Flash book reviews for the last three months

 I am soooo behind on book reviews ugh. Comment or DM me for trigger warnings and more info.

 

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen - K.J. Charles is an insta-buy author for me, so I snapped up this ebook when it went on sale. This is a Regency historical romance with plenty of action and suspense, and I couldn't put it down. A baron who recently inherited his title and estate in Kent learns that the local smuggler chief was his anonymous hookup back in London. There's a lot of friction between them as they parted on bad terms, and the baron almost testifies that he saw the smuggler chief's sister smuggling, but they can't stay away from each other. They go on cute bug-finding dates in the marsh and have to team up to save each other's families from bad men. While not related to KJC's other regency romance series, the theme of healing from childhood trauma is also present. I thought it was interesting that the smuggler chief's grandpa was a formerly enslaved man from the US.  ★★★★  🌶🌶🌶

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibberts - I've had this author's books on my mental to-read list for a while since a lot of bookstagrammers said they were really good. Despite my initial surprise that the book is set in England and consequently all of the characters are English, I was sucked in and devoured this book.  Chloe goes through a near-death experience (a car almost hits her on her hot girl walk) and she consequently decides to change up her whole life, since when it flashed before her eyes, it was really boring. She makes a list of things to do, like camping and 'meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex'. After her apartment building's hot super, Red, helps her get out of a tree while rescuing a cat, she enlists him to help her go through her list 👀 He's down bad for her so he agrees. Chloe is chronically ill, hence not having done many things in her life, and Red has trauma from his last rich upper-class girlfriend (which Chloe is, uh-oh) being horrible and classist to him. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a romance novel this much! This is definitely a kicking-your-feet-and-giggling book, but with a good amount of depth. I need to read the rest of the books in this series, which are about Chloe's sisters. ★★★★.5  🌶🌶🌶

 

I reread How to Keep House While Drowning since, well, guess. It's just as good and helpful as ever. I last flash-reviewed it here. 

I also reread The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick since I rewatched the webseries for the first time in a decade. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it! The webseries (really a transmedia series, as the characters also tweeted and used various social media to add to the story) is a really fun modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice. This book is the book version of that webseries, as Lizzie's actual diary, and it goes through the same stories as the webseries, with more behind-the-scenes stuff that didn't make it into the YouTube videos. For instance, Lizzie's tour of San Francisco with William and Gigi Darcy is described. It's such a great retelling that left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling, but I suspect someone who's never seen the TSDoLB webseries wouldn't be getting the same story out of it. I still recommend it, though. ★★★★

Queerly Beloved by Susie Dumond - I got this book from the thrift store. It's set in Oklahoma in 2013 (aka before gay marriage equality). Amy is a lesbian and a baker who is in the closet at her Christian bakery job. Somebody outs her and she gets fired, so she starts working as a bridesmaid-for-hire since she loves wedding romcoms and is great at problem-solving. She also meets this cute lesbian engineer, Charley, but their dates are really sporadic due to Charley's demanding job, and Amy isn't sure where they stand. There's also friend drama and ex drama, and Amy struggles with her people-pleasing tendencies, being closeted at one job while bartending at the queer bar as her second job, and being true to herself. This book was not as fluffy as it looked, and there is tension with Amy having to go through lots of straight wedding drama while being unable to marry herself (hang in there Amy! 2015 is so close!). I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it. ★★★★  🌶🌶

Women's Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery

I bought this during Barnes & Noble's half-off sale since I had a giftcard. Here's the summary; this book is about the residents of a women's hotel, the Biedermeier, in New York in the 1960s. There's not much plot, and the chapters are loosely connected. Lavery has that retro chatty informative tone down perfectly, and he's an excellent writer. While I enjoyed this, a lot of the women's stories were anywhere from a little to very sad, and the last story is rather horrible (the epilogue softens it). I'd recommend this to anyone who likes reading slice of life stories, mid-twentieth-century books, and how New York was in the past. I'll give this away due to lack of shelf space. ★★★★

Book Reviews: the Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune series by K.J. Charles

I loved K.J. Charles' Will Darling trilogy and A Charm of Magpies series, and my love for Regency romances is well-documented on this blog, so when I saw that KJC had written gay Regency romance novels, I snapped up the ebooks when they were on sale.  I read the two books in the Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune series by K.J. Charles back to back in one day. They're set in the same world (well obviously all Regency romance novels are set in Regency-era England, but, you know, the characters have mutual friends and eventually interact etc.) but you don't really have to read them in order. Both ebooks are from B&N/Nook.

 

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting

Robin Loxleigh and his sister Marianne are the hit of the Season, so attractive and delightful that nobody looks behind their pretty faces.

Until Robin sets his sights on Sir John Hartlebury's heiress niece. The notoriously graceless baronet isn't impressed by good looks or fooled by false charm. He's sure Robin is a liar, a fortune hunter, and a heartless, greedy fraud -- and he'll protect his niece, whatever it takes.

Then, just when Hart thinks he has Robin at his mercy, things take a sharp left turn. And as the grumpy baronet and the glib fortune hunter start to understand each other, they also find themselves starting to care -- more than either of them thought possible.

But Robin's cheated and lied and let people down for money. Can a professional rogue earn an honest happy ever after?

Gold-digging scammer siblings + an autistic-coded baronet who is not taken in by their charm + paying off a gambling debt by ~creative means~ 👀 They start catching feelings during what is supposed to be strictly a ~physical~ arrangement!! 😱 Both Robin and Hart are forced to come face to face with their parent wounds/childhood trauma, and decide whether they can let themselves be loved as they truly are. Marianne is dead-set on marrying a titled noble so she'll be rich for the rest of her life, but Hart's non-rich, non-titled friend is in love with her, and she might be falling for him... Also there's the math genius niece and card games. I liked this a lot and found it interesting to read about all the ways the Loxleigh siblings acted to achieve their desired results and manipulations. Hart and Robin gave me Roy x Jamie from Ted Lasso vibes. There's also a little KJC name punning going on.  ★★★★, 🌶🌶🌶

 

The Duke at Hazard 

The Duke of Severn is one of the greatest men in Britain.

He's also short, quiet, and unimpressive. And now he's been robbed, after indulging in one rash night with a strange man who stole the heirloom Severn ring from his finger. The Duke has to get it back, and he can't let anyone know how he lost it. So when his cousin bets that he couldn't survive without his privilege and title, the Duke grasps the opportunity to hunt down his ring--incognito.

Life as an ordinary person is terrifying... until the anonymous Duke meets Daizell Charnage, a disgraced gentleman, and hires him to help. Racing across the country in search of the thief, the Duke and Daizell fall into scrapes, into trouble--and in love.

Daizell has been excluded from polite society, his name tainted by his father's crimes and his own misbehaviour. Now he dares to dream of a life somewhere out of sight with the quiet gentleman who's stolen his heart. He doesn't know that his lover is a hugely rich public figure with half a dozen titles. And when he finds out, it will risk everything they have...

Poor sheltered Sev (the Duke of Severn) just wanted to have one anonymous hookup, but gets plied with alcohol and robbed while unconscious. His well-meaning relations basically run his life and are always impressing the Grandeur and Importance of his title, so they can't know his ring was stolen; no one can know, as gay hookups are illegal. It was actually stressful reading about Sev (going by Cassian, one of his many names) trying to get around by himself when he has no idea what he's doing. Luckily he stumbles on Charnage, who was a few years above him at Eton, and hires him to help him look for the guy who robbed him. Their adventures have both highs (sightseeing, There Was Only One Bed) and lows (having to ride in a public coach that packs in smelly people like sardines, being in a horrible coach crash with casualties, getting kidnapped), but overall Sev/Cassian finds the freedom exhilarating. He and Charnage also keep running into a young lady hell-bent on eloping and evading her awful guardian, and try to help her. Charnage's deal was sad; I hated how he was cast out from society because his dad committed a crime he had nothing to do with. The fact that Sev/Cassian has been lying to him this whole time doesn't help. Overall this was a wild ride, and I loved reading how Sev came into his own as a Duke and how he used his position to make things right with Charnage and his friends and fix their issues.  ★★★★, 🌶🌶🌶  DM me for TWs (I believe both books have them listed at the beginning)

unorganized moodboard for the Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune series

Flash reviews for books I read last month

Bookshop.org had a summer reading challenge where you could win a contest if you read for at least 28 days straight, so I read the unheard-of amount of 15 books!!!! Forget pre-pandemic reading levels, that is junior high reading behavior!!! Anyway, I don't really want to write out full reviews for all of them, so I'm just writing flash reviews. 

The Maid and the Mansion: A Mysterious Murder (book 1? of series) by Fiona Grace - ebook - another murder mystery where a maid does the investigating. Enjoyed this although I read "the men are coming back from war so there's no jobs for women" and assumed it was World War I and not II, leading me to be confused over several things including how she was able to run and fight in long skirts (nope, at/below the knee skirts). Trigger warning for sexual harassment from boss at work (he dies, yay!!) plus the usual stuff (murder, blood). 3.5 stars, would read the rest of the series if they're free

Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly - ebook - absolutely amazing, one of my favorite reads this year. So sad and hard to read at times but so important, with the internal plot mirroring thoughts I've had re: coming out and balancing authenticity with safety, etc. Also there's cool book restoration/making stuff. Genderqueer, queer and lesbian rep. Lots of trigger warnings including homophobic hate crime attacks, transphobia (also internalized), homophobia (also internalized). 4 stars, 2 chili peppers

How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis - hardcover book - I follow her on IG and bought the book at McNally Jackson bookstore in NYC to support her and because I need it. This book is for people who struggle with keeping up with housework--ADHD havers, depressed people, chronically ill people, etc. The non-shaming gentle parenting around cleaning that I never got, and lots of useful tips. She gets us because she's one of us. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.

Recipe for Confidence by Samantha Picaro - ebook - I think I follow this author on IG as well. Her book was promoted by bookstagrammers I follow, and I bought it on sale because the main character is aroace. The teenage MC is autistic as well and feels like she always has to mask and act happy to please everyone around her. I'm afraid I did not enjoy this book; the writing wasn't very good and neither were the parents, and there was stuff that made me angry. I think I need to stop reading books about and for teenagers. 3.5 stars. 

The Meddle & Mend series by Sarah Wallace - ebooks - This is a cozy found family fantasy series set in a magical, queernorm Regency England where racial diversity is also the norm. I ADORED this series! I downloaded the first one because it was free and one of the bookstagrammers that I follow is always promoting the series, and it was so good I downloaded the next one to read immediately, doing that for each book. I inhaled the whole series in like a week. One of the books, The Education of Pip, is about a character who is groomed into an unequal relationship that turns into forced sex work, so trigger warnings for that (there is a happy ending for him).  DM me if you want more info. There is representation for just about every letter of the queer alphabet, plus anxiety and PTSD rep. There are also characters of color (the society is also non-racist). I highly recommend these books and cannot wait for the next one. 3.5 (affectionate)-4 stars varying, amount of spice varies by book but it's usually just kissing or off-page (some Pip stuff does bleed into other books)

A Charm of Magpies series by K.J. Charles - ebooks - I loved this author's Will Darling Adventures trilogy and downloaded their other free ebooks a while back but never got around to reading them. These books are set in a magical gaslamp Victorian England and are about a tattooed duke with strong magical ancestry and a short magician who fall in love, fight magical crimes, and have extremely adult activities. They have to hide their relationship because it's illegal to be gay in Victorian England. The duke and his manservant lived most of their lives in China (which apparently was fine with gay people back then? That sounds wrong but I don't know enough to dispute it, plus KJC probably did their research).  The magical crimes (which are mostly grisly murders) make this series horror in my opinion; they were far too scary for me  but I couldn't stop reading them because they were so good. 3.5 stars (but a high 3.5) and probably 4.5 out of 5 chilis (very spicy).

I reread Lady Susan because it was the Enchanted Book Club pick for July, enjoyed it per usual, and had a lot of fun discussing the book with other book club members over Zoom. I also rewatched Love & Friendship afterwards, naturally. 

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev - paperback book - I bought this ages ago (not sure from where) but didn't get around to reading it. This was a really interesting loose retelling of P&P (duh) where the heroine is an Indian American brain surgeon and the hero is a Somali-Indian British chef, and both leads took on different aspects of both Lizzy and Darcy. It was really good but really sad, with the Wickham-Georgiana storyline being really dark. To be honest, I didn't get why the hero would really come around to being in love with the heroine when she was kind of an awful mess. Understandable, though, when her family was so terrible to her. I do recommend this book even though it made me sad (and hungry, the food sounded so amazing). Trigger warnings for a character being drugged and raped (past), cancer/terminal illness, police racial profiling, racism, xenophobia, miscarriage (past), manipulation, classism. 3.5 stars, 2 chilis due to a rather unnecessary scene at the end

What an Heiress Wants by Gemma Blackwood - ebook - This is part of a Regency romance series, of which I read one previously and liked it. The heroine wants to get back at this guy who led her on, so she concocts a fake flirting/courtship/engagement with her best friend's brother. You already know where this is going. This book has low spice (only kissing and lustful thoughts) and I enjoyed it, even though it got a bit dramatic at the end. 3.5 stars, 0.5 chili

Whew. I truly cannot believe I read so much. So many great reads this month as well!

Book Reviews: The Will Darling Adventures by K.J. Charles

I downloaded the ebook of Slippery Creatures because a bookstagrammer I follow shared a post (probably from the author) saying that it was free. I am not immune to free ebooks, especially if they're mysteries, about bookstores, and/or queer; this one was all of that! True to form, I forgot about it until I downloaded the Nook app (longtime readers* may remember my Nook usage and loyalty) to my phone in preparation for my trip to Mexico so I could have something to read without bringing physical books with me. I downloaded SC so I could read it and LOVED it so much I purchased the other two ebooks in the series, The Sugared Game and Subtle Blood. These books all have the tagline (?) "A 1920s m/m romance trilogy in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction." 

 
 

Slippery Creatures

Will Darling came back from the Great War with a few scars, a lot of medals, and no idea what to do next. Inheriting his uncle's chaotic second-hand bookshop is a blessing...until strange visitors start making threats. First a criminal gang, then the War Office, both telling Will to give them the information they want, or else.

Will has no idea what that information is, and nobody to turn to, until Kim Secretan--charming, cultured, oddly attractive--steps in to offer help. [...] Enemies are closing in on [Will] from all sides--and Kim is the only man who can help.

You all know how I feel about bookstores. I mean! Just that alone had me. Plus it's a mystery, plus it's queer? Come on. This was SUCH a good, suspenseful story, with lots of twists and turns. It felt grounded and lived in, and I learned some stuff about the period. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me given how we treat our veterans today, but in England after WWI there were no jobs for returning veterans, forcing tons of them to pawn even their medals and do menial jobs if they could find them and beg in the street if they couldn't. That makes no sense to me; so many men died in that war. Like in WWII, women stepped up (I'm sure) and then stepped back so the men could have their jobs back, but there weren't any? I'm sure it was the government's choices screwing them over. Will is so lucky to find his uncle and inherit the bookshop when he died. I liked him as a character; the war changed him, but he's a good and decent man. All three books in the trilogy are told from his POV. The love interest aspect of the book kind of jerks you around a bit, not so much "will they/won't they" but "will this become a real relationship? Can Kim be trusted?". In my reading log notes I wrote "interesting, exciting, and sexy", and that really sums this book up. I really enjoyed it.

 

 The Sugared Game

It's been two months since Will Darling saw Kim Secretan, and he doesn't expect to see him again. What do a rough and ready soldier-turned-bookseller and a disgraced shady aristocrat have to do with each other anyway? But when Will encounters a face from the past in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up, as shifty, unreliable, and irresistible as ever. And before Will knows it, he's been dragged back into Kim's shadowy world of secrets, criminal conspiracies, and underhand dealings. This time, though, things are underhanded even by Kim standards. This time, the danger is too close to home. And if Will and Kim can't find common ground against unseen enemies, they risk losing everything. 

I feel the same about this book as I did its predecessor. Maisie, Will's sensible best friend who is Black and a ray of sunshine, and Phoebe, Kim's best friend and beard fiance who could have stepped out of the Jeeves books, are back in this book too, and they're so fun. The bookstore comes into this story much less, but it can't be helped. All three books have danger that feels real, and the girls end up being threatened by the bad guys too. It makes sense historically, but it really bums me out that the bad guys' go-to to try to threaten the guys/control the outcome is to threaten to rape and murder Maisie and Phoebe. Nothing really bad happens to them, but it sucks. I also got a bit sick of reading the phrase "cut-glass accent" over and over again. Like I get it, Maisie has to pretend to be upper-class to fit in with Phoebe and Kim's crowd. Maybe use a different phrase sometimes though? The class differences between the characters are discussed and come up a lot, unsurprisingly. Working-class Will often pretends to be stupider than he is in order to be underestimated. It just struck me that Kim's last name has Secret in it, ugghghghhhh. To be fair, Will's last name has Daring in it (eyeroll). There is a lot of violence in all three books, as is expected when you come up against organized crime, and there's a good analysis of Will's enjoyment of and facility in killing. It makes sense that the war would make him feel it's the only thing he's good at.

 

 

Subtle Blood  (spoilers in book summary)

Will Darling is all right. His business is doing well, and so is his illicit** relationship with Kim Secretan--disgraced aristocrat, ex-spy, amateur book-dealer. It's starting to feel like he's got his life under control. And then a brutal murder in a gentleman's club plunges them back into the shadow world of crime, deception, and the power of privilege. Worse, it brings them up against Kim's noble, hostile family, and his upper-class life where Will can never belong. With old and new enemies against them, and secrets on every side, Will and Kim have to fight for each other harder than ever--or be torn apart for good. 

Kim's family SUUUUUUUUUUCKS. I hate them. The class differences/issues are even stronger here, unsurprisingly. It's more of the same, in mostly a good way (see my previous note about the girls in danger). Will and Kim's dynamic reminds me a bit of Holmes and Watson's, except Kim is not significantly smarter than Will and Will doesn't go around all "wowzers!!" all starry-eyed. Both men have their strengths and weaknesses that complement each other. Kim is better at smooth-talking and intrigue, while Will would rather choose violence, plus he's good at fighting and doing the right thing when Kim would rather take the easy way out. It made me sad to finish this book; I wanted more!! Psst KJ Charles, please write a companion trilogy from the girls' point of view, and/or a continuation trilogy set right after the boys' POV books. I want to hang out more with all the characters. Spoilers, highlight to read: unsurprisingly to me and my gay goggles, Maisie and Phoebe pair up together too, which made me happy. But they basically just tell the boys and the reader. I wanted more build-up, more details like the boys' relationship got!

Anyway, I loved this trilogy and wish it were a series of 45 books instead. Read them if you like the aforementioned genres and don't mind books with spice/s3x scenes.

Cover notes: I like the book covers, although I hate the (not even historically correct) sideburns the artist gave Kim. Lmao at Will holding his knife in each one. Very cool and perfect font. The Sugared Game's cover is my favorite.

Score: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: February 19-23
From: Barnes & Noble (Nook)
Status: keeping

See my aesthetics moodboard for the Will Darling Adventures!

Representation: bisexual main character and side character, gay character/love interest, lesbian side character, Black side character, veteran with PTSD

Trigger warnings: murder, death, gore, violence, torture, gun violence, war-related violence, trench warfare mentions, kidnapping, rape threats, murder threats, veteran with PTSD, period-typical homophobia, period-typical racism, period-typical misogyny and sexism, a character self-harmed in the past, self-harm scars, drug mentions (heroin), suicide mentions, 1918 flu pandemic mentions, infectious disease bioweapon mention, emotional and physical abuse of child (past), homelessness mentions, poverty, hunger, miscarriage mention (past, vague), period-typical classism, vomiting, an elderly character died from a stroke off-page, probably other stuff. KJ Charles has kindly included lists of content warnings for her books on her website!

*do not exist

**it was literally illegal to be gay in 1920s England. Men could be sent to jail for having gay s3x. See Oscar Wilde's Wikipedia page. RIP Kim and Will you would have loved pride