toujours_nigel | Band Sinister

So I figured I’d do some recs/reviews because it’s Pride Month in the U.S. and also I am a gremlin who likes to display their hoard. IDK, possibly because when I was in school my access to queer lit was primarily via fora, FF.Net and, like, FictionAlley, eventually Livejournal. On some level I’m still shocked every time I read a published book and it has queer people in it who don’t get shuffled away. Right. Uh. Anyway. This is gonna be mostly sff/hist cause that’s how I read, and also mostly standalones.

We’re starting with Band Sinister.

This KJ Charles novel is Heyer but gayer: delightfully bantery with a chewy centre of past trauma and familial obligations.

Amanda Frisby, country gentlewoman and debutante penner of gothic romances, goes for a ride and mangles her leg. She ends the misadventure by being taken into the house of Sir Philip Rookwood, which is unexpectedly full. Her brother Guy rushes to fetch her home and the siblings end up staying with Rookwood and his cronies, several of whom Amanda has pastiched in her surprise bestseller. Worse still, they’re a confusing, blasphemous lot, but they’re witty and companionable and oddly kind. It’s a lot for poor Guy Frisby, who’s spent his life taking care of his baby sister, and only knows about queer relationships via unexpurgated classical lit.

Guy, poor man, spends a majority of the book worried about

Amanda never recovering from her frankly ghastly injury

Amanda being compromised because of her presence in Rookwood’s house

Rookwood and co. realising she’s the author of the book pastiching them

Falling in love with Rookwood despite his obligations, their family history, Rookwood’s other entanglements.

Dealing with confrontations with Very Opinionated people while being very quiet himself.

I loved it, all of it: every conversation and contrivance and Philip’s extremely careful seduction of Guy, but also Philip’s hilarious inability to climb trees, the co-dependent bird-brains, Amanda Frisby’s absolutely everything. It’s such a smart, compassionate book. I’ve been using it to coax/trap people into reading more KJ Charles, and it's been working, which is fab because everyone should read KJ Charles. I'll talk about some of her other novels later this month, but I had to start with Band Sinister.

(Also I got a Band Sinister fic for Yuletide last year and I love it to pieces.)