Blood Sweat Glitter - Outside of a Dog

ebook

ASIN:: B0DNTV8744

(1 review)

The Primrose Glitter Girls play ROLLER DERBY and they’re here to DESTROY YOU!

Well, they’re trying. Team captain Eleanor Ashwell has problems. Her fresh meat skaters are terrified, her blockers fall over when people look at them funny, and if the Glitter Girls don’t start winning bouts soon they’re going to be chucked out of the league. And off the track, things are no better: Eleanor’s job as a nursing sister is overwhelming her, and friends and lovers seem to be drifting away.

Robin, Eleanor’s pretty-in-pink new jammer, is hawk-fast and fearless, and she’s a brilliant skater to boot. But she’s never on time, she forgets her kit, she comes to practice in stupid frilly dresses, and according to Eleanor, she has no respect for the traditions of the game. It’s only because the team needs her so badly that Eleanor is teaching her to play at all.

But ditzy, …

The Primrose Glitter Girls play ROLLER DERBY and they’re here to DESTROY YOU!

Well, they’re trying. Team captain Eleanor Ashwell has problems. Her fresh meat skaters are terrified, her blockers fall over when people look at them funny, and if the Glitter Girls don’t start winning bouts soon they’re going to be chucked out of the league. And off the track, things are no better: Eleanor’s job as a nursing sister is overwhelming her, and friends and lovers seem to be drifting away.

Robin, Eleanor’s pretty-in-pink new jammer, is hawk-fast and fearless, and she’s a brilliant skater to boot. But she’s never on time, she forgets her kit, she comes to practice in stupid frilly dresses, and according to Eleanor, she has no respect for the traditions of the game. It’s only because the team needs her so badly that Eleanor is teaching her to play at all.

But ditzy, silly Robin isn’t quite what she appears to be. And if Eleanor can see past that candy-pink exterior, then there might be some things Robin can teach her, too. About how to win, how to lose, how to rediscover a little glitter in her life. How to get herself back up from where she’s fallen—and how to fall in love.

1 edition

betty@bookwyrm.social reviewed Blood Sweat Glitter by Iona Datt Sharma

The romance I needed

5 stars

Sometimes you don't want to read anything too grim. If you've ever read a romance and enjoyed it, you will probably enjoy this one; it does a very good romance that avoid the main ways romances fail (for me.)

Although the romance is real and compelling, and you believe that the two characters are falling for each other, and can be good for each other, the main attraction for me was the portrait of queer community. Many books described as "cozy" miss the mark for me because they fail to portray the hard work and irritation of building community. If queer community just happens magically when the right people are in proximity, then we are given no tools for what to do when one person in the community is, for example, incredibly annoying, or keeps borrowing things and not returning them or spreading malicious gossip.

I feel I am getting …

Sometimes you don't want to read anything too grim. If you've ever read a romance and enjoyed it, you will probably enjoy this one; it does a very good romance that avoid the main ways romances fail (for me.)

Although the romance is real and compelling, and you believe that the two characters are falling for each other, and can be good for each other, the main attraction for me was the portrait of queer community. Many books described as "cozy" miss the mark for me because they fail to portray the hard work and irritation of building community. If queer community just happens magically when the right people are in proximity, then we are given no tools for what to do when one person in the community is, for example, incredibly annoying, or keeps borrowing things and not returning them or spreading malicious gossip.

I feel I am getting off topic, and misleading you into thinking this book is about what it is not. This book is about Eleanor, a nurse, whose emotional wellbeing is tied up in roller derby, and Robin, the new girl, who doesn't take derby seriously, which Eleanor finds incredibly annoying. Why is Robin so careless! Why is Robin so cute!

But the background against which this takes place is the community of friends and acquaintances, room-mates and derby members who are so beautifully sketched in. This community feels real in the way "cozy" community portraits often don't.

I read this in an afternoon and felt cozy afterward.