Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres and something I’ve been really wanting more of is medieval stories. This book delivered all my wishes and dreams on a silver platter. I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did. By the first chapter I was hooked and didn’t stand any chance of escaping.

The relationship between Arthur and Gwen is probably one of my favorite relationships of all time. They give off the biggest sibling energy and I love how it’s carnage every time they’re near each other. Their banter was top tier.

I loved all the characters. They were giving everything that can be given. I just really loved the development between Gwen and Art. It really was just two siblings wanting to beat each other up (out of love) and I was there for it.

I usually have complaints but there really isn’t anything I’d change in the book. I thought it was ridiculous and over top but Lex did it in a way that wasn’t cringy. It was executed really well. I’ve been having to fight the urge to reread since I read it. It was a very enjoyable book.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked each of the characters and the dynamics between them. I particularly liked the friendship between Gwen and Arthur.

I struggled with the historical aspects of this book. The book tried to walk a line between being set in a specific century and being ahistorical and as a result it felt very confused at times. I think this is the historian in me and many readers won't struggle the same way but regardless, I would've preferred something to indicate that this wasn't meant to be set in specific place or time.

Overall, it was enjoyable.

It's 3:04 am, I've just finished this book, and I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes just completely wrecked. There are so many books that I love and have so much to say, but this is not that. This is one that I love and cannot fathom words encapsulating how I feel about it. "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more" or however that quote goes. The important thing is that this book reached into my chest and wrenched my heart out, but in a very loving way, if that's possible. I love queer love stories, I love queer historical love stories (we've always been here!!), and I love queer found families. For me, this was everything I'd hoped it would be, and then some.

This book was just the palate cleanser I needed after being in a nothing but fantasy mode. The characters are fun and queer, which is always a welcome addition. The story itself is endearing. The fact that it's set in a world where Arthur Pendragon wasn't just a story doesn't really play a whole lot into the story itself but it adds an interesting background.
Gwen and Gabriel both truly grow into their own especially in the end when their world is turned upside down.
Arthur is still Arthur even in the end, though maybe with less wine.
And Agnes and Sidney, oh Sidney, absolutely delightful

Highly recommend if you enjoy queer stories in historical settings

Gwen & Art Are Not in Love is not your typical love story, and that's just fine!

I enjoyed the witty dialogue, funny situations, and heartfelt moments brought to life in this historical tale.

This unique coming of age story embraced diverse and well developed characters that I was routing for.

At times the pacing felt a bit slow and perhaps the book could have been shortened a bit. Overall though, an entertaining, easy read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for providing me with an ARC for review.

Im going to break this review down into my perceptions of characters and my feelings through the story:

Characters:

Gwen: I really enjoyed seeing her character growth throughout the book! I think she was the one who grew the most as the story progressed; she was small at the start of the book but by the end she was loud, courageous and proud and I loved reading it.

Arthur: he stayed relatively stagnant character-wise but he did still grow. I also really appreciate that the author didn’t fully heal up Arthur after he had been battered severely. I liked him quite a lot for the wise-cracking, unserious and unapologetically queer character he was.

Gabriel:
He didn’t feel fully developed to me. I feel like a lot of his development was “tell not show” (meaning we didn’t really get to read what caused his changes). I do feel for him though, as he was born into a role he certainly didn’t want, a role he felt he was unfit for, a role he couldn’t be himself. Overall, I wish he was fleshed out more.

Bridget:
Who doesn’t love swords and lesbians? I honestly wish we got to know Bridget even more than we did— she was very fun to follow!
Bonus points: the talk of painful periods and male physicians not listening. Similar to Gabriel, I wish she was fleshed out more.

Ok, now that we had a chat about my feelings on the characters:

Selling points: Found Family, Lesbian knight, Wise-Cracking Male lead, Friendship, Crows, cats and other cute animals, nice writing style overall.

This is not a retelling, I promise you that.

We open up with a Princess and Noble being betrothed, nothing uncommon with that, right?
Nothing but the fact that they’re both vying for the other team. Gwen has her eyes set upon the only female knight, admiring her from afar. Arthur seems to have a penchants for curly-haired, emotionally-unavailable men and Gabriel the soon-to-be King fits the bill.
We’re in a world of religious turmoil threatening the very crown. It’s Catholics vs the Arthurians although we don’t follow too closely with the politics, it is a romance after all. We’re mostly at the castle or around it during the story be it in one of the royals rooms or the fairgrounds. I do wish that we would have been able to explore more of Camelot though.

I feel like Arthur and Gwen were extremely developed by the end of the book compared to the rest of the characters. We get to witness Gwen at the start being a coward, afraid of her own voice, to the end of the book where she’s brave and proud of her voice. We get to witness Arthur shift from a wise-cracking idiot with bad coping skills, to a wise-cracking idiot with significantly less bad coping skills.

As you may have gleamed I do have a few things I wished had been a bit different:
- I wish that there had been less “tell” and more “show”.
- I wish that the world had been a liiiiittle more developed (especially around the magical politics).
- I also wish that the love interests had been a bit more developed as well.
- **This is me being nit-picky but I disliked the uses of “err” and “uhh” at the start of the book

With the above being said, this was an extremely fun reading experience all in all.

3.5 stars!
First thing I noticed about this book was the cute cover! I love love love character covers and I have to say that this is one of the prettiest cover that I have ever seen! When reading this first, I had a hard time getting into the book but the more I read into the pages, the more I started to enjoy the books. Sometimes books are worth giving a second chance and I am glad I did! I love the queer and historical romance combination and these days, queer historical romance has been my fav. This isn't really a retelling and the characters are funny and is a slow burn and emotional as well!

Thank you Lex Croucher and Netgalley for providing me this e-ARC in exchange for a honest review!

Thank you so much St. Martin's Press for sending me this early copy!

This book is so good!!! The queer yearning portrayed by our two main characters is off the charts. Not the mention the fun banter amount the characters. So fun and an absolutely solid read.

Oh how I loved this book. I had a rocky start getting into it, but once I understood the time period and the world; I was fully obsessed. Funny, charming, delightfully queer with a great cast of characters. I loved every second of my time reading this story.

I really liked what I read of this. The summery had me curious immediately, and I can't say I was disappointed by what I got. Of course, I am the exact type of person who loves inclusive, humorous, remixes of older stories like this one. The style and tone might not be for everyone, but it hit a lot of my personal buttons. Granted, they aren't *that* Arthur and *that* Gwen, but go with it. There is a lot of humor and heart to be had here. I'll for sure want to read this again when it comes out in print.

Gwen and Art arent in love: Arc. I enjoyed the relationship layout of Gwen and Gabriel, early. Nice brother and sister dynamics.

The introduction’s to Lady leclair was so good as well as Gwen’s reaction.

I liked it. I loved the layout of the book.

The characters main Gwen was hard for me to like at times. There was part where I did like here and she just let it all away.

I love a romance and I did expect the ending. I loved the plot and writing style.

I do feel like some parts were dragged out. I finished the book. It was a good read.

My rating is 3.75

I enjoyed this overall, and I think anyone who enjoyed A Knight’s Tale (movie) but wished it was queer will probably love Gwen & Art Are Not In Love.

I personally didn’t care much for Gwen, I think she spends WAY too much time looking down on everyone (especially other girls and women), and I didn’t much like Art in the beginning either (he spends a lot of the book in an inconsistent drunken state; sometimes he’s drunk Camelot dry and can still climb walls and give sage advice, and other times he has one drink and can no longer stand?). Gwen’s brother Gabriel honestly kind of bored me.

Art grew on me over the course of the book, I think maybe because he’s the only main character with character development. His motivations make sense, and even when he made decisions that had me groaning in despair, they felt realistic and in character. (I think another reason his drinking bothered me, is that as the only man (boy) of Color (his mother was Iranian) it felt awkward and while I understand why he was drinking, I wish the author had considered a different vice, cause making your only male character of Color a drunk feels racist to me.)

I liked all the secondary and tertiary characters a LOT more than the three main characters (I know Bridget should probably be considered a main character, as she’s a love interest and on the cover of the book, it we don’t actually see her very much?)

Art’s friend/servant/bodyguard who’s name I can’t remember right now was easily my favorite character. He has a romance with Gwen’s lady in waiting Agnes, who I also really liked. There are two commoners who work in the castle who are friends with Bridget that i wish we’d seen more of, as they seemed interesting (likely why Gwen avoids them, as she’d have to rethink her stance on all women being useless giggling gossip).

Then there’s Bridget, who is a lady knight and Gwen’s love interest. She deserves better. We discover that her family came to england two generations ago from what I think is medieval Thailand, and as her parents lee she learns how to fight and decides she wants to be a knight and faces all sorts of misogyny that Gwen decides, having known her all of a day, to tell her how to fight back against, ignoring that her own mother the queen of england is one of Bridget’s biggest haters. Listen, I liked that the author didn’t make Bridget a meek Asian woman stereotype, or go the other way in making her an unbeatable martial artist. Bridget feels like she could have been a real person, which is why I was disappointed at how little we see her. She literally just shows up when it’s convenient to the story, and despite being the best character in the book is somehow relegated to being a prop. If her part had been cut, nothing in the book would have changed. Which is a shame because I did really like her.

The ending was abrupt, and it didn’t really (for me) fit with the vibe of the first 80% of the book. Is there foreshadowing to some of the events at the end? Yes. But it was still a shock to go from attempted medieval romcom to dramatic historical where prominent characters are permanently disabled and another important character, not a Bad Guy, is killed off. It was jarring, especially in tone.

Despite all the things I didn’t like about it, it did make me laugh out loud quite a bit, which I needed. It was largely fun, and i did enjoy it while I was reading it.

Such a cute read! I loved the character and the story, but if there’s one thing that threw me off, it was the world building. The world building was a big confusing as I think it was a mix of real life history and fantasy, and I overall wasn’t very interested in the politics in the book. I really liked the relationships in this book though; these are the kinds of characters you find yourself rooting for.

After reading and enjoying this author’s two adult novels, I was really excited to read Lex Croucher’s young adult debut! I found it in much the same vein of humor and really enjoyed it. With great heart and laugh-out-loud moments, Gwen and Art Are Not in Love defies tradition for the sake of love and happiness.

Gwendoline and Arthur have been betrothed since birth — the only issue is that they’ve despised each other for their entire lives. This summer, their parents have decided it’s finally time for their marriage, so the two of them are forced to spend time with each other this summer. In the first day of Art’s arrival at court, Gwen accidentally sees him kissing another boy and in retaliation, he steals her diary only to find out that she’s been crushing on Bridget, the only female knight in the realm. Add in Art getting to know Gabriel, Gwen’s older brother and crown prince, and this summer is a recipe for disaster — or maybe finally a time for change in the kingdom.

I really loved our cast of characters and their personal journeys! Arthur was such a chaotic character, and I loved his humor. He’s so used to shirking his responsibilities that he can’t understand why Gwen and Gabriel won’t at least try to be happy outside of their duties. He helps them realize that they don’t have to live a life of misery simply because of the stations they were born to, and in turn comes to realize that sometimes responsibility isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Gwen is heavily introverted and hates disruptions to her schedule; she can’t comprehend Arthur’s general vibe of chaos, but she also comes to realize that she doesn’t have to be completely unhappy in her life like she is now. She takes Arthur’s (technically unasked for) advice and pursues Bridget, while also realizing that her preconceived notions of people are sometimes unfair.

Gwen and her brother Gabriel share everything with together except for the fact that both of them have feelings for someone they “shouldn’t,” according to tradition. I enjoyed reading about both of their journeys to realize that they shouldn’t have to hide who they are. Arthur helps both of them come to terms with this, even more so with Gabriel as the two of them develop feelings for each other.

I also really liked Bridget’s character! As the only female knight in the kingdom, she’s ridiculed and mocked everywhere she goes. However, she sticks with it because she likes being a knight and isn’t afraid to live as she wants. It was nice to see how her confidence rubs off on Gwen over time.

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love was a fun romp that also had poignant character arcs. I had so much fun with these characters and couldn’t stop laughing while reading. If you’re intrigued by a medieval rom-com and/or in the mood for a historical YA romance with a modern twist, I definitely think you should pick up Gwen and Art Are Not in Love!

I loved this book! Gwen and Arthur have been betrothed to each other since Gwen's birth. The only issue is that the two can't stand each other. However, as Gwen's 18th birthday is approaching the pair's respective parents decide the two must spend the summer together at Gwen's family's castle in hopes they can begin to get along. But Gwen has her eye on the kingdom's only female knight Lady Bridget, and Arthur begins to develop feelings to Gwen's older brother Gabriel. Realizing they are better as allies than enemies, Arthur and Gwen develop a cautious pact to cover for each other.

I adore the characters and all of their separate story arcs, but also I love when they all come together in both good times and bad. There's love, hate, drama, longing, hurt/comfort--there's something for everyone!

Firstly, I’d like to say how much I adore this cover! It’s so lovely and I couldn’t stop staring at it while reading the book.

Secondly—this book! I was nervous because this has been an anticipated read of mine but I had no reason to be. I enjoyed the main characters and their relationships. Crouch does such a beautiful job curating these endearing and wonderful characters with seemingly real personalities and ambitions. I absolutely busted out laughing so many times! This book was so fun, witty and honest! I absolutely adored Arthur and his grumpiness and sarcastic comments.

Any who, I AM SO HONORED I GOT THE CHANCE TO READ THIS NOVEL. It hooked me immediately and I love how much we focused on all the side characters as well. I really enjoyed the storyline and wow my heart melted so many times.

I think this one even topped so many other YA queer novels this month, and I can't wait to tell everyone to buy it when it's in stores or be annoyingly persistent about it when I’m at the library.

This was a damn good time. The characters were super lovable, and it was impossible not to root for them all. My only gripe is that this seems to be a standalone, but it definitely reads like a set-up to a longer series (and that’s only a gripe if don’t get a million sequels about this weird little Court scandalizing England I love them so much). Lex Croucher’s writing is funny and warm and feels so cozy and wonderful.

A solid 2.5 and I'm rounding up for stars. I really wanted to like this more because I loved Reputation. This was not a bad book. I think I was coming off the high of another book and couldn't tell if this was YA or not and could never fully get into it. The pacing was a bit choppy at times, especially towards the end. There's a lot of heart and fun in this book and think a lot of people will enjoy it. I just don't think it was for me (which makes me sad bc l'm obsessed with the cover art!)

I liked this read, but it wasn’t my favorite. The concept was new and fresh. The characters were enjoyable, but the witty banter was a bit overkill. Seemed to be trying a bit too hard.

Although it took me a while to get through this book, I overall loved the vibes and the characters. I was already sold on the premise as somehow who loved BBC's Merlin, so I was really excited to see a queer "retelling" of Arthurian legends. My one critique of the book is that it that the action starts happening when the book is about 75% and everything up to that is just character driven, not plot. That being said, I loved the characters and reading about them just existing in Camelot. I of course can't forget how delighted it was to read the gay panic Gwen and Gabriel went through every 2 seconds. Overall this story was such a fun time and I would highly recommend it, especially if you like Merlin!