Full disclosure: Hend Hegazi rules, and I am friends with her. Big whoop, wanna fight about it? This is Hend’s first novel (I love writing “first” because I hope she corrals her kids in the hall closet long enough to write another one). Don’t expect me to be objective. It’s not happening. Normal Calm tells the story of Amina, who is the American child of Egyptian immigrants and a devout Muslim. The story begins as Amina starts college, and follows her as she negotiates the […]
In Which I Address My Intellectual Vulgarity
As someone who has been reading romance novels virtually non-stop for two years, I have a lot of feelings on the subject. As a successful writer in the genre, Maya Rodale has feelings and actual research on the subject. I purchased her thesis, Dangerous Books for Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained, because I wanted to understand why this mass market genre is so consistently derided not only by readers, but also seemingly by the book industry as well. Many people read these books […]
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A Feminist Treatise Wrapped in a Romance Novel
The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan
The Countess Conspiracy made me cry. I have read scores romances in the past two years. I have laughed, swooned, scoffed, gasped, cackled, writhed, and sighed, but I have NEVER cried. What’s more, I did not cry over the romance, I cried over the gender politics. Once again, Courtney Milan has upended the tropes of the genre and crafted something tremendously entertaining that rises above the theoretical limitations she works within. Violet, Countess of Cambury, and her dearest friend, Sebastian Malheur, have been keeping secrets […]
No Duke, No Earl, Slight Problem
Leave me in a bookstore and I will get lost in the romance novel section. Romance novels–to be more precise, historical romances a la old school Amanda Quick–are my default book reads, especially when I want to escape into an adult fairy tale. I say all this to make clear my bias in tackling Nancy Naigle’s Mint Juleps and Justice (2014), a contemporary romance and my January Kindle First selection. Mint Juleps and Justice is part of Naigle’s Adams Grove series set in Virginia. I […]
Scientists in Love
Sebastian Malheur is one of the most revered naturalists of his day… and one of the most reviled men in England. After all, he gives public lectures about reproduction and genetics and that is simply Not Done in polite company. Imagine how much more scandalous it would be if word got out that his pioneering discoveries about inherited traits were actually made by a woman!