Reading in the Time of . . . Whatever the Hell This Is

Reading used to be my refuge. Books were the unreality I escaped to, my heart wide open, my senses attuned to the characters and their journeys. I could ignore the outside world for a while, guilt free. Now, it feels like my favorite pastime has come to a screeching halt in favor of paying attention to the horrors being perpetrated by a psychopath and his fellow ghouls, and I don’t know whether the books I’ve read recently are uninspiring or if I’m simply uninspirable in my current frame of mind.

With that being the case, I haven’t felt it fair, nor have I had the brain space, if I’m being entirely honest, to write what would normally amount to a review. I have been reading, though, with the hope that something, anything, would pull me out of this slump. I thought I might share what I’ve picked up over the past couple of weeks, without going into anything too in-depth, with the intent that maybe a book/author you haven’t read before might inspire you.

Welcome to Dorley Hall by Alyson Greaves: This book, according to its author, began as a rant against the NHS. There’s a lot more to unpack here, though. This is a story about forced transition as behavior modification. To put it in more blunt terms, toxic masculinity is corrected by eliminating the man—one way or another.

But what happens when Dorley Hall acquires, unbeknownst to them, a transgender woman who is willing to suffer its abuses with the intent of using the program to get gender affirming care? It’s a slow but wild journey into sisterhood.

Paper Roses by Lily Morton: For diehard Lily Morton fans out there. This book is everything the Romance genre promises its readers: tropes upon tropes, all culminating in a happily-ever-after. Also loaded with plenty of the author’s trademark banter and snark.

Paper Roses is a quick read, an easy and welcome bit of escapism when you don’t want to be pressed by deep commentary or complex issues.

The Grip of Death by Nazri Noor: This is the final book in Noor’s Arcane Hearts series, and it delivers what he promised from the moment Jackson Pryde and Alexander Wright reconnected in a friends-to-enemies-to-lovers way.

The world-building in this series is not only fun but its characters are sweet, charming, and pretty irresistible. Everything leading up to this moment culminates at the Halls of Making and who was behind the annihilation of the original building in which Jackson lost his parents. We get the answers to that as well as Jackson and Xander’s much-anticipated wedding.

Black Velvet by Fox N. Locke: I went into this book expecting . . . I’m not sure what. A transgender teenager whose father disappeared without a trace seven years before, has a near death experience and then returns from the Great Beyond with a little help from Elvis Presley’s ghost. Now Elvis is Aaron’s near-constant companion.

It sounds like a lighthearted romp through the supernatural, but this book is anything but that. It confronts death and attempted suicide, while also giving readers a glimpse into Aaron’s thoughts and feelings as a transgender man who is frequently misgendered and always on alert for the chavs and bullies. His mission to discover what happened to his dad, and the way he accomplishes that, delivers some lovely heart-tugging moments in the end.

The Outcast Orc by Jordan Castillo Price: If JCP was trying to write the furthest thing from the PsyCop series as possible, she succeeded admirably. And did it in under 200 pages of story that manages to be tense as well as deliver a budding romance that encourages its characters not to judge based on appearance and assumption.

Quinn is an enslaved human, Marok is the Orc who has been shunned by his tribe for what became a fatal mistake, and together they not only uncover a diabolical plot but manage to unmask a level of attraction to each other that delivers them to a place of more equal standing. Sequels await and I’m looking forward to them.

Deck the Halls with Secret Agents by Aster Glenn Gray: If you haven’t read this author’s excellent Cold War Era romance, Honeytrap, that’s okay. You don’t have to, but you might want to. Anyway, this short little Christmas nosh only brings that book to mind because it’s about two rival secret agents-turned-occasional lovers who end up in the same place, at the same time, trapped by the same snowstorm at Christmastime. And they’re both in search of the same potentially damaging, certainly incriminating, letters thought lost to time.

George and Nikolai take advantage of the mission to spend a few passionate moments together. Until a little manipulation reveals they might get more than certainly George had bargained for.

Swordcrossed by Freya Marske: By all preconceived notions, I should have adored this book. Sadly, it was more miss than hit for me, thanks in large part to the deep, and frankly mundane, dive the author takes into the business of wool—the cleaning, the carding, the spinning, the dying, you name it, it’s covered in too much detail for my taste, while the romance that grows alongside the precarious circumstances under which Jay House is struggling to survive is tested by outright deceit and lies of omission.

Matti and Luca themselves were not nearly as compelling as romantic leads as Matti’s sister Maya and his fiancée, Sophia, were as budding helpmates. And as the story reached its sticking point, I found myself skimming to get to the point of resolution. Marske’s beautiful way with words is here, full stop, I simply wasn’t invested in the story.