gal) to read it. These smart ladies made me really think hard about the book: the characters, the plot, the motivations and goals of the characters, and the ramifications of their actions. Looking forward to reading other books with these ladies in the months ahead.

This is a story with high angst and a wonderful resolution; there is high drama and quiet moments. As I read this book, I was reminded again and again that Beverley was a master of her craft when she was writing this series.

The heroine's husband has died, allowing her to escape a degrading, terrifying marriage that she had been forced into. Her dissipated brothers are now trying to force her into another such marriage, so she flees the family home, leaving behind everything. When she sees a nobleman offering her a bit of kindness, she seizes on a future with him by initiating him into sex—her only bargaining chip for a better life. He is honorable and requests his aunt to house her. Freed from horrible pressures, she starts to grow up from the terrified fifteen-year-old she's ever been into a young woman who knows her own mind. However, when she finds out that she is with child, he is forced against his every wish into an honorable marriage of convenience with her. The story is about how they each grow up and grow together.

The Duke's Regret by Catherine Kullman
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This is the second book read of the Saturday Book Club. For this read, @NYSuri joined us as well. Catherine Kullman is such a find! Thanks to GrowlyCub, we chose this one for our second club read, and I loved her writing from the first few pages. It is a small book, but the story is large and leisurely, with no spare words. It is a quiet book by modern standards with less plot and more character development, which I love. All the historical details are spot-on but Kullman sprinkles them in the narrative purposefully and with a light hand. We are almost to the end of this book, and I just love it. This was the third book in Kullman's series, and I hope we'll pick up the first book in the series at some point.

The Duke of Gracechurch was forced into a marriage of convenience at a very young age with a girl not even out of girlhood at sixteen. He bitterly resented having his domineering father forcing his hand and vowed to forsake his wife and cleave to his mistress for whom he has much affection. As a result, he returns to his country seat periodically for ducal duties and getting children on his wife. Other than uncomplainingly allowing him to visit her bed, his wife leads a parallel life growing up under the aegis of the duke's mother.

Seventeen years later and after the death of his mistress, the duke takes stock of his life and realizes that he has allowed his life to pass him by. He suddenly craves warmth and closeness with the family he has discarded and sets about making amends. As you can imagine, while his kids are welcoming, his wife is not. But he is willing to exert himself and offer conciliation at every turn to make reparations.

A Wager to Tempt the Runaway by Bronwyn Scott
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Bronwyn Scott is a writer of great talent who is able to construct story settings that are an immersive experience for the reader, whether they are a country house kitchen by lamplight, a secret cove at moonlight, or a London ballroom in the unforgiving glare of hundreds of candles. And in these settings, she skillfully drops in fully realized characters who live their lives to the fullest.

Josefina Ricci is a reckless artist, all fire and beauty. She has given a deathbed promise to her father to travel the world and shape her own destiny through her art while not being beholden to patrons. She wants to be free of all the trappings of a sheltered young woman, so she leaves Venice in a headlong rush Westwards. When the story open, Josefina is in a sleepy coastal village in England, a fixture at an art school and committed to painting a portrait in order to meet her benefactress’ wild wager. But art does not provide the headiness that smuggling does. Josefina comes and goes in the night, headless of any danger to her person.

Owen Gann is an upright citizen of the village. He comes from a humble background, a man before he could finish growing up. First a smuggler, then an oysterman, he has risen up the ranks to owning a vast international empire shipping oysters. Through sheer dint of single-minded focus — a not-quite-deathbed promise to his mother to achieve success in life — he has earned wealth and repute in the world of men who receive him with mixed feeling over his antecedents. By day, he provides employment to the denizens of the village. By night, he keeps a watch over their smuggling activities, ever vigilant for customs excise officers. My review is here.

Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
Category: Contemporary YA Romance
Comments: This is what romance is all about. This is why I read Romance. Awash in tenderness, with limitless care, Emiko Jean leads with her heart. Tokyo Ever After is a story that is American and Japanese and neither and both. Like the delicate sakura, the protagonists’ love is essential to them, the very air they breathe; whether like the blossoms it will be impermanent or endure is for the future to know.

This is the story of Izumi Tanaka becoming...

A senior at Mount Shasta High School, Izumi often feels like an outsider in the place of her birth. A minor minority, she makes friends with other minority girls, and together, they form an unshakeable bond against everything life throws at them. As a single child of a single parent, she has often felt lonely, but her questions about her father have gotten instantly shut down. Naturally, she has wondered if he even knows she was born; would he accept her if he knew she existed; does he care — these are questions that circle her mind obsessively. A chance glance at a book reveals a name, expert Googling later there is a contact, a letter is sent…and highly polished Japanese officials shows up in her kitchen with its cracked yellow linoleum floor. Her Imperial Highness Princess Izumi, they call her. She’s the illegitimate daughter of the Crown Prince of Japan and he wants her to visit him at his residence, Tōgū Palace, in Tokyo.

Izumi shows up at Narita airport in leggings and a faded sweatshirt and is greeted by Akio Kobayashi, a gorgeous Imperial Guard with a stick up his backside. For ten hours, he had watched her binge-watch television and not read her critical information binder. Not quite the impression she had hoped to make. My review is here.

Book of Love by Erin Satie
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: I greatly enjoyed Erin Satie’s Bed of Flowers, the first book in her Sweetness and Light series, so I was eagerly anticipating Book of Love, the second book in the series. Satie’s stories are always unusual historical novels, and that is exactly their appeal for me. I approach her books without knowing anything about them, confident that she will sweep me away into a story of great worldbuilding and out-of-the-ordinary characters.

Cordelia Kelly was raised as a boy intellectually. But when she attains womanhood, her parents expect her to be obedient and to toe the conventional line and marry where they please. She repeatedly refuses and ends up having a dramatic falling out with her parents, especially, her beloved father. She hares off to London to fend for herself. Such courage in those times. She lands on her feet, rooming with an intrepid female writer and working on freelance bookbinding jobs. She has succeeded in commercializing her art and hobby—what she loves is putting a roof over her head. And yet, she is haunted by the prospect of poverty every waking moment.

Alistair Chandos, the Duke of Stroud, is loyal to a fault. He is the friend you want in your corner. He makes life fun and helps unstintingly when necessary. Whenever a friend needs a favor, he spares no effort. He also loves to play pranks. He thinks the only way his peers see him is as a jokester — that he has no value other than amusing them. He thinks others don’t think highly of his intelligence and so he has convinced himself thoroughly that he is lacking in the brains department, a bit touched in the upperworks. He is also certain that the reason others pay him any attention is because of his exalted title and great wealth.

Book of Love is a story of a man who has a low opinion of himself and a gem of a woman who values him highly. It is through her belief in him that he starts to believe in himself. My review is here.

Catch a Falling Duke by Eve Pendle
Category: Historical Romance
Comments:This book was a disappointment. The premise looked interesting. A duke is terribly shocked over antecedents of his patrimony—their direct involvement in slavery. He decides to chuck it all by breaking the entail and using the monites for reparations. The heroine is a farmer—not the usual, a woman with noble relations come down in the world, but a bonafide farmer. They casually meet at a roadside inn and decide to share their bodies for one night...which leads to two, three, four...and he proposes. She refuses. Their stations in life is too vast for her to bridge. Interesting premise, no? The problem was the execution of the two storylines.

I consulted with Isobel Carr, who is teaching a class on entails. Breaking an entail requires far more effort and has far more strings attached to it than merely doing the leaglese and donating the monies. I would've liked to have seen the duke actively, and in-depth, working on the process of converting the fee tail to a fee simple. He also has a duty to his tenants and to the vast number of dependants, the annuities and jointures he owes, among other financial encumbrances and responsibilities. In addition, his goal of making reparations is not shown in the great detail it should've been. This is the most interesting aspect of his character—the making of him from a wild man-about-town to a responsible, dependable man. In fact, this is the best part of the story, and it is hand-waved over.

The story has the duke completely become a not-duke by choosing to live at the farm like a farmhand, milking cows and forking hay. He completely divorces himself from his old life in town with nary a thought to its loss. I have seen enough of these kinds of stories to know their appeal to American readers—a man giving up his life for the love of a woman. However, I find characters who totally give up their former lives to become entirely new people unbelievable. To me, this person at some point in their life, after the bloom is off the romance rose, is going to regret the loss of that former person they used to be. In this duke's case, perhaps not the profligacy of that life, but definitely town and friends and the ton.

Towards the end of the story the heroine and the duke decide that they want to turn their farm into a co-op so that they can ensure that it cannot be inherited (and potentially destroyed) by one single person. So they involve everyone currently working the farm to join in. While the resulting discussion was interesting—and something not seen in a historical novel—it received far more page time than the duke's entail. That was of far more import to the story because that is his story. Their joint co-op discussion could've been off-page or make a cameo appearance in the epilogue.

While this book did not work for me, I hasten to add that I have enjoyed this author's books before. So, despite this disappointment, I will choose to read one of her books again.

Totally Engaged by Mina V. Esguerra
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This book is set in modern-day Manila in the Philippines. I have read two of Esguerra's books before, and one made it to my Best Books of the year list, so I had high hopes of this one. But it was a disappointment. The story is very much of the author pulling the characters along through tried and true tropes and well-trodden genre paths to the foregone conclusion. Of writing, Stacey Abrams has said, "If there are no stakes, then there are no payoffs." This story has no stakes. And ultimately, this romance story is not romantic. There is sex, but not much of a romance. I know I am being harsh here but I was disappointed by a story that felt lackluster and like it was hastily put together.

She is a 41-year-old, who has a fashion design startup and works out of her family home. She has converted the former garage into a studio home that she rents out. Her childhood friend asks a favor to put up her 39-year-old brother for a few weeks while he finds his feet in his new job at this up and coming company. He is looking for a place where he can walk to work because he works insane hours. Enter the interfering mother, sisters, and her close friends. And suddenly, they are fake engaged, chastely share a bed one night, and start sharing their bodies. The sleeping together leads to the relationship. The interference of the relatives was cute at first, and I usually love to see characters and their families, but this went on and on.

Also, I didn't buy the heroine's sort-of amicable relationship with her mom and her desire to please her mom. The only part of the story that I found fascinating was the US immigration story. US immigration wait times are notoriously long, and what happened to the heroine is a true story. The heroine's parents applied for permanent residentship when she was very young. However, by the time their green card came through, she was over 21. She had aged out of the petition. So her family (father, mother, and sisters) went to the US, while leaving her behind in charge of the detritus of their lives and also the large family home. And from the US, the mother keeps on harping on her lack of husband and arranges failed setups. Frankly, I cannot ever imagine this leading to a meaningful relationship between the two.

April Reading Notes

Some people like to write long individual review posts and some do shorter reviews for a monthly round-up. Both types of posts have their pros and cons. Some people feel that not much analysis is possible in these round-ups, which is true. However,there is blog post fatigue associated with multiple reviews a month. My blog is already miniscule; with multiple posts, it will get further diluted in terms of people reading it.

Given the number of ARCs I read, from which text quotations are disallowed, that style of reviewing has fallen out of my reviewing style. For most of the books reviewed for publication, I do have links to longer reviews where I do more analysis and only put the bare bones of the plot here. For books that I don't review for publication, I do bigger reviews to support why I liked or did not like the books. I do realize that this means longer monthly posts, which could lead to skiming and online reading fatigue and thus skipping, but this style of blogging is what I am most comfortable with at this moment in time.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I read Jalaluddin’s début book Ayesha At Last with such joy two years ago, and I have been waiting ever since for her second book. To her new book, Jalaluddin brings a maturity and keener eye to emotional nuance. Rich with cultural texture, replete with social nuance, and brimming with humor, it is a delight from the first word to the last. Her talent is in allowing her characters to recount their own stories, whether they are the main characters or the secondary ones. No one gets short shrift in the attention she pays to creating whole, complex people. Jalaluddin’s signature style is in her social commentary on the lives led by Indian Canadian Muslims, the immigrants and the first generations. She had started this conversation with the reader in Ayesha At Last, and she continues on that conversation in Hana Khan Carries On.

This is a book that you need to spend some time immersed in. Jalaluddin’s lyrical prose brings to life a story in subtle shades of meaning and expression as the characters share with you their deepest secrets and dreams. Long-buried family secrets and hate-motivated attacks add to the complexity of the narrative. The book can be read is multiple ways: as Hana’s life journey, as Aydin’s character growth, as romantic love between the protagonists, as being Muslim in Canada, and so on. In this review, I have chosen a few of those strands that make up the narrative. You will have to read the book to discover them all. I cannot express how much Jalaluddin’s books please me; I hope they bring you joy as well. My review is here.

Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: mental illness, anxiety, social anxiety] Hogle has won me over with her back-to-back lovely stories. I would recommend both of her books, You Deserve Each Other and Twice Shy.

Maybell Parrish is restless and unhappy in a dead-end job, constantly thwarted in succeeding in it by her coworker. Still, it’s a step-up, in her mind, from her former housekeeping job at the indoor waterpark, so she works d. She’s a killer baker, and constantly daydreams of a life as a baker with her online friend as a future spouse. So when she finds out that she has inherited her great-aunt, Violet’s, mansion, Falling Stars, in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, she dumps her job and walks away. While she had hoped, she would go out with a bang, her meek, people-pleasing nature only allows her to ghost her employer.

Wesley Koehler is a decidedly grumpy, decidedly reclusive groundskeeper of Violet’s estate. While she lived, he had persistently offered to care for her mansion and make it habitable. But the old lady had an indomitable nature and was adamant that nothing should be changed, and all he could do was offer her a place to stay in his small cottage. So when she passes away and he finds out that he has inherited Violet’s mansion, he immediately sets about planning what he will do to fix the mansion that has good bones and only needs thoughtful renovation. He also wants to build an animal sanctuary.

Plot twist! Maybell and Wesley are not the sole inheritors of Violet’s estate. Rather, they are co-owners. My review is here.

Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I have found Sally Thorne’s stories always entertaining and well-paced to hold my interest from beginning to end. I find her a versatile writer. She has written three entirely different books in: The Hating Game, 99 Percent Mine, and now, Second First Impressions. The voice, the style of writing, the choice of words, the type of people, the very narrative—they are all different and unique to the stories she is telling. I know she has received hate for books 2 & 3 by readers who just wanted her to reiterate The Hating Game over and over again.

Ruthie Midona is someone who does not like surprises. She had been bullied as a child and unloved by her family. As a result, she is at pains to always be in control of herself, because when your life is out of control, all you can control is yourself. She is the acting manager of a luxury retirement community, where everything is just as it should be. She is dedicated to her job of caring for the quirky and opinionated denizens of the Providence Villa. Her boss is out for the nonce, and she is in charge.

Teddy Prescott fits the stereotype of a spoilt rich man who doesn’t like to bestir himself for anything involving work. He wants life to be easy and in constant motion, or at least that is what he projects to everyone. In reality, he dreams of owning a tattoo parlor, but he has to first convince his demanding father. Ruthie and Teddy meet when he shows up at the villa expecting to be in charge. My review is here.

The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Jessica “Jess” Davis’ has three people in her life whom she loves with every fiber of her being: her daughter and her grandparents. She is a freelance statistician working constantly to stay afloat as she financially supports her loving grandparents and largely-absent mother every once in a while, runs a house, and struggles to provide her daughter with the comforts, activities, and school involvement she believes every child should have.

When Jess loses a big client because she refuses to compromise her ethics in fudging data, she is forced to become a barista at her favorite coffee shop. For months on end, she was at the front of the counter, now she is behind it. Her humiliation is complete when the person she surreptitiously admires for his gorgeousness but thinks is surly and taciturn comes to order his customary drink and leaves her a big tip.

Dr. River Peña is that grumpy tipper and also a highly regarded biotechnology researcher, who has focused his research on a DNA-based matchmaking app. Along with his mentor, he has founded a company, which he would soon like to take to IPO, based on the research he completely believes in. My review is here.

Waiting for the Flood by Alexis Hall
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: What a stunning story! This was my first Alexis Hall story, and I now get his fame. The writing is...chef's kiss—delicate, unusually perceptive, and imaginative, in emotions and also in the usage of language. Gosh, if you've not read Hall, I'd urge you to give him a try. Do note that this is a slow story and reads like a short novel, despite being only 96 pages long. To me, this is its strength. You can luxuriate in the feelings of the protagonists to the fullest without feeling rushed or feeling like the story is moving to an outline.

Edwin is a book restorer. At the Bodleian in Oxford and at home, he restores all kinds of books that have suffered untold damage. He lives alone in a big house which he used to co-own with his then boyfriend of ten years. The ending of that relationship has been devastating for Edwin. As it is his stuttering has always been the cause of his low self-esteerm, this loss further erodes his self-confidence.

Due to heavy rains, the river close to his house floods his street and his house. It brings Adam, a city engineer, into his life. You would think that a hearty broad-shouldered man wouldn't be in tune with his emotions. But that is not true at all. In Hall's skilled hands, both men come to life in their individual ways and learn to share their sorrows and joys with each other. While is clear in his intentions and feelings, Edwin has to learn to trust and let Adam into his life.

Again, I sound like Hall's publicist, but this is a book worth savoring.

Again by Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: "Indians," "blacks," racism] There was no reason to include these words or the racism that goes with them. They add nothing to the story other than to attempt to show that the heroine grew up poor and lived on the wrong side of the tracks and how her father sent her to the right side for school. Other than this racist backstory, there is no more racism in the book, because the book is only populated with white characters. This is a book written in 1995, so not that long ago, and I can't imagine how the writer was so racist even then.

If you are able to set the racism aside, this is a fabulous story. I would give it an 'A.' It is a gentle story of uncommon actions and reactions, large and small. What could've been clichéd is not because of the little twists and turns in the story that keep you guessing. What is very sweet about the story is that the hero acknowledges to himself and to the heroine that he is in love with her before the halfway mark. The rest of the book is of him waiting patiently for her to love him, then giving up in despair, and then her bringing him back into being alive by her love.

The setting is a daytime soap studio in Brooklyn. It's a scrappy, low-budget half-hour soap set in the Regency. The network execs were reluctant to part with even the small amount of money they did for it, but surprising everyone, the show took off and drew in rating higher than any of the hour-long soaps. It was a case of the engine who could. This was all because of Jenny cotton, the head writer. It all came from her head and she spent countless hours seven days a week working and reworking the stories, sometimes, making changes even the day of the taping. Luckly, her directors and producer were adept at finding good, professional actors who could adapt and act.

Alec Cameron is a well-known daytime soap actor. Since his childhood when he took care of his sister who died of leukemia, he is used to being the responsible person in the cast. If there was a crisis, he would step in and help fix things. However, right from the begining, his respect for Jenny's brilliance has him stepping aside to let her take the lead. He is fascinated with her right from the begining even though she is living with her boyfriend of fourteen years. Of course, he makes no moves on her other than to tell her that he in love with her. It is only when her boyfriend cheats on her and marries someone else that Alec makes clear that he is interested in marriage and only marriage with Jenny. But Jenny does not love him.

I really liked that Seidel does not have Jenny wallowing in her betrayal. She grieves, she plots some mild revenge, she works through her emotions, and she emerges stronger and more optimistic than before. Wonderful characterization there. Then Alec thinks she would fall in love with him. But there is no such automatic, clichéd response from Jenny. And this is the heart of the story, how she gets to love—at first, it was only the show she loved, now she could love Alec and the show.

After All These Years by Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: Even though the above book is the fourth book in the series and this is the first, I read Again first, fell in love with it, and went looking for more of Seidel's work. And while this was not as great as Again, it was still good. However, it is a different book, more a story of a family than a straightforward romance, even though it does follow some of the genre conventions about building a central love story to a HEA climax. However, a fair bit of the second half of the book is in the POV of the teen son of the heroine, which has nothing much to do with the romance and much to do with his own growth. It does go towards the character reformation of the hero, but given that it is from the boy's POV, it's about his growth arc as well.

Three children, two boys and a girl, were born days apart and lived in nearby houses in the South Dakota countryside outside a small town. The three families were close, supposedly, and despite tragedy robbing the kids of some of their parents, the kids grew up happy and wild and incredibly close to one another. Curry, Tom, and Huck made a blood bond to always stay true to each other and always tell each other the truth. As they grow up, first Tom dates Curry, but he is too intense with her, and she gravitates naturally to the sunny-tempered Huck and they marry at 18 and have a child. Tom and Huck are all fired up to join Vietnam, and only Tom returns home, not to South Dakota and only to marry someone else. He doesn't see Curry for 16 years.

That they love each other is a given. But can they build a life together? Curry is rooted into the South Dakota soil for generations. Tom is a footloose historic homes restorer of some repute who travels constantly, job to job. Curry built a flourishing paint business in town, raised a boy, and took care of her grandmother, who raised her, and her mother-in-law. Tom was an absentee husband and an absentee father to his daughter, whom he loves but rarely sees. Curry is building a life for herself for the future when her chick wiill fly the nest and she will have nothing to do. So she is going to college to earn a degree to teach history in school.Tom wants to continue his aimless life forever.

The story of the book is in the emotional growth of both characters, but especially Tom. What I loved this story is that Seidel does not make Tom renounce his work and live in the small town. Most small town stories are where the folks from the big city always give up their life there completely to move to the small town and remake their life from ground-up. It is a rare book that allows me to believe in future happiness for that person. In this book, both characters give a little and take a little and share a lot. Perfect HEA!

The Heiress Hunt by Joanne Shupe
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This book is in a voice and style unlike Shupe's former books. The author has had help with this book, and I wonder if that has affected how the story was written and how it reads. It is disappointing. And...I had really been looking forward to it.

Maddie Webster is a high society girl in 1895 New York City. Used to attention and adulation all her life, Maddie is a strong, confident young woman. She convince her parents not to expect her to marry in her first season, but to give her three seasons or so to indulge in her love of tennis. Now, she's become a national championship player and is at the height of her sports career. However, she knows, that despite her parents indulging her wish for a few years, her only job is to get married. So she sets her cap at the biggest prize of the season, the British Duke of Lockwood, and he is slowly warming up to her. While he hasn't proposed, a proposal is imminent.

Into this lovely situation steps her old, beloved friend, who'd abandoned her in her first season and rushed away to Paris for three years. She had been heartbroken that he had completely broken away from their friendship.

Harrison Archer has been in love with Maddie for years. But one night, he overhears her confiding to her friend about him. Stung, he runs away to Paris, and throws himself into amassing a fortune and living a hedonistic life. He is fond of his delightful mistress, but parts with her when he decides to return to NYC when his father dies. His family had abused him as a child, always treating him as a worthless second son, so now, he is back to bankrupt them and ruin their standing in society. Oh, and now that he is back, he is determined to marry the love of his life, Maddie.

This entire characterization of Harrison is strange. Instead of rushing off to Paris, he could've had a clarifying conversation with his closest friend in the world, Maddie. For all that he claims to love her and her being his best friend, he does not even trust her enough to have one mature conversation. Of course, in that case, the book would've never been. Upon his return, he could've had that conversation, and yet, he never does. He could've have returned at any point in the three years he was gone if he was so much in love with her, but he never does. But now that he is back to wreak revenge, as a side benefit, he is going to pursue Maddie and win her. And while the romantic shenanigans are going on, the revenge plot is put on hold. Towards the end of the book, their relationship hits a stumbling block, and they decide to separate for a bit, and immediately, Harrison gets in touch with his mistress. Right.

At no point did Maddie think to talk to Harrison before he left or after he returns or send letters asking him why he had left so precipitously. Does she not want to solve the obstacle in the friendship with her best friend? She just accepts his abandonment. And then despite his having abandoned her and lived a hedonistic life, the minute she sets eyes on him upon his return, her previous friendship morphs into romantic interest. It's like a switch was thrown; there was no build-up to the new feelings. Maddie's behavior in the breakup of their relationship—the requisite clichéd black moment of the book—is immature at best. I think this was a major peeve of mine: the protagonists' immaturity and inability to have an adult conversation with each other.