Fiction:
Paladin’s Faith by T Kingfisher is fourth in the series, featuring Marguerite Florian and the paladin Shane, whom we met in the first book. As with the previous installments in this series, I was more invested in the worldbuilding, the plot, and the secondary characters than in the romance between Marguerite and Shane, but those are a lot of things to like and I enjoyed the journey! I am hoping I will see Ashes Magnus and Lady Silver again at some point! Ashes is definitely a Life Goal as an older woman.
Warnings: dealing with recent pregnancy loss, past rape, stalking subplot that resolves safely. And the Crowd Went Wild by Susan Elizabeth Phillips is the newest from this well-established contemporary romance author, another in her “Chicago Stars” series. Dancy is an actress typecast as a shallow beauty, suffering from a high-profile divorce and a subsequent recent miscarriage, to which she’s responded by drinking a lot of alcohol. After a truly humiliating event goes viral, she seeks refuge with her first love, Clint, a professional football player seeking a mental reset in his isolated home. It’s been decades since their breakup and still-resentful Clint is not in the mood for helping her, but he allows her to stay in his guest house, a renovated train caboose, the most charming element of the story followed by the rescue dog who steals the show. Fans of Phillips will know this seemingly overdramatic opening is very typical of her heroines, who usually start the story at their lowest point and earn their happy ending after much hardship. Dancy makes some new female friends and discovers the depth of her own talents and strength along the way, while Clint learns when it’s necessary to seek help. This is a pretty classic example of her style, though I was pleased to also find some exploration of toxic masculinity and how it can harm both men and women.
The Wolf and the Girl by Aster Glenn Gray is a short work loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood and set in 1911 Russia and France; though I’m not hugely into fairy tale retellings for the most part, I do love historicals set in this period, and as an added bonus, silent film and Alice LeBlanc figured into the plot. Masha takes care of her beloved grandmother, who is dying, until a wolf arrives that is not a wolf but her former crush, Raisa, who received a scholarship to St. Petersburg and there fell in with anarchists whose terrifying leader, Tatiana, makes a deal with the devil for magic; and after Raisa has second thoughts, she is turned into a wolf. Masha and Raisa flee together and take up stage work, followed by a silent film, which leads Tatiana to them for a very satisfying confrontation. This would be a great introduction to Gray’s work!
