The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

Recently, I restarted my Scribd subscription and stumbled upon a goldmine of wlw fiction and The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics was on the forefront of my list. And, my god, it did not disappoint. This piece was a quick and heartwarming read. It mixed together history, sciences, and sapphics—what could be better than that?

I think the thing I enjoyed the most were the main characters and the growth of their relationship. Watching Catherine struggle with her past burned relationships and realize her romantic feelings for women was gratifying. Lucy was adorable the entire book. I love that she's a little ray of sunshine that showed up on Catherine's doorstep. Their relationship began as that fantastic dynamic of two idiots in love but the other doesn't realize they're also in love with them.

A word of warning to those who aren't a fan of NSFW scenes. This book includes some, but they were quite tasteful and not extremely graphic. I could listen to the audiobook at work and not be mortified.

I'm biased toward the historical factor because the 19th century is one of my favorite periods of history to study and read about. I think Waite did a great job of mirroring the style of authors from the time, whether it was intended or not. A lot of the time, I forgot I was reading a book published recently rather from the 1800s. Waite's style was beautiful and concise, something I think readers interested in dipping their toe into adult fiction could easily get into.

This story is extremely character-driven and that was something else I liked about it. We were able to get points-of-views from both Catherine and Lucy in order to see different perspectives and feelings on the same situations. It created that frustration as readers where we know things other characters don't and we're left yelling "she loves you, you idiot!" at the pages.

Besides the main characters, the secondary characters were also charming and were well written in the way that they had their own lives separate from the main characters. I like when minor characters clearly exist outside of the central plot. It makes them feel more real and not just existing to help the narrator along.

As I stated above, I was listening to the audiobook, and the woman who narrated it gave Priscilla the most annoying, shrill voice that made me hate the character even more. That should have been a red flag immediately. While I hated her, I did like the drama she stirred up. It made Lucy and Catherine's relationship stronger in the end.

Don't worry, the book has a happy ending :)

Overall, I totally recommend The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics and am excited to begin the next book in the series!

The earth is the center of a web of force that touches the moon, the sun, the other planets, and perhaps even all those distant stars that burn so far away. But every other moon, sun, comet, planet, and star is itself a center, and exerts its own force upon all the rest.
Nothing in the universe stands alone.

An incredibly beautiful and thoughtful book. I deliberately read it at a slower pace than usual, even though sometimes it was hard to pace myself and not just gulp down all the remaining chapters. But I didn't want to miss out on anything. The prose here is gorgeous, the characterization throughout the book is consistently evolving, and even though the romance obviously takes central stage, there's so much else going on. 

I loved both Catherine and Lucy, independently and together—especially together. Theirs is exactly the kind of relationship I want to see in romance: two people building a future together as they work through the effects of their individual pasts, seeing the best in each other and lifting each other up, helping each other be the best version of themselves. It was wonderful to see these two women let each other in and work together as partners. All the beautiful details woven into their relationship—the art and the science, the translations and the embroidery—added so much to the story.

The parts of the book that were perhaps the most fascination but also the most difficult to read involved the vividly painted picture of the society these characters live in. It's impressive how the author doesn't gloss over or sugar-coat any of the numerous aspects of the systematic oppression Catherine and Lucy encounter, whether head-on or in passing—and at the same time, manages to lead the story to a powerful and hopeful ending. The world around the characters doesn't change in an instant, but there's a strong feeling that it can change, bit by bit.

Without diving into spoilers, I'll just say I also enjoyed how the subject of the power imbalance between the romantic leads was handled. Like so many topics in this story, it was very directly confronted instead of steering toward something like, "but they love each other, so of course this won't be a problem, let's focus on something else." And it was firmly the kind of confrontation that leads to solutions, not problems.

Overall, an amazing read, and I'm looking forward to reading more books by Olivia Waite in the future.