Swoony Romance Novels That Will Upend Your World
Despite romance's reputation as light comfort reading, the genre has a bass line of chaos pulsing through it — the distinction being that romance presents chaos as survivable, even if your entire world is upended.
Chaos
CHAOS (Bramble, 352 pp., paperback, $19.99) is even the name of Fay's third sci-fi romance adventure, and if you haven't heard about this series yet then you have three books of nonstop thrills and pew-pew space lasers waiting for you. Our heroine is Caro Ogunyemi, a renegade engineer with a past she's determined to keep secret. When a chance to repay some of her moral debt sends her on a solo mission to a high-tech prison planet, she recklessly jumps at it. There she finds Leviathan, a murderous super soldier controlled by an implanted chip that inexplicably fails the instant Caro touches him.
From there it's a race to the finish, as prison riots, malfunctioning tech and inconvenient but irresistible attraction add twists and turns to this roller coaster of a plot.
When the Tides Held the Moon
Roller coasters feature much more literally in WHEN THE TIDES HELD THE MOON (Erewhon Books, 464 pp., $29), a lushly illustrated historical romance about a sideshow found family, a Puerto Rican blacksmith and a captured merman meant to be the next big attraction at Coney Island's Luna Park carnival.
In New York in 1911, Benigno 'Benny' Caldera takes on a project nobody else wants: crafting an enormous metal cage for a saltwater tank, a commission from the Luna Park impresario Sam Morgan. Benny's work is so good his boss tries to take the credit — and fires Benny when he speaks up. With unctuous graciousness, Morgan offers Benny a new job, and reveals the tank's secret: It's meant to hold a merman, as soon as they can capture one.
But the merman, when they do find him, turns out to be sentient — and the most beautiful creature Benny's ever seen. Soon the blacksmith is spending his nights whispering secrets across the glass barrier to Río, as he calls him, while the date for Luna Park's opening creeps ever closer. Morgan knows how to craft a spectacle, but can he be trusted? Will Benny choose to keep Río imprisoned, or set him free even if it means losing him forever? This book is a charming fable — an elemental dance of fire and water.
All Fired Up
Flames are more than metaphorical in ALL FIRED UP (Canary St. Press, 304 pp., paperback, $18.99). This Sapphic contemporary between a professional firefighter and a fire science researcher had me reliving my own misspent youth amid the secondhand couches and karaoke bars in the heart of Seattle.
Nicole, a freshly minted Ph.D. moving back to her hometown, is trying to get over her feelings for her overdramatic best friend Skylar, with no success. Now she finds that not only has Skylar found a replacement best friend: She's moving to Fiji at the end of the summer, in one of her trademark disaster decisions.
Desperate to convince Skylar to stay in town, Nic makes a secret pact with the replacement friend, Kira — an ambitious, type-A firefighter who's hot both in and out of her gear. Conspiracy planning has them whispering in one another's ear … and then casually, not-so-accidentally making out. But while Nic might be ready to let go of her dreams of winning Skylar's heart, Kira is holding onto her own past too tightly.
What a messy, drunken, ill-advised joy of a book. Everyone's putting on a cool, with-it surface while paddling like mad underneath. It reminds me of Casey McQuiston's best party scenes, with the on-point Seattle flavor of Alexandria Bellefleur — effervescent and deeply sincere.
Marriage Bargain With the Comte
Longtime readers know how much I love an elegant category romance like Cole's newest Black historical, MARRIAGE BARGAIN WITH THE COMTE (Harlequin Historical, 272 pp., paperback, $7.99). Evena Baptiste and Dieudonné, Comte de Montreau, are childhood best friends in St. Domingue. Long shamed for being both mixed-race and illegitimate, Dieudonné needs a highborn bride to prove his worth in the court of Louis XVI. Evena's beauty and wit tempt him — but her provincial origin is a mark against her in society's eyes.
Years later in Paris, the comte has been left at the altar just as Evena arrives to make a match of her own. When her suitor assaults her, it's Dieudonné who steps in to save her reputation. What follows is a classic case of two people knowing each other well enough to read one another's emotions, but misinterpreting the cause to disastrous effect. English Regencies unfold against the background of an untoppled aristocracy; here, the looming specter of the coming revolution means we know our couple will have more times of trial to come. It's to Cole's credit that they feel strong and adaptable enough to meet one of history's greatest challenges head-on.
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