Spite is a really motivating emotion. Sometime last summer I was telling my friend Laura about how I wanted to start a story-rec blog based on things other than genre or pairing. That was probably a year after I started thinking about doing so. But it took a full year after for me to do anything about it. And the key catalyst was how wrong another rec list on tumblr was.
See, in this post an asker was asking for recommendations similar to The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee. And the answerer had nothing similar to recommend. There were no other m/m, YA, Georgian historical books. That might technically be true. I don’t remember what they rec’d instead.
But I read The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian and The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue back-to-back. The reading order was a total coincidence. They are incredibly similar books. And so, YA readers, let me introduce you to romance novels.
My first similar recommendation is The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian. It’s got: Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Bi Character, Asshole gets Redeemed, Terrible Father, Awesome Sister. On top of that, things that are close but note quite are that one of the main characters has an illness he collapses from, and the awesome sister has a non-white husband. There is no traveling in this book, but both characters have traveled and lived outside of England in their past. It goes without saying that I liked this book.
Also, check out Brothers Sinister Series by Courtney Milan. These books are primarily M/F, Olde Time Historical England romance novels. The Countess Conspiracy has Best Friends to Lovers and Asshole gets Redeemed. And The Suffragette Scandal has an F/F B-plot. But the one I think will tick the most similar boxes TGGTVAV is The Heiress Effect. It’s got Kidnapping & Rescue, an Awesome Sister, an Epileptic Character, and a Character of Color love-interest. It’s my favorite of the series, because while the main couple are off dealing with marriage-plot and kidnapping shenanigans, the awesome little sister saves herself.
The hardest tag to match from TGGTVAV is “Adventure.” Most of the similar romance novels take place in London with some jaunts to country estates. They don’t tend span cities. But while I wouldn’t necessarily tag these books “Adventure,” there are plenty of romance novels with high-stakes, tension filled plots. And there’s one undisputed queen of historical M/M romance: K.J. Charles.
The Charm of Magpie Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Surprise, Magic Exists!, Terrible Father, The Question of Inheritance
TGGTVAV doesn’t really have magic, per se, but the cure-all that everyone’s on the hunt for veers towards it. And in the Magpie books adventure takes the form of Stephen, a sort of magic police, saving the world, or at least Lord Crane, from evil warlocks. It should go without saying that they fall in love, and it is delightful.
Society of Gentlemen Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Politics Specific books in the series also contain: BDSM, Awesome Sister (in Law)
Society of Gentleman goes the opposite direction of Charm of Magpies. The high-stakes here are shockingly real. These characters are falling in love and making lives for themselves in a world where they are all expected to get married and produce heirs, and being caught with each other could be a hanging offense. That is to say nothing of publishing seditious pamphlets and plotting murder. The stakes in two of the three books here are life-or-death and the machinations required to give everyone their happy ending are amazing.
Think of England by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England
A spy and injured war hero solve a mystery while guests at a country estate.
Sins of the Cities Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Character of Color, Terrible Father
These books are ‘The Question of Inheritance’ brought to a several attempted murders extreme. There’s still one more book coming out in October before this trilogy is complete, so I don’t want to or know enough to say too much. But I loved the second on in the series.
And lastly for something slightly different:
The Whyborne and Griffin Series by Jordan L. Hawke Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time America, Surprise! Magic Exists, Terrible Father, Low Fantasy, Detective, The Question of Inheritance, Kidnapping & Rescue Specific books in the series also contain Awesome Sister, F/F B-Plot, M/F B-plot, Character of Color, Monsters
These books take place in America, rather than England, in a later time (the very first electric lights come to town!). But they have the travel missing in all my other recs. Home for Whyborne and Griffin is a creepy Massachusetts town, but when they get wind of suspicious magical disasters around the world, they travel to them. These books are delightfully formulaic: Let’s split up to cover more ground! Oh no, my partner has been kidnapped! Time to mount a rescue mission! And my favorite is when they live this out around the world in Kansas and Alaska and Egypt.
ALSO My Girl Courtney Milan is starting a new series and i think It May Have Some Gay Soon. ( The Worth Saga – still WIP but 2 books out already, with a tiny reference to the prequel The Pursuit Of… ) it HAS already had a main bisexual character so that’s GR8!!! GO COURTNEY. YOU CAN DO IT I BELIEVE IN U!!!
anyway.
can you tell i have nothing else to read now and am DESPERATELY awaiting more books????
still MAD!!! that Think of England is a one off and there hasn’t been any more since Spectred Isleeven thought it says book one (*wail*)
and just in case anyone didn’t know, there IS a sequel to Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue coming out, starring Felicity!!! (October 2nd! that’s close!)
A VERY IMPORTANT ADDITION TO THIS TALK, thank you sweetie! I’ve only dipped my toe into Milan’s work so far, but she’s done a good job with background gays and neuroatypical peeps in what I’ve read, so I’m happy to hear she might be getting more diverse with her leads.
I suspect the second Green Man book has been delayed due to extensive re-writes, because the original teaser description from the back of Spectred Isle is QUITE DIFFERENT than the one KJ Charles sent out a few months ago to the mailing list:
I don’t have any more historical gay romance recs under my belt, but there’s Peter Darling by Austin Chant, if you’re interested in trans Peter Pan/Captain Hook? I don’t always rec it because I DID spend the first section of the book wanting to punch Peter for being a dumbass, but there’s a reason for that and the writing is excellent. I bought but haven’t read Caroline’s Heart, which looks intriguing.
One that was decent but not great: The Gentleman and the Rogue by Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon. Read like fanfic, basically, and I enjoyed myself. (TW for torture?) I tried some of the authors’ other work but was disappointed – too overwhelmingly sweet and not enough plot for my taste.
And if you’re just craving queer romance and don’t mind modern BDSM spy shenanigans, Joanna Chambers wrote Enemies Like You which was very much my jam. The first chapter is free as a separate ebook, if anyone wants to trial read.
Hi Friends! ( @cactusspatz and @chicago-bluebonnet , you’re my friends now, I don’t make the rules)
I don’t remember why I didn’t rec The Soldier’s Scoundrel and The Lawrence Browne Affair when I first wrote this post. Possibly I hadn’t read them yet. Possibly I just thought The Ruin of a Rake had a more similar feel to TGGTVAV to it, which I stand by, although the other two are great in their own right.
Funny story about The Enlightenment Series is that I read the three original books back to back on a 13 hour flight and by the end I had been awake for roughly 24 hours. I know I read them because I dutifully recorded them in GoodReads. But I have little to no recollection of what happened in them. I got an automated email when the fourth one came out and I didn’t recognize a single character name.
I also loved Caroline’s Heart, but I don’t know that is’t similar to TGGTVAV. To me that feels more like a rec for people who loved Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle.
(I am going to check out Enemies Like You because I am totally into modern BDSM spy shenanigans. I am all over modern BDSM recs.)
lesbian is a porn category. i see myself at ten, hearing it for the first time on the school bus. “what’s that?” i ask. when i get home, i have to ask my mother what “gay” is, and she recoils. says it means “happy.” i trust her. i don’t know she’s not telling the whole truth.
i don’t know that gay also means the opposite. that gay means a snort, a punchline, an insult driven in between comments as if it was the natural resort. that’s so … gay. and lesbian? lesbian is this word dripping with untouchable connotations, somehow slimy and dirty and forbidden at school. during recess, a girl accuses another of being one of them. she gets sent home and we have a talk about how this school doesn’t tolerate bad language. so it means swear word, then.
i used to find myself singing songs i’d make up about pretty girls and shame would crawl up into me until i couldn’t breathe. i forced myself to change the pronouns, even though i was alone, because some part of me knew that it was wrong to be singing about girls. that it wasn’t normal. at thirteen i said i hated boys but when people asked me if i was gay, it was asking if i was damaged. i spat out that i would never be. i couldn’t be. when boys didn’t like my friends, we’d giggle behind our hands that he must be secretly gay. and wasn’t that funny. i’d been taught from fifth grade human sexuality. no one had ever said that girls could appeal to me.
what’s silly is that i knew when i was young and i sort of just boxed it up. i told myself it was a problem for when i was older because it was something dirty and sexual and i knew it was only for adults. at fifteen the word “bisexual” made me laugh. “choose a side,” i said. because i’d heard it said before. i only saw it mentioned when we brought up anyone slutty. that’s the thing, isn’t it? when we erase gayness from our school systems, we let kids find out through media. and gay is a porn category. lesbian is a porn category. bisexual is a porn category.
the first time i fell for a girl, i was doomed. do you know i didn’t realize it was love. do you know that i dreamed about her, made myself sick over her, told myself that i was somehow still straight, even though she made the earth move. it wasn’t until we almost kissed, our mouths minutes apart but missing each other by the bell ringing, did i find myself looking back up “lesbian” “gay” “bisexual” in google. was i okay? was this normal? could this condition be passing? maybe i was just in a phase. everyone said bi people are just experimenting. i still wonder every day – am i really straight? am i really gay? am i lying?
bisexual is still a bad word. it reeks of that middle syllable, emphasis on sex. emphasis on our duality, on our hearts that just want happiness. bisexual is a joke. it is “i’m not into labels” on t.v. and it is “alone” in my life. it is a risk of being kicked out of either community. of belonging to none. of sickness. i say “i’m queer” a lot. recently a girl told me to stop using it, even after all the research and personal reasons i have for using it, because it’s a slur. because anything i could be is a slur.
at seventeen i had no friends because i’d had a girlfriend. she wasn’t even actually my girlfriend, just my friend i kissed often. it was complicated. i still called myself straight then. at eighteen i kissed girls in the darkness, felt them shooting up my veins. they called it a friend kiss, so it was, because it wouldn’t be fair to them. at nineteen i dated a girl because for once i had the option. i didn’t tell my parents even seven months in. once when i am alone and a little drunk i go to see exactly what this porn would be like, if it’s something i would like. glass-eyed women with long fingernails stare into cameras, moaning. their sweat-slicked bodies don’t look like they are enjoying anything. the title reads about how two naughty married women stray from their husbands. they don’t have sex naturally. i turn it off and feel sick to my stomach for days after. when i kiss her, i see them, and i wonder if i’m doing it wrong.
i’m twenty-three and my suitemate says, “it’s not that i have a problem with gays, it’s that i can’t stand watching them do anything like kissing.” so i say nothing. my heart booms against my blood vessels. i have to turn off adblock so i can illegally stream the crystal gems. in my sidebar are girls naked and wet-mouthed and hungry, looking at the camera with letters dancing over their head. i don’t look at them. on facebook is a clickbait article about, “how all girls are secretly lesbians (and how to find out if you’re one of them).” one of them. it turns out that the way is just if you objectively find any other woman attractive. it talks about how all girls are “a little bit gay” if they’re drunk and partying. that a little gayness is alright if nobody is in their right mind.
i see myself typing in those words once again. that frantic, panicked, scary google search. the crime i had to commit while nobody was home. because i knew. i knew somewhere that it was wrong. “what is lesbian?” my little fingers typed. i want to tell myself: don’t look, young one. turn off the screen. go outside. the answers you get will ruin every beautiful thing.
Being raised without stability really fucks with your head, you’re forever trying to figure out a person’s “pattern“ to see how you have to approach them, whether they’re in a good mood and it’s safe, or if they’re in a bad mood and you have to be careful or maybe avoid them altogether, just because those who raised you could never keep a consistent emotional reaction
artherra 