(Some spoilers ahead for Wisp of a Thing).
I thought a couple of romance novels I stumbled over at the library might help me work out the character arcs in Let No Man Put Asunder better. Both protagonists are struggling to get their lives going, which is true of my Paul and Mandy. Unsurprisingly as their dilemmas are jobs and romances rather than being hunted by supernatural killers, they didn’t really help.
They did, however make me reflect that I’d be a bad romance writer. In my own writing, I’m much less interested in the struggle to get to the HEA than in the couple being together happily and dealing with whatever problems occur, as in No One Can Slay Her (available in 19-Infinity). Kate and Jennifer’s are newlyweds when the story starts, even though the relationship’s hitting a rough spot. In almost any romance I’ve seen or read, the struggle is a major part of the book; I don’t think I could make it work. Fortunately writing fantasies with a romance element seems to work just fine for me (or so I hope).
The books also made me aware that just as I’ve read many fantasies that would have been better back before 80,000 words became the floor for a lot of publishers — i.e., what would have worked at 60,000 words felt padded as a Big Heavy Book — the same is true of romance. Both these books top 300 pages and they’d have worked better for me shorter. Of course romance isn’t my go-to genre so evaluate my reviews accordingly.
ASTRID PARKERS DOESN’T FAIL: Bright Falls #2 by Ashley Herring Blake has Astrid, struggling to save her small town home-remodeling company, undertake a prestigious project, transforming the town’s venerated but outdated hotel for a TV home-makeover show. Trouble is, her head carpenter is part of the family that owns it and she’s horrified at how much Astrid wants to turn the hotel’s antique charm into something modern. Needless to say, the two women find each other the most obnoxious, most irritating person they’ve ever met, plus Astrid has to deal the possibility she’s into women (which surprised me — I’m so used to “out” lesbians in fiction it’s been a while since I’ve encountered a coming-out story). This feels like the target audience is way more into HGTV than me (but that’s a lot of people so maybe that was a good call).
FINDING GENE KELLY by Torie Jean (who also designed the cover) worked somewhat better for me. Protagonist Evie is trying to live 
out her dream in Paris, struggling with having disappointed her mom (where are the grandkids and the handsome son-in-law?) and with her endometriosis (the author is also a sufferer). Then Evie’s childhood frenemy shows up, alternately antagonizing and supporting her, and they wind up heading home for a family event doing the fake-relationship thing.
I like Evie’s first-person voice and the endometriosis is well handled (as far as a non-sufferer can tell). However her childhood memories of Liam make him sound more like a bully than anything which automatically got my backup. And like I said, at 350 pages this couldn’t hold my interest. But as Evie’s into films, I did find it interesting to watch Torie Jean drop movie references (a large part of Asunder) into the plot. I’m not sure she contextualizes them better than I do but she resists my impulse to shove too many at the readers at once.
Alex Bledsoe’s WISP OF A THING is the second Tufa novel and answers the questions about race that dissatisfied me in book one: the Tufa have historically been seen as people of color, been disadvantaged accordingly and many with lighter skins have chosen to pass as white, vanishing from Cloud County forever. Although that said, the book is still short on real-world POC (i.e., black rather than dark-skinned Tufa).
Protagonist Rob is a musician who competed on a reality-TV talent show despite thinking it’s crap (the book’s quite confident no real musician would do it), won, begged his girlfriend to fly out for the awards ceremony — and then she died. A mysterious old men has sent him to Cloud County and the Tufa to find a song that salves grief; the Tufa are not welcoming. Plus they’re curious because the part-Filipino Rob looks like one of them but isn’t. Plus they’re even more curious he can see through their glamor.
Unfortunately there’s assorted nastiness among the fae-descended mountain folk. One’s a magical rapist (consider this a trigger warning), several are psychos and bullies. Rob’s got his own anger issues. A creepy young girl keeps hanging around being supernaturally creepy.
Overall it worked better for me than book one and I like the vivid sense of backwoods Tennessee (though one reviewer had a point that the evil Tufa skew to hillbilly stereotypes too much). However I found Rob and his quest completely uninteresting and the book gets way too deus ex machina at times, like when we learn he can see through glamor because the “night winds” that rule the Tufa wanted him too.
#SFWApro. 19-Infinity cover by Kemp Ward. All rights to cover images remain with current holders.
