Yesterday, I blogged about the common mistakes I find in lesbian fiction. Since I don’t want you to think I’m seeing just the negative things, here’s a list of what I liked in the thirty-six lesfic novels I read in 2010.
 
Fresh, beautiful language and vivid descriptions in “Barking at the Moon” by Nene Adams. Examples: superman blue pickup truck. Or: Hennaed hair teased as high as gravity and industrial-strength hairspray allowed.
 
A psychologist who’s neither unethical nor incompetent in “Battle Scars” by Meghan O’Brien. The book also describes posttraumatic stress disorder in a realistic way.
 
The funniest read so far has been “Ambereye” by Gill McKnight. The first chapters have a continuing struggle over an office chair that is hilarious.
 
Characters who don’t look like supermodels in “Butch Girls Can Fix Anything” by Paula Offutt.
 
Good use of sound words (The blip blip blip of a heart monitor. The rhythmic rap rap rap of windshield wipers) in “Wicked Good Time” by Diana Tremaine Braund.
 
A great opening sentence in “Thirteen Hours” by Meghan O’Brien. (At approximately seven o’clock of the evening of her twenty-eighth birthday, during an otherwise uneventful Friday night at the office, Dana Watts was confronted by the most perfect pair of naked female breasts she’d ever seen). The way she teases us by delaying the main clause is very fitting for a novel starring a stripper.
 
An interesting novel about grief and new love: “Collision Course” by CP Rowlands.
 
A refreshingly different book that read like the lesbian version of chick lit: “Stranded” by Blayne Cooper.
 
A clever way to describe the POV character’s looks without violating point of view in “Warming Trend” by Karin Kallmaker. Kallmaker uses plot and dialogue to describe her main character (Black-eyed girls with mops of inky hair never got away with anything – at least that was her experience. … “I like Slavic looks on a woman. Tall, dark, and moody.”)
 
An interesting first sentence that made me want to read on in “No Rules of Engagement” by Tracey Richardson (Jesus, don’t tell me I’m going to die before I even get there.)
 
A complex relationship of the main character with a minor character, her grandmother, in “Starting from Scratch” by Georgia Beers.
 
A German main character who named her hamsters Angela and Helmut in “In the Works” by Val Brown. Did anyone else catch that little joke?
 
Three-dimensional characters and a wonderful relationship development in “Silent Legacy” a.k.a. “Glass Houses” by Ciaran Llachlan Leavitt. I recently re-read it. Guess which main character is my favorite? :-)
 
So, what were the things you liked about the lesfic novels you read this year?