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Romance books (one with gore)
Hey heeeey Hugo books are out and although I am feeling kind of unmotivated for most of the categories, I might actually end up reading some of the novels. In the meantime I am researching romance novels for Reasons (beta reasons) and have read some romance or romance-adjacent books, one of which doubles as Hugo reading.
Romancing the Beat (Hayes) - nonfic, how-to. I was asked to read this because it clearly sets out the beats of a romance novel.
Act 1: the hero and the heroine, and what's holding them back from looooove; meet-cute and "adhesion" (why they are going to be hanging out together, because it's clearly not because they're in love, right?)
Act 2: Falling in love!
Act 3: Retreating from love... this isn't going to work... they choose their fear over love... complete with (possibly soft) breakup
Act 4: Fighing for love: they realize they've been an idiot and need to fix it
(She goes further into detail for each act, setting out exact beats for everything.)
So putting it all out like that made me realize that a) yep, this is how romance novels work, and b) huh, this is why I don't like romance novels. Why do you have to have an act 3? Just gimme a couple who has to work through, idk, multiple-universe-hijinks or something and keeps getting closer. (I mean, sure, there could be times of tension in the relationship, but eh.) Plus which, often the Act 3 breakup happens because one or both of them is an absolute idiot, can't communicate, or both. So it's a good book, and possibly required reading if you want to write a romance novel, but I was not entirely glad I'd read it, heh, because it brings out all the sausage-making out into the open.
Yours Truly (Jiminez) - This author was recommended to me, so I flipped through a few sets of sample pages and found that this was the one whose sample I liked the most. Dr. Briana Ortiz starts out on the wrong foot with Dr. Jacob Maddox, who looks like he's going to take the promotion she deserves. But then Jacob sends Briana a really nice letter... and one thing leads to another, that is to say, kidney donations and fake dating.
It perhaps says something about me that I tend to judge romance novels heavily by the non-main characters, and what totally won my heart in this one was Jacob's family, who are just a delight. They seriously steal every single scene they are in. I found the writing generally quite good, though relying on a dumb miscommunication for Act 3. It also features in Act 4 or so a totally unnecessary and extraneous plot twist (here, I'll just spoil it for you, extraneous random pregnancy, yuck), which I felt was annoying and a blot on what was otherwise a charming by-the-numbers romance.
I liked this one well enough that I read through the samples of several of her other books more carefully, but none of them seem quite as charming as this one, not enough for me to actually read it. I also get the impression her editor leveled up in a big way for this one; it just seems more polished than her other books, even for little things like commas.
The Friend Zone Experiment (Cho) - I vaguely knew this book was a thing and was not all that excited about the title, but then I saw it at the library, and see above about Reasons, so I picked it up. It's super cute! And also like Cho read Crazy Rich Asians and was like, huh, what if I wrote something like that only actually good. The idea is that Renee Goh, the CEO of a small clothing company in London, runs into Yap Set Kiong, who was the boy who broke her heart at university; they're still very attracted to each other, but Renee wants to keep it as friends-maybe-okay-with-benefits so that she doesn't get her heart broken again. Meanwhile, her father is retiring and is thinking about who will be the next CEO of his massive multinational company; Renee is in the running, but she has to work with her brother, who is also her rival for the job. Meanwhile meanwhile, Yap Set Kiong is trying to figure out what happened to his family's friend, who got on the wrong side of another massive multinational company...
I thought the title was a bit misleading, as the CEO plot and the family-friend plot are both at least as important as the friend-zone romance. Additionally, the actual "let's just be friends with benefits" part is honestly a little... underplayed? Like, I don't mind this at all -- I think playing it up more would have meant a lot more "totally not interested in you!!" beats that I'm not really into -- but I certainly would have been much more interested a priori in reading something with a title that brought the rest of the book out into more prominence.
A Sorceress Comes to Call (Kingfisher) - okay, so, I feel like I might have previously overdosed on Kingfisher a bit, as I only picked this up because it was on the Hugo list and I happened to see it at the library. But then apparently I had totally missed that it was basically a Regency romance with sorcery?? Which is totally my jam?? The idea is that Cordelia's mother, Evangeline, is a sorceress who wants to marry rich and is trying to pull the old "I'm a widow who just needs looking after" with Hester's brother. Hester has the great idea of pulling together a house party to counter Evangeline's wiles (seriously, this is so totally my jam. Probably why A Little Night Music is my favorite Sondheim), including her good friend Imogene and her family, Penelope Green who used to be her brother's lover, and Lord Evermore who used to be Hester's lover. Can I say how much I LOVE all the scenes with Hester and Imogene and Penelope and Cordelia. This is Kingfisher, so things go south in a gory and magical way, but honestly I would read a whole book of a more conventional Regency where we just got a lot of the cut direct and so on from these fabulous women and minimal or no magic whatsoever, and no gore. I'd prefer no gore, to be honest :P But anyway, there was enough of this that I really loved it, and I did really like how everything came together.
Content notes: I guess you can't really call this a Regency romance, in the sense that most Regency romances don't have possession/complete loss of autonomy, multiple gory murders, decapitation of something that at least looks like an animal, and a ghost.
This book doesn't quite, er, care about the beats; it really is more concerned with the effects of sorcery than with whether it is really adhering to a proper Act 3, etc. Which is rather how I like it!
Possibly my favorite Kingfisher to date??
Romancing the Beat (Hayes) - nonfic, how-to. I was asked to read this because it clearly sets out the beats of a romance novel.
Act 1: the hero and the heroine, and what's holding them back from looooove; meet-cute and "adhesion" (why they are going to be hanging out together, because it's clearly not because they're in love, right?)
Act 2: Falling in love!
Act 3: Retreating from love... this isn't going to work... they choose their fear over love... complete with (possibly soft) breakup
Act 4: Fighing for love: they realize they've been an idiot and need to fix it
(She goes further into detail for each act, setting out exact beats for everything.)
So putting it all out like that made me realize that a) yep, this is how romance novels work, and b) huh, this is why I don't like romance novels. Why do you have to have an act 3? Just gimme a couple who has to work through, idk, multiple-universe-hijinks or something and keeps getting closer. (I mean, sure, there could be times of tension in the relationship, but eh.) Plus which, often the Act 3 breakup happens because one or both of them is an absolute idiot, can't communicate, or both. So it's a good book, and possibly required reading if you want to write a romance novel, but I was not entirely glad I'd read it, heh, because it brings out all the sausage-making out into the open.
Yours Truly (Jiminez) - This author was recommended to me, so I flipped through a few sets of sample pages and found that this was the one whose sample I liked the most. Dr. Briana Ortiz starts out on the wrong foot with Dr. Jacob Maddox, who looks like he's going to take the promotion she deserves. But then Jacob sends Briana a really nice letter... and one thing leads to another, that is to say, kidney donations and fake dating.
It perhaps says something about me that I tend to judge romance novels heavily by the non-main characters, and what totally won my heart in this one was Jacob's family, who are just a delight. They seriously steal every single scene they are in. I found the writing generally quite good, though relying on a dumb miscommunication for Act 3. It also features in Act 4 or so a totally unnecessary and extraneous plot twist (here, I'll just spoil it for you, extraneous random pregnancy, yuck), which I felt was annoying and a blot on what was otherwise a charming by-the-numbers romance.
I liked this one well enough that I read through the samples of several of her other books more carefully, but none of them seem quite as charming as this one, not enough for me to actually read it. I also get the impression her editor leveled up in a big way for this one; it just seems more polished than her other books, even for little things like commas.
The Friend Zone Experiment (Cho) - I vaguely knew this book was a thing and was not all that excited about the title, but then I saw it at the library, and see above about Reasons, so I picked it up. It's super cute! And also like Cho read Crazy Rich Asians and was like, huh, what if I wrote something like that only actually good. The idea is that Renee Goh, the CEO of a small clothing company in London, runs into Yap Set Kiong, who was the boy who broke her heart at university; they're still very attracted to each other, but Renee wants to keep it as friends-maybe-okay-with-benefits so that she doesn't get her heart broken again. Meanwhile, her father is retiring and is thinking about who will be the next CEO of his massive multinational company; Renee is in the running, but she has to work with her brother, who is also her rival for the job. Meanwhile meanwhile, Yap Set Kiong is trying to figure out what happened to his family's friend, who got on the wrong side of another massive multinational company...
I thought the title was a bit misleading, as the CEO plot and the family-friend plot are both at least as important as the friend-zone romance. Additionally, the actual "let's just be friends with benefits" part is honestly a little... underplayed? Like, I don't mind this at all -- I think playing it up more would have meant a lot more "totally not interested in you!!" beats that I'm not really into -- but I certainly would have been much more interested a priori in reading something with a title that brought the rest of the book out into more prominence.
A Sorceress Comes to Call (Kingfisher) - okay, so, I feel like I might have previously overdosed on Kingfisher a bit, as I only picked this up because it was on the Hugo list and I happened to see it at the library. But then apparently I had totally missed that it was basically a Regency romance with sorcery?? Which is totally my jam?? The idea is that Cordelia's mother, Evangeline, is a sorceress who wants to marry rich and is trying to pull the old "I'm a widow who just needs looking after" with Hester's brother. Hester has the great idea of pulling together a house party to counter Evangeline's wiles (seriously, this is so totally my jam. Probably why A Little Night Music is my favorite Sondheim), including her good friend Imogene and her family, Penelope Green who used to be her brother's lover, and Lord Evermore who used to be Hester's lover. Can I say how much I LOVE all the scenes with Hester and Imogene and Penelope and Cordelia. This is Kingfisher, so things go south in a gory and magical way, but honestly I would read a whole book of a more conventional Regency where we just got a lot of the cut direct and so on from these fabulous women and minimal or no magic whatsoever, and no gore. I'd prefer no gore, to be honest :P But anyway, there was enough of this that I really loved it, and I did really like how everything came together.
Content notes: I guess you can't really call this a Regency romance, in the sense that most Regency romances don't have possession/complete loss of autonomy, multiple gory murders, decapitation of something that at least looks like an animal, and a ghost.
This book doesn't quite, er, care about the beats; it really is more concerned with the effects of sorcery than with whether it is really adhering to a proper Act 3, etc. Which is rather how I like it!
Possibly my favorite Kingfisher to date??
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The third act breakup works when it's set up properly, but a lot of writers either don't want to set it up or they don't know how to set it up.
You have to establish what sort of (probably psychological) issues have caused the situation. If you haven't properly done that, it boils down to one or both of them being an idiot and neither one of them using their words like a grown-up. And then because you haven't established why they're so dumb, they get back together without any plan for actually resolving their personal and/or relationship issues, making the ending totally unsatisfying.
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Though I still don't prefer it as a plot beat in general. Like, get over your issues first and THEN get in the relationship :P (And I speak as someone who did basically have something like a third act breakup with my now-husband... but if I wanted real life immaturity I'd, idk, read my journal ;) )
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I think I've only read the first couple of both of those series (because both my kids decided they didn't want to read them after the first couple), but I really liked them and for a while was giving Hamster Princess to all of the girls around S's age that we knew :) (And, I mean, I guess I still am, except that we no longer know nearly as many girls S's age now that both E and A are older.)
I haven't read all her books but I've read a fair number as they do keep being nominated for the Hugos. The last couple I read were somewhat heavy on the depressing aspects, though, and I think that made me less inclined to read more. (Sorceress is a mixed bag -- it definitely does have quite a few very depressing bits, but it also has quite a few bits I really love.)