The transcript for Podcast 364. Love, Romance, and Beautiful Friendships: Melody and Erin from Heaving Bosoms Podcast has been posted!

This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.

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Welcome to Book Beat! Think of Book Beat as Hide Your Wallet, Part Two!

In Hide Your Wallet, we talk about books coming out in a particular month that we really want to read. But there’s more to good books than just new releases!

Book Beat aims to highlight other books that we may hear about through friends, social media, or other sources. We could see a gorgeous ad! Or find a new-to-us author on a list of underrated romances! Think of Book Beat as Teen Beat or Tiger Beat, but for books. And no staples to open to get the fold-out poster.

Briarley

Author: Aster Glenn Gray
Released: May 5, 2018
Genre: Historical: European, LGBT, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy

An m/m World War II-era retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

During a chance summer shower, an English country parson takes refuge in a country house. The house seems deserted, yet the table is laid with a sumptuous banquet such as the parson has not seen since before war rationing.

Unnerved by the uncanny house, he flees, but stops to pluck a single perfect rose from the garden for his daughter – only for the master of the house to appear, breathing fire with rage. Literally.

At first, the parson can’t stand this dragon-man. But slowly, he begins to feel the injustice of the curse that holds the dragon captive. What can break this vengeful curse?

Source: @normajeansays on Twitter

Beauty and the Beast retelling. But the beast is a dragon and the beauty is Belle’s dad.

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Find buy links for this book here..

 

 

 

The Nocturnal Brain

Author: Dr. Guy Leschziner
Released: July 23, 2019 by St. Martin's Press
Genre: Nonfiction

For Dr. Guy Leschziner’s patients, there is no rest for the weary in mind and body. Insomnia, narcolepsy, night terrors, sleep apnea, and sleepwalking are just a sampling of conditions afflicting sufferers who cannot sleep–and their experiences in trying are the stuff of nightmares. Demoniac hallucinations frighten people into paralysis. Restless legs rock both the sleepless and their sleeping partners with unpredictable and uncontrollable kicking. Out-of-sync circadian rhythms confuse the natural body clock’s days and nights.

Then there are the extreme cases. A woman in a state of deep sleep who gets dressed, unlocks her car, and drives for several miles before returning to bed. The man who has spent decades cleaning out kitchens while “sleep-eating.” The teenager prone to the serious, yet unfortunately nicknamed “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome” stuck in a cycle of excessive unconsciousness, binge eating, and uncharacteristic displays of aggression and hyper-sexuality while awake.

With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr. Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health, but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.

Source: @StMartinsPress on Instagram

This came across my personal feed and, as someone who deals with a variety of sleep issues, I’m really curious about this book.

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Find buy links for this book here..

 

 

 

Tarnished Are the Stars

Author: Rosiee Thor
Released: October 15, 2019 by Scholastic Press
Genre: LGBT, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult

A secret beats inside Anna Thatcher’s chest: An illegal clockwork heart. Anna works cog by cog — donning the moniker Technician — to supply black market medical technology to the sick and injured, against the Commissioner’s tyrannical laws.

Nathaniel Fremont, the Commissioner’s son, has never had to fear the law. Determined to earn his father’s respect, Nathaniel sets out to capture the Technician. But the more he learns about the outlaw, the more he questions whether his father’s elusive affection is worth chasing at all.

Their game of cat and mouse takes an abrupt turn when Eliza, a skilled assassin and spy, arrives. Her mission is to learn the Commissioner’s secrets at any cost — even if it means betraying her own heart.

When these uneasy allies discover the most dangerous secret of all, they must work together despite their differences and put an end to a deadly epidemic — before the Commissioner ends them first.

Source: @RosieeThor on Twitter

“Tall sapphic energy.”

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Want this book? We can help: buy links ahoy!.

 

 

 

Your Heart Only

Author: Elysabeth Grace
Released: July 30, 2019
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Series: Midsummer Sisters #1

It was meant to be a one-night stand, a one and done. However, as Marisa Price and Aidan Graywolf discover, life never plays fair.

Marisa’s academic career is about to soar with the discovery of secret letters handed down through her family telling of a love affair between Shakespeare and his black mistress. A divorce has left Marisa with trust issues and her personal life void of romantic entanglements, which suits her just fine. At least that’s what she believes until the day Aidan knocks on her door.

When Aidan arrives at Marisa’s doorstep to claim his daughter he realizes she isn’t the only reason he’s there. He’s come to claim her mother’s heart as well. Marisa’s proposal of a marriage of convenience with a surprise celibacy clause is unexpected, and gives him an opening he needs to begin his campaign. For Aidan, nothing short of winning Marisa’s love will do.

Can proximity and an unforgettable passion help this pair overcome the past to find true love? Or, did Shakespeare get it all wrong?

CW: sensuous, domestic abuse survivor, some physical violence

Source: @Elysabethgrace on Twitter

Main character is a Black Shakespearean scholar!

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Want to order this one? We’ve got the links you need!.

 

 

 

This HaBO request is from Jessie, who is looking for a contemporary romance that was published in the last decade:

I’m looking for a book that I read within the last 10 years. I think it was a fairly contemporary book. I’m 99% sure I read it on my Kindle, so I don’t know what the cover looks like.

The heroine owns a soap (or maybe toiletries in general) store in a city (probably New York City). Something happens and the business is in trouble, or maybe even is forced to close. For some reason, the solution to her problems is to marry (or maybe just get engaged to) some guy and move with him to a house in Connecticut for a year. I don’t think she likes or maybe even knows the guy, but he needs this marriage/engagement for some reason too – maybe in order to actually inherit the house or some money?

Once in Connecticut, she has a really hard time fitting in. All the other wives she is supposed to interact with dress very conservatively (lots of navy and plaid and pearls) and she doesn’t. She also maybe has trouble fitting in with his family? Over the year, they actually fall in love with each other, but misunderstandings get in the way. I don’t remember any explicit sex scenes.

Quite the setup for a contemporary romance!

This HaBO comes from Alex, who might be looking for an older romantic suspense or a contemporary with suspense elements:

I read this book years ago when I was about 15, all the way back in 1991/92 so we’re really going back a bit.

The heroine is an investigative reporter, very good at her job but gets kidnapped/serious trauma (sorry that bit is vague). Then the guy she’s had a previous fling with offers her his cabin and nurses her back to health. Obviously they end up in bed again, but she’s determined not to commit.

He wasn’t your classic 80s alpha (I’m almost 99% sure it was written in the 80s) and was quietly determined to love her. He doesn’t get angry when she leaves, just says I’m here for you when you’re ready. She literally gets to the driveway and realises she loves him too!

It was a Mills and Boon, but I’ve no idea what category; it was so long ago. My best friend was given a shoe box full of Mills and Boon by her Nanna and we DEVOURED them. I’ve checked Carole Mortimer’s and Nora Roberts’ backlist, as they were writing back then, but it’s not either of them. I’ve always remembered it because my 15 year old self loved the hero’s non alpha-ness, especially when most of those other 80s M&B were absolutely chock full of alpha male bosses, who resented the heroine for making them feel feelings!

Does anyone recognize this one?

This month’s Romance Wanderlust goes out to all of you 1980’s teens who went out late at night and threw things at a movie screen. The castle from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is now a luxury hotel. It probably doesn’t have phone though because, as everyone who went to the movie knows, castles don’t have phones.

In case anyone missed it, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS) is a movie from 1975 starring Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon, among others. By the 1980s it was a beloved cult movie and teens such as myself would go see cheap midnight showings at which some people would dress up and perform the movie in front of the screen and the audience would scream various responses to the lines being spoken or sung (it’s a musical). I feel completely unequipped to judge the movie in any kind of rational way by the (much improved) standards of today but I can tell you that it’s problematic as hell. Still, for many of us at the time, RHPS was a positive, liberating, coming-of-age experience and the thought of staying at the castle (CASTLES STILL DON’T HAVE PHONES) makes me a little woozy.

Oakley Court describes itself as “The Quintessential Country House” which suggests that either all the RHPS props are gone or else England is a stranger place than I thought. It’s a Victorian Era country house in Berkshire on the banks of the Thames. As you can see from all the crenellations, it’s superduper gothic, which is why it was also the set of many Hammer Horror films including The Brides of Dracula.

Note to self – pack gauzy white nightie.

When Susan Sarandon was in RHPS, Oakley Court was in such bad shape that she got pneumonia (she spends almost the whole movie in her underwear). I’m pleased to report that the building is all fixed up now so you can wander around in your underwear all you want, hardy harrr harrr. The rooms look spacious and lovely and include lab coats bathrobes. The mansion suites are the ones that are part of the original structure and have views of the river.

It’s all very wholesome and romantic but I must point out that in addition to these wholesome features there exists an ULTIMATE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW EXPERIENCE. This experience “includes dinner.” We can only hope that it’s not Meatloaf again. Also there’s an annual Time Warp Picnic featuring a screening of the film inside the castle. Interstellar travel not included.

For less R-Rated entertainment try afternoon tea while floating down the Thames as part of the Live and Unwind Festival. Other special events include fun Christmas treats and onsite dining and tea. Dogs and kids are allowed and the hotel seems to work hard at being a fun destination for adults and kids with river activities, extensive grounds, biking, and a floor show.

As is always the case, this is neither a review nor an endorsement of the location. I haven’t been there – I’m just Googling, pensively, as my cats express their disapproval by stealing my luggage.

If you’ve been to Oakley Court, let us know! Tell us about it, Janet!

This scene from RHPS selected for the views of Oakley Court and the almost unique lack of any imagery that might get me into trouble.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to get a little bit personal in this column. Since I began knitting about ten years ago, I’ve used the craft to address my anxiety. Specifically I have PTSD, and I’ve found that certain anxiety-combatting techniques, like mindfulness, don’t always work well for me when I’m feeling panicked: I’m already hyper vigilant during an anxiety episode due to the trauma part of PTSD. Being mindful often makes that hyper-awareness worse. I needed a means of calming my mind without feeding into my hypervigilance. I never set out to knit to ease my anxiety. It was just a super cool side effect I didn’t expect it to have.

Knitting puts me into a meditative state. Some of it is the rhythmic movement and clicking of the needles. I’ve noticed that my breathing evens out and slows as I fall into the rhythm of my knitting. Some if it is due to the fact that both my hands are occupied, which keeps me from fidgeting. A lot of it is because knitting focuses my mind on something and prevents the hamster from running so hard he falls off the wheel.

In short, knitting slows my brain down and calms me.

A | BN | K | AB

So what does that have to do with knitting? Nothing, or so I thought. Since knitting is something I enjoy, I often found it distracted me from my pain (provided I wasn’t into too much pain to knit in the first place). It turns out the relationship between knitting and pain management is more profound.

Corkhill is a physiotherapist and developed a program of Therapeutic Knitting for some of her patients suffering from chronic pain. At first it was designed to help people who were isolated by chronic illness enter a group setting where they could socialize and also be creative. Corkhill noticed that the act of knitting itself seemed to have an impact on her patients’ pain.

Some of this has to do with spacial awareness:

As a physiotherapist specializing in neurological treatments, I was immediately interested in the nature of the movements [of knitting] and their potential impact on the brain. Physiotherapists have been using bilateral patterns of movement for the treatment of brain injury for years.

We tend to believe the information our brain gives us…but sometimes it comes to the wrong conclusions. Habitual behaviors or long-term illness can change your perception of the world–physically and psychologically. Those with long-term pain, for example, often have an altered perception of space. This can vary from limbs that feel a different shape or size to not being able to accurately gauge the space their body occupies. Similarly someone who is normally housebound can feel very unsafe in an open or crowded environment. The brain’s perception of reality isn’t necessarily accurate.

Okay, so what does that have to do with knitting, you ask?

Corkhill continues:

Knitting involves a complex bilateral, coordinated pattern of movements. This will require a lot of integration in your brain to fine tune the movements to enable your hands to work together in a precise way, which means your brain will be working quite hard.

The fact that these movements cross the midline of the body is interesting too–cross midline movements take up even more brain capacity.

The midline of the body is a significant reference point for the brain. Research is at an early stage, but crossing the midline can affect your perception of pain in a limb for example. It’s not fully understood why.

Performing a bilateral, coordinated pattern of movement across the midline of the body that you’re also looking at is a complicated process–it uses up a lot of brain capacity leaving it with less capacity to pay attention to other issues. Add in some counting plus an intricate knitting pattern and you use even more. A large number of narratives collected from knitters describe knitting as highly effective in distracting the brain’s attention, and you can take advantage of this to take control of your life.

Okay, so knitting increases our spacial awareness, helps distract from pain and anxiety, and there’s some science that suggest crossing the midline of your body is beneficial. That’s cool!

But wait! There’s more!

Studies in animals have shown that repetitive movement enhances the release of serotonin. Serotonin raises mood, but also it also calms and is an analgesic. People often instinctively engage in repetitive, rhythmic movement when they are stressed or traumatized. They are intuitively self-soothing as they rock, pace or tap.

I had already associated the repetitive movements of knitting with being soothing, but I’d never thought it could potentially be releasing serotonin as well.

Knit for Health and Wellness offers suggestions for Therapeutic Knitting, including modifications for people who have pain in their arms and hands, positioning for people with back pain, and advice on having a “quiet” knitting practice for when you need to relax and self-soothe, as well as joining a knitting group for socialization.

I do modify my knitting to accommodate my fibro. I often rest my elbows on pillows that I tuck on either side of me, which takes pressure off my shoulders. I also use an analgesic gel on my hands when they get achey.

One thing that wasn’t discussed in the book very much is all of the sensory input that comes from knitting. I love working with really, really soft yarns in vibrant colors. The sensation of the yarn in my hands and the color playing out across what I’m making feels uplifting and joyful.

Right now I’ve got a lot of stress to manage, and I’m taking periodic breaks to work on a Peace of Wild Things Shawl. I love knitting shawls, although I find them tricky to wear.

My shawl is in the stage where it’s lumpy and hard to photograph, but here’s a shot of the very beginning. The yarn is Hedgehog Fibres Skinny Singles in the colorway Hold Your Tongue. I got the shawl pin at my local little yarn store.

Now that I know knitting has some benefit to managing pain as well as anxiety, I’m going to pay more attention to how knitting makes me feel physically. I would imagine the benefits from knitting would also translate to other crafts with repetitive motions.

Are you a knitter or crafter? What benefits do you get from your hobby?

Amazon has a huge assortment of sci-fi and fantasy books today for their Kindle Daily Deals! Grab them while you can, but if you need help choosing, here are a few options below.

An Unkindness of Magicians

RECOMMENDED: An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard is $1.99 at Amazon! So far, this deal hasn’t been price-matched. I would recommended this if you’re in a “burn it all down” mood. The book is violent, graphic, and the characters experience racism, sexism, and the like. But the main character is a witch who essentially wants to dismantle the ruling magic party because they’re terrible. I loved this one.

There is a dark secret that is hiding at the heart of New York City and diminishing the city’s magicians’ power in this fantasy thriller by acclaimed author Kat Howard.

In New York City, magic controls everything. But the power of magic is fading. No one knows what is happening, except for Sydney—a new, rare magician with incredible power that has been unmatched in decades, and she may be the only person who is able to stop the darkness that is weakening the magic. But Sydney doesn’t want to help the system, she wants to destroy it.

Sydney comes from the House of Shadows, which controls the magic with the help of sacrifices from magicians.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

 

 

 

Firelight

Firelight by Kristen Callihan is $1.99! This is the first book in the Darkest London series, a series that I mostly enjoy. In the first three books, the heroine’s are sisters and I’d rank them in their chronological order. The third is my least favorite, namely because it contains a lot of tropes that aren’t my thing. However, I still have enjoyed what I’ve read thus far.

Once the flames are ignited . . .

Miranda Ellis is a woman tormented. Plagued since birth by a strange and powerful gift, she has spent her entire life struggling to control her exceptional abilities. Yet one innocent but irreversible mistake has left her family’s fortune decimated and forced her to wed London’s most nefarious nobleman.

They will burn for eternity . . .

Lord Benjamin Archer is no ordinary man. Doomed to hide his disfigured face behind masks, Archer knows it’s selfish to take Miranda as his bride. Yet he can’t help being drawn to the flame-haired beauty whose touch sparks a passion he hasn’t felt in a lifetime. When Archer is accused of a series of gruesome murders, he gives in to the beastly nature he has fought so hard to hide from the world. But the curse that haunts him cannot be denied. Now, to save his soul, Miranda will enter a world of dark magic and darker intrigue. For only she can see the man hiding behind the mask.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

 

 

 

Dragon Actually

Dragon Actually by G.A. Aiken is $1.99 at Amazon! This daily deal isn’t being price-matched just yet. This is the first book in the Dragon Kin series, which many praise for having kickass heroines. It also looks like the book has a new cover. I apparently read this book according to my Goodreads, but I remember next to nothing about it.

It’s not always easy being a female warrior with a nickname like Annwyl the Bloody. Men tend to either cower in fear – a lot – or else salute. It’s true that Annwyl has a knack for decapitating legions of her ruthless brother’s soldiers without pausing for breath. But just once it would be nice to be able to really talk to a man, the way, she can talk to Fearghus the Destroyer.

Too bad that Fearghus is a dragon, of the large, scaly and deadly type. With him, Annwyl feels safe – a far cry from the feelings aroused by the hard-bodied, arrogant knight Fearghus has arranged to help train her for battle. With her days spent fighting a man who fills her with fierce, heady desire, and her nights spent in the company of a magical creature who could smite a village just by exhaling, Annwyl is sure life couldn’t get any stranger. She’s wrong…

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

 

 

 

Zero Sum Game

RECOMMENDED: Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang is $2.99! This was previously self-pubbed, I believe, so you may have read this one. Carrie wrote a Lightning Review for this book and gave it a B+:

Zero Sum Game is an awesome, fast-paced, inventive science fiction thriller about a mercenary whose superpower is her ability to do complicated math almost instantly.

A blockbuster, near-future science fiction thriller, S.L. Huang’s Zero Sum Game introduces a math-genius mercenary who finds herself being manipulated by someone possessing unimaginable power…

Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good. The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she’ll take any job for the right price.

As far as Cas knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower…until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master.

Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she’s involved. There’s only one problem…

She doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

You can find ordering info for this book here.

 

 

 

I selected this cover for our latest caption contest because it generated a lot of discussion in the SBTB Slack chat. Thank you to Lara Diane for finding this gem.

I also desperately wanted to include the discussion, so you’re even getting a mini Cover Snark in here!

Tara: I’m hoping that’s a campfire pun.

Sneezy: What brand of dumbass can convince someone to take off their shirt when it’s that cold? Never mind everything else he should be wearing.

Shana: Does he have wings made of flannel! And all of his hair appears painted on. What’s the spray-on hair for bald spots called? That’s what this looks like.

Catherine: Is that his original head? I’m trying to work out how you wind up with more tan on your body than on your face, and now I’m picturing him wandering around shirtless but with a balaclava.

Lara Diane: I’m with Catherine. It can’t be his original head. The mismatch is so intense.

AJ: That guy does not know how to match his foundation.

Comment below with your caption! Caption that cover however you wish! You can come up with a new title or tagline. Does he really have flannel wings? Is he some angelic saint come to bestow a blessing for the holidays?

The best captioner will receive a $10 bookstore credit to a book retailer of their choosing.

Standard disclaimers apply: We are not being compensated for this giveaway. Void where prohibited. Open to international residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18. But seriously, keep your clothes on in cold weather and layer appropriately. Before you attempt to match your foundation, be sure to check your undertones! Comments will close Friday August 23, 2018 around noon ET, and a winner will be announced shortly thereafter.

CW/TW: Sexual harassment

Some of you know that I’ve been doing guest reviews here at SBTB for a couple of years. So when it came time to choose a book for my first review as an official part of the team, I knew it had to be this one. It’s my favourite book of all time and to read it is to know me, so what better way to introduce myself?

Jill “Friday” Fryman is stuck in the Heartland of America. She’s been working at Krylon Motors for twelve years and, even though she’s a line supervisor, she has no real authority. Far stupider men get to go much farther in the company, leaving Jill to wonder regularly what she’s doing with her life. Sure, she could finish her MBA, but where would she even put it to use in a town as small as Princeton, Indiana? And when would she have time anyway, between working full time, unwinding from the day’s bullshit with her best friends at their local bar of choice, Hoosier Daddy, and showing up for the occasional fish fry at the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) hall?

Krylon’s just been bought by Ogata Torakku of Indiana, though, so at least a change in management is in Jill’s future, and hopefully not for the worse. She and her colleagues aren’t the only ones who know change is on the horizon. A couple of United Automobile Workers (UAW) agitators show up in town, hoping to get 30% of Krylon’s workforce to give their signatures over so they can trigger a vote to unionize the plant.

One of the agitators is El, who Jill immediately notices is smart, funny, charming, and beautiful as all get-out. Even better, El is interested in her too, although Jill can’t fathom why. Their chemistry is instant and they barely try to fight it, even though they know a relationship between a union organizer and a line supervisor is a terrible idea. But isn’t it funny how sometimes bad ideas are actually the best ones of all?

The first time I read Hoosier Daddy, my heart almost exploded because I was struck by how well my experience and inner landscape was captured in Jill’s story and her surroundings. Princeton sounds a lot like the small town where I grew up, not far from Windsor, Ontario, which has long been hailed as the auto manufacturing capital of Canada. Drive for about 20 minutes from either Windsor or my parents’ house and you’ll reach corn fields, including those that used to belong to my grandparents.

Jill is Schrödinger’s Hoosier because she fits and doesn’t fit at all in Princeton, which is the other main point of connection for me with her because that’s exactly how I felt before I moved across the country. She’s surrounded by people she loves, like the grandmother who practically raised her and her best friends, Luanne and T-Bomb, but also people like her serial sexual harassing boss, Buzz Sheets, and Earl Jr, the totally oblivious dumbass who gets promoted over Jill, much to her friends’ disgust and frustration.

Because Hoosier Daddy is told in the first person by Jill, everyone is chronicled with love or a major side eye, depending on who they are. Luanne and T-Bomb especially are absolute treats, unafraid to give Jill the straight goods when she needs them (every time Luanne says “I got nothin’ to say, so I’ll just say this…”, she’s sure to drop a nugget of wisdom) or to poke fun at each other when the opportunity strikes. Scenes with them often left me chuckling, like when Luanne needs to head off to pick up her daughter’s dress for the beauty pageant on Pork Day USA (“the second most sacred day of the year in these parts”).

Luanne took a long drag off her cigarette. “I gotta head back across the river. Bessie Greathouse is comin’ by to let out the seams in Jailissa’s dress. I swear . . . that girl had to get them boobs from her daddy’s people.”

T-Bomb looked Luanne over. “Her daddy’s people must a had good legs, too.”

“Kiss my ass. I got these damn cankles from thirty years of standing up for ten hours a day.”

Speaking of people Jill cares about, El is also a major highlight of the story and I fell for her almost as quickly as Jill did. While I liked that she’s not afraid to go after Jill right from their first meeting, I was even more impressed by the way she respects and appreciates Jill, her life, and her family. For example, El’s invited to dinner at Grammy Mann’s super early in their relationship, and rather than getting antsy about it, she shows up and charms Grammy Mann just by being herself. El blows the lid off Jill’s tightly contained life, and Jill has to decide if she can finally accept that she deserves more than her current state of stagnation, including a woman who recognizes how amazing she is. It’s just… *chef’s kiss*.

I also want to note that El and Jill’s banter alone is worth showing up for, because it’s part of why I love rereading Hoosier Daddy. One of my favourite instances is when El tries to make Jill guess what she used to do for work before she became an agitator.

“I don’t want to guess. We’ve already established that I suck at guessing.”

“You mean you give up?”

“El . . .”

“No. First you have to say, I give up. Then, I’ll tell you.”

“Are you kidding me?”

She sighed. “It’s easy to see that you didn’t grow up with three brothers.”

“Is everything with you a contest of wills?”

She thought about that. “More or less.”

“Okay, then. I give up.”

El cupped a hand around her ear and leaned toward me. “Excuse me?”

I took a deep breath. “Uncle. I give up. You win. I surrender. If I had a white flag, I’d wave it. If I had a sword, I’d fall on it. If I had milk money, I’d give it to you. Okay?”

She looked unconvinced. “You have to say it like you mean it.”

If I were to have a single quibble, which I personally don’t because I love this book so much, it would be that occasionally Jill or other characters get too technical or focused on the inner workings of the factory. This happens right at the beginning, so I’d urge you to keep reading even if the first few pages make you wonder why I’d recommend a factory book, and it happens again near the end in a scene with the new factory owner. I tend to skim that latter scene because, while it’s important for Jill to know that information, I just want to see Jill and El getting their totally lovely HEA.

Hoosier Daddy has tremendous heart from the first page to the last and reads like a love letter to small town Indiana life. If it pokes fun at these people, it does so gently and only ever with affection, never punching down. The story and its people are frequently so hilarious that I had to stop whatever I was doing the first time I listened to it because I was laughing so hard I started to cry. If you’re an audiobook fan, I highly recommend getting it in that format because Christine Williams crushes the narration, bringing all of the characters to life so vividly and distinctly that I still hear those voices even when I read it to myself on the Kindle.

If you’re looking for an angst-free, silly, gentle, lovely lesbian romance, I can’t recommend Hoosier Daddy enough. It’s one I come back to again and again, and I know I’ll be doing that for the next, oh, forever years to come.

This guest review is a follow up from a Solved HaBO, and it comes from Lisa!

A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.

…

CW/TW: Physical and emotional abuse of child, animal abuse and death, coersive sex, drugged sex, rape and sex with consent issues attached.

All the way back in February 2019, I submitted a HaBO about a Historical I’d been looking around for.

It was a historical – I want to say it’s roughly set in the late 1800s London. A kind of a Frankenstein pastiche.

The heroine is the abused daughter of a disgraced doctor. She’s forced to assist him as he does medical/resurrection experiments on the stolen (dead) bodies of wastrels. Hero is a “corpse” the father steals, is very much alive (duh), and an amnesiac Duke-or-Earl

Fortunately, I got a positive answer from Megan Frampton quite quickly. When someone in the comments suggested I submit a guest review of the book, I couldn’t resist asking Sarah if she’d be cool with it. Thus, I buried my nose back in the novel I half-remembered.

What I found was a book that was a little different from what I remembered it to be – better in some ways and worse in others.

Prepare yourself for epic Gothic Frankenstein pastiche.

It’s 1806, and Olwyn Gawain works reluctantly beside her father conducting medical experiments on the bodies of stolen corpses in the dungeon of the family’s keep. Her father, Rhys, is obsessed with finding the secret to eternal life and defeating death. Shunned by polite company and far removed from his days as a trusted doctor, even the resurrection men paid to bribe the cemetery’s night watchmen and strip the corpses before delivering them to the Gawains would rather not spend much time at Rhys’ rumbling castle home.

Then unexpectedly two corpses instead of one are delivered to their keep on foggy evening. One is notably muscled and healthy looking, and Olwyn uses him as an excuse to sketch a still-life while her father dissects the other body. To her horror, she begins to feel attraction to the naked man lying before her.

But Olwyn’s no necrophile! To her relief, there’s life in the corpse’s blue eyes. When her father goes to pull out his liver, she holds him at bay with a scalpel. Olwyn has run away before to disastrous consequences, but never has she openly defied her emotionally abusive father with such passion; she knows she has to flee at once. Throwing the object of her affection over her shoulders, she makes haste for the outside world with the assistance of her father’s servant and leaves her childhood home behind.

The last thing Aidan Mullin remembers is being stricken by the croup while on a boat. He sailed off because he was reluctant to assume the mantle of the dukedom he is set to inherit from his father. Presumed dead by the ship’s crew, he’d been set for a burial in a mass grave when he’d been plucked from the pile of corpses and delivered to the Gawains.

In spite of inclement conditions and their rural location, Olwyn’s nursing works a miracle and brings him back to life. To protect himself, he tells Olwyn his name is Lóchrann, a romantic name pulled from his childhood. Together the two of them begin to travel to Aiden’s home, sparring along the way.

Even as Aidan and Olwyn approach home, their blossoming love becomes more and more improbable. For Aidan is betrothed to the lovely but snobbish artist Mira Kimball – who, in turn, has begun to scheme to pull Aidan and Olwyn apart with Aidan’s jealous twin, Padraig.

Stealing Midnight is a dark, deep dive into some very gothic subject material. It addresses some big, ugly themes and it’s got some nicely florid and overheated dialogue that appeals to me in a way that’s wholly id-dy. Sometimes it’s cheesy in very good ways – like with Olwyn’s friendship with Camille, a dressmaker, and Aidan’s relationship with his steel-willed grandmother and grandfather. His grandma is in fact amazing enough to support her own story. It’s hard to hate a book that serves up characters like her.

But the main thrust of the story ends up muddled and distracted thanks to several poor plot choices.

Chief among the book’s good points is Olwyn. Her story of recovery is touching and beautifully rendered, providing the book’s most captivating journey. She learns how to value herself as a person and see herself as worthy, smart, tough and beautiful while recovering from the emotional abuse her father heaped upon her, and the trauma of a dog attack. In the case of the latter she gets over the memories with the help of Aidan’s sweet natured dog, Chase.

Aidan and Olwyn’s romance is good – fraught with forbidden tension, solid affirmation, and smoking hot sexual chemistry. There are some very lovely passages filled with steamy descriptions of their desire for one another.

But there are some serious flaws that drag the book down for me. Aidan is a mixed bag of a hero. While he is noble and self-sacrificing with Olwyn and his grandfather, he treats Mira – his supposed fiancee – abominably. The difference between how he desperately resists having sex with Olwyn, knowing the worth of her virtue is high and one of the few things she can control, and how he treats Mira, sets up an odd dichotomy that telegraphs her true role in the book and makes it hard to like him.

Honestly, a lot of my annoyance with the book revolves around Mira, who along with Padraig absorbs far too much of the book’s narrative attention span. We get a POV chapter from the two of them before we even meet Aidan! Mira’s machinations come to an almost hilariously genteel ending, but in the face of the book’s bigger conflicts – Olwyn’s self-hatred and her father’s dogged pursuit of her – they feel beside the point.

Mira’s existence within the book also brings about an unsavory and wholly unnecessary plot point.

Look. We all have lines we won’t cross:

But wait. There’s more.

That dialogue is followed by the revelation that…

In rediscovering Stealing Midnight, I found the part of myself that used to devour Catherine Coulter and Johanna Lindsay novels, the girl who thought they were the pinnacle of romance-writing perfection. The good parts of Stealing Midnight – like Olwyn’s journey of self-discovery, the tenderness of her romance with Aidan, the road trip they undertake, the heavy Frankenstein homages, the book’s fairytale allusions, everything to do with Olwyn’s friendship with the dressmaker Camille and her search for her mother- still shine.

The bad parts – like everything to do with Mira, the plot her character brings about, the animal abuse, and Olwyn and Aidan having sex for the first time while he was hopped up on aphrodesiacs – I hadn’t remembered because I hadn’t wished to.

I’ll take the good parts of the book with me as I continue to read more romance. It was an interesting trip, but not one I’m not going to take again.

This HaBO comes from Nancy, who is looking for this romance. It sounds like a contemporary:

The heroine is raising her nephew (her older sister’s child, sister died somehow). The nephew is a teenager around 15-16. They live in a small town. The boy’s father (hero) never knew about his son, but receives a letter stating that the boy is his son and asking for money in exchange for keeping his secret. The hero is famous/wealthy but I can’t remember how/why. The hero assumes that the letter is from the heroine and in their first meeting he is very angry, but it turns out that she is not the one trying to blackmail him.

I believe the heroine earns a living as a landscaper/gardener. As the book progresses, the heroine feels insecure because the hero can buy so much more for his son that she can.

Does this book ring any bells?

This HaBO request from Stephanie, who is looking for this historical romance. Content warning for the description below:

The heroine’s name is Maggie. She is poor and lives in a shack, but she’s beautiful. She wears a threadbare gown and her creepy dad secretly lusts after her, but wants her to stay a virgin because a rich guy named John wants to marry her. She doesn’t like John, but he sets fires in her body and soul much to her chagrin. She loves some other milquetoast dude who does not have the courage to spurn his family. She had a grandmother with a cow and, one night after being out with John, she hears the cow mooing and finds the grandma dead. She married John and has two boys: one like John and one who is gentler and her favorite.

Now this is where it gets effed up. There is a storm that causes the area to flood. John, out of love for Maggie, saves the son she likes instead of the other one. Somewhere in this the dumbass figures out John is worth her love.

Effed up indeed.

Before reading a book, I try to go in with an open mind and without judgments. “Try” being the operative word. Because sometimes, I hear about a premise and my eyes roll to the back of my head. No way, I think, no way in hell is this going to work. I shouldn’t even try to read this book because it won’t succeed and I’ll regret even trying.

And when I heard about the premise for One Day to Fall by Therese Beharrie — a 72,000 word South African-set romance that takes place in one day — my eyes rolled to the back of my head. No way, I thought, no way in hell is this going to work. I shouldn’t even try to read this book because it won’t succeed and I’ll regret even trying.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Reader, I was wrong. One Day to Fall is a marvel and a feat of extraordinary accomplishment. Every single qualm I had — how will I believe in their HEA if they only interact for one day? How much can possibly happen in one day? — slowly vanished the more I read. Even after finishing the novel, I’m in a state of utter disbelief. How on earth did I love that? I don’t know if I have an answer but I do believe that some of the most wonderful things in life are inexplicable, and this might be one of them.

The premise is simple: Sophia is waiting impatiently in the hospital with her mother and younger sister Zoey, while her older sister Angie is in labor. She doesn’t want to be there — Angie isn’t even close to giving birth and there are tense family dynamics at play — and is desperate to find an escape. At the same hospital, a doctor informs Parker Jones that his mother, a victim of a recent car accident, has been diagnosed with dementia. Parker listens to the diagnosis and walks out of the room, where he runs — and falls — into Sophia. After snarking and getting off to a bad-tempered start, they run into each other again when Sophia opens the back door of Parker’s off-duty taxi in the parking lot.

It seems like fate’s idea of a joke but she begs him to take her to The Company Garden, setting the events of the novel into play. They both need to escape from their lives desperately, just for one day. To go the gardens. To go to the beach. To be intimate. And so they’ll use each other for a one day distraction and then move on with their lives. Good plan, right? After all, how much can happen in one day?

Hahahaha. These poor fools have no idea what’s coming for them. I’d be more sympathetic, only it was delightfully fun to watch Sophie and Parker crash into feelings. And if you can’t cackle evilly at fictional characters, then who can you cackle at?

I’ve never read a book like One Day to Fall before, but the closest analogy I can come to is a bottle episode in television. Like the “The Box” from Brooklyn 99 or “The One Where No One’s Ready” from Friends, a bottle episode is stripped down to its essentials: one setting (often a small room) and a limited number of characters, which allows the episode to focus on dialogue and characterization. One Day to Fall isn’t exactly like a bottle episode — they do leave the hospital and visit different locations — but it has the same impact as one. There are no unnecessary frills; dialogue and characterization are given the utmost importance. And while I didn’t do a quantitative measurement, it certainly felt like the ratio of “dialogue words: non-dialogue words” was much higher than the ratio in the average romance novel. To be honest, I barely remember where they went (the beach?) because the location isn’t important. They could have been anywhere; what I remember are the words spoken between them.

Therese Beharrie is a stunningly talented writer because at no point during any of this did the book feel wrong. It’s something I’ve never read before, so I was at least expecting to feel some hesitation or discomfort. Nope. I was debating how to categorize this book when it struck me: One Day to Fall is a primordial romance novel. Did I just invent that term? Yep. In my defense, I couldn’t find a proper term so I had to make one up!

To me, a primordial romance novel is a romance stripped down to its core: nothing but protagonists — the most important part of the romance — matter. I’m taking some liberties with this definition with One Day to Fall because clearly some of the other characters do matter. Sophia’s main conflict with her family arises from 1) resentment when her older sister Angie abandons the family after their father dies, causing Sophia to step up and save everything and 2) bitterness that her family views her as meaner/harsher than Angie. Parker is dealing with the aftermath of his mother’s diagnosis and his strained relationship with his father.

Sophia and Parker’s families obviously matter to the book, but those characters aren’t that present in the novel. While they are physically present for a few scenes, their importance is primarily explored through Sophia and Parker’s conversations with each other. They have complicated pasts and relationships with their families, and almost all of it is gleaned through dialogue between Sophia and Parker. Angie, a source of conflict in Sophia’s life, doesn’t even show up until the very end for one scene. It’s this dependence on the two MCs that makes me label One Day to Fall a primordial romance novel (if you think of a better name, let me know! I’m open to workshopping ideas).

Ed. note: I suggest ed“Before Sunrise” romance, though the movie is more ambiguous in its ending, despite the sequels.

The laser focus on the protagonists contributed to my faith that this couple will survive the odds and make their relationship work forever. The premise still seems ridiculous — how can I believe in the HEA/HFN after twenty-four hours? The genius of One Day to Fall is that it doesn’t magically solve all of Sophia and Parker’s conflicts in one day. They still have problems to face: Parker dealing with his mother’s diagnosis, Sophia repairing her relationship with her sisters, and both of them slowly learning to trust and rely on each other. But while the events of the book don’t show the perfect resolution to all these problems, it shows that the protagonists have the emotional maturity and tools to work through anything. Regardless of how difficult things might get in the future, I’m confident that Sophia and Parker have healthy communication patterns and will make the best of it. It also doesn’t hurt that there’s an epilogue showing their happiness after six months!

I could go on and on about all the things I loved about this book. How Sophia’s snarky and sometimes mean (I say “mean” with the highest of compliments) humor made me bend over laughing. How delighted I was with the assurance of a child-free HEA (both Sophia and Parker are emphatic about their desire not to have children). But I want you to stop reading this and one-click this book, so I’ll stop rambling now. One Day to Fall is a delight and a marvel, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a romance novel to escape into.

Last Saturday was the first annual Bookstore Romance Day! Did your local bookstore do anything? Did you grab any good books?

I attended a couple things and I loved seeing all the romance love on social media. Here’s to it being even bigger and better next year!

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Missing Jane the Virgin? Frolic.Media has some romance recommendations for you, if you’re looking to fill that void!

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We’ll be making a more formal announcement soon, but if you live in the D.C. area, mark your calendars for Sherry Thomas on October 25th!

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As a lover of all things dairy, I am obsessed with these images of oscypek, which is a type of smokey sheep’s milk cheese often molded into beautiful designs.

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io9 has ranked the roles of actor Karl Urban. He’s definitely one of those actors who shows up in a lot of things while you struggle to remember his name. I highly disagree with their ranking, but it was still a fun list!

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For some reason, I’ve been watching a lot of dance competition videos. This creepy puppet routine blew my mind:

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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!

The summers when I was 11 and 12 years old stand out more clearly in memory than other points in my childhood; I was too young to have even a babysitting job, but old enough to roam the neighborhood with my friends largely unsupervised. It was a stage where I was starting to be aware of the adult world, but was still pretty naïve.

The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone taps into that period of adolescence perfectly. The book is mostly narrated by an eleven-year-old girl, Tikka, as she experiences the tumultuous summer in 1992 when her friends, the Van Apfel girls, go missing. Due to her age, Tikka is an unreliable narrator; she’s oblivious to some of the things going on around her that an adult would notice. As much as this is a thriller, it’s also a coming-of-age story, as Tikka loses a part of her childhood the night the Van Apfel girls disappear. I love a cold case story, and the twist of a child narrator for a large portion of the book made this novel stand out from the thriller crowd.

I do want to warn readers that this book contains scenes of domestic violence, violence to animals (mice, if it matters), and implied sexual abuse. The book also doesn’t have a clear-cut ending, so if you need absolute closure, it’s going to irritate you. I personally felt satisfied by the conclusion even though some questions went unanswered.

This novel unravels slowly and deliciously, and the writing is beautiful and immersive. Take the opening sentence:

The ghost turned up in time for breakfast, summoned by the death rattle of cornflakes in their box.

The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone opens with an adult Tikka flying from the United States back to the Australian suburb where she grew up. Tikka’s older sister, Laura, has cancer, necessitating the visit. It’s during this time at home that she reflects on the unsolved disappearance of three girls that has haunted her into adulthood. Sometimes she and Laura discuss what happened, trying to order events correctly, and disagreeing about their childhood memories. Then we slip away from current-Tikka to eleven-year-old-Tikka who narrates the events of that summer.

Going into the book we know that the three Van Apfel girls, Hannah, Cordelia and Ruth, went missing during the summer of 1992. Ruth’s body was eventually found, but Hannah and Cordelia never were. There was never an arrest made, and the event exists in community gossip to the present day.

Tikka and her sister played with the Van Apfel girls as they were all neighbors and of a similar age. The Van Apfels are extremely religious, and Tikka is instinctively afraid of their father who behaves in ways that she classifies as odd, but an adult reader sees as abusive and controlling. The middle daughter, Cordelia, age 13, is the most enigmatic to Tikka. She wants to be Cordelia’s friend, but Cordelia is mysterious and flighty. She sleepwalks out of her house, which enrages her father. She jumps out of a tree and breaks her arm that summer. To young Tikka these are quirks, but to the reader it paints a picture of something else. Something is happening in the Van Apfel house, and Cordelia is the center of it.

This is from one of the childhood narrative sections:

The way Ruth reported it, it wasn’t until later that night that the Lord visited Mr. Van Apfel, who in turn came to Cordie when she was taking a bath. There he held her head under the shampoo-slick surface to cast away all of her sins. Swimming costume sins. Sleepwalking sins. (Cold-car-engines-in-red-hatch-backs sins). He was careful to keep her cast arm dry, and it protruded like a plaster periscope. While the rest of her shameful body was submerged and washed clean. Baptism among the bath salts and bubbles.

And when Mrs. Van Apfel walked past putting clean laundry away, she must have wondered what her husband was doing in the bathroom while their thirteen-year-old daughter was in the bath. But when she heard him talking in tongues, she knew it was the Lord’s work. That he was building a temple to Jesus right there and then in the en suite.

Eleven-year-old Tikka thinks this behavior is strange, while adult Tikka recognizes it as abuse. This books is operating through two different lenses, one innocent, one cynical, and it balances that duality well.

Young Tikka is also preoccupied by childhood things–not being left out when the older girls want to gossip, writing a play for a school production, obsessively following the Azaria Chamberlain case on the news with the grim fascination of a kid.

Even as adult Tikka searches for closure and answers about what happened to Cordelia and Hannah, she notices the way their disappearance has scarred her community. Her parents are reluctant to talk about it, and when they do, they question if they should have noticed something was amiss. Her sister, Laura, is cagey and defensive about what details they did have as children.

I can’t go into any more without spoiling the book, but I felt that, by the end, I had enough of an understanding of the context of that summer to make a safe assumption about what happened to Cordelia and Hannah, and to understand why Ruth died. It’s strange for me to feel comfortable with an ambiguous ending to a mystery, but in this case I felt I was given so much detail that I was able to reach a conclusion of my own with a decent amount of certainty.

I also loved Tikka’s dual narration. I’ve never experienced an event like three of my friends vanishing, but sometimes when I reminisce about our adolescence with my sister, I realize how different events were different from how I initially perceived them. It’s an unsettling feeling sometimes to re-evaluate old memories as an adult, and this book taps into that sense of unease perfectly. If had to classify it, I’d say this book contains a healthy dose of Gothic nostalgia. It’s like looking back at childhood photographs that seem happy and noticing the shadows in the background.

The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone is one of the more unique thrillers I’ve read in a long time and it sucked me in completely. Some readers will want more answers that we’re given, but I found the ending enough to leave me satisfied.

Sea Witch Rising is the sequel to Sea Witch, which was a very loose retelling of The Little Mermaid with an impressive twist. Like Sea Witch, Rising is a hot mess, and, yet, also like Sea Witch, I just gotta have it. There is romance in the story but the book is not a romance. It’s about mermaid witches and an octopus witch and some human witches fighting the Germans and also patriarchy above and below the sea during WWI.

This book will be confusing unless you first read Sea Witch. It takes place fifty years after the first book and concerns twin mermaids named Runa and Alia. Alia initiates a “Little Mermaid” plot. She falls in love with a human prince, stares at a statue of him, and makes a bargain with the Sea Witch to trade her voice for legs. She has a certain amount of time to make the prince kiss her with true love’s kiss or she will turn to foam on the sea.

Runa, Alia’s sister, refuses to accept Alia’s decision and makes a different bargain with the Sea Witch, with the support of her grandmother and her other sisters. The Sea Witch asks for the sisters’ hair in return for legs for Runa. They end up with short hair, not shaved bald, and even the sisters are like, “um, that was suspiciously easy.”

The deal to save Alia from death is:

Find your sister at the waterside and give her this knife. If she does not gain the boy’s love in return by the end of her fourth day full day on land, she must plunge this knife into his heart, letting the blood drop upon her feet. When his life-force is gone and his blood has anointed her new body, she will be human for the rest of her days.”

Because of “how magic works,” there’s no “Alia gets to be a mermaid again” option. For Runa, there is. If Alia kills the prince in time, and Runa gets the princes’ ring (it was important in the last book) and the knife and also gets the prince’s blood on her own feet, and brings them to the Sea Witch within the specified time, then she can return to being a mermaid. But if she fails, then instead of dying she stays human.

So the reader assumes (at least, I did) that this is now the plot of the book – save Alia, whether through true love or through murder. And yes, Runa does try the sisterly kiss option, but apparently the Sea Witch has watched Frozen and the sisterly love kiss doesn’t count. It has to come from the prince, and it has to be Alia who kills him.

However, the plot takes a sharp turn after the first sixteen (short) chapters and becomes a war story. Suddenly it’s all about spies and blowing up U-boats. Also, the sea king (never capitalized, although Sea Witch is), who is Runa and Alia’s father, has become addicted to a flower that enhances his magical powers. That sentence that sounded less laden with innuendo in my head. Only Runa can grow the flowers, so the king is furious and going through a withdrawal that could well prove lethal for him, and he freaks out and decides that merpeople should wage war on humans now that humans have mines and U-boats. So Runa is also trying to stop a war between land and sea, and all the women in the story, of which there are many, are fighting the undersea patriarchy, and some of the humans are trying to learn magic. There’s A LOT, is what I’m saying.

This book doesn’t make much sense. The pacing is so fast that no one event gets to sink in. The characters are barely sketched in. Some of the actions result in too few consequences and others too many. All the plot devices and themes are thrown into the story willy-nilly. There are not one, but six macguffins. Ideas about agency, the nature of love, friendship, different kinds of duty, addiction, patriarchy, human politics, the nature of magic – all these things are tossed into the story but never actually explored. There’s a sort of romance between Runa and Will, but it doesn’t get time to properly develop. Sea Witch was too slow and this book is too fast.

However, the imagery is fricking amazing, as is a scene in which the Sea Witch and Runa’s grandmother face off. If mermaid stuff isn’t your catnip, then there’s no reason for you to read this. Move on. But if it is, you’ll want to at least skim. Be sure to get the imagery on land and sea, which is gorgeous, the visit of Alia’s sisters to the Witch, and the scenes between the Sea Witch and grandma. Also Will’s adoration of a stolen fancy car is pretty adorable.

And for the record, based on the stated terms of the contract, the kiss Runa gives Alia ought to count. I will argue this with the Sea Witch any day, as soon as I get done cooing over her pretty tentacles. Get your magical contracts in writing, people.