Happy Fourth of July to our members in the US! Hopefully, you’ll be able to squeeze some reading in around the festivities. What are you reading? I’m reading our group read, On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. It’s 1950s historical fiction about a trio of Black singing sisters.

Spammers are gonna spam... 😂

I’m reading American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson. In other plans, I’m having coffee with the local writers I recently did a 30 day writing sprint with. AND my daughter comes home from Paris 🎉 (My son comes home from the UK on Friday. It’ll be so good to have them both home again!🥰) Photo is my daughter wearing Winnie the Pooh ears at Paris Disneyland.

I *think* this one is easier than last week's. We shall see... Even well-loved, super-popular, award-winning books have their serious haters! 😂 This is historical fiction. All guesses are encouraged (no googling, though!). This is meant to be fun. Don't be dismayed if you disagree with the review. Any spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors are copied directly from the review. I’ll post the correct answer tomorrow (17th June 2026). ⭐ Man, after the pitch I've heard about this book from basically every (female) reader I've ever met, I was expecting something that was NOT THIS. Fairly offensive, needlessly graphic, and smutty in that skeevy way, rather than the hot way. At one point, [character 1] punishes [character 2] for disobeying him by literally spanking her - which was treated as perfectly understandable, and was quickly dismissed. I know that I cringed throughout the entire thing, and found it hard to believe that any relatively modern woman would have put up with it, especially as [character 2] is supposed to be extremely well educated, capable and professional. I honestly find it hard to believe that there's five more books of this, and that people read them. That said, I have read worse romance books, but the fact that [author] dragged the novel out across nearly 900 pages just makes me cranky. UGH. ⭐ What do you think? What's the book? (In this case, if you can think of only the title, but not the author, that's ok!)

9 Queer Historical Fiction Books To Celebrate Pride Month—Swoony Romance and Mystery Await! I haven't read any of those, but a couple of my favourite HF novels with queer characters are Days Without End by Sebastian Barry and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. I also loved Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and Fayne by Anne-Marie MacDonald. What are you favourite historical novels featuring queer characters and/or written by queer authors?