I had to struggle past the first quarter - it wasn't just the style of a book written in prose but also that I wasn't so interested in the conversation between the two women. I just wanted the story, not discussions on labels and semantics which I felt disrupted my reading the narrative. Especially early on.

I settled into it however, and by the end did enjoy the tale. I hadn't been familar with the story of King Thrushbeard, which is probably for the best as this story doesn't start to bring those elements in until later.

Read this for my ace book club, and I think we'll all enjoy the rep in here. It's varied, because we have two examples which is nice. I did like Marian's way of describing her distaste of things and her means to avoid them, just as much as I liked Edel's very factual, no-nonsense views of how broad love can be. Aces in fiction always make me happy.