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Books I've Read: July-Aug 2022
Continuing my reading catch-up posts.
July 2022
The Hellion's Waltz by Olivia Waite - audio
This is the third volume in a very loosely connected Regency-era series. (Different central characters in each book, but some cross-references in background characters.) This one has a complex heist-type plot involving textile workers and a musician searching for her lost self-confidence who also finds love. One of the highlights of this book is that both romantic protagonists not only have prior romantic experience with women, but also have supportive and accepting home lives in a way that feels true to the times.
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - audio
Another third book, this time in the Goblin Emperor series. (Or one could count it as the second book in the Cemetarires of Amalo series.) To recap: fantasy police procedural involving a main character who listens to the dead. The queer romance slowly progresses.
An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole - audio
I really enjoyed a couple of Cole's f/f books and decided to branch out and try her m/f historicals. This one is the first in a historic romance series set during the American Civil War and featuring Black protagonists. I’m developing the realization that Cole is rather hit or miss for me. Too often, her romances seem to depend too strongly on an immediate, non-rational, sexual chemistry between the characters. And that just doesn’t work very well for me. I love the topics and characters she tackles, but I’m not the right reader for the ones that depend so strongly on insta-lust.
August 2022
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen - audio
I honestly don't know whether I think this is a good book or not. It's kind of all over the map and repetitive at the same time. I don't really identify with the images of asexuality that it presents and I don't know if it's a generational thing, or because I only recognized my asexuality late in life, or if it's because yet again I feel like an outsider in any community I theoretically belong to.
There are two other August items, but talk about them in dialogue with each others and it makes sense to put them in their own post together.
July 2022
The Hellion's Waltz by Olivia Waite - audio
This is the third volume in a very loosely connected Regency-era series. (Different central characters in each book, but some cross-references in background characters.) This one has a complex heist-type plot involving textile workers and a musician searching for her lost self-confidence who also finds love. One of the highlights of this book is that both romantic protagonists not only have prior romantic experience with women, but also have supportive and accepting home lives in a way that feels true to the times.
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - audio
Another third book, this time in the Goblin Emperor series. (Or one could count it as the second book in the Cemetarires of Amalo series.) To recap: fantasy police procedural involving a main character who listens to the dead. The queer romance slowly progresses.
An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole - audio
I really enjoyed a couple of Cole's f/f books and decided to branch out and try her m/f historicals. This one is the first in a historic romance series set during the American Civil War and featuring Black protagonists. I’m developing the realization that Cole is rather hit or miss for me. Too often, her romances seem to depend too strongly on an immediate, non-rational, sexual chemistry between the characters. And that just doesn’t work very well for me. I love the topics and characters she tackles, but I’m not the right reader for the ones that depend so strongly on insta-lust.
August 2022
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen - audio
I honestly don't know whether I think this is a good book or not. It's kind of all over the map and repetitive at the same time. I don't really identify with the images of asexuality that it presents and I don't know if it's a generational thing, or because I only recognized my asexuality late in life, or if it's because yet again I feel like an outsider in any community I theoretically belong to.
There are two other August items, but talk about them in dialogue with each others and it makes sense to put them in their own post together.