two romances

An Offer From A Gentleman, Julia Quinn, is the third book in the Bridgertons series. It's Cinderella with a little obvious inspiration from Ever After, most notably the plump and sympathetic younger stepsister, so, nothing particularly original, but I ended up quite liking it, the most of any of the Bridgertons books so far. The book seemed a little unclear on how much it wanted to question/undermine the concept of hereditary social class - the heroine ends up in the servant class for some years, but that's "unfair" because she was the bastard daughter of a noble, whereas, you know, all the other servants deserve that lot in life. (And they seem to agree; at the beginning of the novel her fellow servants all conspire to help send her to the masked ball where she first meets the hero, and we don't get any hints that they might be thinking "when is it my turn to do this".) There's a bit in the middle where a couple of the hero's loyal servants are interacting with the heroine and there's some explicit discussion of her somewhat muddled status at that point (once and future housemaid, but temporarily a guest, but the loyal servants want him to hire her), but we don't get any followup with them at the end when he ends up marrying her instead of hiring her and how they feel about that. Courtney Milan would have handled all this better but of course she can't write everything. Anyways, it was pretty charming and enjoyable (if you're willing to read the one-true-love-at-first-sight business as all taking place in a soulmates AU; luckily I like a good soulmates AU).

Trade Me, Courtney Milan. Speaking of Courtney Milan! She's taking a break from historicals to write a contemporary series. This had the potential to be another Cinderella story - poor college student romanced by billionaire - but being Courtney Milan she subverts that in several different directions. Solidly readable with some great lines and scenes and I liked a bunch of the things she did but I don't know that I'm going to want to reread it the way I do the historicals. Also I was very disappointed that there was a major subplot about a smartwatch with groundbreaking video capabilities and its six separate cameras that can swivel and track the user's movements so you don't have to hold your arm in front of you funny for a phone call - and nobody uses it for videophone sex. (Actually all of the sex seemed kind of flat to me; maybe it has something to do with Milan classifying the book as New Adult, like she's writing in a slightly different tone somehow? They weren't exactly less explicit, just... I don't know, more generic or something.)

The Goblin Emperor

I had not been going to read The Goblin Emperor on account of Katherine Addison actually being Sarah Monette and I didn't like her solo book Melusine at all when I tried to read it (having previously known her as half of the Companion to Wolves authors), but then so many people were liking Goblin Emperor that I did. And I LOVED it, so yay me (and maybe they were onto something more than tricking bookstores with the name change business?). Eighteen-year-old protagonist gets catapulted from a life of exile and abuse to the Imperial throne and has to deal with court intrigue and marriage arrangements and he's just so *nice* and *tries so hard* and there are some really well-written and delicately handled characterizations of... well, *everybody*, everybody in the cast seems like an interesting person even if we only see them in passing, and there's some very cool worldbuilding going on with the elves and the goblins and the language and names and honorifics and the way some of that fits into the story. I would have happily spent two more books in this world but it's apparently intended as a standalone, alas. Recommended particularly for people who like the Barrayar parts of the Vorkosigan books but also for fantasy readers in general.