Evie and the Pack-Horse Librarians by Laurel Beckley | ARC Review

Evie and the Pack-Horse Librarians by Laurel Beckley

• Publisher: NineStar Press, August 17th 2020
• Genre: Fantasy, Romance, LGBTQ+, Novella
• Format: Ebook (eARC)
• Page Count: 98 pages
• My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)

CW: racial slights, mentioning of amputation

If you want a very cute fantasy novella featuring a joyous cast of LGBTQ+ people, Evie and the Pack-Horse Librarians should be your top choice.

Evie Southiel (18, BIPOC) is sent away by her publishing company in the city into the countryside as a pack-horse librarian after her now ex-girlfriend leaked an important manuscript. Unaccustomed to rural settings, Evie struggles with her new job, and ends up with a disastrous first solo journey delivering books. But Katalin (19, BIPOC) and her son Lajos (4, BIPOC, arm loss) take her in and make sure she is safe.

Despite the fantastical settings, there are brief acknowledgments of racial slights and economic inequalities between cities and rural areas that are prominent in our world. Beckley has done a wonderful job of incorporating people with different backgrounds and identities into the story. I love how everyone is queer and no one bats an eye. Sexualities are not defined. Multiple characters use they/they/theirs pronouns and one minor character is a transwoman. There is also one big polyamorous family consisting of five grownups.

The build-up of the story is slow, and the ending comes a little too quickly for me. Evie’s love interest doesn’t even show up until the latter half, and that sort of stunted the story arc because it is a novella and inherently short. Though marketed as a romance, I find it more enjoyable not reading it as one.

Evie and the Pack-Horse Librarians is a novella about a female librarian on a horse. What’s not to like? [15 Aug 2020]

I received an e-ARC from NineStar Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.