Our neighbour’s lilac from our landing window. Glorious while it lasts but it’s fragile stuff and doesn’t last long!

The excellent:

The Marriage of Likeness: same sex unions in pre-modern Europe by John Boswell***** I’d been wanting to read this for ages and finally got a cheap ‘used’ copy. It’s fascinating. However, it’s very academic and took me a long time. Also, as I have never learnt Greek I had to take the footnotes and the appendix on trust. The book sheds a lot of light on early Western European attitudes to same sex unions, and to the Church’s way of dealing with them too. It should probably be required reading in the ‘bible belt’.

Deefur Dog by RJ Scott***** A lovely mm romance. A harassed single dad needs a nanny for his daughter but also one that can cope with the Great Dane cross (the dog of the title).

Comfort Zone by Alexa Milne***** A sort of sequel to A Sporting Chance. We find some of the same characters. A lovely story and beautifully written as usual.

And the very good:

Darkness Falls by Jamie Lynn Miller**** An mm romance with the angst of blindness for one of the partners.

Dream by Garrett Leigh**** An mm romance between an ex-dancer and a CAB manager. The plot explores the problems brought about by ME

Mr Warren’s Profession by Sebastian Nothwell**** This would have been a five star read except for the author’s grasp of UK geography. It was a really good story about a mill owner and a clerk in late Victorian times, with a gripping plot and an angst ridden romance. However, even in the twenty first century, it simply isn’t possible to travel rapidly between Manchester, London and Wiltshire. I think American writers and others from outside UK look at our maps and think ‘oh, that’s not far…’ There were other non-Brit flaws, too, but they didn’t stop me devouring the book.

And also the abandoned:

The Elvish Deal by Paul Lockman. An ancient Middle Earth elf in NewYork in 2019 saves a suicidal veteran, Alicia. Not for me.