More mini-reviews! Two contemporary romances and a medieval this time around.

I think this is the best Young Adult f/f romance I've ever read. Yeah, that's not saying a whole lot since the market isn't exactly teeming with them, but Y'ALL. It is SO SWEET.

Yên is not important in her village. Her mother is a healer who knows magic but Yên has no powers herself; all she does is teach the village children but knowing about long-dead scholars isn’t considered important in a devasted world where everyday survival is hard enough.

A fantasy romance prequel novella, an M/M/F erotic romance, and a contemporary romance with a scientist lottery-winner heroine. We contain multitudes.

As I mentioned in September's Top Off Your TBR post, I was excited for this couple when I was reading the previous book in the series. The heroine is a painter, teaching other young women how to paint and pursuing her own career (painting scandalous portraits for the nouveau riche). The hero is an earl, long thought dead following the Battle of Waterloo. He comes back one night and walks into his bedroom at his Dover estate, only to discover the woman he's always loved already in residence.

If I was to give you a very short review of Touch Up, it would be this: I did not enjoy reading this book. The reasons, though, are more complicated. There was a lot I should have liked, a lot that was close... but the amount of shame I felt while reading this and the dislike I had for the characters overpowered everything else.

Speakeasy, book 5 in Sarina Bowen's True North series, came out in May 2018. It's taken me five months to read it because I was afraid. I'm going to open up a bit in this post, so here's the disclaimer that my experiences aren't universal.

My review of The Craft of Love could be as short as “a quiet, gentle romance with supportive and accepting families,” but that hardly seems fair to such a lovely book. Benjamin is a silversmith who runs a smithy and Remembrance is a quiltmaker. They meet by chance when Remembrance seeks Benjamin’s sister’s lacemaking talents. And as luck would have it, Benjamin had just decided to have a quilt made with some dresses his mother made. The two meet along the way at each other’s workplaces and at a lecture, moving from a general admiration to something more specific and loving.

Whenever a lesbian romance shows up on Hoopla (via my library) on audio, I give it a try. One reason is because I'm desperate for good f/f romances. The other reason is because the "lesfic" publishers price their books higher than I can reasonably afford. Sure enough, this one from Ylva Publishing is at $9.99 in ebook and $17.99 in print. (If you want f/f romance at a more accessible price point, your (US) options are: indie authors, sales on the Bella/Boldstrokes/Ylva websites, or libraries.)

Teacher’s Pet, Vol. 2 is the second anthology from Ninestar Press that features stories about student/teacher relationships. However, in most of the cases the teachers are private tutors, yoga or gym teachers or similar. In the stories that are set at a university, the couples agree to wait till the semester is over before they get serious, so they can avoid issues with power-imbalance. The one exception to that is the one story in the anthology that is erotica rather than romance (Press “Copy” to Begin) and in my experience erotica tends to be less concerned with reality anyway.