Halfling by S. E. Wendel

Sometimes life is so heavy and so serious that the only thing for it is to read a book where a half-man-half-orc falls in love with a human woman, and they have lots of seggs. and I just need to assure you that your time in this book will be well spent. Being well into my Literary Hoe Era, I am no stranger to fantasy romance but this is actually quite good; like it has a little bit extra to it. Like yes, you get a big strong green man rescuing a much smaller curly-headed pretty woman, but also you get all this little bonus stuff like the plight of the eldest daughter and the concept of being “other” within a community. This book honestly had no business being this good at character development, at building a truly thorough and believable relationship between these two people, and at having this many detailed and very thorough seggs scenes without a single eye roll from me.

And then where a lot of fantasy romance books end, this book was like at 60% and you think “well where are we going now” and then she just takes you on a much more fulfilling and deep ending that brings each of your main characters completely through their arc, independent (almost) of the romance between the two of them. And the writing and the story and these characters are just so fucking sweet. I think I grinned like an idiot through the whole thing. But then I also got kind of teary too.

Yes, there are tropes abundant in this book, but seldom have I ever seen them written to such pleasurable effect. I just felt like I was in good hands the entire read and it turns out I was.