i think up ciphers to trace unto your skin | because it doesn't feel safe to just say 'i love you.'

[redbrunja]

callmeonetrack recommended Cecelia Grant's romantic novels here, and I completely second that recommendation. I've read A Lady Awakened and A Gentleman Undone (each took me about a day and a half) and I greatly enjoyed both.

Read them if you like:

-determined ladies who drive the narrative
-heroines who are allowed to be broken and flawed and fucked up (especially the lead in A Gentleman Undone)
-actually hot, actually explicit, in-character sex scenes
-LADIES WHO KNOW ABOUT SEX, KNOW HOW TO GET THEMSELVES OFF/USE SEX TO KILL EMOTIONAL PAIN
-romantic leads who are actually romantic leads

I only have a couple quibbles,

which is that I wish that at the end of A Lady Undone hadn't been quite as neat - that the heroine would have to deal with her choices causing people who didn't deserve it hardship, and I didn't like how both heroines decided to make huge, dramatic gestures without consulting the hero. It's nice that it was the FEMALE lead being high-handed, and that the tension between the leads didn't depend on a misunderstanding but it's still frustrating, and in the case of A Lady Undone, I couldn't believe that the female lead didn't check that she had a place to land before jumping.

Comments

[lady-with-cats.livejournal.com]

ooh recs. ty!