(no subject)

[skygiants]

SCENE: MY OFFICE, LAST WEEK

COWORKER A: [makes some comment mostly unrelated to Edwardian house parties]
ME: Ah, just like an Edwardian house party!
COWORKER B: [popping up from the cubicle] I just read a book about an Edwardian house party! It was really good!
ME: ...was it by K.J. Charles and about lesbians -
COWORKER B: It was by K.J. Charles and about lesbians!

So on my last work trip I read Proper English, K.J. Charles' loving lesbian homage to the country house mystery (a prequel to Think of England, another loving homage to the country house mystery, but with more espionage). It's very sweet! Unlike the standard dual-POV romance, Charles spends the whole book in the head of Fen, a sensible outdoorsy Confirmed Bachelorette who has been invited to a nice hunting-party with her brother and his best friend, and is dismayed to find a whole host of other people have somehow or other been included, including, among others, the best friend's unhappy sister, terrible brother-in-law, and sweet serial-engagement-breaking fiancee.

(Sidenote: I spend a lot of time when reading about Edwardian house parties thinking about how stressful and dull they sound, and then I remember I spent three days this past week in a cabin in Maine with some close friends, and, okay, that also is a house part, and it's great. But at such gatherings I never have to deal with random unpleasant strangers who invited themselves!)

Anyway, various people fall in love, and all the mismatched romances and the murder mystery sort themselves out with a maximum of supportiveness and a surprising minimum of stress, and it's all very pleasant and I enjoyed it, but I also look forward to the first time K.J. Charles decides to write a lesbian romance with as much high drama and tension and energy as, for example, A Seditious Affair or An Unnatural Vice. Or Any Old Diamonds, which I also recently read!

Any Old Diamonds is another single-POV story, and also it is a heist story, about a young late Victorian lordlet who hires jewel thieves to steal a diamond necklace from his terrible father, and then also starts banging one of them. There are twists! There are turns! There are complicated family dynamics and surprise identity reveals! There is ... probably not enough emotional fallout from any of that, at the end, but I still found it an extremely enjoyable read.

Personally I did not like as well Band Sinister, which is probably the fluffiest K.J. Charles I have yet read, and certainly a good book for people who like their romances very fluffy! For me, it was helpful in realizing that, much as with mattresses, there's a level of soft that is just a little Too Soft for me. Anyway this one is Regency and involves a naive young pair of siblings who, for plot reasons, have to spend an extended period of time at the house of their nemesis, the local polyamorous rake. Fortunately it takes very little time for the naive young closeted gay gentleman to overcome most of his inborn prejudices and decide he's up for some romance, and for the local polyamorous rake to discover that he likes nothing better than being very gentle to naive but enthusiastic young gentlemen, and for the back half of the book the conflict is largely external and involves an aggressive aunt.

Comments

[skygiants]

Spectred Isle is one of the ones I've not read yet so I don't know anything about Last Couple in Hell! but just from this mention I'm STOKED.

[aurumcalendula]

Here's the blurb that has me excited:

THERESA GLYDE WAS ONCE a Green Man, guardian of one of England’s crucial magical sites. Now she’s dead, but that’s no excuse for lazing about. She has vital work to do, if only she can get back to the right side of reality. And that means finding someone she can use—with a willing body, a suitable mind, and an awful lot of nerve.

Joanie Robey has a London deity’s blood in her veins, and a lifelong acquaintance with the strange, the unnatural, and the scary. She also has a perfectly good job as an artists’ model and no interest in being possessed by a ghost. Particularly not an upper-class party girl who’s having far too much fun being in a body again.

But the Green Men are dangerously overstretched. The veil that protects reality is slowly, steadily tearing, and now something is mounting an attack on London’s occult protections. Joanie and Theresa must learn to cope with their forced intimacy—and their growing attraction to each other. Because the fragile bond between the goddess and the ghost may be England’s last line of defence.

[kore]

Is there still no pub date? WOE.

[aurumcalendula]

I think it's still being written (going by how she mentions having difficulty writing political disaster fiction in the middle of a political disaster when she was on Heather Rose Jones' podcast)?

[kore]

//tries to be understanding and patient

(OMG I WANT IT SO BAD) (also an Isle sequel with the dudes kthnx)

[aurumcalendula]

SAME!

[sovay]

(OMG I WANT IT SO BAD) (also an Isle sequel with the dudes kthnx)

ALSO SAME.

[sovay]

Spectred Isle is one of the ones I've not read yet so I don't know anything about Last Couple in Hell!

I loved Spectred Isle for screamingly obvious reasons and am also doing a bad job of waiting patiently for Last Couple in Hell.