Tag Archives: France

A Decadent Bi4Bi Romance: The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

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The Pairing cover

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[I] wonder if heartbreak will fuck you if you learn to love it enough.

It feels unnecessary to recommend the new Casey McQuiston romance, given how incredibly popular Red, White, and Royal Blue and One Last Stop are. I’m sure this will also get a ton of press and publicity. But I just can’t help it: I loved this book. 2024 has been an incredible romance reading year for me — all of my top three romance books I’ve ever read came out this year. The Pairing (August 6, 2024) is a decadent, sensual trip through food, wine, Europe, and a very queer bi4bi (M/NB) relationship.

Theo and Kit were best friends who grew up together and then started dating. Their lives were completely intertwined until they had a huge fight during their flight to their dream vacation, a food- and wine-tasting guided tour through France, Spain, and Italy. As soon as their plane landed, they went their separate ways and haven’t seen each other since. The tour, though, was nonrefundable, and four years later, the voucher is about to expire. So, Theo books the trip in the last month possible… and then arrives to find that Kit had the same idea, and they’re stuck together for the next three weeks. Along the way, they make a bet about who can sleep with the most people during the trip, but despite the distractions, Theo is having trouble suppressing those familiar feelings resurfacing for Kit.

Let me start here: The Pairing is such a great representation of the queerness of bisexuality. (If you’re not a fan of any depictions of bisexuals being promiscuous, you can skip this one, but it’s all consensual and there’s no cheating.) Not only are both of them sleeping with people of any gender, but I also was charmed by Theo and Kit discovering that after four years, despite having different genders, they have almost identical hairstyles and outfits. Amazing. (Theo is nonbinary, but we don’t find that out until well into the book.) I love these bisexual sluts. (As they self-identify—in fact, the working title of this book was Sluts in Europe.)

While the competition is a good way to pitch this book, it’s really not the focus. Instead, it’s about Theo and Kit’s tenuous new friendship—specifically, the yearning. THE YEARNING. This is such an interesting set up of best friends to lovers to exes to second chance romance. They know each other so well—but they also don’t know anything about the last four years in their lives, and they’ve both changed considerably. They’ve slept together countless times, but the sexual tension is unparalleled. It’s very obvious to the reader—both because we know this is a romance novel and because it’s obvious to absolutely everyone but the two of them—that they’re falling for each other again, but they both think it’s one sided, which leads to them doing things like making out with other people while holding eye contact with each other. And then pretending it doesn’t mean anything!! Absolutely ridiculous. (Which I mean as a compliment.)

The tension and sexcapades through Europe is decadent enough, but Theo is also an aspiring sommelier and Kit is a professional pastry chef. They take their food and drinks very seriously, which means it’s described in mouth-watering detail. And that’s not even counting traveling through some of the most beautiful locales in Europe. The sex, food, travel, and tension give this such a decadent, luxurious, almost overwhelming mood. Read this while eating chocolate truffles and lounging poolside.

And then, of course, there’s the romance. I’m used to dual point of view romance novels alternating between them, but The Pairing is a little difference. We get Theo’s POV in the first half and Kit’s afterwards, meaning we watch Theo reluctantly fall back in love with Kit while thinking he doesn’t feel the same way. Theo worked very hard to try to get over him, but they were never able to completely put it behind them, feeling like relationships weren’t worth trying again: “The thought of starting from scratch, the ordeal of rebuilding something I already spent my whole life building with someone else—it’s exhausting. It’s a fucking Olympic triathlon of mortifying vulnerability, and at the end, I might not even like them as much as I liked Kit.”

I know enemies to lovers is the more popular trope, but I think best friend to lovers is severely underrated, and this couple shows why. It shows what it’s like to be known and loved for every part of you, for all the sedimentary layers of who you once were and who you have become. It’s being loved by someone who knows every facet of you, who’s seen the worst of you.

Part of what I loved so much about this book is the second half, Kit’s section, so I have to include a spoiler paragraph here. (Even though it’s not really a spoiler, because you know which genre you’re reading.)

(Spoilers, highlight to read.) It is so effective to go from Theo’s reluctant, hesitant falling back in love to Kit’s perspective, who never stopped loving Theo. He absolutely adores them, which also hits so much harder because we’ve seen how self-conscious Theo is about certain things. (Including executive functioning and memory problems that are ADHD-coded.) When he learns new things about Theo, things that have changed in the last four years, he thinks, “What a wonder, what a miracle: somehow, more of [them].” When Theo comes out as nonbinary, Kit immediately switches pronouns and affirms their gender, and we can see how he’s genuinely always admired Theo’s masculinity and their femininity.

Kit has been so head-over-heels in love with and heartbroken over Theo this whole time, trying to distract himself but never giving up hope. He reads and references poetry about love and heartbreak, resulting in lines like “I am half agony, half hard” and “[I] wonder if heartbreak will fuck you if you learn to love it enough.” His absolutely adoration of Theo truly sets an unattainable standard for romance. (End of spoilers.)

I went into this with high expectations, but The Pairing still exceeded them. And yes, I cried. This might be the perfect summer romance read.

A Forgotten Classic of Lesbian Literature: Olivia by Dorothy Strachey

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I had found out about Olivia by Dorothy Strachey through the 1951 film of the same name by Jacqueline Audry. MUBI describes the film quite beautifully: “Dreamy laces, soft lighting, and longing glances induce an erotic headiness that renders this landmark lesbian love story a transgressive masterpiece.” I at once started watching the film and loved its atmosphere that was at the same time simple and intense, funny and reflective. The book, on the other hand, was not as funny and simple as the movie was, because of which I loved it even more.

I finally got my hands on the 100-page book with a pretty cover consisting of two women wearing gowns, with their hands slightly touching. I could not quite grasp the exact time-period of the novel, but I presume it’s during the late 1800s, since the novel is partly autobiographical and Strachey was born in 1865. 

The novel is narrated by sixteen-year-old Olivia, who is sent to a finishing school in France. I viewed this novel primarily as a coming-of-age story. Olivia is at an age where one continuously discovers more about oneself and the world. The book depicts the process of this discovery through the clandestine conversions between Olivia and her friend about agnosticism in a strict Wesleyan school, and later through Olivia’s discovery about her love and admiration for her teacher, Mlle Julie, in her finishing school, Les Avons.

I love how passionate and keen the character, Olivia is. The book lets us feel the intensity of Olivia’s emotions ourselves. It has lots of descriptions of theatres and art galleries in Paris, all told through Olivia’s perspective. It lets us feel the excitement of falling in love, as well as the heartbreak that follows when Olivia realises that her love for Mlle Julie has no future.

What I found interesting about this novel was the coexistence of freedom and repression. In the introduction, Strachey writes, “And yet I had an uneasy feeling that, if not a joke, it [her love for her teacher] was something to be ashamed of, something to hide desperately.” Reading some of the descriptions of Les Avons, one would hardly believe that someone could feel so restricted while being allowed to run wildly in the forest full of flowers that surrounded the school. Perhaps this shows that there is more beneath the surface—that a seemingly idyllic setting can foster repression when it comes to certain matters. The relationship between the two heads of Les Avons, Mlle Julie and Mlle Cara, is very interesting, and it is suggested that their relationship was not purely platonic.

Olivia’s morals and her feelings for Mlle Julie contradict each other. She believes that her feelings are shameful: “Was I really capable of vice? Yes, I felt it within me, in this hatred, in this horror, in this confusion itself.” Then again, she thinks, “But love was no vice.” This constant argument with oneself is interesting to observe because we all go through a phase where we realise that our morals and feelings contradict each other and it is up to us to decide which of them to act on. At the same time, Olivia’s thoughts are upsetting to observe, as she was being made to feel guilty when she had done nothing wrong. I think this feeling of guilt is one most of us can relate to, because society often makes us feel guilty for something that literally causes no harm to anyone.

Feelings take precedence over events in Olivia. All the seemingly insignificant events evoke significant emotions, which eventually lead to the “final catastrophe”, as Strachey calls it. The final events of the book are heartbreaking, and are enough to bring tears to the eyes of people as sensitive as I am. In short, I love this book and I don’t know why it isn’t more popular. 

This has been a guest review by “Mysterious”. You can find out more about guest reviews at the Lesbrary on the About page.

A Twisty Sapphic Spiritualist Con: Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkins

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Carmella Lowkins’s new historical novel, Spitting Gold (Atria Books 2024), is a fabulously atmospheric story with a twisting plot that keeps you guessing until the very end!

Spitting Gold is set in nineteenth-century Paris. Baroness Sylvie Devereux has worked tirelessly for years to distance herself from her old life, embarking on a career of respectability with her devoted husband. However, when her estranged sister, Charlotte Mothe, appears on her doorstep with a compelling proposal, Sylvie is drawn back into a world she thought she’d left behind. The two women enjoyed a career as popular spirit mediums—all their visitations an elaborate ruse to trick wealthy patrons—before Sylvie disowned her family. But with their father sick and Charlotte’s debts climbing, Sylvie agrees to help her sister perform one final con on the de Jacquinot family, aristocrats who are convinced their great aunt who was murdered during the French Revolution is haunting the family and the house. 

As the sisters begin to orchestrate their old tricks to encourage the family to part with their fortune, strange and inexplicable events begin to occur, drawing the sisters into a haunting they begin to fear could be very real. As secrets between the sisters and the de Jacquinot’s come to light, Sylvie learns that she may not be able to outrun her past. 

As a neo-Victorian mystery novel with a sapphic subplot, Spitting Gold is a smashing good time. Lowkins draws on the history of nineteenth-century table turning and the obsession with the female spirit medium—who indeed became a kind of celebrity in this period—to stage her suspenseful plot. Add to this a dash of lesbian romance and this novel is perfect for readers of Sarah Waters and Emma Donoghue. 

I was really impressed with Spitting Gold. It has a thoroughly engaging plot and the writing really draws you into the story. It’s structured so that the reader has little idea what to believe as Sylvie and her sister try to con—and then cope with—the de Jacquinot family and the strange happenings at their home. Lowkins starts us off with one kind of novel with Sylvie at the center, and then abruptly turns everything on its head with so many delightful twists. I had no idea where this novel was heading and I was thoroughly surprised by the ending!

I had such a great time reading Spitting Gold. It is the perfect summer read and great for fans of queer historical fiction and lovers of atmospheric literary novels. 

Please add Spitting Gold to your TBR on Goodreads and follow Carmella Lowkins on Instagram.

Rachel Friars is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Her current research centers on neo-Victorianism and lesbian literature and history. Her work has been published with journals such as Studies in the Novel, The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and The Palgrave Handbook of neo-Victorianism.

You can find Rachel on X @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

A Steamy Lesbian Historical Romance in France: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera

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“A person could live a lifetime in six weeks, Your Grace. Entire lives have been changed in less.”

Picture this: it’s summer, your sunscreen is applied, and you’ve taken the day off to spend solo on the beach. You’ve already taken a dip in the ocean. You lay out your towel and get all your fun drinks and snacks ready, and you pull out An Island Princess Starts a Scandal: a steamy F/F romance set in 1889 Paris. Bliss. That’s how I read this title, and it was the perfect setting for this romp of a romance read.

I’m not usually a big romance reader, especially historical romance, but this changed my mind about what a historical romance novel could be. It has such a fun premise. Manuela is a lesbian engaged to a wealthy man, but she has a summer of freedom in Paris with her two best friends before she gets married. She plans to spend this time exploring the sapphic side of Paris in one last debaucherous adventure.

There, she meets Cora, a wealthy businesswoman giving off Anne Lister vibes. Basically the only thing of value to Manuela’s name as a single woman is a small parcel of land she inherited, and Cora needs it to complete a lucrative railway project. Manuela agrees to sell it on one condition: Cora needs to be her guide to the lesbian nightlife of Paris. Oh, and did I mention they already met once before at a queer sex club?

This made for a perfect beach read. I always love seeing the gay side of Paris in the late 1800s/early 1900s, especially the art and literary side. Manuela is a painter, so we see a bit of that: Manuela sees examples of women who have managed to make a living doing their art, something she thought was impossible.

That setting combined with the premise had me hooked from the beginning, and the dynamic between Manuela and Cora kept me reading. Manuela is reckless, indulgent, and clever, while Cora is more tightly wound and ambitious. They clash, but they’re also instantly obsessed with each other. Both are leveraging their power over each other before the land deal goes through for good, and they’re both pretending they’re fine with this being a purely physical, limited time fling.

I can’t leave off that this is perhaps the steamiest romance novel I’ve ever read. There are a lot of sex scenes, everything is described, and everything is described in detail.

I did sometimes get hung up on the writing style, because there are a ton of sentence fragments. They’re a stylistic choice, and I’m not saying it’s wrong to write that way, but they’re frequent. I did sometimes snag on that and get distracted from the story.

This is part of a trilogy of romance novels, each following one of three friends as their love stories play out simultaneously during this summer. I liked seeing glimpses into those stories, and though the other two are straight romances, I still might pick them up, since I had so much fun with this one. This is the second book in the series, technically, but I didn’t feel like I was missing anything by starting here.

If you’re looking for an immersive and sexy romance to escape with for a while, I highly recommend this one.

Colonialism and Revolution in Fantasy France: The Faithless by C. L. Clark

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When I finished The Unbroken by C. L. Clark, I wasn’t sure I was going to continue with the series. It was brilliant, yes: thought-provoking and gut-wrenching, with commentary on colonialism and a passionate, doomed F/F romantic subplot. The strengths of the book, though—the bleakness that reflects the real-life horrors of living through war, occupation, and revolution; the fallible characters making mistakes with devastating consequences; the complexity of the depiction of colonialism—were exactly what made it difficult to read. I wasn’t sure I would be able to read another thousand pages of that between the next two books of the trilogy. By the time The Faithless came out, though, I felt ready to dive in again. And I was surprised to find that book two had everything I loved in book one, but with a lot more fun.

To be clear, this is still a story about empire and power struggles, with deaths and high stakes. But while book one took place mostly on the battlefield, book two is more about court politics in a country reminiscent of France. The power difference between Luca and Touraine is still there, but Touraine has more leverage.

It’s also interesting to see Touraine struggle with trying to figure out where she belongs: the country she was raised in as a child soldier, or the country she was born in and is trying to fight for? She feels outside of both, and is developing her own sense of identity now that she has more space to make her own decisions.

The relationship between Luca and Touraine is more of a focus, and the pining here is unmatched! It also feels more fun to read because there isn’t such a huge power disparity between them. I’m still not sure if they’re good together, but of course I was rooting for them to sleep together anyway. Also, Sabine—who has a friends-with-benefits situation with Luca—really steals the show. Her flirting with both of them and calling out their sexual tension is always fun to read.

This is still the Magic of the Lost series, so there’s a dark undercurrent underneath. Touraine is dealing with PTSD after her near death experience—something I rarely see in fantasy, even though of course you would be traumatized after something like that. The peace between Balladaire and Qazal is tenuous, and the conditions of their agreement are being bitterly fought over, which threatens to throw them back into combat at any moment. Violent revolution looms. Luca is looking for any sort of advantage to seize the throne—and finds that power comes with a price she isn’t sure she’s willing to pay.

I’m so glad I continued with this series. I appreciated the writing, plot, and characterization just as much as the first book, but I found it a much easier read—it probably helps that I’m now familiar with this world and these characters. It’s a rare second book in a trilogy that I like even better than the first. I’m excited to read the final book in the series when it comes out!

Rachel reviews The Disenchantment by Celia Bell

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Celia Bell’s debut novel, The Disenchantment (Pantheon 2023), is a stunning example of queer historical fiction at its finest. 

Set in seventeenth-century Paris, The Disenchantment follows Baroness Marie Catherine, who lives in a world of luxury, entertainment, and intrigue. However, there is also an undercurrent of darkness racing through Parisian nobility: rumours of witchcraft, deliberate poisoning, and fraud abound, and the voracity of the rumour mill means no one is completely safe. Marie Catherine hides her own secrets. Her tyrannical and distant husband is an oppressive and regulatory force, and when he is home she does all she can to protect her children from him by telling them fairy stories. However, when he is away, Marie Catherine is free to engage with her intellectual pursuits, including salons and spirited conversations with female scholars and writers. 

Furthermore, at the heart of Marie Catherine’s liberated existence beyond her husband is Victoire Rose de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Conti. Androgynous, bold, and seemingly fearless, Victoire and Marie Catherine are lovers, and Victoire quickly proves to be a source of joy in Marie Catherine’s life. She admires Victoire’s confidence and freedom, and as the situation becomes more and more volatile in her home, Marie Catherine knows she must escape. When a violent murder occurs involving those close to Marie Catherine, she is faced with a choice, and the one she makes leads her down a path she could never have predicted, and toward people who are committed to protecting their own interests. 

I loved this novel. It’s difficult to talk about this book without giving too much away, but the twists and turns of this plot are completely gripping. Bell’s writing is immersive, and captures the atmosphere and drama of this plot so thoroughly that I was hardly able to put it down. Lesbian historical fiction is undeniably my favourite literary genre and this book did not disappoint. The Disenchantment is well-researched, comprehensive, and draws on little-known moments of French history, expertly weaving fiction and fact together to create a wholly original novel. This book is perfect for fans of Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait (2022) or Emma Donoghue’s The Sealed Letter (2008). 

Marie Catherine and Victoire were characters I loved and believed in, and Bell captures their unique and sometimes warring motivations. However, Bell doesn’t only pay attention to upper-class perspectives in this novel, and the text is a much wider examination of Parisian society in this period. This novel felt like a mix of genres in the best way—part literary fiction, historical fiction, crime fiction, mystery, and Gothic. It kept me guessing until the very end and felt like a thoroughly original, gorgeous historical portrait. 

I highly recommend The Disenchantment for fans of queer historical fiction and/or literary fiction. This is undeniably one of my top queer reads of the year. 

Please add The Disenchantment to your TBR on Goodreads and follow Celia Bell on Twitter.  

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

Carmella reviews All Men Want to Know by Nina Bouraoui

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All Men Want to Know by Nina Bouraoui

Content warning: this review references sexual assault

In the first chapter of her auto-fictional novel All Men Want to Know, Nina Bouraoui (translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins) writes: “I want to know who I am, what I am made of, what I can hope for; I trace the thread of my past back as far as it will take me, making my way through the mysteries that haunt me, hoping to unravel them.”

This is just what the book sets out to do, exploring the narrator’s adult sense of identity–lesbian, writer, French, Algerian–through her past. Born to a French mother and an Algerian father, Bouraoui lived in Algiers until the age of fourteen, when her family relocated to France. Through this fictionalised narrative, Bouraoui ‘unravels’ her personal history, from a sun-baked childhood idyll in an Algeria threatened by the looming civil war of the 90s, to her search for connection as an 18-year-old in the lesbian nightlife of Paris, to her mother’s own life and experiences of sexual assault.

The story is told through beautiful vignette-like chapters that flicker between time periods and locations, mixing past and present, Paris and Algiers. It’s an experimental form that risks becoming frustrating, but I found the short chapters page-turningly compelling. The lack of fixed time and location represents Bouraoui’s own feelings of belonging between places: “I can’t choose one country, one nationality, over the other, I’d feel I was betraying either my mother or my father.”

In the Algerian chapters, headed as ‘Remembering’, Bouraoui writes vividly of desert holidays with her mother and sister alongside the horror of political unrest and violence. Roadblocks, harassment, and murders intertwine with family anecdotes and capers with her childhood best friend Ali.

As an 18-year-old in Paris, Bouraoui begins frequenting a women-only nightclub, looking for love but too terrified to act upon her desires. In this intimately anonymous setting, she feels part of the gay community (“I like these two words, they don’t so much belong to me as own me”) but experiences disconnection from her new lesbian social circle (“The women I spend time with are my rivals, women I go out with, not my friends”). Away from the club scene, she also begins to write. These chapters–headed ‘Becoming’–are reminiscent of the Parisian chapters of The Well of Loneliness as well as the works of Qiu Miaojin in their haunting sense of alienation.

The final narrative strand offers an account of Bouraoui’s mother’s youth in a war-torn France and the barriers surrounding her cross-cultural marriage. These ‘Knowing’ chapters mix family oral history with omniscience – how much would the narrator have been told and how much has been imagined?

All Men Want to Know is an evocative, heartfelt novel that explores psychological questions of self, belonging and knowing. While it covers distressing topics, it’s ultimately a beautiful and hopeful account of coming of age while straddling opposing identities.

Content warnings: rape, sexual assault, suicide, racism, murder, war, addiction, homophobia, sexism