My Favourite Books of February

    KJ Charles never misses, and this is another great mix of historical, mystery, and romance, which is one of my favourite combos. Zeb tries to stay away from his family, because they're all horrible and consider him a failure because he can't hold down a job. But a distant uncle convinces him to come for a stay in the family faux-Gothic manor in Dartmoor, and to his horror, all of his terrible relatives are there, and so is his ex-lover who hates him for losing him his job. The uncle declares that he will choose which of the men will be marrying his ward and get the inheritance. Zeb isn't interested, but he's stuck there because of the mist, and tensions rise between the family members, especially when they start seeing ghosts and messages appear on the walls.
    I love what KJ Charles did with the setting here. It's set in the early 1900s, but the manor was built to resemble a Gothic manor. It's also set in the moors with an unpredictable fog, and so the spooky, gothic atmosphere is absolutely there. There are lots of family secrets and damsels in distress, villainous men and dark desires. 
    But at the center of the book is Zeb, a gay chatterbox with (obviously undiagnosed) ADHD and a strong moral compass. I love the way he foils his family's plans just by being nice. He feels a lot of shame for being such a failure, and unable to manage his time well or do a job well like everyone else seems to. The mystery was definitely more at the forefront of the book than his romance with Gideon, but what we got of the romance I really enjoyed. A second chance romance can be tricky, but this one absolutely worked for me. During their time apart they both had time to think about their mistakes and learn from them, and so this second time around they were better able to communicate their true thoughts and feelings. And some of their conversations were really lovely and romantic.
    And the mystery was really fun as well. It was Gothic, but set in the Edwardian era, so I really didn't know if there would be a supernatural element or not. Are those ghosts real?? Everything moved at a great pace, and I was eager to see what would happen in all the different elements of the story. And it was just so fun!

    This book is gorgeous, about one woman's simple life and yet all the complexity that goes into a life. Lena is a fat Black woman living in Portland, and her story is told in a mix of prose and poetry. She has a daughter, a fiance, two close friends, and a job she loves helping the small but mighty Black community in Portland. But then she calls off her wedding last minute, and that kicks off a complicated period of her life.
    The book starts with the sentence "I don't want to die fat," and Lena's fatness and feelings about her body are a throughline throughout this book. She experiences microagressions and macroaggressions because of her weight, and although it of course sometimes hurts her, she speaks powerfully about how her weight (and the way it intertwines with her race) doesn't diminish her humanity in any way. This correlates closely with her relationship with both her mother and her daughter, and how they each talk to each other about the relationship between food and weight. I loved seeing how each mother's ways of talking to her daughter about their bodies affected how they in turn did the same with their daughter, and it is so hard to get it right in such a cruel world. 
    And of course race is another big part of this book, since it's a core part of Lena's identity. Portland is a very white city, but Lena is doing a project about the history of the Black community in Portland. There are chapters about real individuals who lived in Portland, and how their stories still resonate today. 
    Besides her mother and daughter, Lena also has significant and complicated relationships with her two best friends, her ex-fiance, and Aaliyah's father. I love complicated friendships, so that really hit for me. I loved seeing the friends love each other through actions and words, fight and forgive, and figure things out.
    I really loved the writing in this book. I'm not much of a poetry person, but the poetry in this book was all very accessible. And even the more straight-forward chapters written in prose had a poetic quality to it that I loved. It never felt overly wordy or obstruse, but just gave the prose a lovely cadence, with every sentence imbued with meaning. Really wonderful.

    Grace has a baby at 17 and gives it up for adoption. As an adoptee herself, she tries to fill the void by trying to find her biological family. She finds an older brother, who is half Mexican and never got adopted, growing up in foster homes and not trusting himself after he committed violence when he was younger. She also finds a younger sister, who is a lesbian with a wonderful girlfriend, but has trouble opening up about her insecurities about having a sister who is their parents' biological child. They meet and start a tentative relationship, but their individual stories and experiences mean they all have complicated feelings about what it means to be family.

    I loved this so much. All three characters were three-dimensional and had compelling storylines on their own, but then that was elevated by their interactions with each other. As they hear about their siblings' lives, they uncover insecurities they've tried to keep hidden. All three also have romance subplots, but the focus is firmly on family and their relationships with each other, which I appreciated. The writing is also more elevated than what I usually see in YA, and I think that's also what brought this to another level for me.

    This is a super weird lit fic book that I wasn't always sure I understood, but I was just happy to be experiencing it. The Bride is about to get married in a week, when she goes into her hotel room and sees her dead grandmother in the form of a bird, who tells her to go look for her estranged brother. That sparks a series of strange events leading up to her wedding that she's really not sure she wants to go through with. 

    This is the kind of thing I wouldn't like at all if I didn't love Bertino's writing so much. It's so interesting and descriptive and observant. There are so many memorable scenes and interactions, and I was highlighting so many lines throughout. There are a lot of supernatural or impossible things that happen, like her grandmother showing up and talking to her as a bird, but the book is not interested in exploring whether it's real or not, if it's all in her head, or anything like that. It simply puts the main character in a strange circumstance and asks, what if? I usually like when a book has more of a plot, but then it wouldn't be a Marie-Helene Bertino book. It seemed to be about a woman who ended up in a life she didn't actually want, and the people we miss, and the complex relationships we have. I especially loved her reunion with her sibling and the messiness of relearning the people we used to know. And it features my favourite wedding rehearsal speech in any form of media.

    This is perfect for anyone who enjoys books set in the Regency era but wants something different from the usual story about balls and marriage plots. Isabel is forced to leave her home in London after her navy husband has died and she's destitute and the victim of scandal. She returns to a small town in Cornwall, where she was found as a child and adopted. There's a rumour that she's a Cornish merman's daughter, and she doesn't believe it, but can't deny that she feels a pull towards the sea. While living in her little hut without servants, it's invaded in the middle of the night by smugglers, one of whom is wounded. She helps them out, and finds herself falling for Jack as she takes care of him. 

    The setting was excellent here. I don't know much about Cornwall, but now I feel like I've been there. The cliffs, the sea spray, the little village... Isabel was a great character too. She misses her husband but struggles with the fact she had very little time with him, and might not have loved him like she should have. She grew up as a lady, but now can't afford any help, so has to learn how to cook and clean for herself. But she faces her reality and gets on with it, and even learns to love her independence and being able to make her own decisions. 

    I've read a lot of Regency-era romances, but this definitely felt like a historical with a strong romance plot. It's not set in London, and while both Isabel and Jack are technically part of the gentry, she's poor and he's a smuggler, and other than one dinner party, they don't interact much with other people in their class. There are still threats of scandal and mentions of advantageous marriages, but it's much more concerned with sailing and smuggling and tending wounds. Way more adventure and danger than a typical romance! 

    I appreciated the speculative element as well. I'd never heard of this Cornish version of mermaids, and the questions remains of whether they could exist or not. It just added some fun to the story. Otherwise, the story was gorgeously told, the romance was compelling, the stakes were high, and I thought it was pretty much perfect.