Devil in Winter

This is the longest I've gone without updating this blog since I started it. I've got fifteen books waiting to be written about, which is the furthest I've ever fallen behind. I was already a bit behind when the doctors said my husband might only have a month left to live. That was six weeks ago, and while my reading pace has certainly slowed, it never quite stopped. At the moment things are more or less stable. Not getting any better, but not getting significantly worse either. And in this moment of calm I wanted to try and catch up on my backlog.

But I'm starting with the most recent book I finished, Devil in Winter. I'll get to the others as I get to them. Time has stopped feeling linear in so many ways that I'm less concerned about this blog being perfectly chronological. Moreover, this book was surprisingly pertinent to my own situation.

The heroine, Evie, spends a good chunk of the book taking care of her husband, Sebastian, while he convalesces after being shot. He comes close to dying, but this is a romance novel so you know he won't. He'll recover and he and Evie will live happily ever after. I read most of this book while sitting next to my own husband in hospice, occasionally pausing to help the nurses clean him or to give him some water. It happened to coincide with a time when my husband seemed to be doing better. I began to entertain the idea that he might actually recover.

This is what romance novels do. They give us hope. Sometimes against our will.

My husband is unlikely to recover. He might be feeling a bit better lately, but that's because he's getting more rest in the hospice than he was in the hospital. It's because after months of isolation, he's able to spend time with his children and his friends and me and his mom. It's because people often seem to do a little better right before they get a whole lot worse.

But I'm glad I started thinking down those lines. It made me push the doctors a little harder and force a few conversations. I feel better informed now, and I believe my husband's care team is, too. I think our understanding of the situation has improved, even if the situation itself hasn't.

And who knows, maybe he will make a miraculous recovery. Everyone has told me that it's important to keep hoping. Maybe I'll get my happily ever after after all, instead of just a happily for a little while.

Back to the book, which is commonly considered Lisa Klepas' best. I enjoyed it. I loved watching Evie discover her spine of steel (much as I'm discovering my own lately). Sebastian was amazing, and I only wish I'd gotten to spend more time in his head. But ultimately, Kleypas' books feel a bit too unbalanced for me. She's far more concerned with her heroines than her heroes, and it leaves me wanting more. I'll finish out this series and get Daisy's story. And then I'll probably move on to other authors in the genre.

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