Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange

 

Amanda Grange is officially a new autobuy author of mine and she's woefully underrated. I actually bought this book because it had a 2.89 average rating on Goodreads and I was dying to know why it had been panned. I honestly don't know why it was, though. It's a fun cross between Twilight, Dracula, and Pride and Prejudice, and I had such a good time reading it. My best guess is that because this author mostly writes Jane Austen fanfic, her primary audience was people who want traditional Jane Austen fanfic and didn't appreciate the high camp.

This book is a direct AU sequel to Pride and Prejudice that starts with Jane and Elizabeth's joint wedding and then jumps into action when Elizabeth and Darcy go on their European honeymoon. Elizabeth is slightly worried that Darcy won't consummate their marriage, and even as she is awed by their trip to first Paris and then Venice, she is disturbed by his relatives and acquaintances, and all the sly little hints they keep dropping about his dark secrets.

The title is definitely a bit of a spoiler but there were still tons of fun surprises. I loved Elizabeth's character and Darcy definitely gave off Edward Cullen vibes, which weirdly works because of course, Smeyer based Edward on so many Byronic and Byronic-adjacent heroes, like Darcy, Rochester, and Heathcliff. I'd recommend this to that very niche audience of people who enjoy both literature and camp, because it contains elements of both.

3.5 out of 5 stars

The Six-Month Marriage by Amanda Grange

 

THE SIX-MONTH MARRIAGE was mostly excellent but I also had some frustrations with it. The premise is fantastic, though, and sure to appeal to readers who enjoy high stakes marriages of convenience, such as BEAST OF BESWICK. Madeline is under her abusive uncle's thumb and he's about to marry her to an even crueler and more abusive man to assuage his gambling debts (as Madeline has a 10,000 pound dowry).

Instead of going along with this, Madeline runs away and ends up encountering a handsome scarred man who saves her from some would-be assaulters. When he talks with her and finds out the extent of her desperation, he decides that she would be the perfect candidate for his own trumped-up marriage proposal. He planned to marry a woman named Letitia to have as his countess because he thinks women are stupid and annoying, and at least she is a familiar enemy (lmao), but his father didn't agree with his choice and threatened to disinherit him posthumously from the Earldom if Philip married Letitia.

So Philip's new and ingenious plan is to marry Madeline for six months and then have the marriage annulled. Letitia gets the countesship, Madeline is freed from her uncle, and the uncle gets the dowry in exchange for leaving them all alone. It seems like the perfect plan, but obviously, since this book is more than twenty pages long, it is NOT.

For most of this book, I felt like it was going to be a five-star read. I liked the high stakes and the danger, and there was even a spy element at play that I liked (and I'm not normally into spies). It doesn't really go anywhere though and has the last ditch drama vibes that some of Lisa Kleypas's third act murder attempt subplots do, though. I liked all the characters and I thought the marriage of convenience was marriage-of-conveniencing quite nicely, but THEN Philip had to drop a skeazy line about how Madeline's trauma made her so much more mature and interesting than the vapid ladies of his acquaintance and that made me hate him a little, ngl. It's giving "I'm jealous you had a traumatic childhood because now you have GREAT material for a memoir!" energy. Yuck.

Madeline and Philip also made some INCREDIBLY stupid decisions in the third act and the use of the miscommunication trope in this book made me want to stick my head in gravel. Pro tip: if your romantic rival says, "Hey, let's meet up on this rickety bridge and talk terms" say NO. The end.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Ironskin by Tina Connolly

 Oh man! I have so many THOUGHTS about this book and thank god I didn't have to go through it alone. My friend, Regina Sage, read it with me and I'm glad she did because she warned me about some pretty major triggers that happened towards the end (TW for body horror, including people getting their faces ripped off). I was not expecting a fantasy romance with a prom dress cover to be so DARK.

First of all, I don't think the 3.33 average rating is deserved. But before ACOTAR, I am not really sure people knew what to do with fae romances. Elizabeth May posted about how her Falconer series kind of flopped, because it came out before fae was popular and now it's experiencing a resurgence because people can't get enough faerie smut. I feel like this book falls into the same boat. A romance retelling of Jane Eyre involving the fae, with curses, masks, Tam Lin vibes, and a war of humans versus fae? Sounds very ACOTAR-ish. Except this came out all the way back in 2012.

That said, I can kind of see why people weren't sure what to make of it. It's a very slow burn story. It's one of those stories that's more vibes than it is plot. Jane comes to be a governess to a single dad who has a child who might be part fae. Jane has been cursed by the fae and has to wear an iron mask, because her curse is one of anger, and the mask keeps the magic from lashing out. This experience with fae magic puts her in a unique position to tutor Dorie, but it might also put her in danger. Because as she explores Edward Rochart's castle, she encounters many sinister mysteries that suggest that the castle, and Edward himself, might not be all that they seem.

Until maybe about 60% in, I was all set to give this five stars. I felt like the end petered out a little bit and relied on too much violence to get to the conclusion. How many times does a face have to get ripped off in this book? Because I swear it was at least five. That's like at least four times too many. At least, it was for me. And possibly for the other people who picked this up thinking it was going to be a fun and frothy fantasy romance and instead encountered some Tanith Lee levels of horror.

Actually, I would highly recommend this book to fans of Tanith Lee, because I feel like she also traversed the boundary of whimsical and horrific in her works, too. Like, this isn't dark enough to be outright horror or grimdark but it has many of those elements, just as how even though it's incredibly angsty and has some romantic scenes, it's a little too dark and light on relationship development to be a true fantasy romance. I would argue that the ending is an HFN at best and the story probably could have benefited from a conclusion because after all the horror, it feels way too abrupt.

But I did like this book. I would read more from this author in a heartbeat. It was interesting and unique. I just could have done with like 80% less face-ripping.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Virgin Sacrifice by L.M. Ramirez

 

This scratched the dark academia itch I've been touting since starting the Zodiac Academy series: girls with cut-out hearts, creepy cults, and town founders with too much time and power on their hands, Hollow Oak is not a safe place for the unwary. Luckily, Luz, a half-Puerto Rican wunderkind who speaks four languages and has a whole J. Crew-inspired closet full of dark secrets, is hardly unwary.

Why Choose? is not normally a genre I gravitate too, but I just loved the academia setting so much. I also liked all the Blackwells, especially Locke (he gives major Lance Orion vibes, so if you stan Blue x Orion, you'll probably love this book). Allister, Nixon, and Everest were all interesting too and I'm excited to learn more about them.

For some reason, I was expecting a supernatural element, but this feels more like a horror movie pastiche. I was reminded of Wednesday, Happy Death Day, Trick 'R Treat, and Scream, in particular. Most of the gore is on the DL, although there's one pretty gory torture scene towards the middle that was very hard to read. It's not integral to the plot, though, so if gore is hard for you to handle, you can totally skip over it without missing anything.

The book ends on a major cliffhanger, with a potentially large twist. I still have so many questions and I'm very excited to have them answered when I read more from this author. What a stellar debut.

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars

Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence by Tanya Selvaratnam

 

This a memoir written by the ex-girlfriend of ex-District Attorney, Eric Schneiderman, who was later accused of abuse by several of his exes, including the author of this book, Tanya Selvaratnam. In this memoir, she writes about how they met, and how his abuse escalated, and what her experiences of living with intimate partner violence were like. Apparently this made pretty big news. Trevor Noah even included a joke about it on his show, because it was considered pretty scandalous that a high-up political official forced his brown girlfriend to participate in master/slave play. She obviously found the joke very distasteful and wrote in to complain, for which she received an apology.

I loved this book a lot. I think she did a great job showing how you can enter a relationship with wide eyes and not realize that your partner is an abusive person until it's too late, because of course we want to forgive the people we love when they hurt us in the hopes that they won't do it again. It was wonderful to hear about the people in her life who worked hard to validate and support her, and get her story out there when she needed it. I also loved that she made the effort to point out that some of the behaviors that happen in abusive relationships can be totally fine in a consensual kinky relationship, but the difference is consent, respect of boundaries, and mutual enthusiasm. That's a distinction that not all memoirs like these bother to make.

Some people complained about her privilege but I think it just goes to show how even with a huge support network, money to spare, and an established career, you can still get suckered in by master manipulators and they can still make it very hard to get away. The racial component is also a valid one, too, and she does point out that brown and Black women have good reason to be leery of law enforcement officials when it comes to making reports of abuse.

4 out of 5 stars

Prisoner by Annika Martin

 

PRISONER is an excellent dark romance. There's an almost Hannibal Lecter x Clarice vibe to it, and I love that cat and mouse dynamic. Grayson is in prison for being a cop killer. Abigail teaches creative writing to the prisoners as a graduate student. Grayson is attracted to Abby right away but he also sees her as a means to an end: by being in his program, there's a way for him to escape and get back to his men.

This is a book about two damaged souls finding each other in the most dire of circumstances. I think there are a lot of triggers in here for potential readers because one of the characters was a victim of CSA and there's also somnophilia and non-con. PRISONER handled these subjects really well, though, and didn't languish on the details, which I really appreciated. 

The first half of the book moved faster than the second, which dragged just a tiny bit. I also agree with other reviewers that the bad guy should have got more of a comeuppance and the ending felt abrupt. But apart from that, this was a well crafted, highly emotional story and I'll be thinking about it for a while. One of the best captivity romances I've read in ages, with an FMC that I liked just as much as the MMC.

4 out of 5 stars

Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s by Sarah Ditum

 

The intersection of feminism and pop-culture is one of my favorite topics because so often, when we see popular opinion pieces about pop-culture, the story is told from and about the cisgendered (and mostly white) male perspective. TOXIC was of particular interest to me because I came of age in the late 90s/early 00s, and that shit was toxic as fuck. I am still to this day unpacking some of the harmful messages that I ended up internalizing during that time period. And I don't think anything shows those unattainable and shameful standards for women quite as well as how the media talked about certain celebrities, who either couldn't or didn't want to follow the "rules."

I have mixed feelings about TOXIC because while the subject matter was interesting, the way the author talked about some of these women left a bad taste in my mouth. Take the Britney chapter, which dates itself because it came out pre-Britney memoir: the tone of the essay, while sympathetic, feels patronizing; and in retrospect, some of her remarks about Britney feel quite callous and at times even cruel, such as her analysis of the music video "Everytime." Ditum seems to take it as a mournful song about a breakup, but now we know that it's a heart rending ballad about the abortion Justin made her get that she wasn't allowed to talk about.

The section about Paris reads more positively, but suffers the same limitations because it also came out pre-memoir (her most recent one, I mean; she has two). I liked this chapter a lot because I really like Paris Hilton and I think the author, to her credit, really manages to capture how clever and self-effacing Paris is. However, the essay about Aaliyah was painful to read. Mostly because the focus of the essay is not so much about Aaliyah herself but how she was a victim of grooming. R. Kelly is more prominently discussed in this essay than she is, and the way Ditum talks about her, like a helpless martyred waif who was frozen in time like a bug trapped in amber, made me so upset. 

I don't feel like the Amy Winehouse and Kim Kardashian chapters were very well done at all. Neither of those essays really capture how dynamic and conflicting those women are. Kim Kardashian seems to be a celebrity that people really struggle to write about because I've noticed this is a theme in other celebrity-focused books I've read. I think it's really difficult to juggle the fact that while she portrays herself as a selfish and vapid celebutante, she is an expert deflector, and she and her mom have turned their name into both a brand and empire. She also is the recipient of a metric ton of shit talk. The way people talk about her and her body (particularly during pregnancy) can be so traumatic that I am honestly in awe that she can leave her house without crying (because that is what I would be doing if it were me). Amy Winehouse was a similar recipient of that level of hate, especially in the late aughts and early 2010s. And, like, I really don't think this essay captures how she was basically destroyed by her fame; addiction almost felt like her way of self-medicating from the stress she received from being in the public eye and that is devastating. It feels very Valley of the Dolls, which basically had the message that the standards are women are such that to make do, you have to be drugged up... or perish trying.

I didn't really care about the two essays on Jennifer Anniston and Chyna, so I skimmed those.

TOXIC said some interesting things and reminded me of some very disturbing aughts trends that I'd half-forgotten (like Tila Tequila), but I'm not sure I'd recommend it unless you are just really interested in 2000s celebrity culture and want to read about it in a book that almost seems to emulate the same gossipy tabloid formula that it sets out to criticize.

3 out of 5 stars