Bearly a Lady by Cassandra Khaw is the romantic (mis)adventures of Zelda McCartney, a fat bisexual fashionista woman of colour who works for Vogue’s London office… Who also happens to be a werebear with a vampire flatmate, a date with the hot werewolf next door, a fae prince to babysit, and a crush on her coworker, Janine, that she is desperately trying to ignore.
She’s got a busy week, okay.
I was expecting something like The Devil Wears Prada with werebears, which isn’t quite right (there is a lot of fashion, but not as much about running a magazine as I dreamed, woe), but Bearly A Lady is absolutely funny and witty, with Zelda creating as many problems for herself as she finds foisted upon her.
I think that the only real problem I had with it was that I never understood what the problem was with Janine – all of the potential love interests I liked her best, but I never quite understood what had happened to make this relationship unviable in Zelda’s mind? The closest we get is “Oh, I didn’t realise you were seeing someone,” which is apparently resolved by the time Bearly a Lady starts. Plus the book spends much more time dwelling on the two male love interests than it does on Janine, I guess because Janine is established as lovely and having a friendship in her own right with Zelda from the outset and the other two love interests are… Well, they sure are people that I could believe I’ve met and loathed.
(A thing I did appreciate is that Zelda’s sexual feelings for Janine are presented in the same way as her feelings for Benedict and Jake; I have read a surprising about of fiction with bisexual women in that treats attraction for women as a pure, chaste thing even when the attraction for men is written as sexual.)
The secondary characters are really well-drawn and Zelda’s relationships with them are different and great. In particular, the friendship between Zelda and her roommate, Zora, felt believable and fun; they bicker and bring out the best and worst in each other as best friends do. And the world building squeezed into the space of this novella is interesting – especially things like the enmity between vampires and fae, and the restrictions for shapeshifters.
The story is quite short – it’s novella length – and moves along very quickly, so if you’re looking for something fun to pass the time and you’re in the mood for supernatural romantic drama, Bearly A Lady is for you!
Caution warning: magical coercion.
Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.
