It’s a great setup for a joke: A superhero walks into a gay bar and gets rescued from avid fans by a drag queen. It’s also where we begin Philip Ellis’s contemporary romance WE COULD BE HEROES (Putnam, 370 pp., paperback, $20). Patrick Lake, who plays the comic book hero Captain Kismet in the Hollywood franchise, is a closeted A-lister with a restrictive morality clause in his contract. The drag queen is Grace Anatomy, a.k.a. Will, who works nights at a bar called the Village Inn in Birmingham, England — where Patrick’s filming the latest Captain Kismet movie — and days at a used-book shop.
A superhero’s mask hides a face but reveals a deeper truth. This is also true for drag queens, of course — and drag artists have long been the staunch heart of the queer community. Patrick, whose face is globally famous but whose self stays carefully locked away, is desperate for anyone who sees him as a person. Will offers him a drag community, a scrappy found family and a yearning for love that more than matches Patrick’s own.
This is one of those everything books: You laugh, you cry. Also, to my great joy, there’s a secondary plotline about postwar comic creators that is a love letter to Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.”
The neon gleam of pulp fiction also illuminates Rebecca Fraimow’s LADY EVE’S LAST CON (Solaris, 368 pp., paperback, $16.99), a vivacious heist romance set on a far-future satellite, New Monte. Ruth Johnson’s only loyalty is to her sister — but their usual game of “fleece the wealthy idiot” got upset when Jules fell in love with their latest mark, Esteban, and ended up heartbroken. Now Ruth is determined to make the man pay: She’ll play the well-bred ingénue, get the jerk to propose and skip town with his cash when he learns she’s really an unsuitable nobody.
If only Esteban’s sister, Sol, weren’t so perceptive — and attractive. And while Ruth may be a criminal, there are worse people than her spinning plots on New Monte. Ruth and Sol have no reason to trust each other, but that’s what they’re going to have to do if they want to survive.
My favorite thing about heist romances is the way the leads get conned by love while conning other people. So after all Ruth’s theatrics — the forged identity, the fluttering of eyelashes, the delicate debutante titterings — love pulls the rug out from under her. This is a romp that builds to a spectacular ending.
Maureen Marshall’s THE PARIS AFFAIR (Grand Central, 416 pp., paperback, $19.99) has, it must be said, one of the most anodyne titles in recent memory. The book itself turns out to be a tense romance between two queer men in Belle Époque Paris. Finley Tighe is the illegitimate son of a British earl and an engineer at Eiffel’s firm who’s trying to drum up wealthy investors for what all Paris thinks will be a ruinous eyesore. Gilbert Duhais is a wealthy flirt and nephew to one of Paris’s most successful businessmen — and just as obviously up to no good. Fin’s so worried about protecting his ballerina cousin and his cabaret friends that he forgets to protect his own wounded heart, and by the time he discovers the truth, it’s almost too late.
This story goes from the back alleys of the Rive Gauche to the glittering boulevards of Parisian society, but it all feels equally sinister. There are as many monsters in the fashionable arrondissements as there are in the city’s most louche nighttime haunts, and not everyone can escape.
Finally, we have Alexene Farol Follmuth’s wonderful TWELFTH KNIGHT (Tor Teen, 320 pp., $19.99), where a multiplayer online game provides an opportunity for unexpected romance and self-understanding.
Viola Reyes, 17, is sick of the sexism that haunts her daily life, so in her favorite Arthurian quest game she plays as a young man named Cesario. But when the local high school football hero Jack “Duke” Orsino joins in while he heals from a brutal knee injury, she panics and tells him she’s not Viola, but her twin brother, Sebastian. Late nights and quest teamwork soon break down the walls between them, but the more time passes, the more insidious that first little untruth becomes. Or, as the real Sebastian puts it, “YOUR HOUSE OF LIES IS GOING TO CRUMBLE, VIOLA!”
Teen Shakespeare retellings are often fun, but they’re not often this Shakespearean. The feelings here are baroque in scope, and every interaction feels fraught with significance. It’s delicious: Viola is furious, stubborn and self-righteous, the antithesis of Jack’s breezy but deliberate charm. It’s to Follmuth’s credit that the book is less interested in fixing their flaws than in putting them in tune with themselves and each other. Because identity is not just about who you are, but also about the choices you make — whether you raise your sword for a just cause or choose to take refuge in the shadows.
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