Reading record 20

 Hmm.  Am I capitalizing the "r" in "record" or not?

Hrngh.

Well, it doesn't matter.

Anyway.  Last night I finished reading Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England.  (But it was late at night and I didn't want to take the time to post about it at that time.)

Another impulse purchase, because Barnes and Noble had it on a big table with a sign recommending it to fans of Stardew Valley and Studio Ghibli.  Naturally, that had caught my eye, and reading the back of the book definitely suggested that I would enjoy it, so I picked it up.  (Though I would not have done so if the back of the book hadn't made it clear that the lead is non-binary.  That assurance guaranteed a non-hetero romance (well, in the sense of not male/female; in the most technical sense "hetero" just means "different," and enby is different from anyone who is binary, but...maybe I should have phrased it as "guaranteed any romance would be LGBTQ+", since non-binary is typically also placed under that umbrella) so I didn't have to worry about it turning on me.)

Part of me wants to say this was successfully more "cozy" than the previous "cozy" book I read, but...I dunno, if it was truly "cozy" would I have spent so much of the last third or so of the book crying?  On the other hand, it never got stressful to read and certainly didn't trigger my heart palpitations like You Can't Spell Treason Without Tea did, so...🤷🏻‍♀️

Regardless of its coziness levels (and admittedly most of the book was decidedly cozy), this book was thoroughly delightful.  Mossley's Rest might actually be an even warmer, friendlier place than Pelican Town!  The warning that our protagonist was given, early on, that the town's entire unmarried population would soon be descending on them en masse in the hopes of winning a romance with the newcomer was also very cozy farming sim.  Well, except no one ever tells the player character that "we don't get much fresh blood in this town, so everyone is going to look to snag you asap" and it just sorta happens without anyone acknowledging why that's actually rather strange or wondering why none of those singles ever date each other.  (Okay, some cozy life sims have a few of their bachelors end up in relationships if the player doesn't get them first, but it does seem to be pretty rare in the post-Stardew Valley cozy farming sim boom.  I gather it wasn't unusual in the original Harvest Moon types (but I will admit that I have not yet played any Harvest Moon/Song of Seasons games...though I do own one of the latter that I haven't gotten around to playing yet) but when Stardew Valley inspired the wave of (mostly western) cozy farming sims, most of the new wave followed its lead, including no rival romances.)

...

Hmm.  I distracted myself by going off on a tangent about rival romances in cozy farming sims and now I don't remember if I wanted to say anything else about the book.

Well, I guess I can add it later if I remember anything else I wanted to say.

Original language:  English