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Charming, charismatic, and effortlessly popular, Conrad Stewart seems to have it all…but in reality, he’s scrambling to keep his life from tumbling out of control. Brilliant, guarded, and endlessly driven, Alden Roth may as well be the poster boy for perfection…but even he can’t help but feel a little broken inside. When these mortal enemies are stuck together on a cross-country road trip to the biggest gaming convention ever, an unexpected connection is forged. Will they duel to the death? Or will they let their infamous rivalry take a backseat to the most important game of all: LOVE.
If you’re wondering, we’re in the second full week of April now, and the spring showers are apparently ready to join us. If you decide to wander out into the rain just to have something new and different to do, please do it carefully…and if you have to go out into the rain anyway because you’re essential or otherwise not able to stay home, be careful of the cabin-fevered wandering out into the rain.
News and Useful Links
It continues to be a quietish month in Romancelandia, news-wise, but there are a few things worth checking out.
If anyone ever says that the F-word in a historical romance is anachronistic, just point them to this document.
Girl Have You Met didn’t happen on April 4 in St. Louis, but they pulled together some live panels you can watch on the Girl, Have You Read Facebook page.
The Ripped Bodice introduced a new HEA pouch that they were planning to reveal at the LA Times Festival of Books. They’re super cute!
Love’s Sweet Arrow is already nearly sold out of this great t-shirt, but if they have your size, good on you!
The #dontrushchallenge continues to give back. Here’s one featuring romance authors of color, and another one done by members of RomanceClass (scroll for part two!).
Priscilla Oliveras’s Matched to Perfection trilogy got a makeover!
There’s still time to watch the National Theatre’s production of Jane Eyre on YouTube.
And while the free live stream of the Pride and Prejudice musical premiere is no longer available, you can rent or buy it. (PS there’s also apparently an Emma musical, too?)(PPS while we’re talking musical adaptations of classic books, I discovered, while discussing a musical version of The Count of Monte Cristo, that Frank Wildhorn, who wrote Count along with Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel and apparently a bunch of other stuff, also wrote “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”?! Like, you know, the best Whitney Houston ballad in existence? I had to listen to it with Wildhorn brain and it totally tracks, but my brain is still broken.)
Deals
Best You Ever Had is 2.99 right now (and available to read with your Kindle Unlimited subscription). I am always drawn to Monica Walters’ covers, and this one drew my eye immediately. It also features an age-gap romance between an older man, who are at different places in their lives. When they decide to embark on a passionate relationship journey, they can’t decide if it’s too quick or just the right pace.
Recs!
In a moment of either complete mental disconnect or surprise library desire, I checked out three ebooks over the course of the same number of days. I got no reading done in any of those days, so I’m glad I managed to follow said checking-out with some surprise focus and the ability to get books back to people on the holds list for them before the three weeks was up.
(If you have access to a library that has a digital collection, definitely check it out. There are obviously going to be discrepancies based on whether they have a strong digital budget or whether they even have anyone buying new books during all of this, but it’s also a great time to explore some seriously deep cuts.)
The Flapper’s Fake Fiancé
Lauri Robinson
I was wandering through Harlequin’s new releases and was super intrigued by not only a flapper historical romance, but a fake-engagement flapper historical romance, and since the library didn’t already have it I requested they buy it for OverDrive…and then forgot to check that evening and ended up on the holds list. But the person ahead of me apparently devoured it that evening and there it was for me the next night!
Patsy and her two sisters live in Hollywoodland with their very traditional mother and wildly overbearing father. Even though they’ve all completed secretarial school, their only job is to clean their home and the homes across the other properties in the Hollywood Hills their father owns and is trying to sell to the rich and famous. But none of the sisters wants that life, and in a regular act of defiance they sneak out to hang at the speakeasies downtown, dancing their hearts out and enjoying a cocktail or two. Patsy, though, has another motive for sneaking out to the speakeasy she finds herself at alongside Lane Cox, owner of LA’s best newspaper: she wants to be a reporter and is seeking information about an escaped convict. When both the seasoned and novice reporter end up on the same trail, one thing leads to another and suddenly the rumor is that they’re engaged. And what better way to get Patsy out of the house to pursue her dream?
(CW: Aforementioned overbearing father, attempted arranged marriages, violence, drinking, attempted kidnapping, period-specific racism and use of the word “shanghaied”, excessive inclusion of the shimmy)
Sofia Khan is Not Obliged
Ayisha Malik
Hawked as a Muslim take on Bridget Jones, this one was recommended to all of us by Jenn Northington as an oddly meta retelling-of-a-retelling. It was also not in my library but I requested it and did manage to get it before anyone else had borrowed it. Go me!
Sofia is a publicist. She is also a Muslim, and a Hijabi. When we first meet her, she’s just had a racist encounter on the Tube. And somehow that turns into the idea that she should write a book about Muslim dating. (It all makes sense, I promise.) This is a book that pulls from concepts in Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’s Diary without trying to be either of those things. So if you’re looking for something with the exact beats of either, this isn’t going to be your book. But it was lots of fun, even though it took me three times as long to read as I thought it should have.
(Also, I’ve been told that if you want to keep the glowy HEA feeling of this one to avoid the sequel, but it’s up to you.)
(CW: racism, xenophobia, fatphobia, polygamy, difficulty getting pregnant, death of a parent, alcoholism, overbearing in-laws, smoking and use of British slang for cigarette that is also a homophobic slur)
My Beautiful Enemy
Sherry Thomas
Speaking of those deep cuts. I was wandering through the OverDrive home page for my library and noticed that both My Beautiful Enemy and The Hidden Blade were available to check out. After a surprised “How?” came out I spent a few minutes jibber jabbering with myself about whether I should check out both or just read My Beautiful Enemy, which can be read as a standalone. (The Hidden Blade was written as a prequel and they’re technically a duology, but The Hidden Blade doesn’t have an HEA while My Beautiful Enemy apparently does.) I only started reading it about an hour before I realized “I need to write tomorrow’s KB!” so I will hopefully slam the rest of it in the next couple of days.
Catherine Blade has come to England in search of a rare Chinese artifact that should never have left China. The natural daughter of a Chinese courtesan and a British national, she has awesome skills in the martial arts and can basically become anyone she wants. But her appearance in England is a great surprise to Leighton Atwood, the man she thought she’d killed in Chinese Turkestan nearly ten years before. The story is told in alternating periods—now, and then—so we are introduced to the two characters in the present while also learning about who they were in the past, and how they got to now.
Sherry Thomas’s writing is some of the most compelling stuff I’ve ever picked up, and I can’t wait to get back to it (which I’m going to do now).
(CW: Hidden identities, woman masquerading as man, violence, period-specific racism, emotional infidelity, there might be more)
Have you checked out your library’s digital collection? What have they got?
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!