The YA Agenda — May 2018

[helloladies]

Jenny is the splendid and prodigious co-host of the Reading the End bookcast. She blogs about books and other sundries at the funny and entertaining Reading the End, where you can go for even more book recs in genres other than YA. She is also a champion library patron and is kind to all librarians.

Let me begin by saying that if you have not yet read any of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances, you are missing a trick. I recommend beginning with The Grand Sophy, which features a spirited girl sorting out messes a la Flora Post. And if Georgette Heyer’s books give you the same feeling of joy and satisfaction that they give me, then you will be in the perfect mindset for this month’s frontlist/backlist pairing of books about gifted girls in gowns.

Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer’s Sorcery and Cecilia (1988), a book I liked before it was back in print and therefore before it was cool and I have the library records from my childhood to prove it, is an epistolary fantasy novel sent in the Regency era in which two cousins get involved in magical conspiracies and romances. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Beautiful Ones (2017) is about a telekinetic performer called Hector who thinks he’s in love with a mean woman called Valerie but then this turns out all to be a sham and he instead falls for an also-telekinetic woman called Nina who collects beetles and disregards the proprieties.

If you read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s previous book, Certain Dark Things, you may be expecting a degree of violence and adventure that The Beautiful Ones does not contain. While Sorcery and Cecilia is a magical adventure with Heyer-y romance tacked on, The Beautiful Ones is a Heyer-y romance with incidental magic. Both star heroines who deserve better than what they’re getting from older relatives. Both give me those good, good Georgette Heyer vibes, and end with the righteous and the wicked each receiving their karmic due.

I feel bound to mention here that the more obvious readalike to The Beautiful Ones is Les Liaisons Dangereuses, except that I feel the comparison suggests a more sordid book than The Beautiful Ones actually is. Apart from Valerie, who is terrible right from the jump, the characters do all mean well, and most of the time they try their best. This is, I believe, different from Les Liaisons Dangereuses, though it is hard to say because I have not read it for over ten years and my memories of both it and the movie Cruel Intentions are blurry.

Anticipated May Releases

Ship It, Britta Lundin (1 May, Freeform)
Have we talked yet about how I want All the Fandom Books? Ship It gets to the absolute heart of fandom feels, and I was gasping and shrieking along with the heroine as she fought for queer representation in her favorite show. Ship It is about a teenage fanfic writer called Claire who goes to Comic-Con and asks Forest, the star of her favorite show Demon Heart, about the possibility that his character is gay. Forest laughs it off, which leads to a PR disaster for the show, and Claire’s invited to join the cast for the rest of their publicity tour. Plus, she has delightful, involved parents, which is always great to see in YA.

Undead Girl Gang, Lily Anderson (8 May, Razorbill)
I’ve gotten a huge kick out of Lily Anderson’s first two books, which are adaptations of Much Ado about Nothing and The Importance of Being Earnest. Now she’s back with a new book about zombie girls who have seven days to find their own murderers. I expect this will be fine. There’s never any problem when a protagonist uses magic to raise dead people from their graves. Everything will be completely fine.

Ramayana: An Illustrated Retelling, Arshia Sattar (8 May, Restless Books)
Restless Books is dedicated to bringing translated children’s books to American audiences—an excellent and admirable goal and one that I’m eager to support. Meanwhile I’m murderously in love with the illustrations of this book, which occur in a full color insert of such astonishing beauty it will be hard for me not to cut them out of the book and frame them on my wall. I can’t wait to buy it and stock my godchild’s bedroom with his very own copy, so that he can grow up loving this story. Technically this is more of a middle grade book, but based on my own extreme enthusiasm for owning it forever, I’m comfortable including it here.

From Twinkle, with Love, Sandhya Menon (22 May, Simon Pulse)
When Dimple Met Rishi author Sandhya Menon is back with From Twinkle with Love, which I only hope will be as charming and delightful and romcommy as her first. Twinkle is partnering with Sahil Roy to direct a movie for the upcoming film festival and hoping that their collaboration will bring her closer to Sahil’s twin brother Neil. My love of a good team-up is exceeded only by my love of epistolary books, which this one is! It’s Twinkle writing letters to her favorite female filmmakers! I die.

The Brightsiders, Jen Wilde (22 May, Swoon Reads)
Rock star Emmy King is a train wreck. After a long night of partying that ended with Emmy in the hospital and her girlfriend in jail, Emmy’s got to get her life back on track. She’s maybe developing a crush on her bandmate Alfie, and I must assume that there’s going to be found family vibes all over this book, plus lots of queer characters and casual acceptance. Jen Wilde’s last book, Queens of Geek, was adorable, and I expect nothing less from her follow-up.

Hit me up in the comments with your Georgette Heyer readalikes, your enthusiasm about the villainous Valerie, and the YA you’re anticipating for the month of May.

Comments

[stardreamer]

Re Heyer, I do think it's important to point out that some of her books have been visited by the Suck Fairy over the years. The Grand Sophy, for example, has an ugly splat of anti-Semitism in the middle of it. The Reluctant Widow features a heroine being severely gaslighted by virtually everyone else in the story -- it would take very little tweaking to turn it into a horror story. Attempted rape is used as a major plot point in several books, the most disturbing being either The Black Moth or Devil's Cub. And some of the accepted customs of the time can clang oddly to contemporary ears; a number of the romances are between relatively young women and much older men -- men old enough to be their fathers or in at least one case their grandfather (These Old Shades). Frankly, I wouldn't recommend any of her books as YA unless you plan to discuss them with your young reader afterwards.

That said, I do enjoy a lot of Heyer, and some of the books don't have major Issues. Among my favorites:
- Venetia
- A Civil Contract
- The Quiet Gentleman
- The Unknown Ajax
- The Masqueraders
- False Colours (yes, British spelling)
- Cotillion

A good way to dip your toe into Heyer is her one short-story collection, Pistols for Two.

Also, be warned that Heyer also wrote a series of mysteries. These are nothing like the Regencies in either content or style. I tried one or two and gave up.

[rymenhild]

I cosign every word of this comment, but would add Frederica to the Good Heyers list.

[(Anonymous)]

I would swap out Venetia with Frederica-- Venetia does have assault (hero kisses heroine without her consent the first time he sees her because he thinks she's "not a lady") and that age difference going. Though a lot of the joy of that book is the hero becoming not a jerk, and the heroine definitely has agency about the age difference etc.

this is Jenny!

[(Anonymous)]

Holy crow, I'm so glad you told me this! Geez, that'll teach me to rec a book I haven't reread in a while. I'm going to add a paragraph into the post to point this out and refer them to your helpful comment.

xx

Jenny @ Reading the End

Re: this is Jenny!

[stardreamer]

Heyer discussions come up regularly in several of my online communities, so I'm conversant with the issues.

Now, as to other books that rhyme with Heyer, I'd like to recommend the Sarah Tolerance books by Madeleine E. Robins. There are 3 of them to date: Point of Honour, Petty Treason, and The Sleeping Partner. These are set in an AU Regency (not important to the plots, but some of the political details are different), and the protagonist is a Fallen Woman who is now making her living as a private investigator, working out of the guest house behind her aunt's brothel. (No, these books are not YA at all.) There's no sugar-coating of the darker side of the Regency period; Miss Tolerance is frequently in physical danger, and having a strong circle of friends is one of the things that keeps her from being casually offed by some of the people she's investigating. Content Warning: The entire plot of The Sleeping Partner revolves around the fallout from an abduction and rape, and Robins doesn't pull any punches there either. But if you like the trappings of the Regency and kick-ass heroines making their way in a society which is heavily slanted against them, you can't get much better than Sarah Tolerance.

[bookgazing]

YOU READ THE BEAUTIFUL ONES!!! I'm so happy about this :D Gawd I loved it - especially the scene where Antonina is rebuilding herself after Hector's whole deal is revealed. Although, while I understand that Valerie is terrible, I also love her because I understand her whole emotional vibe. And it made me kind of sad that out of Hector and Valerie (who are basically two sides of a terrible decision coin) it's Hector who manages to rescue his life from his emotional baggage. At the same time I really didn't want Valerie to change even though staying static is destroying her life (that's just me being weird and unhealthily into proud, unbending women who wreck their lives though). I genuinely wish for the further adventures of Valerie who I have no doubt is popping up at an exclusive summer vacation spot after this with a whole new backstory.

[oracne]

Ooh, thanks for the recs!!!