Slow, plodding, and flat
What on earth has happened to Stephanie Laurens? She seems to have largely abandoned writing romances and turned to mystery. The problem is, she’s not always good at it, especially when she omits the passion, emotion, and spirited characters that epitomized her best romances. The Curse of Ill-Gotten Gains is a case in point.
I loved this latest Albion novel from Celia Lake, which features music, magic, history, and romance in 1920s London.
I really love this quiet, thoughtful, slow-paced (but never dull) novel. Technically, it is a historical fantasy romance, but the romance is only one facet of the relationship between the main characters, and only one facet of the plot. There’s also a bit of a mystery threaded throughout, although the book isn’t quite a mystery novel, either.
Rom-com meets action-adventure spy novel in The Blonde Identity. It’s full of danger, chase scenes, and action sequences, but it’s also funny and sexy and frothy in all the right ways. And it hits some familiar romance and spy novel tropes in ways that somehow feel comfortingly familiar and fresh at the same time.
The Verity Kent series gets off to a good start with This Side of Murder. Huber revisits the classic “trapped on an island with a killer” trope, but gives it tension and immediacy… Huber is skilled at plotting, characterization, and atmosphere. I found all three here, plus a believable, complex heroine.
I generally enjoy Agatha Christie, and I love Miss Marple, but this is not one of my favorite of her books. On the other hand, the 1985 BBC adaptation starring Joan Hickson is a longtime favorite and a comfort movie for me.
Weaving Hope is a very gentle, very slow-burn closed-door romance set in magical 1920s Britain.
Naomi Novik’s Buried Deep and Other Stories is a stellar collection of short fiction that displays all of her skill as a writer as well as the breadth of her imagination. I read it slowly, savoring each story.
It’s All a Game starts off with the ancient games of senet, the “royal game of Ur”, and the many forms of mancala, then delves into a truncated history of chess before moving on to the board games many of us grew up playing.
Wooing the Witch Queen was an absolute delight, from its sweet, sensitive, traumatized cinnamon-roll hero to its introverted, reclusive, but decidedly not evil heroine.
