fffriday | Entries tagged with genre: contemporary

I listened to the audiobook for this, which was pretty short (3 hours and 20 minutes). I really enjoyed it! It's definitely a light read, not an epic sprawling romance, but was very sweet and still managed to have a fair amount of emotional depth.

My understanding is this book is a spin-off of the author's heterosexual romance A Princess in Theory, in which an undercover prince (from a fictional African country) falls in love with an ordinary American woman. The main characters of Once Ghosted, Twice Shy are said prince's sexy butch assistant (Likotsi) and an unrelated femme second-generation Haitian-American (Fabiola).

I really liked each of the main characters and their dynamic-- one of the most important aspects of romances for me!-- which I was worried might be lacking when I found out it was a spin-off. In retrospect maybe that was silly of me... so often the side characters in books are my faves!

I also thought the backgrounds of the characters were really well done. I appreciated that there's a bit of culture clash between the two leads without it being a painful aspect of their relationship, and I was very impressed with how Fabiola's background informed her character and the story without defining her. As the child of an immigrant I find that a lot of stories fail to hit that balance for me-- either it's not present at all (fine, but of course it feels nice to see my experiences Represented) or it completely takes over to the point where it's unpleasant to read or otherwise not what I'm looking for in a casual read.

To me Once Ghosted, Twice Shy had the perfect balance of all that. Although I have very little in common with Fabiola, details in her experience from the immigrant-family perspective let me connect with her in a refreshing way, and definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the book.

There's some edits I would have made personally (I thought the opening could have been a little stronger; I didn't like some language choices, such as always referring to "the dating app" on which they met) but felt very satisfied by the time I finished the whole thing.

I really liked listening to the audiobook; I think the narrator not only had a very nice voice, but also did a great job conveying the two characters without going over the top. The two leads also have different accents which I could imagine would be harder to envision if you were just reading it. That being said, there were spicy parts of the book which I didn't realize going in, which came close to being an embarrassing surprise as I was not wearing headphones!

Recommended for:

people that think they'll enjoy a well-contained, thoughtful short story that focuses on a specific window of time in a romantic arc
people that like realistic portrayals of two competent, likable adults working out a relationship together
people that like butch/femme relationships with a very balanced dynamic
people that like when femmes top and butches bottom
people that enjoy representations of inter-cultural relationships and/or second-generation American experiences

Not recommended for:

people that want an epic sprawling romance
people that primarily want problematic/taboo elements in their romance/erotica
people that may be triggered by descriptions of the unjust treatment of immigrants in the United States

hebethen

Happy Femslash February, folks! Long time no post. I haven't been through the entire CHEx collection, but I can feel my energy plummeting due to life/work reasons, so I figured better to post recs from what I've seen even if it's not comprehensive! All of these are rated T or below; there are others that I enjoyed but these were my favorite four out of all of them. (I suppose favorite five would have also worked for alliterative purposes, but four is more symmetrical.)

Two original work recs:
moth and flame have a sweetheart deal (fantasy, guard/princess, ~1.9k)
Pining is a way to put it, but not just in the saccharine way of crushes and romantic longings -- pining for freedom, clarity, leverage. It lets the characters be jagged and brutal and sympathetic, which makes them matter.

Space Aliens! On an Adventure with Pirates (contemporary, actor/stunt person, ~1.8k)
A fluffy little kinda-meet-cute with really excellent dialogue between charmingly nerdy craftspeople.

And two fanwork recs:
Who Could Ask For Anything More? (Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, Josefina/Misty, ~3.4k)
An achingly beautiful sequence that brings life to (a sliver of) Rowan's past as well as the tragedy of her firework-glittering affair with Josefina.

As the Ocean Courts the Strand (Fallen London, Hephaesta/Pirate Poet, ~300)
A short, resonantly poetic snippet that perfectly captures the tone of the source material; it wouldn't be out of place in a Sunless game.

el_staplador

Published in 2007 (the year in which I last travelled by plane, incidentally), this is a complicated romance between an Irish-Asian flight attendant and a Canadian museum archivist. And, while I've been doing a lot of escapist travel reading throughout the pandemic, I wouldn't say that this was a book to induce wanderlust: it's too clear-sighted about the trials of travel, and of being in love with someone who's thousands of miles away. Though there's a real affection for the real Ireland and for the fictional 'Ireland, Ontario' I didn't find myself planning an expedition, the way I have with some other places.

I could add all sorts of tropey genre tags - long distance relationship, age gap romance, opposites attract - but they wouldn't come close to conveying the depth of the novel. I would want to say that all of them add up to make for two interesting, complex characters. (And the supporting cast on both sides of the Atlantic deserves a mention, too: from the stoner ex-husband to the obnoxiously precocious god-daughter.) I wasn't convinced that their relationship was going to last beyond the end of the book, but watching it get as far as it did was fascinating.

el_staplador

This was a really intriguing premise - a researcher sets out to discover the identity and story of two women whose frozen bodies are discovered on Mont Blanc 90 years after their disappearance. They're established quite early on to have been a couple and the narrator identifies (over-identifies?) with them and their struggle to be taken seriously in a man's world.

Unfortunately, it didn't work for me as it stood. Despite a valiant effort by the narrator, I never got far enough into the climbers' heads to be able to see their attempt - unassisted, with unconvincing preparation, and in uncertain weather - as heroic rather than foolhardy. (And that in itself made me doubt the historian's credentials...)

It also had the issue I've noticed in a few historical novels recently: a failure to mix in the (obviously thorough) research sufficiently, resulting in an unconvincing portrayal of the past which had one of the women explaining the recent developments of the suffrage movement in a love letter.

I think I'd either have preferred it twice the length, with room to dig into both couples' stories and personalities, or as a pure historical, removing the distance between Ruth and Cat and their objective. And either way, it needed a more thorough edit than it got.

el_staplador

This is a short book - 130 pages in my edition - and very readable, in a compulsive, car crash kind of a way. We follow an unnamed narrator on a move to the city and through a destructive relationship with Finn, an older woman (who has a girlfriend who's often mentioned but never appears). It's a fragmented, sometimes incoherent, narrative, though it has a very strong sense of direction.

It was well-written, but sharp and rather sneering; I think I'm glad it wasn't very much longer, because I wouldn't have wanted to spend much more time with these characters.

rmc28

On my own journal I've reviewed Undulterated Something by M.J. Duncan, a romance between two former international ice hockey rivals.

Last weekend I was inspired to go looking for f/f ice hockey romance, and discovered it is sadly nowhere near as abundant as m/m. I found five books in total, all fairly expensive as romance ebooks go. Unadulterated Something was the only one in KU, which is why it got read first.

Anyway, as it seems f/f ice hockey is so very niche, I'd greatly appreciate recs for f/f sporting rivalry romances in any sport!

el_staplador

Once Ghosted, Twice Shy - Alyssa Cole

This is a novella in Cole's Reluctant Royals series, centred on Likotsi, assistant to the crown prince of Thesolo. The action, however, takes place in New York, where Likotsi has run into the woman with whom she had a brief relationship some months previously. We follow both the previous relationship and the current one. After flipping between the two timelines for a few chapters, it settles into the later one, moving from 'what happened' to 'what happens next'.

This was a gentle story about rebuilding broken trust, with some lovely details of food, New York, and, most particularly, clothes.

The other two both feature Episcopalian priests as one half of the central couple.

This Is My Body - Elena Graf

The priest in this one is also a former opera singer, so overall this might have been designed specifically to appeal to me. The other main character is a professor of philosophy. There were traumatic backstories on both sides ( spoilers ) which sometimes seemed a little heavy for the narrative to bear.

While I thought this had some pacing issues (it seemed ready to wrap up at the half way point, when an unsignalled twist was unceremoniously dropped in), and I wasn't entirely comfortable with the resolution, this was an enjoyable romance. Nice to see slightly older characters in the limelight, too.

Bobbi and Soul - J. B. Marsden

I was interested to read that the author is a former priest herself - so I assume that the church details are accurate! The other main character is a doctor. I enjoyed the rural Colorado setting. This was, I think, less ambitious than This Is My Body, but possibly more successful as a result. Only one traumatic backstory here (( spoiler ) in this case).

Both of these were the second book in a series, but worked perfectly well as standalones.

el_staplador

More from my Bookcrossing haul:

Sing You Home - Jodi Picoult

Another of Picoult's 'ethical dilemma' novels, this one featuring a custody battle over some frozen embryos - with the debate being over whether they should be implanted in the uterus of the ex-wife's new partner, or that of the ex-husband's sister-in-law.

The first half of the book seemed a bit of a colour-by-numbers coming out story, with all the stock points about 'not like kissing a man' etc turning up right on cue. (Maybe I read too much fanfic.) However, it picked up considerably when it got to the courtroom drama part of the book, which I think is where Picoult's strengths lie, and it has a satisfying ending.

I was uncomfortable with the use of the old 'but shellfish!!!' rebuttal of Leviticus, which skirts a bit close to the antisemitism line for me, and I have to confess that I skimmed over some of the debates altogether, having heard them all before. I was less than impressed by the egregious bisexual erasure (not one mention of the word in the entire book, despite the main character having significant relationships on page with a man and then a woman).

Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology - ed. Joamette Gil

Does what it says on the tin, really: a delightful and varied collection of comics featuring queer witches, with a lovely diverse range of settings, styles, characters, and creators. I'm not a great comics reader so am probably missing some of the subtleties, but it made for a very enjoyable afternoon's reading.

These Witches Don't Burn - Isabel Sterling

A young adult novel set in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts. The narrator is a seventeen year old witch; so are her parents; so is her ex-girlfriend; and someone's out to get her.

It went darker than I was expecting (possibly the animal sacrifice in the first chapter should have given me a clue): this is a world where the worst can and does happen, and there's only so much you can do about it. Actually, it reminded me a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - this time without the bisexual erasure. In fact, there was quite a range of sexual and gender diversity.

It's clearly setting itself up to be the first in a series, and I'm not sure that it needs to be: I don't feel any particular urge to find out what happens next, and I'd have preferred to have the last loose end tied up to make a satisfying standalone.

I think I need a break from first person present tense now, though, after the Picoult and the Sterling.

el_staplador

Actually, two and a half. Nitpicky reviews follow:

Outlaw was a free download from Niamh Murphy's site (which currently isn't loading for me). It's a retelling of the Robin Hood legend with a female Robin. Or, this case, Robyn. I could just about buy the idea of 'Robyn of Loxley' being an example of the Tiffany Problem, medieval spelling and all that, but I think I'd have preferred 'Roberta' or something. However, this was only one of a number of details that felt off - others included inappropriate use and conjugation of the second person singular, along with some questionable accent/dialect choices, and the statement that Robyn had fasted on saints' days - all of which threw me out of the action from time to time.

The action establishes the outlaw set-up and introduces Robyn, Marian, and Little John. It's very much the first in a series, and the f/f content is very slight - no doubt there'll be more in later books.

The Midnight Couch by Jae was another free download. This was a pretty straightforward contemporary story, in which the protagonist is a radio technician with a crush on the station's resident agony aunt. Fairly predictable, but none the less sweet.

DNF The Girl With Two Hearts (T. T. Thomas), which I think was going to be a historical fantasy. I find that the author did do the research as far as royal use of Gosport went, but the dialogue was very clunky and unconvincing, there was only the haziest idea of even fin-de-siècle mores (I can believe the heroine wears make-up by way of a disguise - I can't believe her sister approves of it and then introduces her to their brother as a 'theatre friend'!), and I gave up when the Victorian motorcycle gang showed up.

rachelmanija

A sweet and extremely relatable F/F second-chance romance by the author of Briarley, reviewed on my DW: Ashlin & Olivia.

kore

I reviewed Aster Glenn Gray's Ashlin & Olivia (spoiler: I LOVED it).

el_staplador

Published in 1989, this is a very early Val McDermid - her second, in fact. Reporter Lindsay Gordon is covering news of an assault case at the Brownlow Common peace camp (a thinly disguised Greenham Common) - which is overtaken when the victim of the assault becomes a victim of murder.

This was a diverting murder mystery which veered off into sensationalist spy thriller territory towards the end (I wasn't complaining; I like spy thrillers!) but it was just as absorbing as a reflection of the world of journalism and the politics and preoccupations of the 1980s.

McDermid's observation of the crossover between different groups, and the fault lines within groups, is very sharp, and the way she portrays the uncomfortable sense that one isn't doing enough for the cause of the moment feels just as relevant today. Lindsay, on the edge of two worlds as a self-described hack in a relationship with the highbrow writer Cordelia as much as in her compromised dealings with press, police, and protesters, makes a convincing character. I loved the depiction of lesbian subculture (one character runs a restaurant called 'Rubyfruits') and the casual assumption that the reader will find their way around it (recognising the jargon puts them ahead of at least one plot development).

While I'm here, honourable mention to The Birthday Party (Veronica Henry), which was a novel with several plot strands following the personal meltdowns of a family of celebrities. One of the daughters finds herself in what looks like it's going to be a 'lesbian for attention' relationship, but which ends up becoming something more sincere.

Every now and then I have a whinge about how heteronormative mainstream novels are, so it was nice to see a F/F relationship included in one. There were a few moments that made me wince a little, but generally speaking I was pleasantly impressed by the nuance with which this was treated.

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FF Friday

Entries tagged with genre: contemporary

Once Ghosted, Twice Shy

Candy Hearts recs!

Landing (Emma Donoghue)

Turn Again To Life (A. Zukowski)

Women (Chloe Caldwell)

f/f sports romance

I keep forgetting it's Friday

Three reviews

Three Friday freebies

Ashlin & Olivia, by Aster Glenn Gray

Ashlin & Olivia (2019)

Common Murder (Val McDermid)

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May 2025

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