teach me the art of war

(Echoing a post from April 2023, when life’s busy, these are the books I have the headspace for, and the preceding posts I’d made on this theme.)

November/December can be a stressful time of year.

Ever since I turned sixteen, it has almost always been a season of deadlines – exams, essays, job applications, reports. Often it has been a season of uncertainty – waiting for results, or for details about next year’s plans. Some years I have also felt overwhelmed trying to juggle this year’s work with the preparations expected to be made for next year’s work.

The past few years have consistently involved manual labour in the form of helping colleagues to move classrooms/offices. A couple of times I’ve had to move, too. (Not this year, thankfully. I think I would have cried if I’d had to do that).

And that’s without mentioning family gatherings and Christmas!

So I don’t know if I can classify this November/December as the most stressful or the most difficult I’ve ever experienced. But on top of the expected stresses, this year there were some unique challenges.

I had a couple of bouts of illness that were not just bog-standard, run-of-the-mill colds – one involved being violently ill (I suspect food poisoning). Far more significantly, however, my grandmother died.

I’ll write more about that another time. Probably. But I wanted to mention it, because it is part of my story.

---

The following reviews are not quite all the books I’ve read in November/December, so maybe it would be more accurate to say when life’s tough, these are the book reviews I have the headspace for.

---

• Fundamentals of Biology: Reproduction by Penny Reid: This follows on from Inheritance. PhD student Sam has moved in with her childhood friend Andreas so they can continue to mislead his family with their fake-dating.

I actually read this one back in October and I think I enjoyed it? Once again, it is almost entirely told from Sam’s POV. The ending is less of a cliff-hanger than Inheritance’s ending was, but less satisfying – Inheritance’s cliff-hanger was a positive development that was likely to draw the characters closer together, whereas Reproduction ends with a development that pushes them apart, even though it includes something of the aftermath. ( I might have been annoyed if the sequel wasn’t going to be released the following month. )

• Fundamentals of Biology: Evolution by Penny Reid: Generally I prefer when romances to avoid a third-act break-ups, but when there’s a whole book devoted to the aftermath of a third-act break-up, it becomes more like a second chance romance, and that’s a trope I generally enjoy!

I like that this narrative gives Andreas and Sam the time and space to better understand why their relationship fractured, and to work on rebuilding it. ( I also like that there’s a lot of focus on Sam’s friendships. )

---

• Dating-ish by Penny Reid: Early in November, when I was waiting for Evolution to be released, I happened upon a recommendation for this book – not an algorithmic recommendation, but a comment from another person on the internet.

I actually read one of the books in this series a few years ago (Marriage of Inconvenience) and came away with little interest in checking out the other books, but having been recently reminded that I have enjoyed some of Reid’s novels, I decided to take the unknown internet commenter’s recommendation.

Dating-ish is about Marie, a journalist who goes on a date with a guy who messaged her online, only to discover that he’s not who he pretended to be – he doesn’t want to date her, he wants to interview her for his academic research.

Even though I didn’t clearly remember Marriage of Inconvenience, I suspect I got along better with Dating-ish because it was easier to keep track of Marie’s knitting friends when I had met them all before.

I don’t have any strong feelings about this book, but I appreciated that this was a single POV romance, and I enjoyed it enough that I wanted to reread Marriage of Inconvenience, the events of which overlap somewhat with this book. (So I promptly did that and yep, I can see why Marriage of Inconvenience didn’t inspire me to read other books in this series. There are things I like about it but it really drags on for too long.)

---

• The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson: This is about a couple of doctors who are werewolves. They embark on a fake dating scheme – she wants to avoid her grandmother’s matchmaking attempts, while he wants to avoid the hospital freaking out about him being an unmated Alpha.

I was sufficiently entertained by the first part (fake dating is one of my favourite tropes, and I’m not opposed to stories that could have started life as Reylo fanfic – admittedly I’ve no idea if that is the origins for this particular book.) I got bored somewhere in the middle and didn’t bother to read the final part until over a month later.

This isn’t quite my cup of tea. Or maybe it just isn’t very good? I don’t know.

---

• Kiss of the Basilisk by Lindsay Straube: Utterly unhinged, but strangely – surprisingly – compelling. I read the first chapter out of curiosity, expecting that I would have no interest in reading further, but that was not the case. ( It’s POSSIBLE that my enjoyment had little to do with the narrative itself and more to do with the fact that it successfully distracted me from my own circumstances. ) I will not recommend this book, especially since I did somewhat lose interest and start skimming towards the end, and I am highly unlikely to acknowledge to anyone in person that I’ve read it – I considered not even mentioning it here.

---

• Escorted by Claire Kent: A successful romance author who has always been single hires an escort for personal research reasons.

When I read this, I had a couple of books (one fantasy, one contemporary romance) that I was halfway through but I’d concluded I wasn’t in the right mood for either of them; I’d tried starting a romantic fantasy sequel and struggled to stay focused; I didn’t feel motivated to pick up any of the books I have out from the library.

I decided to check out Escorted after it was mentioned in a discussion about romance featuring couples who are good at communicating with each other, especially in regards to physical intimacy.

It certainly has that. The story is tightly focused on Lori and Ander’s interactions, and although generally my preference is to be given a fuller picture of at least one protagonist’s life and non-romantic relationships, I thought the focus worked for this story. I also prefer more polished, and less prosaic, prose but I thought the prose worked here, too. ( Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood to mind? )

---

• Brood by Claire Kent: Having enjoyed Escorted, and having realised that I’d previously read another one of her books (published under the name Noelle Adams) and liked that enough that I’d wondered about reading another of hers, I decided to see what else she has written.

Brood is a post-apocalyptic dystopian romance about a young woman who has grown up in an underground bunker community, expecting that her duty involves an arranged marriage and having babies. A week before her 21st birthday, upon which Cadence is expecting to marry a childhood friend, she is informed that she’s a better genetic match for a recently-widowed guy in his mid-thirties.

This novella is not quite my cup of tea ( but I found it interesting and oddly satisfying to see a disturbing situation being explored in a way that seems realistic without being too bleak. )

---

• Protected by Claire Kent: This is also a post-apocalyptic romance, but the apocalypse only happened a couple of years earlier. Lilah has been trying to survive on her own for a few months when she is given an opportunity to join a group of scavengers. The group’s leader assigns Deck – tall, strong and silent – to look out for Lilah.

Somewhat like with Brood, there was something interesting and oddly satisfying to see a disturbing situation – the devolution of society, the threat of being assaulted, etc – being explored in a way that seems realistic without being too bleak. ( I guess the story also ticked a box for being single POV, and another box or two for being a cuddly hurt/comfort romance. )

Do I want to read more like this? Maybe someday, if I were again in the mood.

---

Books reviewed but not yet posted: 2
Books read but not yet reviewed: 6
Books started but not yet finished: 4
Number of additional books I’d need to read in the next 5 days to reach the total I read last year: 32