What’s Your Favorite First Line?

It’s Monday. Black Lives Matter. There are people who menstruate who are not women. There are women who don’t menstruate. Topple all Jim Crow-era statues of Confederate generals and slave owners. Black authors don’t get paid nearly enough for their work, and now we have clear examples. Performative allyship was last week; now’s the time to be authentic.

So how was your weekend?

Let’s talk about books.

News and Useful Links

What’s your favorite first line? This thread has a lot of good ones and I’d love to hear more. (I rarely remember first lines, even when they stand out. That’s what phone cameras are for, though.)

RWA made a statement and action plan specifically for how they will work to make it a more equitable organization. Gotta start somewhere, I guess.

Do you have the Girl, Have You Read page bookmarked? Because they have a list of new releases by week and do some spotlights of individual books on a regular basis.

If you’re still looking for romances featuring activists, Ana Coqui, one of the organizers of RomBkLove 2020, pulled together a Goodreads list.

There’s another Date Night this week.

And East City Bookshop’s Really Reading Romance book club is hosting Mia Sosa on the 19th.

Oh! I forgot to mention The Ripped Bodice’s summer BINGO. Go forth and get some stuff.

Deals

Did a certain event this weekend make you think about Black cowboys? If you haven’t already read the entirety of the Westmoreland saga (I mean, who has actually managed it?) The Rancher Returns by Brenda Jackson is 1.99 right now. It’s the first in the series titled “The Westmoreland Legacy” so I’m pretty sure you can read it without having read any of the thirty million books in the core Westmoreland series. And this one features a wealthy rancher who is returning from active duty as a Navy SEAL to find a woman looking for buried treasure on his land. So yeah. That sounds hella fun.

Recs!

Someone asked me the other day for a recommendation that for me, was a literal unicorn. So I’m asking you: if you know of a historical romance by a male author of color with middle class queer protagonists…hit me up, I want to read it.

So I haven’t been reading much, but I did want to highlight some books I’m looking forward to reading someday, when all our brains have been given the opportunity to reset. In particular, these are books by queer Black authors. I’ve got such a list, books wise, and I can’t wait to have them all in my life. But that’s going to take a few lifetimes, as it currently stands.

Femme Tales by Anne Shade

I don’t know much about this book besides the fact that it’s a collection of three fairy tale retellings featuring Black lesbians/wlw, but that alone made me almost willing to drop the 9.99 that Bold Strokes Books makes us pay for the majority of their ebooks…which if I actually want, I end up buying in print because by that point, might as well. The three stories are riffs on Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, so that’s always going to be fun.

Office Hours by Katrina Jackson

KJ is an autobuy for me, even if I don’t always manage to read the books immediately, as I intend to. This one has an academic setting, which is always interesting to me. Here, two professors fight the academic blues with their fascination with each other. So that’s sweet, and I hear it’s low on angst. I’m all for it. Also, Katrina Jackson often has at least one queer character in her books, but I don’t yet know if that’s true for this book.

Things Hoped For by Chencia C. Higgins

I don’t actually know if Chencia is queer but I need to talk about this book. NEED. I have no idea what it’s going to be about besides a Black butch lesbian rapper and FEELINGS (both of which are shared in Chencia’s Twitter promotion of the book). But how many times do you see a cover like this? How many times do we get a story like this? I can’t wait to get into this world, share life with these people, and just revel in the pure queer Blackness that this book promises to encapsulate. Sadly, it doesn’t come out until next month, so I’m going to have to just pine sadly at the cover.

The Sugar Baby Series by Rebekah Weatherspoon

This one is a bit of a cheat; I’ve read the first novella, So Sweet, which is a literal iteration of its title, but there are two more that round out the couple’s story. Kayla, the protagonist, is in a rough spot financially when her roommate convinces her to go to a Sugar Daddy mixer. There, she meets Michael, an older man who turns out to own the company that runs the app. They take a liking to each other, and soon Kayla is a happy girlfriend who is also reluctantly accepting the patronage of a man who can definitely afford it. While the first book can stand alone, the others build out Kayla and Michael’s romance and probably offer more of the smoking romance and sex we get in the first book.

This is the tip of the iceberg and I obviously don’t know the identities of every author, even the ones who write romances with queer characters. Who are your favorite queer Black authors?

As usual, catch me on Twitter @jessisreading or Instagram @jess_is_reading, or send me an email at wheninromance@bookriot.com if you’ve got feedback, bookrecs, or just want to say hi!