(I guess queer historical selkies are in vogue in Canadian publishing this year? I mean, that's two books so far, but it's weird that it happened twice, lol.)

This one is set in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia, with a human midwife and Gaelic-speaking selkie trapped in a bad marriage. The blurb promises gothic horror, and is a lie, as the book is very fluffy, and it's impossible to believe that anything bad is going to happen.

I guess this belongs to the "cosy" genre in the line of Legends & Lattes, wherein we have a very nice characters whose main (if not only) flaw is self-doubt, who then come up against an external threat that's in no way of their making and isn't actually all that threatening, and team up to defeat it and learn to love again. If it has a historical setting, there'll be some loving cottage-core details about cheesemaking and pretty outfits, but societal homophobia will be downplayed and/or overcome. Internalised homophobia will not be a thing, or will only be mentioned in past tense. No one sympathetic will have any attitudes that would be out of place in the twenty-first century progressive spaces online.

And sure. Fine. I get the interest in comfort reading low-conflict romantasy, etc. There have been times I've enjoyed it myself. I just don't find it especially interesting from where I am right now.