I was all set to get this email out on the actual first day of April … and then I spent most of Sunday lounging, listening to podcasts and cuddling my cats. Oops? (I’m not sorry.)
Speaking of my cats, they were the mascots for the Championship Match for this year’s Tournament of Books! You can see them in all their glory here.
Are they the cutest? Yes, they are. Okay, on to the books!
The Last of the Tournament of Books
This book took me so long to finish because it stressed me out. Alex, our protagonist, is a young woman accompanying an older man summering in the Hamptons. When she gets kicked out, she thinks she just needs to get back in his good graces and swindles her way through different social groups so she can see him at his party at the end of the week and things will surely work out. This book is exploring class and gender and sex work and privilege and while I appreciate all of that, the decisions Alex makes are TERRIBLE and they STRESS ME OUT. Literally sent my reading back a whole week because I had to cringe through chapters. There’s stuff to get out of it but oh, my blood pressure.
I owe Big Swiss an apology because based solely on the jacket copy, I thought this book was not for me. A psychiatrist’s transcriptionist in upstate New York is intrigued by a patient and then meets her and begins an affair, unable to admit she already knows a lot about her from literally transcribing her therapy sessions. But it’s so much more than that. Beagin is a great writer, able to say so much in little asides. There’s a great paragraph towards the end about finally being comfortable being bisexual in your forties that I was blown away by. This is much more of a character novel than a plot novel so if you’re intrigued by some of the plot strings, know they won’t go as hard as another writer might have tugged but if you read the first chapter and you’re connecting with the style, you’ll love this book.
American Mermaid - Julia Langbein
The story of an high school English teacher who moves to LA after the rights get bought to her debut novel, I wanted to love this book so much. I did love this book for a lot of it! Though no projects ever got off the ground, I have been in talks with Hollywood people about how they’ve wanted to adapt my books for screen and they were painful at times, to put it mildly. Watching her slowly, potentially, lose her mind trying to protect her feminist novel from getting turned into a summer blockbuster is oh so relatable. But halfway through, they introduced a half-baked, clearly not researched idea of the heroine (and by extension, her mermaid protagonist) being asexual and it is so poorly done I actually had to put the book down for a moment. Having her sister call her broken and no rebuttal of that? Calling asexuality immunity to love? Yeah, sorry. You’ve lost me. ~Screw that~
Non-Tournament Books
You May Now Kill the Bride - Kate Weston
God, the title is fun, isn’t it? A murder mystery where people keep dropping like flies leading up to a wedding, I really, really wanted to like this one. There were two issues, though. The first was technical: the point of view would switch between paragraphs, if not sentences at times. There are five main characters and though I was able to keep track, it was still jarring. The other problems was more in the character development. These five girls have been friends since they were tiny and it would flash back and forth between them growing up and the present. And yet, there was no feeling that they truly liked each other. In both timelines, the others resented each other and were always talking behind the others’ backs. It was hard to believe in their friendship. I did want to know what happened and there were a lot of twists and turns but ultimately, it wasn’t the best.
I’m not usually a huge short story person but these were interesting. The general theme of the collection was typical story (girl gets back on dating apps, teen is lonely at figure skating practice, woman is at her job) in abnormal world (the time war just ended, the government has been disappearing men, vampires exist). All of the stories were also queer (great!) and sexual (sometimes worked, sometimes felt out of place.) My favorite was Natalya, written as a medical examiner’s report as a coroner does an autopsy on a woman she had a fling with as a teen. If these set ups sound interesting, definitely give it a try!
The set up for this is great: she’s a curse breaker, he’s an archeologist, they’re butting heads at a castle in the Scottish Highlands. I’d never actually read this author before because all her other novels are, as the BookTok kids like to say, rather spicy and that’s not what I’m looking for in my rom coms. I thought this one might be different? But it was still a little bit much for my tastes. Still, I liked the set up and I liked the characters. I just probably would have liked half the sex scenes shortened so that there could be a tiny bit more character development but that’s on me, I suppose.
On the other hand, here’s a book I thought might be a little boring and then I fell head over heels for it. The third in a regency series, our hero is the bastard brother who was brought into the family as a kid but is very aware of his place in society (and a widower with a daughter) and the heroine is a duke’s sister who has to use a wheelchair due to a childhood illness that messed with one of her legs. His sister married her brother back in book two so they are both in town for a big party and start hanging out because they both feel on the fringes and find they can talk easily to each other since they’re basically strangers. I adored their relationship, how it begins as friendship and grows to something more and I love how their discussions with each other lead them to grow into better versions of themselves. And good disability rep! In a regency romance novel! You love to see it.
How has another month passed? Where has March gone? How dare time move forward in a linear fashion.
Highlights of this month included spending time in Seattle with my best friend Katy and her husband, who flew in from New Orleans. Absolutely lovely every time I get to see her. I’ve also gotten into seeing a genre of movie that’s ‘It might be good or it might be horrible but either way, it’ll be fun’ horror films with my friend Glitch. This month we saw Imaginary which was terrible but extremely fun to be at. My favorite part was before it began and a couple with their six year old child came to sit in front of us and Glitch typed on their phone to me ‘someone’s about to be traumatized.’ Truer words, etc etc.
What do I have to look forward to in April? …. Nothing. I’m headed to the beach the first weekend in May for a friend’s art show (all art shows should be at the beach, fyi) but the month of April brings only work, alas. I have gotten back into streaming a little bit, mainly because I wanted to play Baldur’s Gate III after watching someone else play it on youtube in a way I didn’t like so that’s been fun. I joked while making my main character on stream about how the first character I ever created was a half elf named Penny for the Neopets Roleplaying boards … and then obviously had to recreate her for the game. I’ve been playing Monday nights, if anyone ever wants to tune in.
And this is where I leave you all for another month, alas! No more tournament books to read so we’ll probably go back to genre and nonfiction for a little bit. As always, you can become a subscriber for $5/month or $35/year and choose something for me to read with its own newsletter devoted to it. I beg of you, few subscribers that I have: please send me a book. I am ready.
Until then, see you in a bit!