The time has come to revisit one of my favourite couples of my own making, ever: Lina and Karol, the world-hopping, redhead, dieselpunk, mystery-solving and romancing doppelgängers. Because book two is coming out in under a month!
Yes, this is the sound of the writer panicking. But also getting seriously excited to share the followup to events from Johnny’s Girls with you. Without getting into too many spoilers, let’s just say that book two takes off a few months after book one ended, which places our girls firmly in the middle of the hot summer of 1945, in the city of Rijeka, freshly freed from the Axis powers’ occupation.
You know what’s one of the worst things you can do in the middle of a hot summer? Investigate a body which has already been dead for a few days…
For book two, I chose a setting which is not all that close to me, even though I kinda sorta wrote my master’s thesis on something similar—a convent. (If you caught the teeny tiny fact from book one—the one about Lina being raised with the nuns after the Malnar parents’ deaths—you probably won’t be surprised to hear that!)
On the other hand, Girls in Black also introduces what’s quickly becoming one of the characters I’m having the most fun writing. Her pincurls are almost as tight as her smile, her officer’s uniform polished to perfection, and she’s the reason why Girls in Black got placed in the historical reality of mid-1945 stronger than the idealistic, a bit more alternative version from book one.
If you like…
…doppelgängers
…women in suits (with cigarettes, obviously)
…lady soldiers
…historical murder mysteries
…portal fantasy
…and, of course, sapphic shenanigans…
Take a peek at my slightly dark, but still romantic lesbian historical suspense Girls in Black!
Girls in Black are coming out on April 2, 2021. All preorder links.
Vesna Kurilic 