Why hello there,

This is my very first Substack post and I have performance anxiety. I used to blog all the time, as referenced by the posts that are years old in the archive. I’ve decided that I want to do it more often as an anchor to my more rambling long-form videos.

With Rosen’s latest installment in his Evander Mills Trilogy, Rough Pages, being published on the first of October, I thought it would be fun to do a mini readathon. So I planned this taking place between the 16th of September and October 1st. However, I have a horrible habit of creating things and then forgetting about them, and with this being Boy Wonder’s Birthday AND the end of Horror Hound, my brain needed a bit of time to recover.

So I didn’t start until the 18th, with the first novel, Lavender House, published in 2022. The one thing I want to say is that Rosen does Queer incredibly well. This novel is penned with incredible care and attention to detail. I think they did a wonderful job of interlacing the aching need to be loved that we queer folk have with the ache of needing to solve this case.

In this introduction, we follow our hero, Evander Mills, who was an Inspector with the SFPD, who was released from his duties because he was found during a gay bar raid. This takes place in the early 50s, it’s illegal to be queer, clubs are raided and if you are unlucky enough to be found, it is bad news bears.

Due to the difficulty of finding employment once you are outed, he was contemplating ending it all right after this last drink at his local bar. When he is approached by Pearl, the Matriarch of A Soap Icon, to help her finally figure out if her wife’s death was an accident or murder.

What he finds is an oasis of sorts. A safe haven, an entirely queer family living in a paradise inside their estate and forced to interact with the cruel world only when outside of it. This utopia makes it difficult to determine if the case actually has any merit and whether or not, the culprit is from the outside, or more likely, one of them.

I devoured the last 10% of this novel and absolutely loved its conclusion. Each novel includes the first chapter of the next, and I was enthralled with the direction Rosen decided to take Andy.

I gave it an ecstatic 🥕🥕🥕🥕.5. Due to being in the middle of the mini readathon I immediately started the next novel in the series; The Bell in The Fog.

(Introduction to Book 2)

The shenanigans continue directly into the second book. With the help of Elsie, Evander opens up a small office above the Ruby, to help queer individuals with their detective-centric problems. The police have always been unhelpful, so having a queer detective in a place where they feel safe, would be a great way to make money for himself and The Ruby.

The cases that are being brought to him, are mostly trying to figure out if the people his clients are interested in are queer, and aren’t really bringing in a lot of money. Just when he begins to despair, he receives a rather large case, in the form of an old flame coming back into his life.

This gives him a bit of shock, due to James, having just disappeared from the Navy in the middle of the night and never to be heard from again. This trauma causes him to become a police officer, effectively splitting himself in half. One half an officer and the other half a closed queer person. I like that in this novel, he discovers more of an open life and has come into his own more. What will make him happy and how to create his own version of a good life.

James comes with a blackmail case. He has been keeping his queerness a secret because it’s illegal and having a relationship with an escort. Who then starts blackmailing him, and he is asking Evander to figure out who he is because he gets court-martialled.

While I thought this particular installment dragged more than the previous one. It felt pretty repetitive towards the middle. I did like the mystery more in this one. I figured it out pretty quickly, but again the motivations escaped me. I do think the shining examples of his characters are what make these mysteries shine.

I wound up giving this installment 🥕🥕🥕🥕. Finishing this novel brought me to the meat and potatoes of this entire assignment. I was finally on the arc I received back in August. Rough Pages.

Rough Pages is the 3rd book in the Evander Mills series, and since it was just released I’m unsure of it being an end to the series or just an installment. If it is the end of a series, creating a trilogy, it was a great one. This case definitely brought n re-introduction to characters from the first one and helped clear a new path for Evander’s Future.

In this installment, Evander is brought back home, to Lavender House with a juicy case dangled by Pat, the LaMontagne’s Butler. He is very Hush hush about the entire affair until he can speak with Andy in person. With, the courtesy, Andy showed the case in The Bell and the Fog, he has become a queer household name.

Pat asks him to look in on friends, Howard and DeeDee, who own a bookstore that caters to the queer community. In not only carrying queer novels and nonfiction but creating a unique book delivery service delivering to their doorstep. While this convenience was wonderful when it was safe and sound.

Pat is alarmed at the radio silence that he’s had with the book owners. The store has been closed for the last week or so, and he’s concerned that something has happened to them. If something happened to them, it’s possible that something happened to the list that fuels the book delivery service. All those queer names and addresses in the wrong hands could be absolutely deadly.

So once again, Andy is on the case, looking for missing people and following all the leads that pop up. I think the best thing about this installment, is how the side characters shined. Andy came into his own at the end of book two and fully into book three, but the side characters presenting all of these different views on the same subject was an interesting thing to read.

I was so excited to be able to complete this series and to add another to my read list. A good portion of the 2000 books on my TBR are starts to series, which I’m unsure I want to continue. I’m so glad that Evander has made the list. If this is indeed not the end for Andy, I can’t wait to see where the next novel takes him and his queer little family. They have now burrowed a small spot in my heart, and I only hope the best for them.

Until Next Time,

Gabs

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