more book recs and some pop culture babble

Ok, we are in the crunch period to the Royal Wedding Shenanigans (someone in my twitter feed shared the news that Eugenie & her dude have moved into another one of the cottages at KP, which makes everyone neighbors), the boys are making me crazy, and I need to go review some API doc with several non-native English speakers, so here, have the thing that has been keeping me sane recently some more Modern Royals recs:

A Princess In Theory, Alyssa Cole, might have the Best Premise Ever: Our Heroine, a grad student/former foster child on a shoestring budget, keeps getting these irritating emails about how she’s the Betrothed of the Crown Prince of Thesolo in Africa. Our Naledi, being a smart girl, ignores the spam. Except… it’s not spam. 😀 So, yeah, super-fun premise; super-gorgeous cover; fun, mostly fluffy, plot, seasoned judiciously with a little reality, angst and villains, requisite HEA ending. Prince Thabiso is a little oblivious to his privilege but not outrageously so; his right-hand-woman is awesomely cool (I hope she gets a sequel); and Naledi, the heroine, is a little vulnerable under her strength. All very good stuff with maybe a little bit of a rushed ending, but still, super-fun to read.

Royally Matched, Emma Chase, sequel to Royally Screwed, which I also liked, though I will say, the men of this family (the hero is RS’s hero’s brother) are about as far down the jackass line as I want to go. They (mostly) make up for it and get better, so there’s that.

The Princess Trap, Talia Hibbert – I feel like this one should come with content warning for abusive relationships, because, holy crap, does the prince in question come from one seriously bad, bad, bad family situation. He’s mostly still a functioning adult, but he comes with a lot of baggage and ends up dragging the heroine into it all. She’s pretty awesome, though. There should probably also be a smut warning, because there’s lots of (well-written and just a little on the kinky side) sex.

Royals, Rachel Hawkins, is out today and I am waiting for the d/l from the library, but I’m giving it a shout-out because RH’s #sexyhistory twitter threads have kept me going on more than one long, gray Tuesday. I’m waiting patiently for the whole War of the Roses thread, which will probably take weeks and weeks. (Today’s thread seems to be Queens Mary and Anne and their less than heteronormative emotional lives and the tangles in which Srs Historians tangle themselves to not admit said less-than-heteronormativity.)

Previous list here

And finally, a podcast: When Meghan Met Harry, which has been updating weekly since the beginning of the year, covering every wedding rumor, related event, and marginal possibility. If you only want to listen a little, grab last week’s ep with Tan from the new Queer Eye as special guest.

And speaking of, I am loving the new incarnation of Queer Eye, especially since they’re running around the ATL, *double* especially when they take their fabulous selves out into the wilds of OTP (Outside the Perimeter, aka, Red Country.) I don’t think there’s been an episode yet where I haven’t cried.

Also. Holy sh*t, I had ZERO inclination to see Venom, and the first teaser trailer did nothing for me, but then the second trailer dropped and TH (IN WELL-FITTING JEANS) came striding onto my youtube with his whole face visible (and scruffy, killmenow) and this is clearly a lost cause.

Alsoalso, I was going to write up my reactions to Infinity War, but I think they can be summed up as… (definitely spoilers) …

Continue reading more book recs and some pop culture babble

collecting my royal valium

So, I was going to start this post off with your usual week-after-Thanksgiving round-up of food, shopping, and my status in various writing challenges**, but then my twitter feed exploded in a shower of sparkles about the Royal Engagement and I decided to join them. (My usual skim of reputable news outlets and the utterly grim headlines contained therein may or may not have contributed to this decision.)

As many of you know, I do love me a good Royal&Not romance, so in the spirit of the day (and to keep me from pulling out any more of my hair over the rest of reality), here are a few of my favorites (and one that annoyed me to the point of going off on a GR rant, just as a warning):

A Queen From The North, Erin McRea & Racheline Maltese == Technically, Our Heroine is not a commoner, but the British alt-history backstory gives enough of a hurdle for Our Couple to overcome w/o the extra class distance. Bonus points for making a contemporary marriage-of-convenience plot point work. (Extra bonus points for a diverse supporting cast.)

Royally Screwed, Emma Chase == American working-class girl, playboy Prince of (Not-Quite-Wales). He butted right up against too-oblivious/arrogant-to-live, but hey, he made her happy and he came through in the end, so I’m good. (There are a couple of sequels that I haven’t gotten around to yet, but I liked this one enough that I’d be willing to give them a go.)

The Royal We, Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan (aka, the gofug girls) == If you haven’t already, today would be the day to read this particular story of the Prince of Wales and his [American] college sweetheart (and her party-loving sister & his semi-feckless but secretly tragic brother.) Happily enough, it’s a kindle deal-of-the-day today. Somebody’s marketing team just won the RL Events jackpot.

To Marry a Prince, Sophie Page == This one is sweet and a little mellow, with an alternate history and line of succession that changes reality just enough to make it not!Wills&Kate-ish.

A Royal Pain, Megan Mulry == This is the one that aggravated me to no end. I should have stopped reading it 20 pages in, but I think it was the only book handy and by the time I was really annoyed, I finished it out of spite. It’s the first of a series, though, so clearly I was in the minority. YMMV.

I am waiting semi-patiently for Alyssa Cole’s A Princess In Theory, which comes out at the end of February, in which a nice, smart American girl keeps deleting all those emails about how she’s secretly betrothed to an African prince… Today seems like an excellent day to pre-order.

Plz, feel free to drop in any titles you might like to recommend.

**Answers to the mundane updates: I will have to type up the cauliflower-cheese casserole I made b/c it isn’t online, but omg, it is *so* freaking good; scored a new Lucky purse for me, socks for the boys; got some kind of a plague so my not-great-but-still-cranking-out-words writing more-or-less collapsed, 😦