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Romance Roundup

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I read almost exclusively historical romances, and these usually come in series that feature a certain family or group of friends who each find love in a different volume. This means that the ancillary characters you grow to love in the first book will be revisited in the subsequent books. It also means that protagonists get their own little continuing episodes in sequels.

This is why I particularly love discovering a new romance author. I fall in love with a whole passel of delightful characters, each with their own personalities. I get to keep up with these characters over time, chronicling not just their grand romances, but also their little life experiences afterward, in the sequels that focus on other characters. It doesn’t hurt that romances are usually published in quick succession, meaning the wait for a new novel isn’t usually very long.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve dove into two new authors: Lily Dalton and Courtney Milan. Dalton I picked up quite by accident. She was signing at the Texas Library Association, her book was free, and it was historical romance. That’s all the convincing I needed to give it a try. Courtney Milan I’ve heard talk of for some months now and figured it was finally time to see what all the fuss was about.

Never Entice an Earl by Lily Dalton
Daphne Bevington’s maid Kate has gotten herself into a terrible situation. Kate’s father took out a huge loan from an unscrupulous lender, and now the lender has come to collect. In order to pay off the loan, Kate has taken a side job as an exotic dancer, but she’s fallen ill and can’t make it. So Daphne, without Kate’s knowledge, takes her place for the evening. Naturally, the situation at the dance hall/bar is a bad one; unsurprisingly, our hero is there to save the day.

This was a pretty typical historical romance, I think. The hero and heroine (both upper class and titled) are thrown together into a ridiculous situation where sparks fly immediately. The setting is generically historical: women wear corsets and have to be chaperoned, but other than that, historical detail is almost nonexistent. The story could be happening at practically any point within a 100 or 150 year time frame. All this is fine, actually – I don’t mind any of it when the romance itself is done well. Unfortunately, I never got a real feel for the leads. I have a hard time remembering any of their defining characteristics, and the romance between them happens suddenly and because it’s supposed to, not because their personalities are a match. It’s not a bad read, but not an outstanding one.

The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
This is the first book in the Brothers Sinister series, which features a few full-length novels as well as a few novellas. Our heroine, Minnie, has a scandalous past. Thanks to the meddling of our hero, Robert, this past may come to light and ruin Minnie’s carefully-crafted new life. Of course, Minnie has her own tricks up her sleeve – she has some equally damning dirt on Robert. The stakes here are actually quite high. Milan doesn’t write romances where the hero and heroine are kept apart by mere misunderstandings. Both characters have choices to make, but each choice will hurt themselves or someone they love. The tone of the book is pretty serious throughout, though I’m glad it had the requisite happy ending. I wasn’t wowed by this one, but I did enjoy it, and it was sufficiently different from other romances to keep me intrigued and reading on.

The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan
I liked this one even more than The Duchess War. It’s a great deal funnier, thanks to a premise that is inherently amusing: the heroine has decided she will never marry, and she’s decided to make it happen by being deliberately awful. She dresses in hideous clothing, casually insults lords and aristocrats, and pretends like she doesn’t know the first thing about manners or social niceties. There’s a dark side to the plot, as was the case with the first book, but I found myself laughing out loud a lot despite the gravity of the heroine’s situation. I always appreciate my romances more when they’re funny. I also think Milan’s writing is a bit better here. The affection between the two leads develops at a believable pace and Milan knows just how long to keep them apart before finally throwing them together.

After finishing up this second book, I’ve found that Milan’s books tend to be more socially and politically-conscious than other historicals I’ve read. Her heroes and heroines are usually part of the movement for social change, such as abolishing the peerage, organizing workers’ unions, or expanding the vote to non-landowners. This helps place the books more firmly in a historical context and lends them an air of authenticity that is often missing from other romances of this kind. While the focus is definitely the love story, these historical romances seem almost as much “historical” as they are “romance.” The subplots used to hamper the two leads getting together also seem more genuine since they stem from the characters, who are well-rounded and flawed in real ways (rather than “quirky” ways as is often the case – I’m looking at you, heroines who are delightfully clumsy). As a result, the romance is truly swoon-worthy and all the more satisfying at the end.

Trial by Fire by Josephine Angelini

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Josephine Angelini’s new series has a unique concept, one that marries science fiction and fantasy (into what she calls “sci fantasy”). I’ve seen the melding of these two genres bandied about the past couple of years as the “next big thing,” but I haven’t actually seen a lot of published stories that truly fit the description. Usually, the story falls pretty firmly on one side of the SF/F line, so I was really excited to give this one a shot.

Aside from the SFF combo, the concept is unique in other ways: the storyline involves female witches whose magic is derived from the energy within their bodies, activated by certain foods and other stimuli. However, this magic only works the proper way in one of the two parallel worlds featured in the book, which is tough for our protagonist. Lily lives in our world and has suffered terrible allergies most of her life, crippling her socially and ensuring she’s always in danger of suffering some life-threatening attack. When she’s unwittingly taken into a parallel world where witches rule, she learns that her allergies are actually side effects of her magic, which has been held dormant within her body so long without release that it’s causing her harm. In this alternate world, she’s immensely powerful. Unfortunately for Lily, this kind of magic doesn’t work in our world – but that doesn’t stop her from trying to get back to it.

Lily didn’t get to this alternate world on her own. She was brought there by Lillian, an alternate version of Lily, also a powerful witch. Because of her power, Lillian rules over Salem, and she’s not kind or fair. She’s set up magic as the one true way of doing things, meaning that doctors and scientists as we regard them are persecuted. According to Lillian, there is no room for science in a world ruled by magic.

Lily isn’t sure why Lillian brought her to this other Salem, but she knows she wants to get back home. She’s taken in by Outlanders, a group of people who live outside the walls of Salem. They don’t have any of the protections offered by Salem and its ruler, meaning they’re at the mercy of the Woven, terrible creatures that started out as animals but have now become something else. The leaders of the Outlanders want Lily to develop her own magic so they can use it to make a better Salem for themselves. Some of the Outlanders have counterparts in our own world (like Tristan, Lily’s best friend) and some don’t (like Rowan, a boy who once worked for – and loved – Lillian before joining the Outlander cause).

It’s difficult for me to communicate how complex the concept and world-building are here. In some ways, the story is set up as a basic good vs. evil tale, with the Outlanders as the righteous rebels and Lillian as the power-hungry despot to be taken down. It’s complicated, though, because we get some of the story from Lillian’s perspective, and it’s clear she has goals that are not entirely selfish. She brought Lily – a person who could theoretically be powerful enough to defeat her – to her world, after all, and she must have had a reason for doing so. The matriarchal society of alt-Salem is also fascinating and something not commonly seen in SFF. What will draw a lot of teens, though, is the idea of Lily meeting herself – Lillian – in this alternate world. They’re like and unalike in various ways that fluctuate over the course of the story. At first, Lily believes she’s completely different from her alt-self and tries to convince the Outlanders of it; but after some time, she starts to doubt it. This comes at about the same time we as readers start to doubt Lillian’s characterization as entirely evil.

I really liked the ideas behind this story. It’s so creative and so fresh, even when it’s using some common tropes (romance, witches, tearing down a despotic regime). The magic system and world-building in particular are standouts. I don’t think the story is entirely successful in its execution, though. Lily as a character is a bit flat. She’s immensely powerful in alt-Salem, but her actions are mostly reactive (things happen to her, she doesn’t make things happen). That’s not a criticism of Lily as a person (I think a lot of us mostly react to things), but it’s not great for a character in a novel. For a lot of the book, I felt like I was stuck in exposition, even while the characters battled Woven. Lillian’s motivations remained murky up to the end, which is too bad, because she is by far the most fascinating character. This is a series, so perhaps Lily will come into her own a bit more in the sequel – and we’ll get to spend more time with Lillian.

My review copy came with a letter from Angelini stating that the magic system she writes about is based on actual science, which is clearly a marketing ploy, but it’s also fascinating to consider. This would be a good pick for fans of both science fiction and fantasy who want something new and something that makes them think. It’s also a worthy entry into the growing parallel worlds subgenre.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Trial by Fire is available now.

Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang

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Liz Emerson planned it all out. She knew what date she’d crash her car and kill herself. She plotted where it would happen, when it would happen, and then she allowed herself 7 days to change her mind. If she couldn’t find a reason to, she’d go through with the plan.

Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang begins when Liz follows through with the plan. But this isn’t a story that’s told in a linear way. Instead, as Liz lies in the hospital, we’re given flashbacks and flash forwards into her life. What could possibly make her want to kill herself? For someone as popular and put together and respected as Liz, it seems like suicide would be the last thing she’d have on her mind.

This story is told through a surprising narrator, though readers will catch on pretty quickly to that. They may not be clear on who the narrator is until the reveal at the end, but this deliberate choice is why Zhang’s novel stands out from many others and why the book itself is fresh.

The narrator knows Liz and knows Liz well. And that narrator isn’t willing to lie about who or what Liz was in life. Liz, despite appearances as a popular and well-respected girl in her school, is far from a nice girl. She’s manipulative. She’s mean. And she’s persuasive. Those characteristics are precisely why she’s respected though — people don’t want to get on the wrong side of her because they know that nothing good could come from it. But even being close to Liz is a problem. Her best friends, Julia and Kennie, can’t escape her manipulations.

Thanks to Liz, Julia’s found herself with a bit of a drug problem and Kennie has had an abortion. While both girls make those choices for themselves, Liz’s persuasive power and the fear that acting against what Liz says they should do would be cause for worse, they follow through. They listen. They’re under her control, whether they like it or not.

Then there’s Liam. He’s a nice guy. A really nice guy. And he’s at the hospital almost immediately after Liz’s crash. Not because he and Liz are a couple and certainly not because she’s ever given him the time of day. In fact, Liz and her friends did something awful to Liam early on in their high school career that marred his reputation forever. But Liam, being a bigger person, saw through her actions and knew that maybe, just maybe, there was something bigger and something better lurking beneath Liz’s surface. He was, in fact, the person who knew it was her car that crashed. He recognized it and recognized Liz as the driver from the shirt she was wearing. Rather than allow himself to let her be, he instead decides to follow his own good heart and be there waiting for her, whether she recovered or not.

Liam is good, but Liam was also part of the problem, and not by his own choice.

Falling Into Place is fast paced, but it’s nuanced. What seems like a cut-and-dry story of a mean girl isn’t that straightforward. It’s easy to dislike Liz because she’s not likable. But her unlikable characteristics have some explanation. She is exceptionally lonely. With a father who died when she was really young by an accident she witnessed and a mother who travels all the time and finds Liz to be more of a pain than a child to love, she finds herself spending a lot of time in her home alone. Drinking. The mean things she does aren’t done as a means of being vindictive but instead, they’re ways to keep her entertained. To fill her own life with some kind of meaning, despite the fact that she recognizes and knows there are consequences.

Liz is filled with regret for her actions, but the problem is when you’re at the top of the social ladder and people respect you and fear you, admitting your weaknesses is an impossible thing to do.

During the seven days prior to her suicide, Liz tries to change herself. She goes out of her way to try to say the things she’s intended to say forever — she wants to apologize to people and she wants to reach out and ask for help. She tries, and as readers, we see that it’s not done as a means of seeking sympathy, but as a way of really, truly trying to change herself. We know she feels bad, and it comes through in little and surprising ways. There’s a moment when Liz reflects upon her decision and she notes that she has to kill herself on the same day her dad died to minimize the days per year her mother would have to grieve. She’s not doing this to make people feel bad; she’s doing this for the exact opposite reason. She wants people to be free of her being a bad influence and a problem.

She reaches out. During those last few days, she tries to change. She goes to her school counselor and asks for help, but the counselor unintentionally turns her away. She speaks up about feeling depressed, and she’s turned away. Not because the counselor doesn’t care, but because the counselor can’t do anything for her and, unfortunately, her reputation precedes her. Liam sees through her. But Liam also knows he can’t reach her. Kenna and Julia, despite what Liz believes, care deeply about her. They know her. But, as Liz notes, they might not be as perceptive to her inner turmoil as she wishes they could be, and reaching out, she thinks, would be an incredible sign of weakness. Would they care? With how she’s hurt them, why wouldn’t they hurt her back?

Worth noting that readers get to make the choice on whether or not Liz is redeemed in the story. Zhang doesn’t give us a solid answer, and because of who the narrator is, it’s further complicated. This was a smart, savvy narrative choice because it’s the kind of story that has no good answers at the end. It can only lay out the facts, and those facts are inextricably tied to the narrator sharing them, and that narrator shows both the good and the downright ugly. The narrator loved Liz, but the narrator didn’t love everything Liz did.

Falling Into Place is tightly written, and the complex structure works. This book is a fast-paced read, and it’s one that could easily be done in one sitting. Personally, I appreciated walking away a few times because there was a lot to sift through — Liz is anything but one-dimensional and holding the contradictory thoughts of her meanness with the sadness she felt inside required some away-from-the-page reflection. The writing is solid and at times really lovely, and while some of the renderings of high school and secondary characters can feel a little bit flat, it’s forgivable because of who the narrator is, how long that narrator has followed Liz, and, perhaps the thing worth noting but not lingering on, the author wrote this book when she was 18. Without being beyond her own high school experience, it’d be impossible to see the wider world. Which isn’t to say it’s bad — it’s far from that — but instead, some of the depictions read a little young and yet, they show really huge promise.

Zhang’s debut is a memorable one, and I can see this being a title getting some Morris discussion. It hadn’t been one I paid a lot of attention to, but I’m really glad I picked it up because it far exceeded my expectations and left me eager for what Zhang will write next. This book could be called If I Stay meets Before I Fall and that would be an accurate description, though I liked Falling Into Place more than either of those titles. There are shades of Thirteen Reasons Why in this book, too. While a mash-up of the three books may make this sound like it’s the kind of book that’s been done before, it’s not. Falling Into Place is new, different, and it will have huge appeal to readers who liked any of those prior titles without it ever feeling like it’s trying to be any of those titles. This is a book for your realistic YA readers who like complex characters.

Falling Into Place is available now. Review copy received from the publisher. 

The Vault of Dreamers by Caragh O’Brien

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The year is 2066. Rosie Sinclair attends the Forge School, the premier place for creative teenagers to hone their skills and get ahead in subject areas like filmmaking, acting, dancing, and fine art. Graduation from the Forge School is a guaranteed ticket to the good life.

But the Forge School is also a reality television series. All students who attend are on camera for twelve hours of the day. The other twelve hours, they’re put into a drugged sleep, a sleep they’re told will enhance their creativity. As any reader of dystopias (and this is a sort of micro-dystopia, if we consider the school to be its own community) will realize right away, everything is not as it seems at Forge.

Vault of Dreamers opens with Rosie fretting over the “fifty cuts,” the point in the television series (and the school year) at which the fifty students with the lowest “blip rank” (meaning popularity with the viewers at home) will be cut and sent home. Rosie is nearly number 100 (out of only 100 students), and she’s pretty resigned to not making it past the cuts. But it wouldn’t be much of a story if it ended with her going home, so I’ll give a grand non-spoiler and tell you that she makes it.

Rosie is a bit of a rebel, and because she figured she had nothing to lose, she decided to forgo her sleeping pill one night before the fifty cuts. She pretends to swallow it, then sneaks out of her sleeping pod and goes up to the roof, just for kicks. She also sees one of the doctors putting an IV in the arm of a sleeping classmate, which alarms her. Sneaking out one night is a relatively small act of rebellion, but it kicks off a series of similar acts. She starts skipping her pill more frequently, meeting up with a non-student who works in the cafeteria, and planting her own cameras around the school to determine what exactly is going on at Forge – because she knows the school administrators are not simply encouraging creativity in the students by making them sleep 12 hours at night.

This is an odd duck of a book. The premise is actually quite creative, particularly when the sci-fi reason behind the existence of the school and its enforced sleep is fully discovered (the title is kind of a spoiler, but it’s fairly complex, so there’s lots to puzzle out even if you already know it involves dreaming). At the same time, its creativity hampers it a bit. Because the explanation is strange, it’s harder for the reader to grasp, and I left the book feeling a bit confused still. The last pages – and I do mean the very last ones – take the book to a new realm entirely, and that’s where it finally lost me. I don’t need my endings tied up with a neat bow (nor do I need them to be happy, which this one isn’t), but I do think it’s important that the reader is not left saying “huh?” after she turns the final page.

2066 is probably still considered the near future, at least in terms of SF writing, but it’s far enough in the future that the references to Youtube and Facebook sprinkled throughout the book are jarring. They seem very out of place mixed in with references to new and unusual technology we’ve never heard of, and I think teens will rightly question O’Brien’s assumption that such things will still be around 50 years from now. Won’t they be replaced by something newer and shinier? How long did MySpace’s popularity last?

Those were my two biggest hangups with the book, one pretty major and the other relatively minor. There’s a lot this book does right. Rosie’s voice is done very well; she sounds like a teen, not like a world-weary adult (a lot of teens in futuristic sci-fi seem middle-aged cynical to me). This doesn’t mean she’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed all the time, it just means she sounds her age: young. She’s naive, and even when it’s clear that the adults aren’t looking out for her best interests, she clings to the idea that they are still the ones to be trusted. It’s heartbreaking.

The fact that the school is also a reality series is an intriguing twist. There’s an explanation given for it partway through – at least an explanation for the public, not necessarily the real reason. The concept is relevant for today’s teens and explored fairly well. The students are encouraged to speak directly to the camera, and viewers at home can pull up their favorite students’ feeds whenever they like (there’s not a single camera creating a single story; each student can help shape their own story). Students use the cameras to their advantage in various ways, particularly as the fifty cuts approach, to gain popularity with viewers, which is also directly to “banner ads” that make them money they can cash upon graduation. There’s also the claustrophobic feel the cameras create: Rosie is sure she’s always being watched, but she can’t let that stop her from her quest. It just means she has to get more creative with it.

This is a thrilling read, fast-paced, with a lot of secrets for our protagonist to unearth. There’s a small dash of romance and a couple of subplots (a strange fight with a friend, Rosie’s rough home life) that add layers. The unsuccessful ending notwithstanding, this is a worthwhile read for fans of near-future SF and would make a good readalike for Lauren Miller’s Free to Fall or Rae Mariz’s The Unidentified, both also tech-heavy books set in highly-monitored schools where the adults turn the students into consumable products.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Vault of Dreamers will be published September 16.

Girls Like Us by Gail Giles

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Biddy and Quincy are two special education students. Or at least, they were special education students until they graduated from high school. Now, they’ve been placed together in an apartment that sits behind a home of an older woman who they’re responsible for helping out. She’s almost like their overseer, but she’s really not (or at least, she’s not hugely invested in that role).

The two girls were placed together following graduation for legal reasons, but the caseworker who paired them together did so for very specific reasons. Ones which Quincy can’t make sense of and ones which leave her more frustrated than content.

See, Quincy is a rough-around-the-edges kind of girl. She’s got a facial scar, thanks to a horrific young home life, and she wears her hurt, her anger, and her defenses like armor. When she’s moved into this apartment, she’s given a job to work outside the home, at a local store. She’s capable of doing it, despite what others might think of or perceive of her skills because of her education. Though Quincy’s told she and Biddy are to share their home responsibilities — it’s a way for the two of them to both acquire new skills — Quincy is a good cook and takes on the cooking for all meals, rather than splitting the task with Biddy. In return, Biddy cleans.

Biddy is almost the polar opposite of Quincy. She’s exceptionally sweet and kind, with a large heart. This is despite her own rough past, one which comes through periodically in the story but isn’t fully exposed until it needs to be. Unlike Quincy, Biddy wears her scars internally, and her external persona is that gentle nature. She’s not rough. She’s not tough. She mothers a duck and ducklings that appear in her garden, taking extreme efforts to protect and nurture them, to ensure that the babies and mom survive in their out-of-place home. But Biddy is scared, and that scared comes out in somewhat unexpected ways.

Girls Like Us by Gail Giles is a dual-voiced novel, written with short chapters and in a style that reflects the authentic voices of these two girls. They don’t speak or think in entirely perfect sentences or use proper grammar — but it’s never once distracting nor is it belittling. In many ways, this choice in style is exceptionally respectful of these girls, how they think, and why seeing how they think this way matters. Never does it feel like the girls are being made fun of nor that their special education status makes them anything less than fully human.

This isn’t an easy read, though, despite the fact it is fast paced. It’s engaging, but the horrors both girls experience are unbelievable. Biddy, who is sweet on the outside, has been raped in the past. Not only had she been raped, but she had become pregnant and her caretaker at the time forced her to give up the baby for adoption. Though Quincy thinks of her as a slutty kind of girl initially — and Quincy is quick to judge the fact she’s fat to seeing her once with candy and snacks tucked inside her clothes — but as Biddy opens up to Quincy following something horrific that happens to her (spoiler: Quincy is also a victim of sexual violence, at the hands of a coworker who we know early on is suspicious), Quincy begins to see that Biddy’s exterior isn’t the whole of her.

There’s a lot to mine here in terms of armor and how we wear our scars. This is a realization Quincy comes to, too: she’s biting and tough in her words, and her scar becomes quite representative of how she feels on the inside. Biddy wears her wounds with her body. She eats — or did eat — for comfort and solace. While many times this character trait can be problematic in books, as it’s such an easy way to explain why a character is fat, rather than allowing them to be fat, Giles does a great job not doing that here. She’s giving an explanation, but she’s not making Biddy’s life about her body. Where it once was what Quincy saw as what defined Biddy, Quincy is the one who realizes what a crummy way it is to judge someone. She knows she wouldn’t want people to judge her by her exterior. Perhaps, too, it’s worth mentioning here that Quincy is a person of color, and that becomes a topic she broaches in her side of the story.

Girls Like Us isn’t perfect, despite how many things it does right. At times the format and the pacing mean that huge plot points are rushed over or shoehorned in in a way that doesn’t feel authentic. There’s a moment when — spoiler — the woman who Biddy and Quincy work for tries to reunite Biddy with the child she’d given up for adoption. This entire scene felt uncomfortable because it wasn’t fleshed out well, and while that is part of the point (Lizabeth hadn’t thought this through when she decided to pursue this), it felt like one thing too many in a story that had been handling a lot of issues very well.

That said, one of the best parts of this book, and why I keep thinking about it long after finishing it, is that Giles wrote a book about girls. There’s not a romance here, and even when boys become a problem within the story, they’re not turned into enemies — Biddy’s fearful of them, but she’s not hateful toward them. More importantly, girls aren’t enemies, either. There aren’t “other girls” in this book. There aren’t girls who are special or more valuable or more different than others. These are two girls who learn how to work with one another and who come to love one another for their strengths and for their flaws. These are two girls who, despite being so different, have a shared core to them. Quincy and Biddy build one another up and they are there for one another through some really tough stuff in a way that empowers their relationship and in a way that empowers them individually. They’re not saved and they’re not saving. They’re respecting each other and learning how to grow and become individuals. This is a powerful and all-too-rare message in YA. Though these girls have been a part of special education, they aren’t any less human than anyone else.

Giles respects these girls so much, and it’s through Quincy and Biddy’s voices that we begin to understand how labels such as “differently abled” and “special education” or any other euphemism can be useful and can be hurtful. As Quincy says to one of her coworkers, she’s not dumb. She’s just been given a different education because some things are hard for her to grasp. It doesn’t mean she’s unable to function in the world; she just has to adjust her functioning to suit her strengths and accommodate her weaknesses.

Pass Girls Like Us off to readers who like gritty novels, as well as those who like a fast-paced book. This will appeal to reluctant readers, as well as more advanced readers, and it certainly should be given to those who are seeking stories set after high school and not in college. These girls are part of the working class, and Giles knocks the economics of this out of the park. Likewise, readers who are looking for books about girls, about friendship, about tolerance, and about how those with learning challenges operate in the real world will find so much to enjoy here. By far, my favorite Gail Giles read.

Girls Like Us is available now. Copy picked up from the library.