Ruby Lang – House Rules

I’m going to out on a limb and guess that Lang’s brief for herself with the “Uptown” series was to write using core romance tropes, but consciously alter some standard pillars of each. So the first portrayed a not-quite fake relationship and the second featured not-really-enemies-to-lovers, and here we have a nonstandard second chance (They

Ruby Lang – Playing House

Delightful. The title suggests a fake relationship trope, and while that’s not completely inaccurate, it’s also a bit of a feint. And I really liked that about this book, it feels less like it’s executing romance tropes, and more like the lives it depicts have resonances with those tropes. Lots of great details make this

Ruby Lang – Open House

I liked that “Playing House,” the first short novel in this series didn’t slot too neatly into the “fake relationship” trope, and “Open House,” similarly, isn’t quite “enemies to lovers” – the protagonists have and acknowledge an immediate attraction, but their roles place them in conflict: Tyson is helping out with a community garden, and

Seanan McGuire – Middlegame

I’m fascinated by unintended connections. I bumped “Middlegame” up my TBR because I’m trying to read as many of the Hugo Nominees as I can, and (skirting spoilers you can’t get from just reading the list of chapters( it has surface-level congruencies with some of them. Like “The Ten Thousand Doors of January,” it offers

Jasmine Guillory – The Proposal

Every time I watched a wedding proposal on the Jumbotron at a Red Sox game, I wondered: is this going to be the one that doesn’t go as the proposer intends? Cause it seemed like awfully high stakes, and a weird environment to make a life-altering decision in, if there was any decision-making involved. That’s

Lucy Score – The Christmas Fix

Enemies-to-lovers + Reality-show-hijinks + Christmas = OMG The set-up is already in catnip territory for me, but this is very well executed. The protagonists’ burgeoning mutual attraction evolves naturally and credibly despite the friction their roles impose on them. The book has a large and likable supporting cast, very warm tone overall, but not treacly.

Alix E. Harrow – The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Absolutely stunning. “Ten Thousand Doors of January” uses the familiar trope of hidden doorways to another worlds to tell a story about the power of creativity to disrupt oppressive power structures (like white supremacy). Although it has some serious things to say, it’s also terrifically entertaining, and emotionally involving, with some twists I foresaw, and

Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Gods of Jade and Shadow

Both the 1920’s Mexican setting and the underpinning of Mayan myth set “Gods of Jade and Shadow” apart from the vast majority of fantasy fiction; the combination lends this novel firmly in “not like anything else I’ve ever read” territory. Even when the bones of the plot feel (appropriately!) familiar, the way it unfolds is

Chi Yu Rodriguez: No Two Ways

From other reviews, this short novel seems very polarizing: A bisexual woman and and a bi-phobic lesbian negotiate a mutual attraction. I found KJ Charles’ review very helpful; he praises this book not so much for its exploration of sexual identity but for not punishing its protagonists for hookup culture or binge drinking. Perhaps because I came

Andrea Beatriz Arango: Westwood Monster Patrol

I really enjoyed Andrea Beatriz Arango’s modernized take on “A Christmas Carol,” and I was eager to read anything else I could get my hands on, enough to read a little out of my comfort zone. And I’m glad I took a chance on this, it’s completely unlike any other supernatural-themed YA I’ve read. The