A Wild Steampunk Romance, a Hollywood Character Study, and a Cocktail that Rewards Good Shopping
Plus: A retelling that immediately joined my Top Ten Novels of 2023
What are your favorite books to read when you can’t sleep? I ask because thanks to a kind of reverse seasonal affective disorder, these days find myself awake at dawn, which sounds like it would be just fine…except that right now in England, dawn is comfortably before five AM.
Some mornings I pick up a dense history book and read until my restless brain waves the white flag and I can fall asleep again. Other times the insomnia won’t budge, and I treat myself to a few (dozen) pages of a romance novel so that I don’t resent the hours I have to pass before luckier people wake up. I’m spending my days bleary and at risk of tripping over my own feet, but at least I’m well-read!
This week I read and loved…
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
To begin: of all of the reimagining of the Greek myths that have come out in the past decade or so, your Songs of Achilles and Circes, your Ariadnes and Clytemnestras, this is the best. Hands down, bar none, everyone else pack up and go home. The story of Medusa and her Gorgon sisters is smart, angry, and at times deeply poignant, but it is also blackly, blackly funny. Haynes spares none of her characters: the gods are prickly, capricious, and extraordinarily violent, and the mortals are self-serving, greedy, and, as my husband’s people say, thick as mince. The Gorgons end up caught between them, labeled monsters, even though they’re nothing but. This will be in my list of Top 10 Novels I Read in 2023, I guarantee it.
The Wisteria Society for Lady Scoundrels by India Holton
Imagine a romance novel that’s the result of Jane Austen’s creative, highly anachronistic threesome with P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett. Still with me?You’re in for a treat! Holton has created a fizzy, archly witty, and highly absurd universe, full of genteel assassinations and literal house thefts, bastard sons of Bramwell Brontë and valetudinarian aunts with vendettas, and to enjoy this book the way it deserves, you will need to not so much suspend your disbelief as shove it into a cannon and fire it into the stratosphere. But if you’re in the mood for a truly unique romance, definitely pick this one up.
Will They Or Won’t They by Ava Wilder
Will They Or Won’t They is a sharp-witted Hollywood-set romance, and it’s also a masterclass on creating believable and gripping internal conflict in contemporary romance. In contemporary, it’s usually two characters’ psychological issues that hold them apart, and Wilder presents us with a deeply anxious, prickly, avoidant heroine who collides with a people-pleasing hero with a bad case of imposter syndrome. Lilah and Shane don’t just push each other’s buttons, they play stride jazz piano on them. A key principle of the second-chance romance is that it begins with the couple still in the throes of whatever badness pushed them apart, and Wilder does not shy away from showing the layers of animosity and hurt that have to be excavated before Lilah and Shane have any shot at being happy together. But they get there, slowly but surely, two steps forward and one-and-a-half back, and you’ll be rooting for them all the way.
I also enjoyed…Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen, Settlers by Jimi Famurewa, The Siren by Katherine St. John, An Accidental Bookseller by Bill Samuel
And I mixed…a Rome with a View and an Aviation.
After a few years of making cocktails at home, I get the same pleasure out of going to a well-stocked independent liquor store as I do out of an indie bookstore. The sheer variety of choices! The number of stories behind all these bottles! And like in an indie bookstore, the folks behind the counter are supremely knowledgeable and more than happy to share their knowledge. For example, did you know that maraschino liqueur is originally from Croatia, not Italy, and that the best stuff is still made there? And that there’s another liqueur called parfait amour, which is flavored with roses, vanilla, and almonds, and whose color is a rich royal purple? I ended up buying equally purple crème de violette anyway, but how delightful is that?
This week’s deliciously fragrant Aviation was thanks to the clever people at Gerry’s in Soho and Amathus Drinks in Shoreditch. I am generally not a floral drinks person, but the perfume of violets plays beautifully against gin, lemon, and maraschino, and the dash of purple liqueur turns the drink the color of a hazy London evening sky.
But what if I’m not lucky enough to have a fancy liquor store within a short distance of my house, you ask, and I want to make something delicious right now? Well, I can commend to you the Rome with a View I made from Alice Lascelles’ recipe in The Cocktail Edit, a dry spin on an Americano that swaps dry vermouth for sweet and adds lime and sugar to the soda. Eminently refreshing on a humid night.
I also enjoyed…a Cardamom Angel Face at the American Bar, an Enzoni at Quo Vadis, and Field Recordings Shirts Chardonnay 2021 from Pacific Wines in Angel.