The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Absolutely loved this. Loved, loved, loved. I needed books like this to exist in the mainstream in my 20s.
Lucy is an astronomer, trained up by her (now late) father. Catherine is a widowed Baroness who supported her husband’s work as a world-traveling astronomer.
They meet, there is an EPIC SLOW BURN that does a fantastic job of conveying the uncertainty of potential queerness in a straight-oriented world (is this friendship or flirting?!) and they fall in love, as this is a romance. Lucy and Catherine together learn to navigate their relationship, their different social standings, and their different approaches to the world, to the arts, and to how to express love and affection when you’re scared.
This is an us-against-the world conflict book, and the world is pointedly sexist in its scientific and artistic communities, but Catherine and Lucy are going to take it on together.
I literally punched the air when I finished it.
Confessions of a Curator, Editor, Geek 