Plot Summary

It’s been hundreds of years since King Arthur’s reign. His descendant, Arthur, a future Lord and general gadabout, has been betrothed to Gwendoline, the quick-witted, short-tempered princess of England, since birth. The only thing they can agree on is that they despise each other.

They’re forced to spend the summer together at Camelot in the run up to their nuptials, and within 24 hours, Gwen has discovered Arthur kissing a boy and Arthur has gone digging for Gwen’s childhood diary and found confessions about her crush on the kingdom’s only lady knight, Bridget Leclair.

Realizing they might make better allies than enemies, they make a reluctant pact to cover for each other, and as things heat up at the annual royal tournament, Gwen is swept off her feet by her knight and Arthur takes an interest in Gwen’s royal brother. Lex Croucher’s Gwen and Art Are Not in Love is chock full of sword-fighting, found family, and romantic shenanigans destined to make readers fall in love.

Review

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books for the advanced copy.

I want to start out by saying that as a 30 something woman, I am not really the target audience for this book. If I had read this in high school where I was at the height of my obsession with Arthurian legends (I was v cool), this book would have been a 5 star read no notes. Queers in history? Hell yeah! However, now that I’m older I do have notes.

When in the hell does this take place. It vaguely states a few hundred years after King Arthur, but that’s all we get. That really bothered me and I kept trying to place when this is supposed to be. This is very much a YA historical fiction novel, but there was too much modernity in the story for me. I kept imagining this was all taking place at a weirdly immersive ren faire.

One thing I did love was the friendships we made a long the way. And by that I mean the supporting characters. Being queer is hard. Falling in love the first time is hard and awkward. Having stalwart friends that will literally defend you with swords is priceless and timeless.

This book is perfect with I would say teens to early 20s crowd. It flows well, has a cute plot, though the end seemed out of place to me, it did give the characters space to effect real change in their world. While I didn’t love love the book, I can always get behind a queer history novel. Gays existed throughout time, it’s the victors who get to write the history of the repressed.

Basically more gay legends please.

3.5 out of 5 stars.