List: romance

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston is a rom-com, pure and simple. It's light-hearted, it's witty, it doesn't feel like "Hello, fellow kids" – what more do you want?

Good forest fairytale. Heavier on the "hurt" side of hurt/comfort that I initially thought. Good characters, good writing, and only a bit low on substance.

Romance, mysterious curse, estate management: A queer/gay romance in a fantasy version of Victorian England. The youngest exiled son of a lord returns to England after his father and brother die, and has to contest with the curse that led to their deaths. Luckily, he finds a strange but attractive young wizard blah blah blah, you see where this ends. Very atmospheric, and a bit too well-written to deserve to be labeled as "enjoyable trash".

I re-read "Shards of Honour" somewhat by accident while looking up a quote for a writing exercise. I had remembered it as a decent first entry in brilliant series: Okay sci-fi, but nothing special.

Captain Ivan Vorpatril finally gets his own book, after decades – both in our world and theirs – of grumbling in Miles' shadow. Unfortunately for him, he gets his book at the point in life when Miles' bad habits have finally rubbed off enough to push him into a chivalrous-if-ill-advised wedding. Bujold has the decency to show up front that this will be a romance, so that the inclined reader doesn't have to fret about the ending, and just gets to guess how she'll bring it off.

This is comfort food, but it's GOOD comfort food. Fantasy world with inverted gender roles (only one man per 20 women, group family marriages ensue). It follows the Regency romance arc perfectly except for leaving out that relationship building part in the second third, which actually might've been better to include. But it's really enjoyable – takes the gender role reversal seriously, isn't stupid about it, but also clearly just has a lot of fun telling the story.

Luckily you cannot read this book in earnest anymore – times have changed too much. So if you read of the far-too-wild, far-too-stubborn young Ilse, who has to go to a boarding school to learn manners, and who is slowly "tamed" by her new friends and teachers until she turns into a young lady, you can feel amused or offended (depending on your temperament) instead of feeling pressured to do the same.

Victorian London, just with vampires and werewolves – both of which very proper and integrated – and propriety, corsets, hats, gossip, and all other Victorian stereotypes. It's basically Urban Fantasy, complete with the sassy, abrasive, clever, female protagonist and a handsome werewolf.