What is the opposite of Dark Academia? Bright Academia? Radiant Academia? Whatever it is, Letters to the Luminous Deep certainly qualifies. This cozy, epistolary fantasy features a slow blooming romance and an intriguing mystery. The world in this novel is predominantly aquatic with only a small landmass being available to humans. People either live on ships, in buildings underwater or on man made islands. Our heroine E (her full name isn’t revealed until the end) … Continue reading Letters to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall →
Content warnings: Lots and lots of grief and loss, also death of a secondary character Dearest Josephine is an epistolary novel about grief and coming of age, disguised as a paranormal gothic romance. It is a sweet, clever, beautiful book, and I adored it. In 1820, the recently orphaned Elias Roch meets Josephine DeClare at an inn, and falls instantly and passionately in love. But in the morning, she is gone, and he has no … Continue reading Dearest Josephine by Caroline George →
Mr Right Across the Street is a very sweet, very hot, slow-burn romance. Mia Abbott is building a new life in Manchester, where she has moved after her last relationship ended in the kind of unpleasantries that lead to changing cities and phone numbers. For the first time in her life, she is living alone and far from her family, and she is enjoying the opportunity to rediscover herself as an independent woman. She is … Continue reading Mr. Right Across The Street by Kathryn Freeman →
Mild trigger warning for deeply negative, damaging descriptions of mental illness common during WWI. I love epistolary novels, especially those with a solid thread of romance, so Last Christmas in Paris was a hefty dose of my catnip. While I was entirely absorbed by this novel when I was reading it, I found the ending and the finale of the emotional journey way too rushed, and not as finely wrought as the first 85% of … Continue reading Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb →
For those who love an element of foodie-ness in their fiction, Delicious! is a tempting piece of women’s fiction about self-discovery centered around people’s love of food. Its cast of eccentric characters is very Alice in Wonderland-esque, but too many pans in the fire and the heroine’s infallibility tended to make the book a bit of a slog. Billie Breslin has traveled to New York from California to take a job at a food magazine named … Continue reading Delicious! by Ruth Reichl →
Like most Jane Austen fans, I focused my Austen attention on her six fully completed books. I really thought I had my Austen down, but then I thought I better look at some of her earlier writing and OMG HAVE YOU READ LADY SUSAN? This is a book that Austen sort of kind of finished – I mean, it looks kind of done but it reads like she planned to do some major edits and … Continue reading Lady Susan by Jane Austen →
