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Recent reading
Jun. 12th, 2023 06:08 pmI have been out hiking for two days, which was lovely. I hardly had to carry any food, since I passed by two places where I could eat. One was a fancy vineyard/hotel/conference center/restaurant, which had an absolutely delicious buffet breakfast! Yum. It also had an actual newly built folly looking like a crumbling castle, in the basement of which was their wine shop. Very kitschy.
I feel a little bad about being so hard on that historical f/f romance? I mean, I know there's a whole genre of Highland romances, most of them m/f, and perhaps the vagueness in historical period is a genre convention. However, while I was out hiking I read a very good historical f/f romance which I am eager to recommend to you!
The Heiress by Molly Greely (2021)
This is excellent. It is published Austen fanfic, with Anne de Bourgh/Original Female Character, and also Anne de Bourgh/Rosings Park. The style is not Austen pastiche, but I didn't find it obtrusively modern, and it's just good writing in general, that serves the story and sometimes also makes you stop and appreciate a turn of phrase. The premise is that Anne is the way she is because she was given laudanum as an infant to keep her from crying so much, and then that just...continued, because her doctor said she was delicate and kept prescribing it for her. So it's the story of how she manages to get free of that, find out who she is without it, and become an independent adult who is not managed by Lady Catherine. I called it a romance, but I'm not sure it actually is a romance in the genre sense; it's more focused on Anne than on the romance. It's also not a predictable book; I was genuinely uncertain at several points as to what was going to happen. Would talk more about it except that I don't want to spoil you!
I feel a little bad about being so hard on that historical f/f romance? I mean, I know there's a whole genre of Highland romances, most of them m/f, and perhaps the vagueness in historical period is a genre convention. However, while I was out hiking I read a very good historical f/f romance which I am eager to recommend to you!
The Heiress by Molly Greely (2021)
This is excellent. It is published Austen fanfic, with Anne de Bourgh/Original Female Character, and also Anne de Bourgh/Rosings Park. The style is not Austen pastiche, but I didn't find it obtrusively modern, and it's just good writing in general, that serves the story and sometimes also makes you stop and appreciate a turn of phrase. The premise is that Anne is the way she is because she was given laudanum as an infant to keep her from crying so much, and then that just...continued, because her doctor said she was delicate and kept prescribing it for her. So it's the story of how she manages to get free of that, find out who she is without it, and become an independent adult who is not managed by Lady Catherine. I called it a romance, but I'm not sure it actually is a romance in the genre sense; it's more focused on Anne than on the romance. It's also not a predictable book; I was genuinely uncertain at several points as to what was going to happen. Would talk more about it except that I don't want to spoil you!
