reading: the lady's guide to celestial mechanics

[sword_logic]

the lady's guide to celestial mechanics is a historical romance novel by olivia waithe, released june 2019. after her father passes away, lucy muchelney wants to continue the astronomical work she did with (and for) him and answers a call for translation help from the widowed countess of moth, lady catherine st day.

i don't know how to describe just how blown away i was by this book. i'd never read a romance novel before so i wasn't really sure what to expect as far as the steamy to plotty ratio goes, but i figured i've probably read more explicit things on AO3. (i was right, but several magnitudes less right than i thought i'd be.) i wasn't expecting this book to be so gentle.

lucy's queerness is established right off the bat; the novel opens with her fleeing her ex-partner's Proper Wedding to a Proper Husband, and her anger at being cast aside, among other things, is a large chunk of the driving force behind accepting lady catherine's request for help translating an astronomical text.

lady catherine is... so incredibly, wonderfully, beautifully complex. catherine is constantly at war with the ghost of her abusive husband, and this was one of the most subtle, thoughtful, and gentle explorations of abuse i've ever read, second only to meg's history in riordan's trials of apollo series. her trauma isn't ever used just for dramatic effect, and whenever she's reminded of things her husband would do and ways he'd bully her, her fear feels so grounded in reality - she knows he's dead, she knows her fear is irrational, and she feels it anyway. she has to navigate this fear around her feelings for lucy and lucy herself, and the author does a really great job in letting catherine explore her past.

and on that note, catherine's moment of realization that she's allowed to like women - that women are allowed to like women - is so jaw-droppingly tender and good, and the way she and lucy navigate this realization together is equally wonderful. this excerpt in particular blew me away so hard i think i had tears in my eyes:

...and the letters on the tombstone spelling out birth and death dates while a willow spread mournful arms above and around them. "Your father?" Lucy asked.

Lady Moth nodded. "I was seven," she said. "It was very sudden. Mother wore black for three years." She cocked her head. "Until Aunt Kelmarsh moved in, now that you mention it."

"Do you think..." Lucy swallowed hard. This was a terribly impolite question to ask, but the truth often mattered more than manners, no matter what the etiquette books said. "Do you think your mother was happier with your father, or with Mrs. Kelmarsh?"

Lady Moth stayed quiet so long that Lucy began to despair she'd truly offended. She was trying to compose apologies in her head — difficult when you couldn't openly acknowledge how you'd erred — when the countess spoke again. "I don't think love works like that. You might as well ask the earth whether the sun or the moon is more important." She blushed a little pinker and raised her eyes, star-bright. "You can't always judge by what came before. Sometimes, there is a revolution."

The words burst over Lucy like sunlight, or the flare from a newly discovered comet. She stared, dazzled.

Lady Moth held her chin high, though her breathing was coming fast.

sometimes, there is a revolution. fuck, man. i sat there and gaped at the page for ages after i read that. it was so much to take in.

another thing i really, really appreciated about lady's guide was that it doesn't ever go for Torture Porn about how terrible and misogynistic and racist Ye Olde London was (i think it was set in the early 1800s? a character was mentioned as having survived the french revolution), and chooses to show marginalized people in strong, supportive communities over the toils and misery and terrors that people dealt with. this was a book about raising each other up and pushing back and saying "value us, or destroy yourselves."

i recommend this book so, so, so highly. it was such a great read with a truly wonderful happy ending, and i'm really excited to see what this author writes next. the bad thing now is that this set the bar so high for romance novels that i don't even want to try anything else, lol.