Aldi > Recent Status Updates

The thick plottens! (who in the hell marketed this as YA anything, and have they been fired? 'cause they really need to be)

Tell me one more time how sensible you are while missing the most obvious shit, please do.

This was off to a bit of a slow start but I'm into it now *popcornmunch*

I adore Ana so much.

I wonder if there's a write-off subsection for "garments destroyed through exposure to assorted corpse goo" for crematory workers' tax returns.

These covers are so frickin' gorgeous *paws*

Looking much forward to our intrepid heroine starting to broaden her horizons and quit her very credible League of German Maidens persona 😬

I am emotionally compromised.

Welcome to Flambards in Summer, the only book to ever have me sobbing uncontrollably on page one.

I love Dorothy so much.
"So Mark kissed you on the mouth! Dish, girl, dish!"
"uh he's my COUSIN"
"yeah so is Will. his brother. your actual fiancé. you Essex folks are weird, darling"

I need a familiar palate cleanser after a disappointing read, so I'm breaking out the gorgeous new editions, yay!

Now they're at a CASINO, good lord. Will there be a Regency-costume Elvis impersonator next, because that would actually be fabulous.

Yes hello I appear to have made myself the fact checker for this book out of sheer grumpy aggravation: Speakers' Corner was not a thing until 1872 *faceplants*

Why do Harriet's throwaway thoughts about going to school sound suspiciously like a modern co-ed situation? Ma'am, you would have been school-aged well before 1800 and I don't think what educational facilities for girls existed at the time would have let in a sex worker's bastard daughter, arrrrgh, this book

"...her bodice displaying a fair amount more breasts than than is typical of even a barmaid."
I take it we have entered Total Recall territory.

I'm also reasonably sure they didn't have baby "buggies" during the Regency (a quick Google search tells me prams were Victorian and the versions existing before then were deathtraps pulled by goats??), or that a lady of the ton would be pushing her own if they did, but I'm learning I'll have to pick my battles with this book lest I spend the entire read spluttering with historical inaccuracy-induced outrage.

And now the duke is telling a lady he met an hour ago that she's dull to her face, Jesus fucking Christ on a piece of toast. This is clearly not meant to be a complete parody so WHAT.

Another one from the Nitpickers' Society of Pedantry and Obsession with Historical Accuracy, sorry, but... I don't care how unconventional and scandalous you are, lady, you do NOT address a duke by his first name in public, let alone yell it across a crowded ballroom! What.

I'm enjoying this a good deal so far and am pleasantly surprised it isn't YA, but I really need these Regency characters to stop saying "ass" every other page (the body part, not the donkey). In fact, I have a sneaky suspicion and/or hazy memory that I was annoyed by the very same thing in Gentleman's Guide. American authors, get someone to Britpick your England-based manuscripts, I beg of you.

Author appears to be embracing comma splices, whose supposed wrongness I have rejected all my English-speaking life (they're not a thing in German). I suspect we'll get on very well.

Absolutely can't settle to fiction at the moment due to various factors, so the atrocities of 19th century colonialism in the Congo it is, I guess!

I'm too far into this series to DNF now but I'm plagued by the same central issue I had with the first book: I don't really care what happens to any of these people 😬

That was a bloody harrowing chapter.

Mid-19th century Austrian nobility problems aside (good lord what a ridiculous way to live), I am hugely enjoying this, actually.

I was today years old when I discovered this is not, in fact (as I'd believed as long as I've been aware of this book) a memoir but a novel! Whoops. I am, however, here for it.

I really want to like this much more than I do but everything is moving soooo slooooowly. Can we start tearing down the evil empire already, please I'm dying here 😴

Me at line 1: Oh fuck
Me at paragraph 1: oh FUUUUUUCK
Me at paragraph 2: ... every single one of these 390 pages is going to be agony, isn't it

I swear I read this as a H/D fic in the early noughts, lol. Draco is cruel, incisive, artsy, fragile, too pretty and oversexualised in worrisome ways! Harry is frustrated and intrigued and doesn't want to care! Draco's parental figure is charming on the surface but some seriously fucked-up shit is clearly happening! There is fraught kissing! Harry is obsessed! Woe, woe betide his poor, pure, generous heart!

Every aloof ice queen of a mean, posh, fucked-up queer boy with hidden depths is a Lymond/Laurent/Draco Malfoy lookalike. Just once give me a character with this attitude who's a chubby redhead or something, lol.