Rosemary and Rue

"It’s an urban fantasy series about secret magic in the modern world. October Daye, also known as Toby, is a half-fae changeling, which is a marginalized group within the fae world of the story. The first book in the series is titled Rosemary and Rue , and the rest of the books are also named after Shakespeare quotes. I love that. Toby initially works for a fae duke as a knight-errant, which is like a private investigator. Even though Toby is only a dogsbody, she has sword-fighting skills, low-level illusion skills, and a specific blood magic that is particular to her. In the prologue of the first story, she’s living in San Francisco with her steady boyfriend and their daughter. Then she gets cursed to be a fish for fourteen years. Between the prologue and the first chapter, she comes back, but by the time she’s back to normal, her boyfriend has married someone else and their kid is in high school. It’s very tragic. “Many of us read books to live out our power fantasies” She’s alone in the world. She works at a grocery store. She avoids everyone from her old life, and she becomes a hermit. Then she is, once again, magically cursed. In this case, she’s cursed to find her friend’s killer. The rest of the books follow this format. She’s solving a mystery, finding a missing person, finding a missing object, or figuring out who murdered whom. The books are steeped in fairy lore and magic, with aristocratic fairy courts and their queens and intrigue. These novels contain everything that the grandfather in The Princess Bride says when he’s introducing the book at the beginning of the film: “fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles.” Toby has had a tumultuous upbringing and been living on the streets, so she is tough from jump, and she gets even tougher. Her partner, in terms of the battle couple dynamic, is Tybalt, who is a king of the court of cats. He has various magical abilities, including shapeshifting between human and cat forms. He’s strong, handsome, and sarcastic. Their relationship is a very slow burn, though it’s initially quite catty—pun intended. At the moment in the book when Tybalt gives Toby his jacket, I remember thinking, ‘This is inevitable. I don’t care who else is involved. They’re definitely going to end up together. As soon as they exchange clothing and she keeps it, that’s it.’ When it comes to stories with any kind of romance in them, I think a lot about the power dynamics of the pairing. In a lot of category- romance novels , the man intrinsically has more power than the woman, whether it’s physical strength, social standing, money, or some other factor. With battle couples like Toby and Tybalt, there may be an initial power differential, but ideally it’s resolved before they enter into a relationship. This novel doesn’t become a Cinderella story of a lowly half-fae being seduced by a king because Toby becomes more of a political player as the series progresses. She unearths secrets about her past and becomes stronger and more magically and physically powerful, to the point where they can meet as equals, instead of Toby relying on Tybalt in a fight, leaning on his political reputation, or always needing to be rescued because she pushed herself too hard and everything is a mess. That does happen, though! They balance each other out, as they each have their own specific strengths and weaknesses. Individually, each of them is a powerhouse. Of course, it’s a fantasy romance , so they grow stronger together."