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F/F Friday: Chicken Run, by Alma Fritchley
Cozy mysteries about a lesbian chicken farmer in rural Yorkshire? Sign me up, please!
I stumbled across Chicken Run, by Alma Fritchley, somewhat randomly in the library this week while looking for something else. (Our library shelves everything together rather than separating books by genre, which tends to lead to serendipitous discoveries like this one.) I'd never heard of it; apparently it's the first of a series from the 1990s and I remember that the library had the next couple, so I'll be back for those too.
The actual mystery part of the plot is like 5% of the book randomly shoehorned into the last chapter, made all the more wtf because it's actually like a major mystery/action plot (involving drugs, plutonium, gangsters, and an international crime ring) that just sort of drops in and out of what is otherwise a sweetly charming book with romance and humor that meanders between rural Yorkshire and the Manchester gay scene (which the author clearly knows inside and out; you know, there are a lot of books with queer pairings that could be easily have been written by authors who are gay or straight, but this book is CLEARLY written by an author who is using her own life as partial inspiration or at least as research).
Which is actually a big part of the draw for me! I love a strong sense of place in books, and this book has a fantastic sense of place along with a delightful narrative voice, charming characters, and an engaging romance between the butch farmer heroine, Letty, and the local small-town librarian that entwines with Letty's complicated relationship with her ex. (I gotta say, of the various F/F genre romance I've picked up off Amazon lately, none of it struck me as particularly hot, at least in terms of things I personally find hot. This book, on the other hand, I found incredibly hot even though the sex scenes aren't particularly explicit. Just Letty's description of her love interest's legs, say, really got to me. I think the fact that the protagonists are both mature women in their 30s/40s was helpful with this.)
If I have any caveats at all about this book, it's that it's very 1990s-gay-scene in some ways (the protagonist has Firm Views on things like femme lesbians and bisexual women married to men, for example) but it didn't really bother me in context; it all felt of a piece with the narrative voice and ambiance. YMMV, though.
This book made me think of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija's post awhile back about not enough picnics in books. This is a book composed almost entirely of picnics, with characters who are delightful enough to follow along to every picnic. I'm looking forward to the next one.
I stumbled across Chicken Run, by Alma Fritchley, somewhat randomly in the library this week while looking for something else. (Our library shelves everything together rather than separating books by genre, which tends to lead to serendipitous discoveries like this one.) I'd never heard of it; apparently it's the first of a series from the 1990s and I remember that the library had the next couple, so I'll be back for those too.
The actual mystery part of the plot is like 5% of the book randomly shoehorned into the last chapter, made all the more wtf because it's actually like a major mystery/action plot (involving drugs, plutonium, gangsters, and an international crime ring) that just sort of drops in and out of what is otherwise a sweetly charming book with romance and humor that meanders between rural Yorkshire and the Manchester gay scene (which the author clearly knows inside and out; you know, there are a lot of books with queer pairings that could be easily have been written by authors who are gay or straight, but this book is CLEARLY written by an author who is using her own life as partial inspiration or at least as research).
Which is actually a big part of the draw for me! I love a strong sense of place in books, and this book has a fantastic sense of place along with a delightful narrative voice, charming characters, and an engaging romance between the butch farmer heroine, Letty, and the local small-town librarian that entwines with Letty's complicated relationship with her ex. (I gotta say, of the various F/F genre romance I've picked up off Amazon lately, none of it struck me as particularly hot, at least in terms of things I personally find hot. This book, on the other hand, I found incredibly hot even though the sex scenes aren't particularly explicit. Just Letty's description of her love interest's legs, say, really got to me. I think the fact that the protagonists are both mature women in their 30s/40s was helpful with this.)
If I have any caveats at all about this book, it's that it's very 1990s-gay-scene in some ways (the protagonist has Firm Views on things like femme lesbians and bisexual women married to men, for example) but it didn't really bother me in context; it all felt of a piece with the narrative voice and ambiance. YMMV, though.
This book made me think of
rachelmanija's post awhile back about not enough picnics in books. This is a book composed almost entirely of picnics, with characters who are delightful enough to follow along to every picnic. I'm looking forward to the next one.