By Emily O’Malley Liu

Our weather in the Midwest has been real wonky the last month – a couple of weeks ago, we had temperatures in the 80s, which made everyone itchy to start planting their (our) gardens. Every professional was warning us to hold our horses, that we are not frost-free until Memorial Day, and sure enough this week we’ve gone down to a freeze, which has made me very cranky.

All this to say, Wine for Roses, a gentle, queer retelling of Beauty and the Beast, was not only soothing for my general nerves but for my gardener nerves, too. I can’t plant any of my own seeds yet, but I can read all about Ethan, a gardener hired to restore the rose garden at an estate overseen by a reclusive trustee. Bless Liu, who even filed down some of the rougher edges of the original story. When I told Rebecca about this book, she asked how it deals with the whole kidnapping, and I was like, oh, there is no kidnapping, it’s just straight employment! My poor frayed nerves were starting to twang a bit towards the end, as well, but Liu managed to capture the general feeling of the original without the guilt and dying.

Liu has created a marvelous world of hedge witches and casual magic set in an otherwise very prosaic rural Indiana. This is her first published novel, which shows in some loose details, but I’m very much looking forward to reading more from her, and I hope she continues to play around with this world, as well.