I should probably make this a monthly thing!

Much of what I’ve been reading lately has fallen squarely in the romantasy genre with a good bit of it being Young Adult. Once again, impatience sent me to the actual library shelves for some of these books.

Latest Reads:

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

This starts out with a young woman exiled by her own brother and continues some years later with a totally different protagonist, one surrounded by the mystery of what happened to the exile and how it affects a trial to choose a new emperor. I like the way Hodgson subverts the “introduce your protagonist first thing” rule. She adds a twist near the end of the story that I guessed just before the reveal; she plays fair with the reader as far as clues are concerned. There are several unresolved plot lines, so a sequel is planned for late 2027.

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

Definitely a cozy romantasy about a young witch stripped of her magic for the crime of necromancy. She and her resurrected great-aunt run an inn, a magical place where the powerful charm on it is slowly fading. Even so, it appears for those who need it, including a stern, weary magic scholar and his witchy, autistic, little sister.

Rules for Ruin and The Marriage Method by Mimi Matthews

Two books from The Crinoline Academy series. The Academy trains young women how to disrupt the patriarchy of Victorian England by any means necessary.

In Rules for Ruin, Euphemia “Effie” Flite is sent to London, presenting herself in polite society in order to ruin the reputation of a politician before he can sink a law guaranteeing property rights for women. She gets tangled up in the machinations of a gambling house owner, who is already using the politician to keep law enforcement out of the slum he’s trying to save.

The Marriage Method sees Effie’s beautiful but crippled best friend, Penelope “Nell” Trewlove, trying to stop a newspaper editor from investigating the Academy–as well as tracking down a girl who disappeared on her way to the school. Caught in a compromising (though innocent) position with the editor, Nell is informed there’s no other choice but for her to marry the man. Together, they work through their sudden marriage as they investigate not only the missing student but also the murder of the paper’s popular gossip columnist.

I enjoyed the way Matthews wove both the history of the era through the nascent women’s rights movement and the realities facing women of Victorian times. I did deduce some of the mysteries presented before their revelations.

Wires and Nerve Vol. 1 & Vol 2: Gone Rogue, by Marissa Meyer & Stephen Golphin

I was surprised to find these two books were graphic novels. They are sequels to The Lunar Chronicles tetralogy, focusing on the android character, Iko, and her quest to bring to justice the monstrous wolf-soldiers from the previous books. All of the characters from the Chronicles make an appearance, but Iko is the protagonist in both books. I wasn’t impressed with the art style, nor with the limited color palette. There didn’t seem to be enough facial variation in the main characters for my liking.

The Princess Knight by Cait Jacobs

My very first thought on reading the blurb was the film, Legally Blonde–spurned girlfriend follows her ex to the tough school he’s attending. Or, in this case, a princess from a soft, decadent kingdom follows the man who was supposed to be her betrothed to the martial academy he’s attending–with war on the horizon. She has to learn to fight, to think of others than herself, and to thwart a plot destined to overrun all the besieged nations, including her own. Definitely a romantasy, though the fantasy part is minimal.

The Spellshop, The Enchanted Greenhouse, and The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst

Two of these are connected; the third is not.

I read The Enchanted Greenhouse before The Spellshop and I recommend reading the The Spellshop, first. Though the stories include different settings and characters in the same world, there’s definitely more set-up in the first book. I enjoyed the world building, and how events in the first book are resolved in the second, even though the setting and cast are totally different.

The Faraway Inn is definitely YA. A high school girl from Brooklyn goes to help her innkeeper great-aunt in Vermont to get over the pain of a failed teenage romance. Her grumpy great-aunt doesn’t want her there at first but she’s determined to help restore the run-down inn back to its glory days–all while trying to solve the mystery of the inn and its oddball denizens.

The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire, by India Holton

Romantic comedy with a touch of academia and a splash of magical slapstick, mostly involving an unpredictable teaspoon. There are two more books in this series concerning relations of the female protagonist; this is the third book in the series.

TBR:

Fairest, Marissa Meyer

The Bone Maker and The Queen of Sorrow by Sarah Beth Hurst (I have two more books by Hurst on hold.)

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox