It's Cold Outside! Warm Up With a Hot Romance Novel.
We've seen since the Regency how romance plots generate tension from the friction between characters' emotions and their family's expectations. Many contemporary romances are modern skins wrapped around this structure, like new upholstery on an heirloom chair.
Late last year we looked at romances where characters had to part from their families; now, we have three books where ongoing family drama interferes with chances for love.
A Bloomy Head
Please believe me when I tell you to breeze right past the cover of A BLOOMY HEAD (High Flying Poultry Press, ebook, $4.99), because that's not what's important here. What's inside is a bold, quick-witted, earthy, deeply researched delight of a romance that's already topping my list of the year's best. I came for the cheese-making, but I stayed for the glorious prose and wonderful characters.
Kate Gravenor is newly widowed and struggling to make ends meet on the family farm in Shropshire by making French-style cheeses. She has a host of siblings who are all keeping too many secrets in their gossipy small town, and that's before her soldier twin, Henry, shows up with an injured military doctor in need of nursing. Dr. Thomas Holyoke, who has a few secrets of his own, is furious that Henry disobeyed orders and didn't leave him to die of his injuries. Now he's laid up in bed in the farm's kitchen, which is occasionally invaded by rampant cows, tended by a red-haired cheesemaker.
And then the murders begin.
This book is a gory Gothic gem — Jane Austen meets 'Midsomer Murders.' There were so many more beheadings than I was expecting! Everyone is seemingly up to no good: Kate's brother John Mary, who speaks mostly French and is basically living in the woods; her sister Anne, who's only pretending to have a job on a neighboring farm but is definitely getting money from somewhere; her brother Peter, the local vicar, feared by all the other siblings. It's strange to describe something as cozy when it features so many autopsies and abuses — the author's note at the outset is much appreciated — but I felt so fiercely warmed by the ending that the word feels warranted. Great fun, genuine peril and a romance that feels deliciously dangerous — just what winter needs.
Les Normaux
In the graphic novel LES NORMAUX (Avon, 336 pp., $30) Sébastien, whose parents disapprove of his magical abilities, has moved to a supernatural Paris. He's planning to start his magical education soon, and to blow off some steam he ends up at a club, where he gets tipsy and makes out with a hot vampire.
And then Sébastien panics. He never hooks up! He's in no head space for a relationship! Even worse, the hot vampire is in fact his neighbor, so he's impossible to avoid!
Meanwhile, the hot vampire is having troubles of his own: His name is Elia, he's a model and also works as a publicist and producer for his wealthy vampire family's fashion empire. He doesn't have time for a boyfriend either, so he and Sébastien mutually agree they're going to be friends — even if they're both secretly harboring more romantic feelings than they let on.
This is a serial romance, with a suitably slow tempo and a wealth of brightly drawn secondary characters (the Cyclops playwright and Sébastien's furious, power-mad pet rabbit, Pierre, are personal favorites). It's saved from being too quiet by the pulse of realistic anxieties: Sébastien worries about his little sister, with whom he has little contact; Elia's inability to say no to his parents is surely not sustainable for much longer. We're nowhere near our HEA yet, and I'm pacing the floor waiting for the next installment.
Make Room for Love
In MAKE ROOM FOR LOVE (Self-published, ebook, $5.99), Mia is fleeing an abusive ex-boyfriend. She's been crashing on a friend's couch but needs a long-term housing plan, which can be difficult when you're trans and also an overworked, underpaid graduate student. A chance encounter leads to her becoming roommates with Isabel, a tall butch electrician whose partner has recently moved out and left her scrambling to pay rent alone. But as these roommates share space and intimacy, they'll have to choose between breaking their lease, or breaking each other's hearts.
Isabel is the stoic type, so it's a long time before she reveals the truth to Mia: Her partner left because Isabel wasn't coping well with the grief of losing her sister.
This romance covers so much territory — bi awakenings, union organizing, gloriously filthy Latin poetry — but it's Isabel's catastrophic decisions that offer so many savorable 'Oh, sweetie, no!' feelings before everyone sorts themselves out.
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