A review by amcgeewrites
Lady Hotspur by Tessa Gratton

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 It took me an entire year to read this book, which was incredibly long and broken into three big sections which I treated as their own novels. It may not take you that long if you like your works on the denser side, however, and I am glad I stuck with this book. If you like Shakespeare or The Outlaw King but want it to be gay, I can recommend. My only critique of this story is that, despite the fact that there is very clear dialogue about the pervasiveness of killing your gays in narrative, no man gets what I would call a happy ending in this book, and the body count for queer men is very high. Overall I wouldn’t say that this was per se the book for me, but it’s a very good book and I would pay good money for it to be a movie. Like serious money. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, War, Violence, Alcoholism, and Mental illness

While I think all the content was handled well, you still spend a lot of time in it, specifically in suicidal ideation and alcoholism, as well as forced hetero-sex for a character who did not feel that attraction. (The sex itself is not explicit, but it does loom for most of the book.)