Review - - The Geographer's Map to Romance

The Geographer's Map to Romance

by India Holton

Love’s Academic Book 2

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: April 8, 2025

Reviewed by Nancy

 

Professor Elodie Tarrant is an expert in magic disasters. Nothing fazes her—except her own personal disaster, that is: Professor Gabriel Tarrant, the grumpy, unfriendly man she married for convenience a year ago, whom she secretly loves.

Gabriel is also an expert in magic disasters. And nothing fazes him either—except the walking, talking tornado that is his wife. They’ve been estranged since shortly after their wedding day, but that hasn’t stopped him from stoically pining for her.

When magic erupts in a small Welsh village, threatening catastrophe for the rest of Britain, Elodie and Gabriel are accidentally both assigned to the case. With the fate of the country in their hands, they must come together as a team in the face of perilous conditions like explosions, domesticated goats, and only one bed. But this is easier said than done. After all, there's no navigational guide for the geography of the heart.

Nancy’s Thoughts:

The Geographer’s Map to Romance mixes a marriage of convenience, a second

chance at love, and a grumpy-sunshine pairing with a dose of humor, including a

sendup of the academic world. The result is a delightful book. It’s set in a Victorian

England where geography (earth science) includes dealing with magic, which is a force

of the land. Instead of ley lines, we have fey lines and magic forces measured by

thaumometers.

Elodie and Gabriel Tarrant are obviously still attracted to each other, possibly even

obsessed with each other, but neither thinks the other reciprocates their feelings. As a

result they spend a lot of time trying to dodge each other and to convince themselves

they don’t feel what they plainly do. Elodie is imaginative and poetic and sees the joy in

everything. Gabriel is serious, careful, and determined to remain grounded. He’s so

stern with his students that they’ve nicknamed him Professor Tyrant.

The pair and their assistants, along with a cost-conscious fellow from the Home Office,

arrive in Wales to discover that wild magic is levitating animals, starting fires, and

transforming people and objects into plants, animals and birds. The situation escalates

as they investigate, and the combination of danger and proximity brings their feelings for

each other to the fore. For example:

He took a step closer to her. She tossed back a loose strand of hair and stared him

down (or, more accurately, up, since he was some four inches taller). The air between

them crackled with a magic considerably more potent than that which was exploding

pebbles on the road beyond.

But they both carry on trying to ignore their emotions until the situation reaches a point

where that’s impossible.

One of the things I most enjoyed about the book is Holton’s wry narrative voice. I also

enjoyed her use of internal language, sometimes with strike-throughs, to show the

feelings Elodie and Gabriel are trying to suppress. In Chapter One, they meet at the

train station, having both been dispatched to deal with the magical emergency, each

unaware the other is involved until they meet at the train station. Elodie responds this

way:

Approaching him was the hardest thing she’d done in a long while, and this was coming

from a woman with a doctorate that had required extensive knowledge of trigonometry.

She hated the coldhearted, unforgiving man. Absolutely, completely loved—wait, no,

loathed him. Arriving at his side on the platform, she offered a terse yet completely

polite greeting.

But Gabriel went on staring at the block in his hand, such a calm, somber beauty to his

face that it made Elodie’s throat ache. Ache like I’ve just swallowed poison, she

amended furiously.

That wry internal narrative also supplies humor. When a tourist drawn to the magical

mayhem in Wales blathers about the excitement of magic, Gabriel has this reaction:

Bloody hell. The fellow was either an incoherent lunatic or a humanities student.

(Gabriel did not always find it easy to spot the difference.)

Then there’s this:

“What about free will?” Elodie argued, setting her hands on her hips.

“What about it?” Gabriel asked, as if free will was something he, as a university

professor, simply could not countenance.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll note that I have a degree in history, grew up in a

college town, and am married to an academic. The wry references to academia are not

mean-spirited or unkind and fit the characters’ personalities.)

The supporting characters include a professor who’s supposed to deal with magical

disasters but has a knack for causing them, as when he took his class to see what he

thought were singing stalactites but were really razor-sharp, spinning stalactites. Yet

he’s likeable because he’s always willing to pitch in and do his part.

The silliness of the tourists who’ve come to see the magical disaster is so like the

onlookers who rush to see disasters today that it works extremely well in context. The

cowardice of the man from the Home Office contrasts nicely with Elodie and Gabriel’s

determination. And the villagers’ desire to capitalize on this opportunity is not only

understandable, though it’s inconvenient for Elodie and Gabriel, but often humorous.

The romantic arc progresses in a believable and satisfying way, with the magical

disaster woven through it instead of occurring parallel to it.

The worldbuilding is original, cohesive, and well explained.

By this point, readers may be wondering why, if I liked so much about this book, I gave it

4 stars instead of five. It’s because there’s one part of it that bothered me a lot. The

romantic conflict, the marital problem that sent Elodie and Gabriel in opposite directions

a year before the story starts, is based on a misunderstanding of a comment—a true

comment—that five minutes of conversation could have resolved. Yet neither pursued it.

Near the end of the book, we see Elodie developing insight into Gabriel’s personality

that leads her to look differently at that misunderstanding. He’s gaining similar

understanding of her. Those bits are written very well, with the story leading up to them

nicely. In order for me to buy that misunderstanding as the book’s main romantic

conflict, though, I needed their internal reactions in the moment the breach occurred (a

moment the story includes as a flashback) to know why they didn’t pursue that

conversation, and they aren’t there.

The relationship conflict is central to a romance, and when one doesn’t work for me, it

has to affect the way I rate the book. A lot depends on how much I enjoyed it otherwise.

Would I keep reading the book if I hadn’t committed to review it? How much did I enjoy

it apart from my issue with the conflict? In this case, I would have kept reading and

enjoyed the overall story immensely. So it gets four stars, and I highly recommend.

~Nancy

Review - - The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love

The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love

by India Holton

Love's Academic - Book 1

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: July 23, 2024

Reviewed by Hellie

Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, stealing both her bird and her imagination like a villain. Albeit a handsome and charming villain, but that's beside the point. As someone highly educated in the ruthless discipline of ornithology, Beth knows trouble when she sees it, and she is determined to keep her distance from Devon. 

For his part, Devon has never been more smitten than when he first set eyes on Professor Beth Pickering. She's so pretty, so polite, so capable of bringing down a fiery, deadly bird using only her wits. In other words, an angel. Devon understands he must not get close to her, however, since they're professional rivals. 

When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning. Now keeping their distance becomes a question of one bed or two. But they must take the risk, because fowl play is afoot, and they can't trust anyone else—for all may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology.

Hellie’s Heeds

Amazon has a quote from NPR, which summarizes what I thought much more elegantly: "So riotously clever it almost defies description...an alchemy of romantic elements held in perfect harmony." It is. On nearly every page, there is a tongue-in-cheek, riotously clever one-liner or several, which will have you in stitches as you marvel at India Holton’s writing style and obvious firsthand experience with all things academia. 

Some of the more notable gems I found particularly hysterical were:

“Don’t try that charm on me, if you please. I will not succumb like some–some–liberal arts undergraduate.” 

[Hellie aside: as a former liberal arts undergraduate–I can say I definitely fell for some charm in my time. And I fell for the charms of Devon Lockley in this romp.]

Gladstone’s summer residence…reflected his academic character–and the fact that he’d inherited a large income, since no science teacher could afford such an estate.

This morning he [Gladstone] was outdoors, endeavoring to capture a leechsparrow. Which is to say, he sat on a mahogany sofa in the meadow behind the house, gesturing with his rosewood pipe to several graduate students who traipsed through the grass, bedecked with protective goggles and earmuffs, wielding  heavy-duty nets, as they did the actual work of capturing a leechsparrow. 

And so many more that if I continue, I might as well just quote the entire book. Being I work in Academia with many faculty who are not that different than the ones described in this story, it was a marvel to enjoy and I wished I could sit with India and just exchange academia stories. [Note: I obviously don’t think this was taken from real life–there are no magical birds to my knowledge nor Oxford women professors in 1890, during a time when India did not yet exist–but it was very adjacent to life in academia, let me just say.]

The chemistry sizzled between the two characters; the pacing was fast and constantly moving–they were on the run for their lives a good majority of the time. I do hope they had a restful break after they found their happily ever after because the pacing did get occasionally exhausting. All the characters were larger than life; and OMG, the IOS “press” agents were a riot. I loved the writing style–as a liberal arts undergraduate, I majored in English, so it tracks–it’s colorful, witty, and very British in humor a la Oscar Wilde. 

I’m delighted that another character featured in this book looks to be the hero of the follow up book in this series: a grumpy geographer named Gabriel. I cannot wait. 

Chef’s kiss. 5 stars. (I recommend this book while eating a bag of chocolates. You don’t really need it to finish the book…but I recommend it just the same.)

Review - - The Secret Service of Tea and Treason

The Secret Service of Tea and Treason

by India Holton

Dangerous Damsels - - Book 3

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: April 18, 2023

Reviewed by Nancy

 

 

Two rival spies must brave pirates, witches, and fake matrimony to save the Queen.

Known as Agent A, Alice is the top operative within the Agency of Undercover Note Takers, a secret government intelligence group that is fortunately better at espionage than at naming itself. From managing deceptive witches to bored aristocratic ladies, nothing is beyond Alice’s capabilities. She has a steely composure and a plan always up her sleeve (alongside a dagger and an embroidered handkerchief). So when rumors of an assassination plot begin to circulate, she’s immediately assigned to the case. 

But she’s not working alone. Daniel Bixby, otherwise known as Agent B and Alice's greatest rival, is given the most challenging undercover assignment of his life— pretending to be Alice’s husband. Together they will assume the identity of a married couple, infiltrate a pirate house party, and foil their unpatriotic plans. 

Determined to remain consummate professionals, Alice and Daniel must ignore the growing attraction between them, especially since acting on it might prove more dangerous than their target.

Nancy Says: 

Although The Secret Service of Tea and Treason is number three in a series, it generally works as a standalone. The premise, secret agents posing as household servants in Victorian England, is brilliant, and I loved the callback to the old Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series in the secret headquarters entered through a shop, the A.U.N.T. acronym, and the gadgets, both magical and not. I really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get there. There were a great many things I liked about it, though, so let’s look at those first. 

The main characters are charming. The heroine, Alice Dearlove, is clever, loves books, and can hold her own in a fight. She prides herself on being a professional woman. The hero, Daniel Bixby, is smart, strong, bookish, and equally able to hold his own in a fight. Both grew up in orphanages run by A.U.N.T. and so were trained from childhood to be effective agents for the organization. It has shaped their lives so it is their main focus, and their superiors are determined that nothing will distract from that. When this policy leads to conflict later in the book, it’s believable and is handled well. 

Also handled well are the attraction and resulting sexual tension between Daniel and Alice as they pretend to be married. They’re determined to maintain a professional demeanor, focusing on the mission, but that pesky attraction draws them steadily closer. Because of that attraction, they both grow and change. They’re each in an emotional place at the end of the book that’s very different from where they are at the beginning. The character arc was engaging and believable. 

The book has a large supporting cast, so it’s natural that some would be drawn in more detail than others. The A.U.N.T. head scientist is an inept version of James Bond’s Q, and I would’ve felt sorry for him had he been a little less pushy and annoying to Alice and Daniel. 

A few of the pirates and other supporting characters are developed in individual scenes, but most have brief introductory appearances that give the reader an idea of their characters. This is one spot where having read the prior books might have helped by supplying a fuller picture of them. A bit more about those the hero and heroine knew before would’ve been helpful to me as a first-time reader. When Daniel turns to a particular character at a moment of crisis, I would’ve liked just a little about how he feels about his reaction and why he trusts this individual. 

I also have trouble with the idea that pirates and spies travel by magically flying houses (vaguely reminiscent of Baba Yaga’s chicken-leg but non-flying house and her flying mortar and pestle), yet the government wasted about twenty years without managing to figure out how that’s done. This means the pirates have free rein for raiding, not that much of it occurs in this book. This may work for some readers, but I just didn’t buy it. If pirates are a problem, someone who wants them stopped will figure this out. If A.U.N.T. can do it, so can someone working for the government. 

The overall plot involves Alice and Daniel searching for a weapon that’s to be used to assassinate Queen Victoria. A.U.N.T. finagles their attendance at a pirate house party so they can find and destroy or steal that weapon. While I liked the idea, I didn’t feel any sense of urgency about it. Alice and Daniel do search various parts of the mansion, but there’s no ticking clock, no feeling of an immediate threat. Because I didn’t feel anyone was in serious peril, the book sometimes felt slow to me. 

While the pirate houseguests are a threat to everyone around them, stealing from each other and their hosts and vandalizing the house, they don’t seem to be much of a threat beyond their group. They’ve stolen various valuable objects, and one of them fires on the A.U.N.T. flying house, but they don’t seem generally menacing. Even when they chase Daniel and Alice, they don’t seem serious about catching them. 

I also don’t buy that anyone who knows how these people behave would invite them to a house party and tolerate their vandalism and stealing. They play games that damage the house, and I have a hard time accepting that any host would put up with that, let alone invite in a group they know are prone to such behavior. 

In summary, I loved the setup, the emotional arc, and the main characters. The overall plot didn’t work for me, but I realize not everyone cares about that as much as I do. Based on the setup and the strength of the romance, I recommend the book.

 

3.5 stars

 

~ Nancy