Book of the Day Roundup: February 13-17, 2023
Miss Newbury’s List
Megan Walker
Shadow Mountain Publishing
Softcover $15.99 (320pp)
978-1-63993-052-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Megan Walker’s wistful Regency romance novel Miss Newbury’s List, a woman is faced with a choice between an aristocratic marriage or unexpected love.
Three weeks before her wedding to a duke, Rosalind feels overwhelmed. She’s lukewarm about the cordial match: it would benefit her family’s standing, but she’s fearful that she’ll miss her chance at a full life. Inspired by her aunt, she makes a list of ten dreams for her future. They range from learning to swim and eating sweets to changing someone’s life. Her desires, even when they’re whimsical, reflect her sense of longing for personal agency. Rosalind’s best friend is cautiously supportive of her desires. Meanwhile, a family friend, Charlie, hides his family’s secrets beneath a bruised façade.
As she works through her list with increasing delight, Rosalind faces classic questions about responsibility versus independence. She finds common ground with Charlie, who also confronts his fears about measuring up to other people’s expectations. Peril and tangled motivations fuel big revelations that may enable the cast to make unencumbered choices.
Rosalind’s clear affections for her loved ones contrast with her feelings of dread about the increasing social restrictions she faces. Her exchanges with her younger brother are loving and carefree; his sense of duty inspires her. And Charlie, an outcast because of his unconventional choices, ignites her curiosity. His gentlemanly concern for Rosalind’s safety; his empathy about her reluctance to become a duchess; and his teasing encouragement to unearth the truer facets of herself result in a warm, playful connection. Their romance is both daring and restrained.
Miss Newbury’s List is a gentle, moving romance novel that’s inspired by kindred companionship and crossroad reckonings.
KAREN RIGBY (December 27, 2022)
The 30-Day Engagement
Waverly Decker
Calhoun Howard
Softcover $16.99 (322pp)
979-898662100-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A staged relationship blooms into love in Waverly Decker’s lighthearted LGBTQ+ romance novel The 30-Day Engagement.
Emory and Mari broke up eight years ago, so Emory is surprised when Mari, who works as an actress in Hollywood, invites her to her Malibu wedding. Emory’s boss wants her to connect with Mari’s groom, who’s a tech mogul; it’s a task that Emory dreads, but considers to be vital to making junior partner. In need of a plus-one, Emory hires Bliss, a cash-strapped florist who tends to Emory’s office plants. Theirs is a quirky meet cute. Still, the women discover that early impressions seldom reveal the full truth.
As they shop for wedding attire and formulate a plausible story about how they met, Emory and Bliss become closer to one another. Emory is career-focused and weary, while Bliss is driven by idealism: her fledgling business is all about simplicity and adding beauty. Their exchanges are inquisitive: Bliss, despite her skepticism about corporate life, is attracted to competent Emory; she plays the part of a devoted fiancée according to her convictions about what commitment should look like. Meanwhile, Emory feels delighted by Bliss’s impulsivity.
When feelings arise between the women, they trouble the line between sticking to a short-term business agreement and pursuing something of greater depth. They also soften as they learn to embrace each other. The pain of their respective pasts recedes. Broader ideas about future hopes, the delicate artistry in floral arrangements, and learning to admit to one’s shortcomings and risk new beginnings all add up to a sweet love story in which Bliss and Emory’s differences are paved over.
In the upbeat LGBTQ+ novel The 30-Day Engagement, a contractual romance becomes an authentic one when passions ignite.
KAREN RIGBY (December 27, 2022)
The Scarlet Circus
Jane Yolen
Tachyon Publications
Softcover $17.95 (256pp)
978-1-61696-386-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In the fairy tales and poems of Jane Yolen’s The Scarlet Circus, there are curious permutations of haunting, mesmerizing love stories.
Featuring previously published stories alongside new work and personal commentary, this entertaining book explores pleasures and disappointments that are as otherworldly in their expressions as they are humane. The entries are linked by desires that reveal themselves in steady, confident, and clever ways. They leave just enough leeway to imagine the provocative outcomes of their characters’ fates; they’re also often refreshing in their versions of happy endings, with occasional exceptions of loss. With their treasure-seeking, imaginative turns, the entries chase familiar themes into strange new territories.
Here, a marriage between a sun-cursed prince and a disbelieving woman results in regret. Elsewhere, an elf meets the ghostly inspiration behind Shakespeare’s Juliet, prompting her fateful pursuit of love. In another story, an average princess with no marriage prospects discovers the power of wish-making through embroidery, orchestrating her own future; still elsewhere, an ordinary stepdaughter grieves her father’s death, but still finds a way to secure herself love.
“A Ghost of an Affair” stitches worldly details with fantasy elements as a modern artisan’s jewelry sales to Neiman Marcus are at home with silversmithing in Scotland. And the magic of love defies logic in other entries: people who were separated by a century meet during a rainstorm, and while an authorial voice steps in to quip about how “corny” it all is, the event also leads toward a sweet finale. It’s in these splendid spaces between the book’s winking tributes to sentimentality and its swerving surprises that an unabashed sense of romance lingers.
With romantic tales inspired by history, dragons, and literature, The Scarlet Circus is a bright romance anthology marked by people’s agile maneuvers.
KAREN RIGBY (December 27, 2022)
Sing, Nightingale
Marie Hélène Poitras
Rhonda Mullins, translator
Coach House Books
Softcover $17.95 (176pp)
978-1-55245-448-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
An enticing visitor spells doom—or a new beginning—for a distinguished but troubled family line in Marie Hélène Poitras’s novel Sing, Nightingale.
The Berthoumieux men have been caught in an endless cycle of control, lust, forbidden desires, and death for generations. Though once prosperous and influential, the sun was already setting on their fortunes when Aliénor, a woman with a mysterious past and motive, came to stay. Her arrival signals a reckoning for the family patriarch and threatens to unearth the secrets that have long been hidden in plain sight.
The narrative unfolds like a stage play, with the settings and characters arriving one by one to assume their places in the grand drama. Malmaison estate is an eerie place with a dark history and unusual customs. Its waning glory is felt in its dwindling livestock and the abandoned secondary house where Aliénor now takes up residence. The surrounding forest and nearby village are just as unnerving, providing both nourishment and a place to conceal the most gruesome crimes.
Time seems to work differently at Malmaison: though years pass and occupants change, the same patterns and fates overcome them in the end, with both men and women—but women most severely—being punished for their desires. In this way, the narrative uses fantasy to explore real-world problems of the human need for power and control.
As Aliénor stumbles closer to the truth, the Berthoumieux family undergoes changes both natural and strange. The old ways crumble in incredible fashion, and the family is set on a new path that will lay the past to rest and at last bring Malmaison into the future.
Sing, Nightingale is a twisted, haunting tale of jealousy, murder, and vengeance in the countryside.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (February 8, 2023)
The Weight of Air
Kimberly Duffy
Bethany House Publishers
Softcover $16.99 (400pp)
978-0-7642-4038-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Kimberly Duffy’s historical romance novel The Weight of Air, circus performers fight to recapture their identities.
Behind the twinkling lights of the circus lies a hidden world of pain and longing. Ever since her mother abandoned her and her father died, strongwoman Mabel has wrestled with crippling self-doubt that leaves her unable to perform. Jake, an acrobat, is desperate to escape the career that killed his wife, but feels obliged to Mabel, his childhood friend. And Polly, once a beloved aerialist, is overwhelmed with guilt for abandoning her family. When the three are drawn together, they decide whether they are willing to forgive the past to move forward.
Set in early twentieth-century Europe and America, The Weight of Air presents the realities of circus life through a lens of celebrating differences. Its circus performance scenes are vibrant and exciting while also symbolizing people’s inner struggles. Polly’s recklessness on the trapeze symbolizes her feelings of worthlessness; Mabel’s struggle to perform her strong act represents her struggle to find inner strength after the loss of her father. As Mabel and Jake contemplate finding happiness in one another, Polly realizes that her depression does not define her.
The book is delicate in handling sensitive topics, yet unwavering in its message that they need to be dealt with. Polly opens up about her postpartum depression, which left her unable to care for Mabel. Mabel wrestles with feeling objectified in a society that’s dominated by men, in which people see only her body instead of her abilities. And those around them contribute humor and amplify a sense of the circus’s strong family atmosphere.
The Weight of Air is refreshing historical romance novel set among circus performers who struggle, but also triumph.
VIVIAN TURNBULL (December 27, 2022)
Barbara Hodge
