enemyofperfect | Snowflake Challenge #9: Canon rec

It turns out that going a week without adequate sleep really makes it hard for me to keep up with this challenge, go figure! But I think I'm finally starting to catch up again, so here goes.

I had to think a lot about what canon or canons I wanted to rec for this challenge. There are so many shows I love!

amovingtarget even suggested that I could use this post to rec a canon I haven't seen yet to myself, and for that I know exactly what I'd pick: The Great British Bake Off, which from everything I hear is really sweet and soothing and something I definitely need to try.

But finally I realized what I need to rec here, and it's the romance novels of Courtney Milan!

She's someone whose books I'd seen recced for ages, and I even wanted to give them a try once I saw someone talking about the one with a shy black mathematician being wooed by an Irish pro-suffragette satire columnist, but although there have been romance novels that I've admired and enjoyed, it's never been my genre as much as science fiction and fantasy and fanfic all are, so I guess it was easy to leave her work on my to be read list.

Then one day I learned that Courtney Milan is the pen name of Heidi Bond, whose witty and insightful blog I'd followed wayyy back in the day when she was a law student. And once I knew that, I absolutely had to try her work -- more than ten years after her blog's deletion, I still remembered it fondly, so obviously I had to read her published writing! And luckily enough for me, the prequel novella to her Brothers Sinister series was (and is) available as a free sample, so I was quickly able to discover that her published fiction is really, really good.

Mind you, she isn't an entirely traditional romance author. As she says about her decision to self-publish in her FAQ:

In case you’re wondering, the push I was getting from my traditional publishers was that the books I was writing for them were already too quirky.

So do I think I would have been able to write the Brothers Sinister as I did? No, hell no. What would have changed?

Everything. I mean, completely everything. The notes on everything would have come back as “NEEDS MOAR JERK.”

So if she doesn't write alpha assholes, what does she write?

So many fantastic things! She writes about men who are virgins and unmarried women of breeding who aren't; about peers and the sons of coal miners; about scientists and journalists and activists in spades -- and this is just in her Victorian era Brothers Sinister series, which is about not a family of sinister reputation, but just about a handful of nerds who think it's funny that they're all left-handed. She writes about bad sex and great sex; about contraception and past sexual assault; about blood family, and found family, and the times when the two overlap. She also writes fantastic secondary romances I sometimes love even more than the primary ones -- and one of them is sapphic!

I think my personal avorite of the Brothers Sinister series is number three, The Countess Conspiracy, but all of them have characters and moments I love. And so far I've only read one of the four series her website lists -- I think next I need to try the Cyclone Series, which is contemporary and looks super intriguing.

So yeah -- if you're into het romance that's refreshingly low on toxic masculinity, consider giving Courtney Milan's writing a look!

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muccamukk

Brothers Sinister is by far my favourite of her series, especially Heiress Effect, but I also really like the Cyclone series so far. I'm hoping she puts a new one out soon. Love her!