Books shelved under “Romance”

Sometimes truth is more interesting than fiction. Sometimes fictionalizing the truth—books based on a true story, if you will—helps highlight true stories that have yet to receive their due. History is seldom boring. The Rose Code is that type of historical fiction. Set primarily in Bletchley Park during the Second World War, this book is not about the genius of Alan Turing or Dilly Knox. It’s about love and sex and betrayal. Kate Quinn follows…

What if you could take your feelings of sorrow, hurt, grief, loss, etc., and surrender them up? And if, in turn, the person to whom you surrendered these feelings could use them to nourish a beautiful, if capricious, garden? That’s what In the Shadow Garden explores. Liz Parker’s dark romance thriller, set in a small town in Kentucky, is about what we do with our worst memories. But it’s also about friendship, family, and who…

I was somewhat skeptical about this book going into it simply because of how it was marketed as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare retellings can be hit-and-miss. Thankfully, These Violent Delights is a hit! Chloe Gong takes the broad strokes of Romeo and Juliet but adapts the story quite heavily. There are some subtle nods (like a bar named Mantua) and some really nice set pieces (like the mistaken-for-dead moment) that Gong…

I love it when I take a chance on a book and it pays off. I knew nothing about Freya Marske or this novel, A Marvellous Light, but the description was sufficient to persuade me to buy it. No regrets. This Edwardian fantasy novel about magicians, with a gay romance and plenty of class and family drama, is a perfect spring read (or indeed, a perfect read for any season). Marske takes a mystery…

Duo M.A. Carrick’s The Mask of Mirrors was far-and-away one of my favourite books of 2021. It was such an original, interesting fantasy novel! So I pre-ordered The Liar’s Knot with much anticipation, though as usual I didn’t actually get to reading it until now! That delay did not dampen my excitement, nor did Carrick disappoint me. There is no second book syndrome here, folx.

The Liar’s Knot picks up shortly after the end…

The multiverse is a weird and wonderful concept. It’s actually several concepts stacked on top of one another wearing a trenchcoat. In One Verse Multi, Sander Santiago plays with some of those concepts to create a universe-hopping mystery involving polyamorous love interests, evil corporate aspirations, and dramatic confrontations. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this book, and I don’t think I could have predicted what I got. I wish I had…

Don’t you just love when you read a book and it makes your heart feel so incredibly full? That was my experience with The Midnight Bargain. While C.L. Polk’s earlier Kingston Cycle was captivating, The Midnight Bargain was an absolutely sublime balance of magic, romance, social justice, and more. I say this as someone who is not particularly keen on romantic plots! I loved nearly everything about this book, from its characters to its…

Been a while since I read a new Thomas Hardy novel, mostly because I try to pick them up in gently used editions from my local used bookstore! I think I have read all of his most well-known novels now and have just a few less celebrated ones, along with collections of short stories, left. A Pair of Blue Eyes is not Hardy’s first novel, but it is an early one and the first to…

Do not let the slim form factor and thinness of this book fool you. Sara Farizan poses a thorny problem here and asks very real questions about the lengths to which one might go to be with one’s forbidden love. Ultimately a tragedy of sorts, If You Could Be Mine is nevertheless filled with promises of new beginnings. It is a reminder that, in the face of incredible oppression, people always find a way to…

Every so often I just love to put myself through the experience that is reading the sequel to a book I read nearly 6 years ago! That is the case with The Crown’s Fate, which picks off where The Crown’s Game left off. Somehow, that first book and the description of this one were enough to keep it on my to-read list after a massive purge I did shortly after joining the StoryGraph. Then…

Not sure what my record is for “longest time between book and its sequel,” but Prototype might be the holder. I read Archetype over 6 years ago. Since then, this sequel has sat on my to-read list, never quite making it to my bookshelf. Until now! I recently conducted a joyous purge of my to-read list as part of migrating it to The StoryGraph—somehow, Prototype made the cut, but I was galvanized to finally borrow…

I’ll give this book credit for getting me out of my reading slump that I fell into at the beginning of the year. I read Felix Ever After in a day! Kacen Callender made me feel very invested in Felix’s story. Though I wouldn’t call this a “light” YA read by any stretch of the imagination, there is a lot in here that is humourous to balance out the more serious parts. In particular, Callender…

Mirage reminds me, in a good and less racist way, of Dune. I wish I had liked it more, because honestly this is the type of science fiction I want more of: science fiction that might be set in space and in the future, sure, but that focuses more on the intrigue and relationships than on the tech and whizz-bang special effects, and in a way that centres people of colour. Mirage does…

Two years ago I picked up, on a whim, Sarah-Jane Stratford’s Radio Girls, and I fell in love. The book was the perfect blend of history, politics, and feminism. I’m pleased to say that with Red Letter Days, Stratford has done it again. While the protagonists share some superficial qualities—both move from North America to Britain, both work in communications industries in some capacity, both become somewhat embroiled in espionage and skullduggery—Stratford has…

Every so often, I consider dropping the star ratings from my reviews. After all, ratings are a convention, not a requirement. Novels like A Suitable Boy confound the one-dimensionality of a 5-star rating system and leave me stymied. This is a 5-star novel. It is also a 1-star novel. Do I split the difference, give it 3 stars? Or do I depart from tradition and leave it unrated? You already know the answer, of course,…

Ever wondered, “What would Jane Eyre have been like if Jane Eyre had been a serial killer?” That’s the basic premise of Jane Steele, although if I’m being honest, the serial killer aspect was not as intense as I had thought it would be. As a feminist retelling of Jane Eyre this book leaves much to be desired. However, as a kind of mystery/thriller/romance, Jane Steele is a lot of fun. I came to…

I first read and reviewed Middlemarch in 2009, so you can read my first review if you like. This review will reiterate some of the points of my earlier review, but enough time has passed and I have changed enough that I definitely took different things from this book this time. Nevertheless, still a classic and a masterpiece.

Middlemarch is a sublime example of Victorian authors recognizing and attempting to chronicle a disappearing lifestyle. Eliot…

Like so many time-travel stories, This Is How You Lose the Time War is frustratingly, endearingly, eerily beautiful. It takes a special kind of talent to write time travel well—you need not only that non-linear perspective that many writers find necessary even for linear plots, but you also require a certain level of sheer, Lewis Carroll-like madness to conceive of a multiverse so vastly alternative to our tiny slice, or strand. Amal El-Mohtar and Max…

I’m slowly working my way through my Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry backlog from back when I had a subscription to every book they published. Anna Kashina’s name was familiar: turns out I read a similarly named Shadowblade that also features cool sexy sword-wielding ladies. I’m not saying these books are clones, but yeah … Kashina has a theme here.

In Blades of the Old Empire, an ancient enemy has returned and has an outsized interest…

This is one of those books where you kind of like it but also kind of don’t like it, and you're low-key impressed you don’t actively hate it? Yeah, I think that's what this is. Stolen Songbird is a hot mess of paradox: the plot is straightforward but also convoluted; the romance is broken but also kind of believable; the main character is annoying but also grew on me. I liked it enough that I…