August is on!

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and it's a hot month for recs.

Many thanks to July's reccers: brighteyed_jill, venturous1, machshefa, she_burns1, and sussexdowns, as well as our permanent reccers who always bring the goods. We're grateful for their perseverance through the many problems with LJ access this month.

Our volunteers for August are beneficia, bwblack, hagiologic, kim47, and spike21. We're looking forward to hearing from you.

If you'd like to sign up to make recs for the community, please add your name to the Sign-Ups post. Further information is here, for the current schedule and rec guidelines.

Thanks!

Fic: The Blog of Eugenia V. Watson

[kim47.livejournal.com]

Title: The Blog of Eugenia V. Watson
Author: madlori 
Pairing: Sherlock/John, John/OFC (referenced, in the past)
Length: 93 000 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Verse: BBC
Author's summary: I like to think of this not so much as a blog but as the first draft of my inevitably best-selling memoirs. My Life In an Unconventional Family. How unconventional? Well, I live with my divorced parents and my dad's husband. How's that for starters? Trust me, it gets weirder.

My name is Eugenia Watson, but you can call me Genie. I'm sixteen. This is my life.

Reccer's comments: Now I know a lot of people will look at the length, rating and kidfic tag and skip right over this. Don't! It takes a great deal of skill and subtlety to write a compelling story from the first-person perspective of an original character, but madlori delivers in spades.

What really stands out is how well-drawn and engaging the original characters are. Genie is an absolute delight; smart, badass and very much her own person. Her mother Grace is intriguing, and I couldn't help feeling that, were it not for Sherlock, she and John would be a perfect match. They aren't half-hearted additions to the story, they are real, fully-fledged characters and before long I was just as invested in their lives and happiness as I was in Sherlock's and John's.

 

The incidental Sherlock/John stuff (and there's a fair amount of it) is absolutely delicious; there are hints of a tantalizing backstory and glimpses of them at their BAMF-iest, crime-solving best. madlori 's depiction of Sherlock in the father role is absolutely spot on, and her characterisation of Genie is more or less exactly what I would expect for a child of John's. Her Sherlock and John are quite, quite ridiculously in love with each other without ever being out of character. 

 

A note on the length: don't be freaked out by it. It's split into 28 chapters, one blog entry per chapter. Read in one go, or a few chapters at a time, either works well.

ETA: Not currently a WiP. The author's note on the final chapter reads: "Work is marked complete for now and is on hiatus, having reached a convenient stopping point. Additional chapters may be added in the future."