#woc romance

[mariaslozak]

After too many months of no reading notes, I decided to document some of those books in an alternative manner. Here’s a spread from my traveller’s notebook, about the final installment in Cole’s Loyal League series.

[mariaslozak]

Spread from an interview with genre legend Beverly Jenkins in Blush Magazine, February 2019 (link in source).

“When my career began, there were only a handful of Black romance writers. Now there are tons, and they’re writing fabulous books within all romance’s sub genres”.

[mariaslozak]

The next installment in Alyssa Cole’s ‘Reluctant Royals’ series has a fake engagement plot with a wallflower heroine :-) In A Prince On Paper, the bad boy, red-headed hero is not named Harry but he is a prince from what sounds like a small principality in mainland Europe. (The cover architecture and the names blend Central, Western, and Northern European cultures.) I haven’t read A Duke By Default yet, but I have the impression both characters appeared in that book?

“Nya Jerami fled Thesolo for the glitz and glamour of NYC but discovered that her Prince Charming only exists in her virtual dating games. When Nya returns home for a royal wedding, she accidentally finds herself up close and personal—in bed—with the real-life celebrity prince who she loves to hate.

For Johan von Braustein, the red-headed step-prince of Liechtienbourg, acting as paparazzi bait is a ruse that protects his brother—the heir to the throne—and his own heart. When a royal referendum threatens his brother’s future, a fake engagement is the perfect way to keep the cameras on him.

Nya and Johan both have good reasons to avoid love, but as desires are laid bare behind palace doors, they must decide if their fake romance will lead to a happily-ever-after.”

[mariaslozak]

Historical romance nominees in various categories* of Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards 2018 (books published in 2017). What do you think of the picks? Squees? Surprises?

Looking at these covers makes me realise how single-mindedly I focussed on reducing my TBR stack last year. While I read twelve of these authors, only a couple of the actually nominated books were among them. I’m sorry not to see A Lady’s Code of Misconduct by Meredith Duran make it into any category: as an exceptional book by an exceptional author it was my top read in the genre last year. And finally, my eyebrows rose mildly at seeing a sub-category for British Isles-set historicals - an amusing romance tautology if ever I saw one. (There’s no category for those set outside the British Isles). They rose a few degrees higher at the irony of finding Victoria Alexander’s France & Italy-centred Larceny With A Dashing Stranger listed in that sub-category.

*The categories I pulled them from are “best book of the year”, “series romance”, and “historical romance”, the last of which also contains several subcategories: “British Isles-set romance”, “historical love and laughter”, “first historical romance/first historical fiction”, and “indie/digital historical romance”. An Extraordinary Union, Breathless, and The Duchess Deal are nominated in more than one category.

[mariaslozak]

As a romance reader who has lived half my life in countries not my own, it never fails to warm my heart when a heroine strives to learn a new language.

The first book in Alyssa Cole’s Loyal League series, An Extraordinary Union, was a mixed bag for me, but with A Hope Divided my enjoyment is back on track.

[mariaslozak]

This month I tried two contemporaries. The writing style of Tracey Livesay’s Love Will Always Remember is polished and assured and I found the heroine unusual and interesting: she’s a hard-hitting lobbyist and engaged to the hero’s brother. The downside for me was that the mental lusting is strong and incessant from the onset. Unfortunately, instalust usually functions like a wall that blocks my ability to connect emotionally with characters and in this case the way it was presented felt uncomfortably inappropriate instead of starcrossed. I ended up DNF’ing this one early on. No doubt being in a reading slump exacerbated things because I’m usually a patient reader. Also, do note that @betweenthecoversofbooks and @diehard-fangirl highly enjoyed the story.

The aforementioned reading slump was, however, broken by Lucy Parker’s cheeky Act Like It. In this one, which heightens the enemies-to-lovers tension by adding forced proximity, PR powers blackmail the heroine and hero, both London stage actors with low personal opinions of each other, to behave like lovebirds in public. It’s a gradual and grudging and comedic road to becoming even marginally physically comfortable with each other, which means a cautious alliance builds up first, followed by tentative friendship and sparking attraction. This approach I found both refreshing and relaxing, and so ended up having a lot of fun. I’m adding Parker’s two other London performing arts romances to my tbr: Pretty Face and the upcoming Making Up (May 2018). The latter pairs a circus artist heroine with a special effects artist hero. How is that for unusual romance professions?

Thank you so much for the Act Like It recommendation, @riley1cannon!

[mariaslozak]

While one could wish that the cover would do a better job of reflecting the quality of its authors, this is a new historical romance anthology that could not be more timely considering both the recent romance diversity report by The Ripped Bodice and the current state of affairs in the US. (Each of the three authors comes from a diverse background.)

Containing three novellas linked to the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, Hamilton’s Battalion includes Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ heroes and heroines. It looks set to be released on the seventeenth of this month (October 2017).

Here’s what contributor Courtney Milan has to say about it:

“It is also a book about the country I am a citizen of, a country that has values of hope and fairness and equality woven into its very founding. Its founding also contains the exact opposite. For centuries, America has been locked in a struggle with itself, trying to decide if it will live up to the best of its ideals or live down to the worst of its history. This country has been through some dark times, but no matter how bad things get, I refuse to give up on the radical notion that all of us are created equal. It is my most fervent wish that someday equality will truly belong to everyone, the way it was originally promised. I don’t know if this is the book anyone needs to read, but it is the one I needed to write at this particular moment.”

[mariaslozak]

Today Jezebel posted an interview with Alyssa Cole about her historical romance An Extraordinary Union, which is set during the U.S. Civil War:

“So, you know, I’m black, and a lot of the kind of romance I write usually really tries to reflect reality and the reality of diverse people in society. And, you know, sometimes even with contemporaries, that can be frustrating. With history and especially American history it was like—and I think this is something that people think about before even buying an American historical romance with a character of color—is there going to be a happy ending and how can there be a happy ending? Things like that. As I studied history more and just, well, common sense—I’m here. There are so many people of color here. We all got here somehow. And I’m sure it wasn’t all misery for every single one of our families. So here in the United States, things weren’t always great—understatement!—but even in terrible times, people always manage to find some form of happiness and there are happy stories that can be found in real history.

“So I started thinking, well, why wouldn’t I be able to make a romance set in any time period?There has always been instability, there have always been terrible things going on, but people have always found a way to find love and happiness and family in times like these.”

For reference I’ve uploaded Cole’s author’s note from the book, which I’m currently reading, above.