Erotic historical romance isn't exactly rare, but in my reading experience, it's harder to execute well than contemporary erotic romance. Writers have to consider things like the social and physical repercussions of sex for women, for example, and make all of it sexy. In all historical romance, I like to put on my rosy book goggles and pretend that sexually transmitted diseases don't exist in sex clubs in a time without antibiotics. And that a pregnancy wouldn't spell the end of a woman's career, marital, and social prospects. Y'know, all the things that no one wants to think about while reading a story in which sex drives the romantic plot.
I feel oddly spoiled that I have had a really good streak with books so far this year. And Tempest just continued the pattern with its beautifully strong and complicated main characters and heartfelt love story. And now, I'm suffering from a good book hangover and off to read a mystery just so that I don’t lose that good romance buzz.
Tally Adam’s first book in the Immortal Romance series has a lot going on. It wears its influences on its sleeve - Underworld, Supernatural, and many other vampire and werewolf movies and shows of the 90s and 00s. Shadow Pact follows William, a half werewolf half vampire who is the official executioner of the Coven, a shadowy organization that rules the immortals of the world. He and his surrogate father figure and friend, Paoli, act as the Coven’s hand to kill any who disobey their laws. When they go to a werewolf pack to exterminate a new target, they meet Emily, a human who is trying to save her estranged sister from the pack. Surprise, surprise, William and Paoli’s target is Emily’s sister. William attraction to Emily is immediate, and together he and Paoli discover that Emily must be his mate. But a werewolf has never had a mate that’s been human before!
The first series of Anne Bishop’s The Others ended two years ago with Etched in Bone. Since then Bishop has written two additional books in that world for her World of the Others series. In this spin off series Bishop revisits familiar themes, while expanding the world, by introducing new types of characters and introducing new perspectives. The first book in that series was Lake Silence. It took place in an Others controlled human settlement, and it takes place a little bit after Etched in Bone. That book followed new but familiar characters and could be read as a standalone, as it only lightly references prior books.
Wild Country, however, takes things a completely different direction. As a long-time fan of the Others series, I couldn’t put it down, but it suffers from and magnifies a lot of the problematic issues from the original series - chiefly, sexualized violence against women - this time, extending beyond the exploitation of the cassandra sangue. A large of percentage of the women in this book experience some sort of violence or sexual harassment at some point in the novel and one character suffers a gratuitously explicitly violent death.
Crazy Cupid Love is a goofy contemporary fantasy rom-com with some Greek Mythology thrown in. The Erosians (descendents of Cupid/Eros) told the world about themselves back in the 1960's, and joined the ranks of other highly taxed and regulated service industries. Eliza, a failed Cupid, has a gift so strong that she can enchant people without trying. It's caused her all sorts of trouble before the book starts, and doesn't stop.
This book ruined me. Even if the title was not The Earl I Ruined, I would have written that sentence, but now it’s there for posterity as some sort of dad joke. The truth is that this book hit the right chord and I couldn’t stop reading it. I whined about how I had to go to work when all I wanted to do was call in sick and finish this gorgeous story. Also, this book has one of my favorite complicated heroines too.
More mini-reviews! This time we've got a queer YA with romantic elements, an m/f contemporary, and an m/m new adult (college-set) romance.
Ernesto Vasquez might have been born in the Dominican Republic but he is a die-hard New Yorker at heart. His food truck, OuNYe’s menu expresses the special fusion of his New York city childhood, where the Afro-caribbean flavors of his heritage and that of his Puerto Rican, Cuban, Jamaican and Haitian best-friends, nourished and united them. Making his food truck a success is his driving objective because Nesto can’t live on passion alone, he needs his truck to turn a profit. Willing to try anything, Nesto has given himself six months Upstate in his mother Nurys’s new town of Ithaca, in a last ditch effort to keep his dream aflot. If he fails to find customers, he will pack it in and head back to NYC and find new dreams.
Possibly my favorite trope or character in historical romance is the science-y bluestocking. I will read all of these books because they totally play into my science vanity, not that any hot lords or ladies have sought me out for discussing groundwater flow or vapor intrusion models in public. This is not to say that I love every science-y heroine book, but I will read all of them. Before you think “she hated this one too?” I need you to know that I really enjoyed Lady Claire Is All That.
