It’s very Kimberly that I just had a nightmare in which the nightmarish occurrence was that the public library had pushed the YA bookshelves so close together that they were inaccessible. 📚

🔖🧵 Read Just Make it Already! How to Boost Your Sewing Confidence.

Brooks Ann Camper includes this as a bonus link in the orientation for Skirt Skills, which I’m taking right now. It’s exactly what recovering perfectionists need to heal & works for any creative endeavor.

Finished reading: To Have and to Heist by Sara Desai 📚

Super cute and fun!

🧵 I made a pillow! Well, I covered a pillow. I used instructions from the Sewing 10 class from Brit + Co. My seams were so wobbly that I actually had to go back and hand sew a gap closed. I used a messy whip stitch to finish it but I’ve hidden the seam on the bottom here.

📚💬 “When no help comes from outside, a lost crop becomes a famine.” Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal

Finished reading: Idol by Kristen Callihan 📚🎧

Finished reading: Once Upon You and Me by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Another delight from Timothy Janovsky. Full review coming soon!

Finished reading: Tangled Up In You by Christina Lauren 📚

A super cute Tangled retelling!

Disabled writer heroes: Leigh Bardugo. Esmé Weijun Wang. Johanna Hedva. I have more but these are the ones top of mind at this moment.

A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera is a historical romance set mostly in Paris during the 1889 Exposition Universelle, about a Dominican-Mexican doctor and the duke who falls for her. On the closed door/open door/in the room/in the bed heat scale, this book puts you in the bed with the main characters. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:

Physician Aurora Montalban Wright takes risks in her career, but never with her heart. Running an underground women’s clinic exposes her to certain dangers, but help arrives in the unexpected form of the infuriating Duke of Annan. Aurora begrudgingly accepts his protection, then promptly finds herself in his bed. New to his role as a duke, Apollo César Sinclair Robles struggles to embrace his position. With half of society waiting for him to misstep and the other half looking to discredit him, Apollo never imagined that his enthralling bedmate would become his most trusted adviser. Soon, he realizes the rebellious doctor could be the perfect duchess. But Aurora won’t give up her independence, and her secrets make her unsuitable for the aristocracy. When a dangerous figure from their past returns to threaten them, Apollo whisks Aurora away to his villa in the French Riviera. Far from the reproachful eye of Parisian society, can Apollo convince Aurora that their bond is stronger than the forces keeping them apart?

What I loved

This is the third book in Adriana Herrera’s Las Léonas trilogy, and I have loved every book in the series. Herrera gives us three best friends, each having her own adventure. By the time it’s Aurora’s turn to be the heroine, her friends Luz Alana and Manuela have found their own partners and the circle of the three friends has expanded to include Luz Alana’s husband, Evan, and Manuela’s partner, Cora. Evan and Cora often serve as a Greek chorus for the hero, Apollo, and it’s delightful.

Apollo himself is an incredibly dreamy hero. Aurora has been running herself ragged tending to patients both night and day. She has neglected her own needs. Apollo notices her taking care of others and not taking care of herself, and takes it upon himself to take care of her.

Aurora is a fierce doctor, the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Mexico, collaborating with colleagues in Paris to establish a network of women’s clinics. She dedicates herself to her work. Her growing attraction to Apollo gets her out of her head and into her body.

Adriana Herrera always gives us a delightful cast of supporting characters and here she gives us Brazilian boxing club owner Gilberto and his Vietnamese partner Minh, whose mother farms lavender in the French countryside. Apollo’s body man, Jean-Louis, is a giant who Apollo appoints to escort Aurora on dangerous night patient visits but whom Aurora quickly wins over to doing what she asks more than what Apollo does.

I feel like I’m not doing the book justice here.

Adriana Herrera writes love scenes that tie the emotional and physical relationships of the main characters to each other in a way that both titillates and tugs at heartstrings. The more Aurora and Apollo get to know each other, the more each of them impresses the other with their commitment to helping the people they serve: patients in Aurora’s case, and tenants in the duchy in Apollo’s case.

Romance readers love a broken character, and I especially love the way Aurora is broken, the way she is constantly fighting to prove her worth while also caring deeply for her patients.

What I wanted more of

I found myself lingering over this text rather than devouring it, I think because I didn’t want Las Léonas to end. There’s nothing I wish Adriana Herrera would have included in this book that she didn’t. I just hope she keeps writing historicals.

What I need to warn you about.

The clinics where Aurora works offer services that were perfectly legal in Paris in 1889, but also those that were not, especially contraceptive services and abortions. Abortions and abortion aftercare are discussed in the book. Herrera has a note about this at the beginning of the book, so definitely look at an ebook preview or the first few pages of a physical copy to read that. Aurora is put in physical danger and there is reference to poor treatment at the hands of a peer in her past as well as reference to the same peer continuing this behavior in the book’s present.

Who should read this book

Lovers of historical romance. People who want a historical romance that isn’t set in England or during the Regency. Readers who want to see fierce Afro-Latina women defying the limitations society tries to put on them and finding love. Readers who love found family.

Book: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke Author: Adriana Herrera Publisher: Canary Street Press Publication Date: February 4, 2025 Pages: 432 Age Range: Adult Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Purchase

Everybody writes about being the mother of a baby. But what about being the mother of a big kid? You are this new version of yourself, integrated with the old, out of the early fog, free of the strange combination of portentousness and tedium. But you are still postpartum, you are eternally postpartum. You matresced, you are no longer becoming a mother but you are a mother. What is unique at this stage? Are you still annihilated? Is your life still kintsugi? Do you live in fragments? I think yes, but the fragments are bigger now. You have more time for yourself but you remain available, vulnerable, to interruption at any moment. You still steal your moments for self from sleep. The quiet of the sleeping house is still a precious time.

Finished reading: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera 📚

I love this book. Full review soon!

I’ve been conducting inventory on our 5000ish volume school library and it’s been going well. It’s surprisingly physical work. Today my arms don’t like it and I’m having to take more breaks than I have previously. This is an example of the variable disability of chronic illness. ♿

🔖 Read The real reason Musk retreated by Daniel Hunter (Waging Nonviolence).

This article about the power of collective action really made me feel hopeful.

"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers

Listen on Apple Music

Describe the perfect song for a road trip and why it works.

This song starts every road trip our family takes, as an homage to its use in How I Met Your Mother. The driving beat is perfect for that early road trip energy.

View Kimberly Hirsh's Crucial Tracks profile

"The Book of Love" by The Magnetic Fields

Listen on Apple Music

What song would you use to describe your current relationship?

The first song that came to mind was Riki Lindhome's "Middle Age Love," because we've been together for almost 27 years and still find each other super attractive. But I wanted a less explicit choice so I picked "The Book of Love." It's long and boring, like our relationship might look to people outside of it, but I love so much of what my husband does.

View Kimberly Hirsh's Crucial Tracks profile

Finished reading: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚

A fascinating book about what our ghosts say about us.

Finished reading: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera 📚

Another re-read. I basically cried through the last two chapters.

📚💬📝 “A disabled life is a life interrupted.” Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice

📚💬📝 “Tending to your body and mind is a way to tend to your work.” Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice

📚💬 “In that moment Manuela began counting her blessings to have found friends who not only came to the rescue but who knew there was no problem in life one could not tackle armed with good cheese and champagne.” Adriana Herrera, An Island Princess Starts a Scandal

📚💬 “Ghost stories, for good or ill, are how cities make sense of themselves: how they narrate the tragedies of their last, weave cautionary tales for the future.“Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Mijn Nederlansen vrienden, do people ever put hagelslag on stroopwafel?

Finished reading: A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera 📚

This is a re-read. It’s a testament to Adriana Herrera’s work that even though it’s only six months since I originally read it, I found this riveting and didn’t want to skip or skim at all.

Finished reading: Firelight by Sophie Jordan 📚