I thought about doing individual reviews for each of these books, but instead I think I'll start a tag for books with love interests who are such insufferable, arrogant assholes that I stopped reading. Is this something left over from the het romance 'bad boy' trope? Why? WHY?? Are there really women out there who long to be insulted by a brooding jerk? Apparently the answer to that is a resounding YES! Clearly I am not the target audience for these books. Your mileage may vary.

Goldenseal by Gill McKnight seemed promising, but Leone, the wolfie love interest, is such a complete arrogant ass AND a stalker that I just couldn't keep reading. Maybe this combination is sexy to some, but not me. It's especially creepy when you understand the power dynamics here: Leone, a werewolf, is literally capable of tearing Amy to shreds with her superhuman strength so her stalking is more than a little unsettling. The fact that she's a douchecanoe just made me want to throw my kindle out the window. 

Thief of Always by Kim Baldwin and Xenia Alexiou. Again, I really wanted to like this, but the main character, Allegro, is another smug, insufferably arrogant jerk. I get that these books are escapist and therefore not terribly realistic, but she's supposed to be undercover and therefore NOT DRAWING ATTENTION TO HERSELF. Instead she's rude, cocky, and her flirtation with her target/boss borders on sexual harassment. I just don't get it. And I don't understand why she wasn't fired after fifteen minutes. She's supposed to be a handy woman hired after wandering in off the road (!), yet her boss (a COUNTESS!) is making her dinner despite her insults? Yeah, I don't know either. Maybe it's really hard to find good help in the Netherlands?

I got an email telling me that I was being a bit harsh and that I should be more supportive of lesbian books. I get this, but I also feel like there's a difference between 'harsh' and 'critical'. Criticism in the best sense is supposed to push us to do better. And I think that the lesbian publishing world could do better. Especially for what they're charging us poor little lesbians ($15-25 for a paperback! $9-18 for an ebook!). There are too many mistakes, too many novels that are simply too light in terms of length, etc. and the quality is just not there with some of them. For the price I pay for one of these novels, I should receive a professionally edited (and I don't mean simply proofread) work. I'm not expecting Literature or even Jeannette Winterson or Sarah Waters, but I do expect a well-structured, proofed, and edited book. Otherwise lesbian fiction will forever remain a ghetto of publishing.

So, let's talk about Andi Marquette for a minute. I'm not sure why this author doesn't get more love from the community. Her books are very well written, plotted, and edited. No, they're not perfect, but they're much better than so many lesbian novels I see getting heaps of praise. 

I'll start with her Land of Entrapment, which is the story of K.C., a young, sociology post-doc who's hiding out on her grandfather's farm in Texas after an ugly breakup. Marquette manages to give us a ton of information about K.C.'s backstory with her ex, Melissa, without an ugly info dump. Melissa shows up after three years to beg K.C. to help her find her younger sister, Megan, who's disappeared after taking up with a white supremacist. K.C. it turns out is an expert on white supremacy groups and she reluctantly agrees to help the woman who cheated on her and broke her heart. 

There's a great story here and a romance that isn't the one you're necessarily expecting. Marquette handles the plot well and with the exception of a few over-the-top desciptive touches (especially during the love scenes, which was a bit bothersome), her prose style is clean and efficient. Her setting, Albuquerque, New Mexico, is so lovingly described it becomes a character in itself. My one issue is the lack of real jeopardy for the characters although this is a failing of most of the genre and Marquette's puts her characters in more danger than most. Especially Megan who we've begun to care for despite her potentially problematic character (she did take up with a racist, sexist asshole after all and it's a miracle Marquette can make her sympathetic). I'm not sure why so much of the lesbian fiction/romance genre tends to smooth over any real danger for their characters (or even worse, go over-the-top into pointless character torture), but it seems to be normal. I know it's hard to balance a gritty crime novel plot w/a believable romance, so I'm going to assume it springs from that. Marquette certainly manages it better than most. 

Marquette's the real deal. She can write, her characters are believable and likable, and her stories are actually compelling. In other words, you won't find yourself skimming over the 'story' to get to the racy bits. I highly recommend this author's crime novels and her sweet, crime-free novella, Some Kind of River )it's only .99 for the ebook!).