Book Review GWEN & ART ARE NOT IN LOVE

Thank you to the author Lex Croucher, publishers Wednesday Books and St. Martin's Press, and SMPInfluencers, and NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of GWEN & ART ARE NOT IN LOVE. All views are mine.



Opening Quote: [It's] not so much a silver lining as it is just silver all the way down. Loc785

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. There is actually quite a bit of European military history in the outset of the book. It's quite interesting. 

2. I love the woman knight. That she is an object of derision makes her smile truer and a more believable character for me. I'm really looking forward to more of her!

3. This is definitely not my usual genre, but I'm loving this author's brand of historical realism slash romantasy. 

4. I'm typically not a fan of retelling, but this is fantastic, in which Gwen and Arthur are a marriage of convenience to cover each other's queer identities. 

5. I a-DORE that the merlin refers to Gwen's irascible horse rather than a grumpy wizard!

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. Sometimes the language is slightly too contemporary for the story's era, and it cause a kind of temporal dissonance while reading.

2. The research just isn't great in this book. Arthur's castle has a library. Literacy in medieval times was only about 12%. (She references this later in the book, so this is a cause of confusion for me.) Documents were more likely to be on skin than paper and in the form of scrolls than books. The concept of "library" wasn't even fully formed yet and mostly belonged to the efforts of religious institutions (abbeys, churches) to collect religious documents. It probably wasn't likely that the wealthy read for pleasure yet; more likely they heard documents recited to them by people whose job it was to perform. Every time Gwen retreats to the library in this book, I lose the thread of the story because my eyes cross a bit.

Rating: 🐎🐎🐎🐎 irascible merlins
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: Nov 30 23
Format: Digital arc, Kindle, SMPI
Read this book if you like:
🏛 retellings
🕰 historical fiction 
🌈 queer lit
💖 romance
🏩 marriage of convenience trope

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