Meg Mardell's Blog

Best Hammock Book

Tracey Livesay, Like Lovers Do (2020)

Everyone loves a good opposites attract romance. In this breezy summer read, Nicole is an against-all-odds orthopaedic surgeon who’s just one key fellowship away from achieving her dream job; Ben’s the privilege offspring of a medical dynasty determined to run away from his legacy (okay, he’s a financial planner, not a rodeo rider, but still.) She’s got a no relationship rule; he’s got a no doctors rule. Result? These two have friend zoned each other hard for years while also living together (she’s his tenant). Obviously, we’re going to jump right in at the point where everything changes. With her fellowship in jeopardy, Nic agrees to be his girlfriend for a beach trip. We all know where this is going. Set in the relaxed linen playground of Cape Cod, Like Lovers Do is a perfect summer chill read. With Livesay’s writing, the character’s internal and external conflicts really come to life while never getting weighed down with angst. It’s also hot in the way only two people who’ve been crushing on each other forever can be. All you need to know is the hammock plays a pivotal role. The second in the series based around four friends’ annual vacation, you can easily read this one alone.

Best Road Trip Read

Alison Coburn, Here We Go Again (2024).

Did you miss out on a road trip this summer? Fear not, it’s time to roll down the window and blast that ABBA along with two polar opposites who hate each other, stuck in a van for a cross-country trip. What could go wrong? Naturally, everything. At this point, you might be excused for thinking you know where this one is going. But Colburn’s epic summer road trip romance is all about unexpected detours. Yes, hot mess Logan and perfect priss Rosemary have the expected backstory of being best friends as school, who of course fancied each other, but then had an epic falling out. Even going back to teach at the same school has not thawed their icy hate… until their dying English teacher needs a ride to from Washington State to Maine. Yeah, not such a fun reason. Don’t worry, we still get antics and mishaps galore. We have a mascot dog. And we have so so much road food. I actually wanted to do a vegetable delivery… which is evidence of just how invested I became in these characters. Logan and Rosemary begin the book closed off to change and, frankly, pretty unhappy. They both need a life intervention as much as their grumpy, lovely teacher, Joe, needs to finish his own unresolved business. Their catharsis during their time on the road never felt forced or overly proscriptive. Colburn really has a beautiful way with her characters. The diverse neurodiverse rep made my heart do a happy dance. (Not everyone with ADHD is a chaos gremlin!) Rosemary is also demisexual, or maybe just Logansexual, and that issue gets nuanced treatment. (Colburn includes only one open door sex scene, but it is an absolute masterclass in how sex scenes can do major character work.) Be prepared that you will shed some tears at the end of this one, so have your favourite road trip drink to hand for hydration. This is definitely more than one for the road – it’s a keeper.

Best Beat the Heat Book

Diane Biller, Hotel of Secrets (2023)

Sometimes hot isn’t hot, it’s just annoying. You want to be transported to a place where fruit doesn’t have to be eaten the day you buy it and your skin doesn’t stick to the furniture. And if there are picturesque snow-lined streets, dripping crystal chandeliers, and glittering ballgowns in that place? So much the better. Enter Hotel of Secrets, a historical romance that whisks us off to Vienna for the city’s Ball Season in 1880. Maria is an insanely competent person we first meet juggling high society and plumbing problems in a single night; she’s the manager of the legendary Hotel Wallner, a legendary establishment that’s fallen on hard times. To say the hotel is in her blood is an understatement. She’s the fourth Wallner woman to inherit the place – gotta love a matriarchal business – and each generation has amassed a whole host of secrets. Enter Eli, a fish out of water American government agent. He is also an extremely competent person – lots of competence porn in this one – but entirely flummoxed by Viennese society during its hectic, waltz-mad winter Ball Season. Eli is clearly on the spectrum, and the way he learns to open up to Maria and the eccentric inhabitants of the Wallner Hotel is beautiful. The romance is slow and delicious. Other things to love? Biller’s deft conjuring of an entire historical world (hello, Austrian-Hungarian Empire) with which most readers aren’t familiar. The author also weaves in a generous helping of mystery and murderous mayhem. While I wouldn’t quite categorise it as Romantic Suspense, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. Other tropes to show up for: Virgin Hero, Renovations Romance, and Linen Closet Lay. Okay, I made up that last one, but truly it should exist.

Best Fan the Flames Read

Cat Giraldo, Wild Pitch (2022)

The word spicy gets thrown around a lot on social media. Specifically, it gets used because one big platform bans any remotely sexual language. I don’t love that, and I also don’t love the endless debates around what makes something a three-four-five hot chilli pepper read. Folks, it’s subjective. But Cat Giraldo’s baseball romance is my definition of a hot read. The leads, Sierra and Mateo, are hot. Yes, they are pro athletes, but Giraldo writes them as genuine people, sweating and suffering as they play through one hot summer in SoCal. They are also hot for each other… but shouldn’t be, cause they’re teammates. Finally, they are hot for a very specific sexual relationship that’s central to making their romantic connection happen. At work, he’s the captain and in charge, so off the pitch and in the back of his pickup truck, she wants to take the lead. Giraldo nicely updates the classic grumpy-veteran-meets-talented-upstart by having Sierra be the first woman playing in the Majors. I know absolutely nothing about baseball, so cannot vouch for this as a faithful love letter to the sport. But the game provides that longer structure native to the sports romance, i.e. The Season. These two start off pretty gun-shy of any relationship and it helps to have a bit more time to develop their relationship. That said, this is not a ‘hot read’ that comes in hot. Be prepared for a little wait. Also, be prepared that, once Sierra and Mateo finally give in to temptation, there are a lot of sex scenes in this book. And they do come in one particular flavour – this is not Baskin Robins – so check the tagline to make sure this is something you are at least curious about reading. If you’re still game, grab some cracker jack mix and enjoy your prize.

Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn

Am I saying a release that’s going to be all over the Best of 2023 lists is overlooked in summer reads round ups? Yeah, I am. It came out in February and blew up immediately (hi, book clubs everywhere) and will doubtless be everywhere again in December. But the sweet spot for me for this read is absolutely the lazy days of late summer. And not just because the hero builds docks for a living. We writers often characterise ourselves as either plot-based or character-based. Obviously, we need both elements in a story, but what is it that comes into our heads first? For Clayborn, it must be her characters. Take the titular Georgie, a young, newly unemployed woman who returns to her parents’ house in Virginia for a sort-yourself-out summer. Unlike so many main characters who charge into the opening scene of a novel, Georgie is deeply unsure of who she is and what she wants. The only thing she knows is that she doesn’t want to be the flaky screw up she was back in high school. It’s unfortunate that her first flailing visit to the local convenience store is witnessed by her high school music teacher – and a very attractive if irritated man. Another author might turn this character into a comic heroine, forever prat-falling at the moment of maximum impact. But Clayborn allows Georgie a lot more space during this long summer interstitial. Yes, Georgie tries some bucket-list style stunts – including a disastrous dock incident – to find direction in her life. But mostly we follow her renegotiating life’s bedrock relationships (parents, childhood best friend, community,) while exploring a new romance. Turns out our very attractive but irritated man, Levi, has plenty of his own adolescent baggage. Along the way, Georgie will discover that maybe, just maybe, she’s been okay all along.

How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole

Because of its amazing cover – I love a Clinch! – this book was instantly on my reading list. Yet somehow two years elapsed without me cracking the spine on this 2021 release. I’m so glad I finally rectified that error now. Because this is undoubtedly a summer read. Not just because of the settings (Atlantic City and the Atlantic Ocean) but because Cole has written a delightful twist on the classic historical romance. Ignore the contemporary category; this is a very fun send up of those old school romances that involved kidnapping and high-seas adventures. One of the very first romances I ever read was Johanna Lindsey’s Once a Princess where a golden-eyed prince abducted a very pissed off American heroine to an imaginary European country for a date with destiny. Predictably then, How to Find a Princess immediately delighted me with its battle between the overly formal (and overly forward) mystery foreigner Beznaria and the unassuming (but secretly powerful) American Makeda, the woman she’s trying to convince of her royal destiny. There are so many little Easter eggs for old school romance lovers here, from kidnapping banter, to tell-tale birthmarks, to a ‘Dimple of Doom’. But Cole delivers everything with a firm footing in the present day – even when on a rollicking cargo ship (another nice touch). Had the cargo ship been attacked by pirates, this book would have entered my pantheon of All Time Great Romps. The plot ran out of steam a little towards the end, or whatever filthy fuel cargo ships use today, but I remained absolutely invested in the characters. As always, Cole does great neurodiversity rep (Bez is on the autism spectrum) and conveys complex family dynamics with care. Ultimately, the cover’s gorgeous modern take on The Clinch is the perfect summary of a book with lots of historical-fantasy feels but a very relatable heart.

Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

Full disclosure, I haven’t finished this one. After ten fizzy hours of listening to Hall’s latest release on audiobook, tragedy struck…. my library app recalled the book. Goddaaaaaamit! But because of a combination of my absolute enjoyment of 80% of the book and my complete faith in one of my favourite romance authors, I’m still eager to recommend this one. Hall is pretty much unmatched in the world of Romance both in terms of quality and range. He started with some wonderfully moody contemporaries in his Spires series, broke into the mainstream with riotous rom-com Boyfriend Material, and since then has written seemingly whatever the hell he wants: foodie romances, mysteries, and historicals. I haven’t been able to keep up. Now he’s back in the Regency, but this time with magic. Or ‘magick’ as it probably was back then. Mortal Follies is ostensibly about a pure young English girl, Miss Maelys Mitchelmore, who is very unfairly under a curse, and her entirely unsuitable – indeed unwilling – suitor Lady Georgianna Landrake whose every male relation has died under suspicious circumstances. Georgianna is the suspicious circumstance. In reality, the whole tale of young love amid the picturesque ruins is a vehicle for our puckish narrator – yes, an actual Shakespearian fairy – to keep up a running commentary on the absurdity of humanity. If you love gothic romance with a healthy side of humour – think The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels – then you are in for a treat. If possible, get this one on audio as Nneka Okoye does a wonderful interpretation of the waspish fey narrator. But listen quickly or else risk being stuck, like Maelys, in a rapidly unravelling ballgown. Or burnt by a brutal library app.

Scoring a Spouse by Liz Lincoln

Would you like to travel somewhere the USA women’s soccer team still rules the roost? No, this isn’t another historical romance (ahem), but rather Liz Lincoln’s alternate women’s soccer universe clustering around the fictional NWSL team the Milwaukee Wolfpack. Scoring a Spouse is the first in the longtime sports romance writer’s new series. It features Erika, a centre forward and all around badass, and Nate, a cinnamon-roll CEO. Erika has just discovered she has rheumatoid arthritis at only 30 and is now in debt from privately paying for her secret treatment. Enter our charming millionaire soccer fan with a solution… oh yes, romance readers, you know it’s time for a Marriage of Convenience. And thank god, because Erika is dealing with a lot: chronic pain and a whole lot of secret keeping. But this isn’t a heavy read thanks in large part to the aforementioned cinnamon roll. If you like love interests who cook favourite foods, give great massages, and provide other scientifically-proven methods of pain relief (exactly), then this should hit the spot. The romance also features lots of sports comradery, a tiny dog called Donut and, oh, the Women’s FIFA World Cup in Australia where (spoiler alert) the team doesn’t crash out in the first knockout match. There are a few loose threads as the plot progresses, but nothing I wasn’t happy to overlook. After all, summer isn’t a time for housekeeping but for kicking off your shoes and running around in the grass. Up next in the series is an enemies-to-lovers romance and the 2024 Olympics. Let’s hope Lincoln’s indomitable national team are a bit closer to the real thing this time around!

I am the OG audiobook listener. I listened to audiobooks as a teen back when they were broken up into multiple MP3 files. Files pirated by Russians. They would post you their entire collection on a couple of CDs, each voice stamped. A gravelly inflected recitation of ‘audiobooksforfree.com’ will always mean more to me than just intellectual property theft. So it feels very against type that I’m coming to the Romance audiobook world so late in the game. Obviously I tried over the years, but whether it was the terribly adult sounding person reading sex scenes or some internal censor that demanded I use my commute listens for more worthy titles, I never took to it.

My listening landscape changed when I got Libby, the public library app. Or rather, it changed when I couldn’t get Libby titles on either of my ereaders and so decided that audiobooks were my only option. Regardless, in 2023, I’m steaming my way through those popular romance titles that have claimed precious public library dollar/pounds of late. And what could be more popular in the pandemic-influenced publishing market than rom-coms? Literally nothing. I have feelings about this, but there’s no denying the strength of this market has allowed several sapphic rom-coms to shoot up the charts. Most notably two series set in the US’s rainy Northwest, starting with…

Alexandria Bellefleur, Written in the Stars (2020)

The debut juggernaut sapphic that launched the whole rom-com subcategory, Written in the Stars does not mess about. Do you want a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, the OG enemies-to-lovers romance? Meet Darcy and Elle, opposites who attract. Do you want the single most popular romance trope in circulation today? Yes, they will fake date and wonder the entire time if any of this is real. Do you want a rom-com that channels the city most associated with iconic cinematic rom-coms? Okay, it’s not set in New York. Seattle is a close second, right? Despite rolling my eyes at the ‘is this real?’ handwringing, our P&P stand-ins are pretty perfect. Darcy especially did all the right Type-A romantic lead things, from defending Elle against her judgey parents to pulling out a great Grovel & Gift at the end. I will never look at the potted culinary herbs in the produce aisle the same again.

Ashley Herring Blake, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care (2021)

First off, the big thing you need to know is that, not only does Delilah Green not care, but she is sexy as hell. Her whole black-on-black-on-black artist aesthetic mixed with curly bed hair and inked sleeves is a whole lot of yum. And her voice? Husky honey. (Shout out to Kristen DiMercurio, who slays narrating this series.) Hmmm, what else? There are other hot queer women in this book too, notably Claire, the curvy single-mom bookshop owner of Bright Falls, WA with whom Delilah starts a secret affair during a rare visit back to her hometown. Secret affair because Claire’s the bridesmaid bestie of Delilah’s estranged sister. Like all good small-town romances, Delilah Green traffics in homecomings and reckonings with our past – in this case during an over-elaborate pre wedding ritual. I can never get enough of that stuff.

Alexandria Bellefleur, Hang the Moon (2021)

An MF romance nestled with a sapphic series, I both loved this book and wanted to throw it across the room (which was, alas, not possible if I wanted a functioning phone.) For Book #2 in Bellefleur’s series, we’re still in rom-com central, aka Seattle, and the trope is another hot one – Best Friend’s Brother. Darcy’s bf Annie (such a great rom-com heroine name!) flies in for a surprise visit only to be landed with Darcy’s younger brother Brendan (why not Will? Or Fitz?) as her tour guide. Dating-app founder Brendan is evangelic about red-rose romance – and has been in love with Annie since he was a kid. The prospect of him trying to convince jaded Annie about The Power of Love through a series of rom-com style dates had me bouncing in my seat. Obviously, nothing would go to plan (comedy!) and slowly he’d learn that romance is not the same script for everyone (swoon!) In retrospect, I got overly invested in how I wanted the scenario to play out. That’s on me. But dammit, if you’re going to have a bf’s little bro be the love interest, I’m gonna need him to be more than two measly years younger, and I’m going to need to see a bit more pushback on adolescent fantasies versus reality. Still, I’m always here for the queer MF romance. And speaking of Team Bi…

Ashley Herring Blake, Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail (2022)

Spoiler, Delilah Green’s wedding photographer gig doesn’t come off. Estranged sis Astrid is single and… definitely not ready to mingle. Because it turns out that breaking up with your shitty dude isn’t always the fresh start you need. But don’t worry, Astrid, because here comes a soft butch carpenter called Jordan (another sexy voice) in her dungarees and vintage ford to help you blow your life up all the way. I couldn’t possibly list everything I loved about this novel. Type A character unravelling? Heartbroken carpenter? Bisexual awakening? Drastic reappraisal of life ambitions? All that and so so so much HGTV renovation porn? Yes please. The only thing that threw me was the scene where Astrid and Jordan are in a library and start reading… Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur. Authors, don’t do this to me! What, your characters are real but the other author’s characters are just in a book? This messes with my mind! Anyway, I absolutely goddamn loved this romance.

Next up:  What else but Written in the Stars #3, Count Your Lucky Stars, and Bright Falls #3, Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date? Sure, the Bellefleur book is already published, but I’m waiting for Libby to notify me. They have this cute little bell emoji.

January is dreadful. Just as dark and dreary as the month before, but somehow we’re expected to endure it with fast-dwindling leftover holiday chocolate and no fairy lights. One activity that always makes me feel better this time of year is reading about the incredibly posh polar explorers of yesteryear. Captain Scott. Sir Ernest Shackleton. A dude genuinely called Apsley Cherry-Garrard. All sitting in their little tents in -50 eating one measly block of pemmican and then hauling a sled another few feet closer towards the magnetic pole. But while I still love a good frozen toe fest, this January I’ve delved into the joyous world of shared body warmth that is cold-weather Romance. 

Adriana Anders, Whiteout

As the title suggests, Anders’ 2021 Romantic Suspense is set in the honest-to-god Arctic where a team of researchers find themselves in an even worse predicament than Scott’s doomed expedition. Angel is our fresh-start-seeking cook extraordinaire, joining the ultra-isolated hub for the season. She’s crushing on Ford, aka the Ice Man, a glacially featured research scientist who won’t give her the time of day. Which is extra annoying in the land of round-the-clock sun. However, when the two go on the run together, the Ice Man’s lava-hot interior is bound to erupt, right? Or, at least crack open? Let’s just say it’s an icey burn. These two can’t even unzip their puffy parkas without risking death. I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel where the main couple consistently can’t bang because they will die. Literally die. Not a huge Romantic Suspense reader before, I was impressed with how Anders’ pacing and peril kept these two absolutely parched for each other without ever feeling artificial. Eventually they are subsumed back into the insane conspiracy that sent them running in the first act, but Angel and Ford are always best when it’s just them against the elements. There’s a follow up adventure – the global criminal syndicate won’t defeat itself – also set in the Arctic.

Heather Guerre, Cold Blooded

Next is a chilly read from a new favourite, the subgenre juggernaut that is Heather Guerre. Is there anything this author can’t write? I’ve already read her sweet fantasy succubus romance Demon Lover, her bittersweet homecoming romance What Could Have Been, and her absolutely delicious urban workplace romance Preferential Treatment (read it!) Any of these books qualify as great January reads imo as all Guerre leads are Wisconsin-bred women who say ‘welp’ and know how to put on snow treads. But it’s for her paranormal series started in 2020 that Guerre ventures into the Alaskan winter and a small town with a closely guarded secret (spoiler: they’re shifters). Grace is our outsider haunted by a past relationship and Caleb is the hulking hottie who sniffs her rather than conversing. For me, it was the setting rather than this pair that made this book. While I can’t comment on the indigenous representation, I appreciate the author crafted the fictional town around waves of diverse immigration and did not whitewash Westward expansion (or, you know, Northward expansion). While I prefer Guerre’s sexy femdoms and struggling small town sweethearts, Cold Blooded wins the survivalist sweepstakes.

Alexis Hall, A Lady for a Duke

Finally, I’ve chosen a recent release from one of my perennial favourite authors, the wonderful Alexis Hall. This gorgeous Regency Romance made waves when it came out last year for being an Historical Romance with a trans heroine released by a major trade publisher. That’s definitely one reason I was excited to get my hands on this book. I really trust Hall to do the work to make this critical representation sing. And he does that work with some of the most incredibly honest, beautiful, and hot sex scenes. What I wasn’t expecting was that A Lady for a Duke is also capital-r Romantic. From the first moment we enter the hero’s forbidding castle in the dead of January, I got Gothic goosebumps. (I would pit a comfortless coastal castle in the North of England against any polar desert for austere beauty.) The Duke of Gracewood haunts the castle, self-medicating after the death of his best friend. But then Viola shows up and, though achingly familiar, she’s not a ghost. God, do I love this classic melodrama trope of the dead loved one’s return! While the story unfortunately leaves the castle, Hall invariably brings this emotional romance to a very satisfying and organic HEA. Alas, I really didn’t like the audio narration. Viola’s vowels weren’t posh enough and her sister-in-law sounded like Lady Bracknell rather than a woman who must be all of thirty. I recommend reading this one.

Need more winter Armageddon inspo? Can I recommend the 1983 BBC miniseries Shackleton? No? Fine, maybe just another season of Alone. See, we’re all comforted by others’ extreme and entirely voluntary discomfort.

Next, I’m totally switching gears and diving into sweet, foodie romances with plenty of indie and queer sprinkles on top. See you in February!

KJ Charles, Masters in this Hall

Despite the late 2022 release of the audio-only A Thief in the Night, Historical Romance fans have felt the gap in the supply line as KJ Charles moved from self-pub to trad-pub. So it was with great gratitude and glee that we learnt of her surprise Christmas novella, Masters in this Hall, at the beginning of this month. The tale of John, an unassuming disgraced hotel detective forced to spend the holidays with rich relations, and to collaborate with the spotlight-seeking entertainment coordinator Barnaby, really, really hit the spot. Of course it’s got the Charles hallmarks like opposites attract, heist antics, and Eat the Rich, but where it really lands is in that holiday novella sweet spot of Second Chance Romance. John and Barnaby have met before and it ruined the detective’s career. Can the unlikely pair get it right this time around, or is somebody going to get defenestrated for Christmas?

The Scent of Pining Hero Holiday Novella

Kate Clayborn, Missing Christmas

A little present I gave to myself this holiday reading season was Kate Clayborn’s debut series ‘Chance of a Lifetime’. This gorgeous contemporary trilogy isn’t holiday themed, but the incredible care that the author takes with her characters – their origins, their journeys, their futures – fits the emotional tone I want for my December reading. Also, I usually spend the holidays with my family in a college town in Virginia, which just happens to be the setting for ‘Chance of a Lifetime.’ Well, imagine my delight last week when I discovered Clayborn wrote a Christmas novella set in the same universe. Even better, 2020’s Missing Christmas is the story of Jasper and his business partner Kristen with whom he has been smitten for years. Years. Look, I love a pining hero any time of year, but that fresh pine scent is extra potent during Christmas tree season. Add in a snowed in cabin scenario and a montage of movie-watching and cookie making by a character who hasn’t celebrated Christmas in ages, and you have all the ingredients of the most heart-meltingly emotional holiday mini-masterpiece.

The Chaos Christmas Holiday Novella

Lucy Bexley, Checking it Twice

While many holiday novellas whisk their main characters away from the entanglement that is family – hence the preponderance of stranding snowstorms – rom-coms like to lean into the family fiasco trope. And what, Lucy Bexley asks her loyal lesfic readers, is more chaotic than a Christmas Eve wedding? So, for this 2020 release, we are all jollied off to an enormous country cabin where prep for a society wedding is in full swing. Sacha is our chaos monster, who unfortunately also has the rather important job of being her sister’s bridesmaid, while Hal is our organisation gremlin in charge of planning the whole shebang. What’s clever about this setup is that it not only traps the two leads together but also makes it damn hard for them to have any privacy. Something’s gotta give! As resolving the friction between other-oriented celebrations and personal pleasure is at the heart of the rom-com holiday read, Checking it Twice’s resolution is cathartic to everyone walking that tightrope IRL. Still, I wanted one more chapter with Sacha and Hal celebrating their first Christmas together in private.

The Is It Really A Holiday Novella?

Heather Guerre, Demon Lover

If you had asked me when my favourite podcast recommended this 2022 paranormal novella as a sexy spooky read whether it would make it onto my holiday best list, I probably would have given a weird snort – assuming I wasn’t too distracted by my rapid-fire one-click selection of said romance. I mean, true to its title, Demon Lover stars a succubus. Granted, the succubus, his name is Irdu, is an exceedingly disarming and shy demon lover, but surely he and Autumn, the lonely graphic designer who summoned him with her horniness, are just going to have lots of Netflix and Chill and The End. Right? Not quite. At its heart, this novella is the story of two lonely people negotiating what is a really difficult time of year for lonely people. Sure, it starts with a Halloween visitation, but Autumn and Irdu’s romance develops against the backdrop of Thanksgiving and then deepens during Christmas. When after years of not celebrating, her new relationship inspires Autumn to make her traditional holiday meal, it humanises her demon lover. Literally. And in taking the, also literal, risk of resurrecting her holiday traditions, Autumn is finally claiming care and companionship for herself. Truly a seasonal celebration of giving.

The Banging It Out In A Snowstorm Holiday Novella (Sponsored by KU)

Mae Harden, Lumber Snack

Thank god for KU at Christmastime. It truly is the reading equivalent of the office holiday party where you can snaffle all the different cookies you don’t buy for your own home. I could select any number of KU tasty treats here – some with nuts, some without – that helped make my season bright, but I’m giving the nod to Mae Harden’s contribution to 2021’s ‘12 Days of Kissmas’ collection. First, what a title, right? Like a good novella itself, it packs so much romance joy into a limited space. Will it be short? Yes. Will it be hot? Yes. And will there be a lumberjack? Oh yeah. The premise is exactly what you want/expect with a distressed bridesmaid being rescued from the snow by a very single and very large lumberjack. Also, there’s an adorable dog called Tucker. Which is important because we need to get that cosy cup of coco feeling from a holiday novella even when we’re adding chili powder.

What exactly is a traditional Christmas? It’s tricky to say, right? My best friend and I always joke that once we do something twice, it’s a tradition. But at this time of year, there’s just so many layers of tradition buried beneath the avalanche of fake snow that it’s hard to know when anything began.

On top, there’s the stuff we’ve identified as adults we love about the holidays. Personally this is the traditional time for me to break out the Christmas blend tea, my sheepskin slippers, and to watch the television stars of yesteryear – hello Jennie Garth! – rock seasonal knitwear and permanently unbuttoned coats in heart-warming holiday romances. There’s the family traditions from our childhood. Advent will always be associated for me with my sister and I competing over who could eat our post-dinner After Eight the slowest (she won). Then there’s those broader cultural traditions like how I wait until American Thanksgiving is over for my first listen of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’. I grew up mostly in the States and can still remember driving home from the enormous turkey meal at my aunts, watching all the neighbours getting to work stringing up their lights to signal the start of the festive season.

So that’s our beloved individual traditions. But what about Christmastime? Our holidays are also very much a commercially-curated experience. Naturally, this privileges European experiences in the boomtime economy of 20th century United States. But beneath the electric-bill busting American brand of the holiday, there is an earlier, but still highly commercialised tradition. Yep, the traditions that loom the largest in the smorgasbord of festive options has got to be those we get from the Victorians. Let’s break it down like your least favourite colleague’s gym workout:

Christmas pudding? Victorians. Christmas cards? Victorians. Santa Claus? Okay, that was Coca-Cola in collaboration with the Victorians. But don’t give the credit for the Christmas tree to the Germans, cause it’s the Victorians who hauled that candlelit fire hazard into our homes. What about the very idea of Christmas as a charitable, family-oriented holiday? Victorians. Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol specifically. And while nineteenth-century ideas of charity in the form of a roast goose for the deserving poor is seriously outdated – it’s all about mutual assistance in 2022, my dears – the feel-good community-focused vibe still tracks. So I couldn’t resist returning to this gaslit Christmas era and diving headlong into all the iconic experiences of the season for my holiday novella series.

For the third and final book of my Christmas Masquerade series, I’ve whisked my MCs – all three of them! – off to the Devonshire coast. Having done a London Christmas with its ice skating in Regent’s Park in Book 1, and a Highland Christmas with its New Year’s bonfires in Book 2, I really wanted to set Book 3 somewhere that brought a new set of holiday traditions into play. Very literally. From indoor games like Blindman’s Bluff to outdoor pursuits like horse riding, I wanted play to be at the heart of this holiday. It’s also the largest family celebration I’ve attempted with a huge extended family all descending on a manor house for a country Christmas along with our citified chaperones. I had great fun walking them all down to a seaside teashop and leading them through uncoordinated carolling. The more the merrier was my motto while writing this book.

Appropriately enough, this is also my first book with three main characters. The vee-poly romance blossoms like a Christmas rose between my lovely ice queen Candida (what better time of year to thaw?) and her two love interests. Sophie, an avowed Horse Girl, is contending with both her huge, nosy family and the return of her adolescent crush, Candida. While Broderick, Candida’s elegant ex-lover, hates holiday jollity and has ventured outside London only in hopes of winning back the woman he loves. Naturally, I had great fun dragging him into the countryside holiday antics!

I hope readers enjoy this holiday excursion to the gaslit Christmastime era with all the trimming I could find while also extending these traditions to include a queer love story.

Happy holiday reading!

Love Meg xx

The cover confused the hell out of me.

Infamous by Lex Croucher is ‘Booksmart meets Bridgerton’. It says so on its illustrated cover featuring the now-familiar back-to-back stance of two protagonists with wry smiles. One of the young women is in a pale Regency gown and tiara and the other wears a waistcoat and wields a dripping feather pen that would destroy pastels. Opposites? Check. The namedrop of the still-revving Netflix juggernaut made sense too. Half of the trade Historical Romances on the market now are labled ‘For fans of Bridgerton and [add popular novel, film or television show].” Before Infamous, the YouTuber’s debut novel, Reputation, was originally pitched as Pride and Prejudice meets Mean Girls – before the inevitable Bridgerton hook.

So, Infamous is a YA Regency Romance right? Booksmart’s heroines are graduating high school. Also, there’s that tiara, an accessory that screams Ye Olde Senior Prom. Flip the book over and the blurb promises us ‘practice kissing’ between childhood best friends. Case closed. Wait. The blurb also discloses that its twenty-two-year-old aspiring writer heroine, Eddie Miller, is going on a voyage of self discovery. Hmmmm, that’s firmly within New Adult range (18-23). But… but can an Historical Romance even be New Adult? Other Romance subgenres write in very specific ways about freshly hatched grownups testing out adult life within rarefied conditions: Contemporary Romance with their college-aged protagonists obviously. Paranormal and Fantasy with their equivalent fancifully named training grounds. Historicals? Not so much.

Historical Romance operates on a different timeline of maturity to the present day. At least in the eras that dominate the subgenre. Thankfully, we’ve mostly dispensed with our OG teenage heroines who metamorphosed from adolescent hellions into adult life partners within days. Now our Regency and Victorian Historicals give us a delightful mixture of wicked spinsters, scandalous widows, and wallflowers who are secretly scientists. Female leads, including in sapphic romances, can range from their mid-twenties to – if we are very lucky – mid-thirties. But even if a Regency heroine is twenty, she is not in a New Adult Romance because there is simply a very short runway to adulthood built into this world of debutantes and marriage marts. She gets the equivalent of Senior Prom. Then she’s an adult.

But maybe this is all about to change? Let’s look beyond the cover.

The opening chapter of Infamous feels very ‘Bridgerton Family At Home’ with our wealthy, large, and unconventional Miller family squabbling entertainingly. So far, so fanfiction. Croucher gives us a wink and nod right away. Our aspiring writer Eddie is penning a story about Anne Bonny and Mary Read but shifts the action from a pirate ship to the ‘Jelly Roger Tea House’ where they reach for the last biscuit at the same moment, #onlyonegingerbread. And then Eddie is such an Eloise-as-played-by-Claudia-Jessie type, always slumping and slouching and sighing. Oh, and failing to realise that her best friend Rose Li might want more than a front-row-seat for Eddie’s life.

Compounding Eddie’s juvenile qualities is her total cluelessness about and, frankly, cruelty towards Rose. We don’t get Rose’s POV, but her unrequited love is obvious from the jump/practice kiss. Eddie wants this lovely person to just hang about beta reading her coffee shop fanfiction forever and is horrified by Rose’s desire to marry and start the next chapter of her life. That Rose’s experience of life, and of same-sex kissing, might be different to her own never occurs to twenty-two-year-old Eddie, despite that fact that Rose is Chinese British and not from a wealthy family. I initially assumed that Eddie’s obliviousness re: racism was part of the Bridgerton AU Regency of inclusive casting. Which begs the question: does the lack of racism in Bridgerton make any sense off the screen?

We all know the Shondaland take on Regency England is palate-popping gorgeousness where visibility is everything. Bridgerton allows all modern audiences to see themselves as potential belles and bucks of the ball.  The diverse casting gives us the best acting talent in front of the camera and more equitable involvement behind the scenes. In a non-visual medium, however, does it compute to have an AU Regency where racism in all its varieties is imperceptible and yetsexism, homophobia, and classism are all fighting fit? Intersectional feminism says no. My gut says don’t sit on the fence. Swing for it. Either tackle the Regency with all the period’s isms and fill it with characters determined to live their best lives regardless OR get rid of them altogether. Set Mean Girls or Booksmart with period pomp and ceremony but with modern sensibilities.

Anyway, these were my thoughts before the book suddenly became ‘Agatha Christie meets Sally Rooney’ in Infamous’s fantastic second act. Eddie and Rose are invited on a Regency writing retreat. Croucher whisks us away from Somewhere, London to Somewhere, Countryside where a crumbling Gothic castle sits atop an isolated island. Our motley assortment of mismatched guests can only approach by a creaking rowboat. And the weather is turning nasty… I cannot stress my enjoyment of this setup enough.  If Infamous was fanfic, it had just become inspired by J.G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy. Add in a charismatic douche of a sub-Byronic poet as host and I was very, very happy. I won’t get too much into what transpires in this superb setting other than to say that the uncomfortable dynamic between aspiring writer Eddie and the grandiloquent celebrity poet is fantastically well-judged. It fairly shrieks overly-keen-new-female-graduate-student meets young-but-not-as-young-as-he-pretends-to-be-psuedo-renegade-professor. Their interactions had me squirming with recognition at times. See, this is a college book! 

But if Infamous is New Adult – and it is – what does that mean for Romance’s best subgenre? So existing Historical devotees (me!) are clearly interested in authors shaking up the cis het White ballroom in a host of ways: from gay rakes to Asian dukes to honest-to-god middle class people who have real jobs. Historicals keep getting more entertaining as some brilliant authors research the hell out of erased people and cultures. We love the combination of sweeping imagination and painstaking historical detail. But what about the readers picking up Romance for the first time because they love Bridgerton? They might want fanfic-inspired Eddies leading their Regencies: technically grown-up people who are floundering about trying to find their gender, sexual. and vocational identities and who are allowed to do that without the hair-trigger threat of ‘ruination’. It may be that Historical Romance, however innovative, can’t provide that type of New Adult representation.

If we’re worried about a confusing reception line, maybe we should print up a hologram set of Almack vouchers to make room for the incoming AU Regencies escapades.

Next Up: Besties Book Club is back and all over the shop discussing Rebekah Weatherspoon, Scotsmen, and SIZE in Romance.

*We do get one scene in Bridgerton, Season 1 that provides a reason for this racial inclusivity. I would have left well enough alone and spent that filming budget on another wig for Queen Charlotte. Similarly, the inclusion of a Black author who can enlighten our young White heroine about Abolition at the Writing Retreat From Hell in Infamous asks more questions than in answers: namely, if we are living in a world where the actual African slave trade exists, why aren’t the main characters not, like, a lot more conscious about racism?

Okay, okay… let me get this straight: these two dudes’ entire hometown has just been flattened by a tornado?

Yep. Caleb and Ben have lived there their whole lives.

The bodies of people they have known their whole lives are piling up in the local park?

Uh huh.

Like… their Sunday School teacher?

Look, I already agreed they know everybody affected by the tragedy pretty well. Small Kansas farming town and all that.

Right. Soooo their primary concern right now is?

What’s going on with this hot chick they just had a fantastic threesome with last night.

Obviously. Um.

What?

Okay, I’ll bite. Why do they think this horrible, world-destroying event will jeopardise their hottest threesome ever?

Oh, it was really dramatic. Ireland walked into Ben’s bar and the roof fell on her head.

Oh shit! Ireland’s the hot chick right? The curvy girl of the title? Now she’s really injured too, and they feel responsible.

No, she’s totally fine. Just has a bit of plaster in her gorgeous long hair.

How’s that pos –

The bar was already pretty destroyed so there wasn’t much of the roof left.

Wait, Ben’s bar, his livelihood, was destroyed along with vast swathes of his hometown?

And then he was all like, ‘Just get out of here, Ireland.’ Ben yelled! But was also like just super super cold and controlled.

He was probably upset because – 

Like the magical night they spent together meant nothing to him! And Caleb was all like ‘I’m never going to forgive you for driving her away.’

She drove away? I mean maybe all for the best because Caleb and Ben have a whole rescue effort to – 

No, she left her camera at their house, so Ben’s got a chance to grovel.

When he eventually comes home after a day of digging bodies from the debris.

He’s there by the time she turns the Prius around. Ireland’s realized that she deserves better and is sick of being treated like shit.

Ah, so there was an incident before the, uh, massively traumatised bar owner told her to go away?

No, their night together was perfect. They worshipped her. And now they are pushing her away!

But the Sunday School teacher…

And she has this horrible sister who fills her fridge with diet shakes and this awful ex-boyfriend who body negged her constantly.

Oh I see. Ireland realizes how bullshit those toxic relationships are after the worshipful threesome. She’s going to go back and raise hell back in the big city, huh? Love that trajectory for her.

No, she’s going to go back and confront Ben.

Right.

Yeah, he’s going to have to grovel pretty hard. Only it’s really difficult for him to open up and be vulnerable.

Because he’s in shock. Because of the town-flattening tornado.

I guess. Also he has major PTSD from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Okay, I just… I just don’t even know anymore.

Man, I’d heard Sierra Simone had invented the bonkers chart but, honestly, I thought that might just apply to consent when dealing with some kinky shit. Age play. Blood play. Priest play. Something within my range of understanding. Then I read the much-recced Misadventures of a Curvy Girl. And it turns out that what’s really wild is this. This shameless prioritization of a budding thruple over the type of tragedy that marks a community for a lifetime. Not the scale I was expecting! But maybe this is the point. This is a first-person present, deeply interior account of a romantic relationship that rivals even natural disasters for intensity and impact.

And it’s definitely a risky romance. For Ireland, the risk is challenging a lifetime of not feeling worthy of having her dreams come true because of her body type. For Caleb and Ben, the risk is the future of their complicated, life-long partnership. It’s big! That said, this book is… a lot. The intensity of these introspective characters can feel like way too much, especially when Ireland tumbles into a black hole of self-loathing. Kelsey quit at this Dark Moment when Ireland’s newfound happiness – and horniness – collapses in the face of a perfectly horrible trifecta of online shaming, ex revenge, and self doubt. I skimmed and stuck around for my favourite character of the whole book to emerge at 85%.

We both really want to give Sierra Simone a second chance. I’ve subsequently looked up the real Sierra Scale where she rates tropes along a Wild/Wrong axis. Her basic idea is that surging up the Wild side is a no-holds barred bonkfest of joy, that crawling out further and further along the leg of Wrong gets us to a very icky place, and that playing around in the high-concept ground where Very Wild meets Quite Wrong equals some of the most intriguing Romances around. Simone wrote a lovely post when she shared the scale. Go there! she urges. Get all taboo. But also DO THE WORK. Complicate your premise and characters. Acknowledge the power at play here. Question why you want to write this story at all.

I can’t help feeling that the ‘Misadventures’ franchise, a twenty-plus series to which she contributed a few books, didn’t allow Simone to do all the work she wanted. One of the most glaring but unacknowledged power differences between Ireland and her ardent lover boys is a full decade of life experience – a life which in their case has included many years of menage relationships. Our heroine is really digging herself out of a significant knowledge deficit. The character she meets at 85% is a charismatic shortcut to self-knowledge but it would have been really awesome to watch Ireland go back to Kansas City. She would kick her negging sister and ex into touch and realign her professional goals around her hard-won body confidence. Maybe her instinct to photograph tragedy could have been the conflict between these characters rather than a PTSD sufferer’s outburst during a majorly triggering moment. Who knows?

In the Sierra Simone era, there’s a lot of grey areas to play with in Romance, and few absolute truths. But one unassailable fact is that having a threesome in a barn while a summer storm rages outside is insanely hot.

Next time: Hot Book Club Summer continues with Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon with its modern marriage of convenience plot and thicc Scotsman!

The food truck had only just pulled up in Ithaca, NY, but we knew we were here for the long haul. ‘This may be jumping the gun,’ Kelsey messaged, ‘but I am prepared to go all in on the entire Dreamers series. I just drove for two hours listening and was grinning in delight the entire time!’ What can I say, in American Dreamer, author Adriana Herrera brings it in every possible way: two adorable, contrasting main characters, Nesto and Jude, fully immersed in their family and friends and jobs, a small town in the summertime, and a food truck.

Okay, I got very hung up on this truck, to the point of casually scanning any public space I walked through just in case it had pulled up and was serving the Afro-Caribbean flavours inspired by Nesto’s Dominican roots and the island cultures of his friends. Seriously, the descriptions of this food were detailed and intense.

So, yeah, it was a warm welcome. Honestly, I’d expected nothing less. While the point of this round of Book Club is to read big authors we’ve tragically overlooked to date, I may have read all of Herrera’s sapphic holiday novellas, including the one that features two Dominican bakers in a contest. Yum. But American Dreamers was the series that started her Romance career, (in 2019, a crazily short time ago in comparison to her diverse output.)

And what a story! On the one hand, Herrera hands us all the small town feels we want, quickly populating the place with a city hall, cute bars, and a library (with sexy librarian Jude inside, of course!) There is no immediate conflict beyond the very real fear that is opening yourself up to a new person. Kelsey sums up the vibe between Nesto and Jude thus: hmmmm yeah he’s into me… is he into me?… but I’m super busy… but maybe?… but holy shit he’s so hot… maybe I will run into him at the farmers’ market!” I agree with my esteemed Book Club colleague about how delightfully human sized the book’s drama is. We don’t have a dastardly villain or a galactic catastrophe to contend with. Instead, we have a Racist Karen fucking with Nesto’s business and Jude coping with religious trauma, aka real shit that people have to deal with.

Like so many road trips, our boundless, Slurpee-fuelled energy eventually wore down. But not before we listen to Nesto and Jude’s happy-tears HEA and the second in the series, American Fairytale, which takes us back to NYC. As we were listening to the audio version, we had a great guide too. (Shout to narrator Sean Crisden; the sexiness of his voice is verified by his stint doing IPB.) There’s much to be said for having an intermediary between you and the author when the book’s presenting a culture different from your own. However immersed in a story I might be, I’m still filtering everything through my white lady voice.

I checked the two final full-length books out of my local library over the 4th of July weekend. Herrera’s celebration of American immigrants felt like the right kind of book party. She’s always championing the potential of the United States while accounting for all the bullshit that makes it a struggle to achieve the American dream. Book 3 takes us back to Ithaca for another round of small-town politics and everyday racism. It’s a lot, I messaged Kelsey, but in a good way. Clearly my first love remains small town + eats. But the American Dreamers books are all wonderful in their way and I’ll bet other readers salivate over the big city champagne fundraisers just like I’m a goner for accidental meet-ups at the farmer’s market.

And I defy any Romance novel to have a more heart-warming conclusion. I don’t want to spoiler Nesto and Jude’s HEA but it features a food truck AND a mobile library. For kids! IM NOT CRYING YOU ARE CRYING, messaged Kelsey. We are so charmed that we are plotting to go on a real road trip this summer and visit Ithaca. Kelsey has even discovered a blue bungalow that someone (Jude?) is advertising on Airbnb. It’s like those library posters: books take you everywhere.

Up next, we are going on a metaphorical road trip to Ménage County Kansas with Sierra Simone on the SatNav. The AirCon will probably break before journey’s end.

*Flushed from the success of reading all the Old School Historicals set by those modern doyens of the Romance genre, Sarah and Jen from ‘Fated Mates’, Kelsey and I embark on Season 2 of our Besties Book Club: Current Chart-Toppers.

Kelsey is a badass. In fact, she’s been so busy being a badass that she didn’t join me for Book Club this month. Even such clickbait texts as “She’s going to tie him to the mast!!!!” got zero clicks. You can see the situation was pretty dire.  If she was allowed to write this blog, Kelsey would probably apologise and would cite work-place stress. People apologise all the time when, really, they should take a damn bow. They’ve been fighting for a saner work structure. Or they’ve been resisting an insane one by withdrawing. And, either way, they deserve a round of applause.

Take my own heroine. She’s a Shared Living provider, part of an amazing group of people who share their homes with special needs adults. The outcomes for these residents are terrific compared to institutional spaces. But, yeah, it’s super demanding work. And then the pandemic happened and the work just never stopped because home. What’s that? A majority female workforce? Working from home? Doing care work? Yep, no way we could use that social and economic legacy in a time of crisis to create an impossibly demanding and underpaid environment.

Kelsey has been busy taking a stand against the limitless demands on her labour. She has been busy being badass.

Hey, you know who else knows a badass heroine when she sees one? Sarah MacLean. I cannot believe I’m only meeting these grown-up, kick-ass women now. I’ve been feeling pretty guilty about the fact that, one Christmas novella aside, I’ve never read this big name author. Which is insane. She writes late Regencies with just the dreamiest of stepbacks. It’s the signal all of us Old School Historical fans look for. And I know from her podcast, which I’ve been a huge fan of for nearly two years, that she’s going to give readers those sweeping Old School stories with the current politics I need. My only excuse for not immediately blowing through her whole cannon is that I was almost too invested in her being amazing to actually read her stuff.

Thank god that we’ve dedicated this year’s Book Club to tackling some of the biggest names in the current Romance scene! Because I’ve never loved playing catch up more than I have reading the three ‘Bareknuckle Bastards’ books. MacLean’s heroines are just gems. Too often a strong female lead has to be either reckless to the point of foolhardiness or impervious to the point of inhumanity. But the three women in these books are allowed complex, even contradictory, characters. They can be socially timid and privately untamed. Or professionally confident and personally insecure. Or outwardly ruthless and inwardly grieving. They’re always nuanced. They’re always badass. 

The other evident hallmark of a MacLean romance that I adore is how wonderfully networked the characters are. The Bareknuckle Bastards are first and foremost three siblings who go to the mat for each other (literally), but they’re also the centre of a close-knit community in London’s Covent Garden. And if a world filled with burly men with dockers’ hooks and ships full of contraband cargo doesn’t sound like female-focussed storytelling, then you haven’t read Gail Carriger’s book on The Heroine’s Journey.  Of course storytelling is gendered, but any sex (or none) is allowed to go it alone in a hero’s adventure, or bring people together heroine-style to defeat a bigger adversary. In this case, the crushing class system of 19th century England.

We were only scheduled to read Wicked and the Wallflower – and, right out the gates I get one of my favourite tropes, the scarred hero – but it’s impossible to read just one of these. MacLean writes a tight-knit trilogy. I sometimes resent being sucked right into the next book to ‘find out what happens to X’. Not here. For starters, the emotional payoff of each successive book is greater than the sum of its parts. Secondly, each one is just damn good on its own. Brazen and the Beast, Book 2, is the lovely, creamy centre of this layer cake. A tall, curvy heroine takes no prisoners – until she ties the hero to the mast!!!!! I will say no more. 

For the full payoff, you’ve got to read Daring and the Duke. MacLean really takes the finger, ie the risk, here. She’s always applauding other authors for attempting bold shit and here she practices what she preaches. The third book pairs our only female bastard with the enemy duke who a) colluded with the Bareknuckle Bastards’ evil father to get the title b) maybe tried to murder them as children c) tried to sorta murder her brothers as adults, and d) threatened to harm both previous heroines. So how the hell is this going to work out?!  Actually, surprisingly well. Yes, the book has all the angsty feels, but what really impressed me was the lighter moments that were as surprising as they were organic. Daring and the Duke felt at times almost like Derek Craven gender-reverse fanfic. Our bastard queen owns an impossibly glamourous women’s bordello with gaming tables. She cannot allow herself to feel. She has a factotum. Needless to say, I was a fan.

So yeah, this series feels like a rallying cry for heroines and heroines’ journeys, as well as being a real flex of writerly chops. A round of applause, Sarah MacLean.

Up next: Will my adoration of this author last when we attempt her much-hyped recommendation of Kresely Cole’s ‘Immortals After Dark’ series? It’s just your average twenty-part paranormal series filled to the back teeth with supernatural alphaholes. What could go wrong?