Books I've Read: December 2025
Dec. 31st, 2025 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjSince I have another hour before heading off to a New Year's Eve party, I might as well bring the reading notes up to the current date. I read a lot of books in December, but only a couple were thoroughly enjoyable.
The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler -- (audio) Sapphic historical mystery. Well-researched, but with a bad case of researcher's disease. There's too much showing off on details that a narrator wouldn't normally be expected to provide. The psychology of the characters is also rather anachronistic, or perhaps overly clinical. Also, the narrator regularly tells us about the protagonist's desire for women, but doesn't really demonstrate it in a believable way. Also, there's a possible scenario that is set up but then the character never acknowledges or explores it (i.e., that the Evil Suitor has kidnapped the victim and is lying about it). All in all, I spent too much time yelling at the book while listening to it.
A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory -- (audio) I picked this up in a series-sale on Chirp. Historical mystery focusing on a physician in medieval Cambridge. There was a time when historical mysteries were just beginning to be a thing when I'd read everything I could get my hands on. And then a time when there were enough of them that I felt like I was allowed to begin disliking some of them. Yeah, this falls in that category. Ugh. The writing is ok but OMG it drags, especially during the endless details of the plague. And it has a bad case of "this medieval doctor magically knows what treatments will eventually be proven effective by modern medicine." There's endless repetition of the clues and details of the mystery, though maybe that's a deliberate technique. I have three more volumes in this series, but I'm not likely to continue listening.
Saint-Seducing Gold by Brittany N. William -- (audio) Sequel to That Self-Same Metal, which I read a couple months ago. (YA historic fantasy set in the early 17th century.) Very enjoyable for the representation and worldbuilding. But it felt very repetitive, as if all the emotional beats needed to be hammered away at to make them stick. Maybe this is a YA thing? I enjoyed it, but I'm not necessarily eager to pick up the third and final book.
The next few books were read specifically to do an updated version of my "sapphic spin-offs of Jane Austen books" podcast, so I was reading some things that I was dubious about going in.
Emma: The Nature of a Lady by Kate Christie -- (text) I regularly mention that I’m very much not a fan of the approach of taking an existing public domain text and making only minimal changes or additions to create a new story. Which is exactly what this book does. As far as I could tell, we don’t run into any alterations to the original text until chapter 5, and I’d say that maybe 99% of the text is simply identical to Austen’s original. The premise is that Emma and Jane Fairfax were childhood sweethearts, sabotaged by Mr. Woodhouse confiscating their letters to each other while they were separated. The eventual resolution is for Jane to enter a lavender marriage with Knightley who much prefers male partners. If you like this sort of pastiche, this may be the sort of thing you’ll like, but I don’t, I’m afraid. (After checking past reading notes, I noticed that I had exactly this same reaction to this same approach for a previous Christie book.)
The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks -- (text) On the surface, Jane Bennet doesn't seem an obvious candidate for a sapphic take given how central her attachment to Bingley is to the original story, but Mara Brooks has followed that thread in The Scandal at Pemberley. I have a mixed reaction to this novella—maybe short enough to be a novelette? The prose is elegant and full of rich sensory imagery, but the plot is a bare skeleton on which to hang a series of erotic scenes. There are also a few logical holes in the plot where the characters have some unfortunately modern attitudes about public displays of affection between women in the Regency era. Really gals, it’s not actually a problem for you to be in each other’s bedrooms and even to share a bed! (See my trope podcast about the “only one bed” thing.)
The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub -- (audio) This is far more ambitious than the other books I read in this Austen-spin-off binge. I confess this book utterly blew me away after an uncertain start. The cover copy misleadingly suggested that it might be a slapstick mashup of Pride and Prejudice with Frankenstein in the same vein as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it was much more thoughtful and nuanced than I expected. It takes quite some way into the book before the sapphic thread is made overt, and the characters have a lot of obstacles to get past for their happy ending. (One of which is an additional fantasy twist that seemed to come out of nowhere, but I’m willing to go with it.) While the plot and trappings stray outside the realistic nature of Austen’s work, the social and psychological aspects of the plot rang true to the times for me, including the meandering path Mary and Georgiana take to recognize what they’re feeling as romantic love and to decide it’s worth fighting for.
The Lady's Wager by Olivia Hampton -- (text) Evidently a number of authors share my interest in seeing Mary Bennet get some love, because this is yet one more book that addresses that angle. This one gives Mary a secret life as an author and pairs her with an original character: a former governess struggling to make a living in London. While the set-up of the plot is clever and plausible, the execution stumbled on numerous points. The characters have anxieties about their budding friendship that are out of place in the early 19th century—a time when it was utterly normal for women to express appreciation for other women’s beauty and to engage in physical affection in public. It would also have been utterly normal for two spinsters to set up household together for economic reasons, so I found their subterfuge unnecessary. These are elements that really spoil a sapphic historical for me, when the characters have 20th century attitudes, anxieties, and reactions.
We move out of the Austen books for the last two.
Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) I thought I'd give this a try, despite being so-so about Vasti's f/f Regency in the same continuum. (One of the characters from Ladies in Hating is a secondary character in this one.) Alas, this ended up being a DNF, though for idiosyncratic reasons that might be a strong plus for other readers. The story has some interesting ideas and characterization but around midway slides into about 80% sex by volume and I just got bored. Some authors can write such excellent characters and plot that my indifference to sex scenes is overcome, but the balance was too badly off for me in this book.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite -- (audio) This was a nice finish to the year's reading. Murder mystery on a colony ship where bodies are renewed from memory backups. So what happens if your backup gets erased and then your current body gets killed? Interesting chewy ideas. The protagonist is sapphic, but sexual orientation isn't a marked feature in this continuity so it's just background. (I've previously enjoyed Waite's sapphic historical romances.)
There. I'm totally caught up with my reading notes. My "in process" spreadsheet (which is where all these notes have been living) has a couple dozen titles in it that either need to be officially marked DNF or that I had put on the list as a to-do and then never read. I think I'll clean that up so I can start fresh.
The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler -- (audio) Sapphic historical mystery. Well-researched, but with a bad case of researcher's disease. There's too much showing off on details that a narrator wouldn't normally be expected to provide. The psychology of the characters is also rather anachronistic, or perhaps overly clinical. Also, the narrator regularly tells us about the protagonist's desire for women, but doesn't really demonstrate it in a believable way. Also, there's a possible scenario that is set up but then the character never acknowledges or explores it (i.e., that the Evil Suitor has kidnapped the victim and is lying about it). All in all, I spent too much time yelling at the book while listening to it.
A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory -- (audio) I picked this up in a series-sale on Chirp. Historical mystery focusing on a physician in medieval Cambridge. There was a time when historical mysteries were just beginning to be a thing when I'd read everything I could get my hands on. And then a time when there were enough of them that I felt like I was allowed to begin disliking some of them. Yeah, this falls in that category. Ugh. The writing is ok but OMG it drags, especially during the endless details of the plague. And it has a bad case of "this medieval doctor magically knows what treatments will eventually be proven effective by modern medicine." There's endless repetition of the clues and details of the mystery, though maybe that's a deliberate technique. I have three more volumes in this series, but I'm not likely to continue listening.
Saint-Seducing Gold by Brittany N. William -- (audio) Sequel to That Self-Same Metal, which I read a couple months ago. (YA historic fantasy set in the early 17th century.) Very enjoyable for the representation and worldbuilding. But it felt very repetitive, as if all the emotional beats needed to be hammered away at to make them stick. Maybe this is a YA thing? I enjoyed it, but I'm not necessarily eager to pick up the third and final book.
The next few books were read specifically to do an updated version of my "sapphic spin-offs of Jane Austen books" podcast, so I was reading some things that I was dubious about going in.
Emma: The Nature of a Lady by Kate Christie -- (text) I regularly mention that I’m very much not a fan of the approach of taking an existing public domain text and making only minimal changes or additions to create a new story. Which is exactly what this book does. As far as I could tell, we don’t run into any alterations to the original text until chapter 5, and I’d say that maybe 99% of the text is simply identical to Austen’s original. The premise is that Emma and Jane Fairfax were childhood sweethearts, sabotaged by Mr. Woodhouse confiscating their letters to each other while they were separated. The eventual resolution is for Jane to enter a lavender marriage with Knightley who much prefers male partners. If you like this sort of pastiche, this may be the sort of thing you’ll like, but I don’t, I’m afraid. (After checking past reading notes, I noticed that I had exactly this same reaction to this same approach for a previous Christie book.)
The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks -- (text) On the surface, Jane Bennet doesn't seem an obvious candidate for a sapphic take given how central her attachment to Bingley is to the original story, but Mara Brooks has followed that thread in The Scandal at Pemberley. I have a mixed reaction to this novella—maybe short enough to be a novelette? The prose is elegant and full of rich sensory imagery, but the plot is a bare skeleton on which to hang a series of erotic scenes. There are also a few logical holes in the plot where the characters have some unfortunately modern attitudes about public displays of affection between women in the Regency era. Really gals, it’s not actually a problem for you to be in each other’s bedrooms and even to share a bed! (See my trope podcast about the “only one bed” thing.)
The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub -- (audio) This is far more ambitious than the other books I read in this Austen-spin-off binge. I confess this book utterly blew me away after an uncertain start. The cover copy misleadingly suggested that it might be a slapstick mashup of Pride and Prejudice with Frankenstein in the same vein as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it was much more thoughtful and nuanced than I expected. It takes quite some way into the book before the sapphic thread is made overt, and the characters have a lot of obstacles to get past for their happy ending. (One of which is an additional fantasy twist that seemed to come out of nowhere, but I’m willing to go with it.) While the plot and trappings stray outside the realistic nature of Austen’s work, the social and psychological aspects of the plot rang true to the times for me, including the meandering path Mary and Georgiana take to recognize what they’re feeling as romantic love and to decide it’s worth fighting for.
The Lady's Wager by Olivia Hampton -- (text) Evidently a number of authors share my interest in seeing Mary Bennet get some love, because this is yet one more book that addresses that angle. This one gives Mary a secret life as an author and pairs her with an original character: a former governess struggling to make a living in London. While the set-up of the plot is clever and plausible, the execution stumbled on numerous points. The characters have anxieties about their budding friendship that are out of place in the early 19th century—a time when it was utterly normal for women to express appreciation for other women’s beauty and to engage in physical affection in public. It would also have been utterly normal for two spinsters to set up household together for economic reasons, so I found their subterfuge unnecessary. These are elements that really spoil a sapphic historical for me, when the characters have 20th century attitudes, anxieties, and reactions.
We move out of the Austen books for the last two.
Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) I thought I'd give this a try, despite being so-so about Vasti's f/f Regency in the same continuum. (One of the characters from Ladies in Hating is a secondary character in this one.) Alas, this ended up being a DNF, though for idiosyncratic reasons that might be a strong plus for other readers. The story has some interesting ideas and characterization but around midway slides into about 80% sex by volume and I just got bored. Some authors can write such excellent characters and plot that my indifference to sex scenes is overcome, but the balance was too badly off for me in this book.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite -- (audio) This was a nice finish to the year's reading. Murder mystery on a colony ship where bodies are renewed from memory backups. So what happens if your backup gets erased and then your current body gets killed? Interesting chewy ideas. The protagonist is sapphic, but sexual orientation isn't a marked feature in this continuity so it's just background. (I've previously enjoyed Waite's sapphic historical romances.)
There. I'm totally caught up with my reading notes. My "in process" spreadsheet (which is where all these notes have been living) has a couple dozen titles in it that either need to be officially marked DNF or that I had put on the list as a to-do and then never read. I think I'll clean that up so I can start fresh.
