Romance – Page 4 – Marked for Plot

Someone You Can Build a Nest In

Someone You Can Build a Nest in caught my eye with its cover as I was exploring 2024 new releases. I threw a hold on the audiobook at my local library and promptly forgot about it until it came up just as I was finishing a re-listen of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It was perfect timing, and ended up being a really wonderful read that is a good example of a book that manages to successfully balance romance and fantasy elements in its story.

Elevator Pitch:
Shesheshen is a shapeshifting monster. Homily is a monster hunter. After Shesheshen is driven from her lair and unmasked, she ends up falling down a ravine only to be rescued by Homily, who mistakes her for a human woman. As they fall in love, monster hunters descend into the town and Shesheshen must grapple with her own survival, what it means to fall in love when (for her species) that usually means killing the one you love, and how to successfully masquerade as a human.

Read If Looking For: quality asexual romance, plus sized queer rep, cozy/horror mashups

Avoid if Looking For: monsters that truly feel monstrous

Evocation

Evocation immediately caught my eye with its cover. While I’m not a someone who subscribes to Tarot in my personal life, I greatly enjoy how it can be used as a symbolic component in stories, especially fantasy ones where its easy for me to suspend disbelief and enjoy fortune telling. That, plus a queer cast made it an easy choice for me to read.

The Premise:
David is one of a long line of Occultists, the family line said to have traded something away to a demon for power and wealth. Central to David’s life is Rhys, his ex who is currently married to a formidable witch named Moira. Overworked and seeking to take over the occult society, David begins to experience magical episodes that leave him fearful that he’s victim to something sinister, forcing him to turn to his ex for aid, and shifting the relationship of all three forever.

Read If Looking For: poly romance, dynamic narration, occultism

Avoid if Looking For: flesheshed out magic systems, mystery/thriller plotlines that satisfy

Mistress of Lies

One of this year’s bingo squares is ‘Judge a Book by It’s Cover’ which challenges you to read a book without knowing anything other than what’s on the front cover. Mistress of Lies was my pick for my ‘published in 2024’ themed card. I thought the art was wonderfully evocative, and also visually distinct from a lot of cover art trends I’m seeing these days. Ella Garrett (designer) and Felix Abel Klaer (illustrator) did a phenomenal job.

The Premise:
In a country ruled by an upper class of blood mages and led by a deathless king, a young noblewoman kills her father. She wants to change society for the betterment of her brother, who is Bloodless, and relies on scheming and plots to do so. Meanwhile, a Bloodless commoner stumbles upon a murder victim that has been causing discontentment amongst the Bloodless people, fostered by whispers of rebellion. He finds himself dragged into noble society against his will. And lingering around it all is the Royal Bloodworker, forming a trilogy of attraction as the three struggle to find an equilibrium in the newly unsettled Blood Worker Society.

Read If Looking For: romantic tension, polyamorous storylines, moral ambiguity

Avoid if Looking For: political intrigue, books free of YA/New Adult vibes

The Emperor and the Endless Palace

Reincarnation and recursive gay romance books seem to be a running theme of 2024 releases. I didn’t read all of them, but The Emperor and the Endless Palace seemed like the type of gay romance that was going to push past the cliches plaguing gay romances both in and out of fantasy spaces at the moment. And despite some classic debut-novel issues, it was exactly what I was looking for.

The Premise:
Two men, soulmates, find each other across various lifetimes. Dong Xian is a clerk at the Endless Palace 2,000 years ago, scheming for power. He Shican is something of a lost soul, an innkeeper in the woods of China in the 1700s. And River, who immigrated to America as a young child, is has recently come out and is exploring his identity in the hedonistic LA queer community. As their stories progress, so too do they intersect, replay, and unravel.

Read If Looking For: romances that aren’t quite Romances, looping narratives, lustful gay men, historical queer representation

Avoid if Looking For: saccharine queer stories, or books that aren’t romance heavy

An Academy for Liars

Dark Academia isn’t a subgenre I read a lot of. I tend to prefer my magic school stories on the kid-side of things. But when this year’s bingo card asked me to dive into a Dark Academia, I started looking for a 2024 release that would satisfy me. An Academy of Liars seemed like fun, and I had a great time with it, even if I had some issues with the book’s execution.

The Premise
Lennon’s life is in pieces when she’s invited to Drayton, a college secluded in time and space for those who have the gift to persuade people (and reality itself) to bend to her will. She just fled an engagement with a cheating fiancé, is in the midst of a sever mental health crisis, and is looking to reinvent her life. While there, she meets a hot tattooed professor who becomes her advisor, and discovers that she’s got abilities that the everyone is jealous and terrified of. Oh, and the school and all its inhabitants are all harboring dark secrets. Fun times!

Read If Looking For: Dark Academia with a romance focus, fast paced books, rats named Gregory

Avoid if Looking For: healthy relationship dynamics, quality mental health rep, books that will make you think

The Mars House

Sometimes there are books that have an enduring impact on me, where my first impressions of a linger and solidify. Other times my opinions about books shift radically the further I get from them. The Mars House is one of those books. It’s a book that had been on my radar, and I got a gentle nudge when I stumbled across it on my library’s shelves. It was a roller coaster of loving it, and slowly falling out of love with it the longer I’ve been away from it.

The Premise:
Tharsis, once a martian colony and a now a full city in its own right, has separated significantly from earth. People have grown taller, more physically frail. They’ve also enacted a host of cultural changes to reform the issues the see from earth, removing gender and religion. The leading cause of death is accidental homicide from the stronger earthborn. A single bump is is enough to cause death. January, a refugee from earth, finds himself a second class citizen, forced to work in a water factory despite being the principal dancer at the London Ballet. He finds himself linked to Aubery Gale, a senator running for Consul of Tharsis on the platform that earthborn are exceedingly dangerous, and should be forced to go through the dangerous and debilitating naturalization process to make Mars safer for those who braved the journey generations ago.

Read If Looking For: interesting moral questions, grounded science fiction, talking mamoths, neat and tidy endings

Avoid if Looking For: quality queer representation, healthy

Masquerade

I’ll be honest that Masquerade was a bit of an impulse purchase. Heterosexual romance focused books aren’t something I read a ton of, but the idea of a Persephone story in precolonial Africa was intriguing. Certainly it’s got a lot more going on than most Romantasy books do, and I appreciate the big choices made.

The Premise:
Òdòdó is a witch (more specifically a blacksmith) one of the many women who craft weapons and tools all while being looked down upon. And then, after her town is captured, she ends up dragged across the continent engaged to the king of Yorubaland, who claims he will do anything to earn her love. But she quickly starts finding that she went from one cage to another; this one is just more gilded. But she also finds herself attracted to the King, and the tension between these two ideas forms the core of the book.

Read If Looking For: romance with a twist, competent characters, evil characters

Avoid if Looking For: high fantasy

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

Mark Lawrence is an author that gets name dropped a lot in places where I get recommendations. Yet I never seem to find time to pick him up. His newest series features libraries. I love libraries! So I picked up an audiobook copy and gave it a listen. In the end, I don’t know that this was entirely for me, which is sort of the vibe I’ve been getting from Mark Lawrence books in general.

The Premise:
Livira, once a poor duster orphaned by the encroaching Sapper (dog-people) armies and finds herself an apprenticeship at The Library. Evar is trapped in The Library. Has been his whole life. Their stories and explorations of the library end up uncovering some of it’s secrets. After all, The Library exists in all times and in all worlds, and is bound to have more than a few surprises in store for those who choose to wander its shelves.

Read If Looking For: books about books, breaking time and space

Avoid if Looking For: something innovative in the genre

The Fox Wife

Historical Fantasy isn’t my go-to subgenre, but The Fox Wife grabbed my attention from the cover art and a plot summary that had me intrigued. Foxes have been a running theme of my reading for around a year, with them popping up in expected and unexpected places, so it felt apt from a motif standpoint as well.

Elevator Pitch:
The Fox Wife shifts between two lead characters in 1908 East-Asia (mostly various parts China). Snow is a Fox, one of the shapeshifting tricksters who has lived centuries and goes by many names. Bao is an investigator with a supernatural gift for discerning truth from lies. Snow seeks revenge for her dead child and finds herself attached as a servant to a family living under a curse. Bao has been hired to investigate a the identity of a dead courtesan. Their journeys bring them into contact with their pasts and with other foxes who have agendas of their own.

Read If Looking For: atmospheric books, Chinese and Japanese historical settings, few fantastic elements, charismatic characters, feminist themes

Avoid if Looking For: tightly-written mysteries, political intrigue, or action scenes