Category: romance

Fiction, literary fiction, race, romance, Uncategorized

Book Review: Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess

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Jess and Josh were sparring partners in a legal history class in college, and she only remembers him being ultra conservative and telling her how Affirmative Action is racist. Landing a job at Goldman Sachs after college, Jess is very displeased to realize that Josh is on her team but as the only person she knows in an ultra-competitive work environment she leans on him for support. As their tentatively formed friendship moves into something more romantic, in a world that is suddenly hyper political in the wake of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Jess struggles with the identity she has created for herself and what she’s willing to compartmentalize for a certain type of love.

I think the publishers of this book did Rabess such a disservice by categorizing this as romance. Yes, the vehicle for the author’s thoughts is very well served by using romance but this book is not primarily about romance. When the blurb for this book came out, it was 1 star bombed on Goodreads because of someone on TikTok reading the description without having even read the book. And then you go on Goodreads and see so many one-star reviews that proudly proclaim that they didn’t read the book, but they just know that it is racist! I felt really bad for the author and that’s why I put this on my list even though I too, was turned off by the blurb. But I consider it a cardinal sin to review a book that you didn’t read or didn’t finish. If I even read 95% of a book and then DNF it, I never rate it on a public space.

I think people expect works of fiction to further their viewpoints instead of it furthering the viewpoints of whatever character the author has created. I think evaluating any book should be – does this behavior sound accurate to the character the author is trying to sell us? Would this character do this? Is this in line with the foundation the author has set for us? In the case of Jess, Rabess is incredibly spot on. I know the exact type of black girl Jess is. The cool black girl who tries really hard to never rock any boat and seeks white validation. I don’t even understand the argument that this book is racist when both the main character and the author are black. Something dealing with race making you uncomfortable does not mean it is automatically racist. You’re supposed to feel uncomfortable. That is the exact feeling that Rabess is trying to create.

Jess grew up in Nebraska in a predominately white town that boasted only her and her dad as the only people of color. She went to school with only one other black person. She grew up with girls who would tell her that boys only wanted “blondes, brunettes, red hairs, in that order”. Her dad tried really hard to shield her from the effects of her childhood but honestly, you cannot self-esteem your way out of how the world treats you.

This background leads to Jess going to college and trying really hard to be as far away from blackness as possible. She doesn’t join the Black Student Union, she never makes any black friends, she dates white men exclusively. Even white men who are only fetishizing her and who she knows don’t actually want her as a human being. Jess says things like “I just don’t get Beyoncé” while her white friends give her a pat on the back about how she’s such a different black person because she doesn’t like Beyoncé and how it’s because she’s just too smart. This is the character Rabess has created, and you have to judge the premise of this book on who Jess actually is, not who you are or what you think is “right”.

So yes, Jess is the exact person who would fall for a Trumper. And frankly, Rabess does such a fantastic job of pacing out their relationship that you’re absolutely torn. You wonder if you too would fall for Josh if you knew him. Josh has so many redeeming qualities, he stands up for Jess so much that even you would wonder if you’d be able to resist him. The last lines of this book I absolutely love because this book was written years after the Trump era in which we’ve seen the effects of electing Trump as President. As women’s rights and affirmative action are now gone and Josh is trying to convince Jess that “Everything’s fine”, we all know that everything is not fine.

Do yourself a favor and pick up this one without reading the blurb and read it with an open mind. This is Rabess’ debut novel and she deserved better than how the mob treated her first offer to the literary world. I look forward to whatever she writes next. I gave this book, 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: Happy Place by Emily Henry

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‘Love means constantly saying you’re sorry, and then doing better.’

Harriet and Wyn have been together and engaged forever. They are the couple their friend group looks up to as the perfect couple. Unfortunately, they’ve broken up without telling anyone – their families, their friends, nobody. Every year, their group of friends travel to Maine for one week in the summer to reconnect with the people who understand them the most. Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth that they are still a couple just to make their last week ever at the Maine cottage perfect, since it’s been put up for sale. This is a rom com so obviously, shenanigans ensue.

I’m a big Emily Henry fan. I’ve read a lot of her books and have progressively loved them. I have to say that this one was a miss for me. I usually love the characters in Emily Henry books especially Book Lovers but the people in this book did nothing for me. I kept waiting to feel the deep love between these friends that has kept them together for so long, but I never did. Everybody was hiding something ridiculous from the group, things that did not matter at all. Who hides a breakup from their best friends for 6 months? Their friendship group just never clicked for me at all. If the entire premise of this book is that this group of supposed best friends never talk to each other about anything ever then what are we doing here? They are not best friends.

I especially enjoyed the romance between the two main characters. How they got together and then seeing the cracks in their relationship was something that was very well written and very thoughtful. I enjoyed the tension of two people who clearly still love each other. pretend to still be together. The snarky banter between them was delightful and something I’ve really liked in all of Emily Henry books. This book also delves into so many different topics like parental alienation, grief, depression, medication, death and the way friendships change as we get older.

My problem with this couple is in how the book ended. The ending is like a Hallmark Christmas movie where a top New York City lawyer moves to the tiny village to be with a man and sell corks. I loved Book Lovers because Henry didn’t sacrifice her character’s career just because she fell in love. The ending of this book was very rushed and very unrealistic. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but the ending is so silly that it made me annoyed especially since even though Harriet found her job hard, she enjoyed doing it. Yes, it wasn’t her passion but who needs passion when you’re 100s of thousands of dollars in debt already and you’re good at it! I will never understand this American obsession with finding your passion, that’s why you get to have hobbies because sometimes a job is a job!

I really like Emily Henry and will read her next offering but if you are new to her, please don’t start here. Read literally anything else of hers. We have two of her books reviewed here and here. My personal favorite is Book Lovers. I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Book Related Topics, literary fiction, romance

Ranking Taylor Jenkin Reid’s Books

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You have to be under a rock if you have not heard of Taylor Jenkins Reid. She has had a recent explosion of popularity and a lot of her books are making their way to screen (even though I am finding out that for some reason, they don’t seem to translate well to screen).

It’s always been a goal of mine to read all her books and I finally got around to reading them all. I thought it’d be fun to rank the books from my least favorite to absolute favorite. I think it’s easy to see the difference in my tops and bottoms. I am not a romance person and her earlier works seem to lean towards that vs. the later books where she created worlds that seem so realistic.

Anyways, here we go!

9. Forever, Interrupted – Took me a while to read this one but even though I made sure to read this when I was ready. It didn’t quite do it for me. Didn’t care for the protagonist and I got bored and trust me, I understand grief! You can see my review here.

8. One True Loves – At first it sounded far fetched but then it seemed like Emma’s choice was clear as day so everything felt like going through the motions.

7. Maybe in Another Life -This was a sliding doors type situation. We go back and forth and see what Hannah’s life could have been depending on choices she made. It got a little muddled but I enjoyed it but I don’t think TJR stuck the landing with this one aka the ending wasn’t my fave.

6. After I Do – I liked this because it just felt real. Wasn’t sure what the ending was going to be but I was pleased with it.

5. Evidence of the Affair – A short story only available in the Kindle Unlimited series, I enjoyed this one. It’s straight up in letter format but what a compelling story. You can find my review here

4. Malibu Rising – Talk about world building spanning across generations. My kind of book. The ending wasn’t the best but I enjoyed the book. My review is here.

3. Carrie Soto is Back – You couldn’t convince me Carrie Soto wasn’t real. Great book that just uses tennis as the anchor but it is so much more than that. Review can be found here.

2. Daisy Jones & The Six – The only way to consume this book is via audio. It’s a shame the screen adaptation didn’t do it justice but what a book. Review here.

1. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – What a masterpiece of a book. I always imagine it as a grand opera. I’d be curious to see if this doesn’t top everyone’s list of TJR books.

What do you think? What are your rankings?

Taynement

Fiction, literary fiction, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: The Idea of You by Robinne Lee

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Solène Marchand, a 39 year old, divorced, art gallery owner, takes her 12 year old daughter, Isabelle, to her favorite boyband’s concert. August Moon, a band filled with young British boys, has taken the world by storm. They’re selling out stadiums and young girls all over the world are madly in love with them. The last thing Solène expects when she takes her daughter and her friends backstage to meet the group is to make a connection with one of the boys, who is just 20. Hayes Campbell is clever, charming and severely attracted to Solène. What begins as a series of clandestine trysts quickly evolves into a passionate and genuine relationship. She flies across continents and cities to meet up with him and have amazing sex until their relationship is revealed in the press leaving her daughter heartbroken and vulnerable and Solène, herself, exposed to the millions of girls who are mad that this old woman is with the love of their lives.

When I started this book, I was sure I was going to give it a one star at the end. A fanfiction about Harry Styles? I don’t care how many times fans of this book and the author denies it but this book is very clearly about One Direction and Harry Styles. I just couldn’t get past the age gap and the judgement I had. But I thought for a long time about this book while I was reading it and afterwards. If the genders were reversed would I feel so judgemental towards Solène? Would I judge a dad for sleeping with a 20 year old and question his love for his daughter? I realise that girls have a very different relationship with their favorite male pop stars than their favorite female pop stars so none of the dilemmas that arose in the book would have even been a thing in the world we live in. I also knew how this book was going to end. There was no other way for it to end except the way it did. I don’t want to spoil the book for anybody.

My problem with this book is that the author tried to convince us that Solène and Hayes fell in love but I never saw that on the page. I never thought they had any real conversations. Every conversation they had was about sex and about how much they loved sleeping with each other. The author didn’t show us in depth conversations that showed they were anything other than sex buddies. All we kept being told was the number of orgasms he kept giving her. There was a night he gave her 8 orgasms! Maybe I’m speaking too quickly. Maybe if someone gives you 8 orgasms, you have no choice but to fall in love too. This book has a lot of fans (there’s even a Facebook group just for the fans of this book) and I picked this book up because someone mentioned how much they loved it. I was in a book slump so I quickly picked this one up and another reason I didn’t give it one star is because it did exactly what I wanted it to do. It completely rebooted my reading life which I’m so happy about.

The characters in this book were so pretentious, I don’t even know where to start. Of course Solène is French and even though she was born and raised in America, she still considers all things French to be cool and sophisticated. She’s so well traveled, went to an Ivy league school, so beautiful, so intelligent. She is everything you think of when you think of a stereotypically sophisticated French woman. The author did not lift her pen when jotting down ALL the stereotypes. Hayes is also very rich, very posh, went to private school in England, father went to Eaton, and of course so mature for his age! These two people are gallivanting the world, meeting other cool and sophisticated people like them, buying art, discussing art, having dinners in fancy places, meeting more cool people like them and buying thousands of dollars worth of art!

So why did I not give this book one star? Because honestly it has stayed with me since I read it and I’ve had the urge to convince other people to read it just so I have someone to talk to about it. It’s also interesting to me that I had a lot of problems with this book but I did not find the age gap as creepy as I thought it would be. The author, I feel, did a very good job with that. Hayes still read very young to me but I kept forgetting he was barely legal. Anyway, I gave this book 2 stars and seriously considered giving it 3 stars but came to my senses. I will say though, that I enjoyed being irritated by these characters.

Have you read this one? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: The Most Likely Club by Elyssa Friedland

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“The thing about problems is that they will be there tomorrow.”

It’s 1977 in Belfort, California, 4 high school senior friends are ready to take on the world. Melissa Levin, Priya Chowdury, Tara Taylor, and Suki Hammer have weathered high school together and even their yearbook superlatives confirm their dreams: Most Likely to Win the White House, Cure Cancer, Open a Michelin-Starred Restaurant, and Join the Forbes 400. Fast forward 25 years and only Suki has made her dreams come true while the rest of the girls are struggling to figure out life. As they gather at their high school reunion and look at the ones who did turn themselves into something, they dream of what life could have been if they had stuck to their goals or if life hadn’t decide to screw them over. There and then, they make each other a promise to strive more and finally achieve at least a version of their high school superlatives.

I love a second chance story, which is why I picked this one as my Book of the Month Pick. Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me because it was trying to do too much. I enjoyed learning about these women’s friendship dynamics because I quite like reading about complicated female friendships. Ultimately, I didn’t think they had a good enough friendship for the bad parts of the friendship to be overlooked or read as just complex human nature. When Melissa finds out something about Priya’s daughter on social media, instead of going to her friend with it (it’s a child for crying out loud), she uses it to feel better about her own life and her own child. She then uses it to comment snidely to her friend whenever she felt like Priya was being holier than thou. I just felt, this is not friendship. Once it involves children, you cut the shit and make sure your friend’s child isn’t putting herself in dangerous situations.

There are so many issues that the author would just throw at us and then none of it even mattered at the end of the book in her hurry to try to pull together all the threads she tried to force into the book. Tara, the bisexual character in this book told us so much about her crush on Suki. Her every high school memory is tied to Suki and the author doesn’t fail to tell us this, every chance she got. But when we finally meet Suki, which for some reason doesn’t happen till the last 15% of the book, nothing is even explored with that. It’s like the storyline just died? Suki seemed like the one with the most interesting life among the friends but we never get her actual full story and when we meet her, she’s in crisis and we can’t even follow what exactly is wrong with her husband. Melissa just happened to meet a millionaire at the high school reunion who just proceeded to fund her campaign for Mayor which I found so eye roll inducing.

The only character I liked in this book was Priya. I think her problems were real life grown woman problems that I could identify with. She was a doctor who was turning down opportunities because she couldn’t get her husband to be an actual full participant in their family. Her evolution in this book was honestly the only one worth reading. Her, standing up for herself and insisting her husband actually parent the children he helped bring into this world, was the only reason I didn’t give this book one star. I wish every character had been written as honestly as Priya was. Her struggles trying to balance being a doctor, a wife, a mother and a daughter in law was so hard for me to read. I was exhausted just reading what her day was like.

I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads. I think you should check it out if you’re looking for something easy to get through and hopefully, this review has made your expectations realistic so you’d probably enjoy it more than I did.

Leggy

Book Related Topics, celebrity memoir, Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, Memoirs, Non-Fiction, romance

Our Best and Worst Books of 2022

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Leggy’s Best:

“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”

Emily St. John Mandel has become such a must read author for me. I have enjoyed every book of hers I’ve ever read. I absolutely adored this book and gave it 5 stars. You can read my full review of this book here. This year has been a fantastic reading year for me in all genres so I thought it would be hard for me to pick a favorite but this was such a clear answer for me.

Other favorites:

  • Book Lovers by Emily Henry (favorite romance book this year for sure! Full review on the blog here.)
  • Dreadgod by Will Wight (The 11th book in the Cradle series by Will Wight. Please read these series if you haven’t yet. These books are so much fun. The 12th and final book comes out next year. favorite fantasy book of the year for sure!)
  • Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (This was my favorite weird book I read this year. Goodreads marks this as horror? Didn’t get that at all but it was so strange and such amazing writing)

Taynement’s Best:

This was one of the first books I read this year and nothing else captured my attention like it. This memoir of sorts has Faith Jones recounting her time in a cult and how she got out of it. I could not believe a lot of the things I read and the fact that it was someone’s real life was really jarring. As mentioned in my full review, loads of trigger warning for this one. Any book that had me go down a rabbit hole of wikipedia and documentaries just to get more information after I was done, was bound to be top of my list.

A lot of the books I enjoyed were niche favorites (books about reality show bts) but some other favorites were:

  • Verity by Colleen Hoover (This book was an acid trip but I probably read this the fastest. Full review here)
  • The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (I guess I had my number of non fiction reads. Perfect blend of smart and interesting. Full review here)
  • The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth (This was a random read that I ended up liking a lot. Full review here)
  • Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (TJR rarely misses with me and this was not an exception)

Taynement’s Worst:

This was a recent review of mine so it should be no surprise that it is my worst. Up until writing this, I didn’t realize how much non-fiction I read this year. Well, my worst book is also in this genre. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a memoir now whether they deserve it or not. This memoir had so many missing gaps, way too much toxic positivity and just overall missed the mark. Extra negative points for the terrible voice cadence that was used in the audio book. I just really hated this book y’all! (Full review here)

Leggy’s Worst:

Instagram loves this book. I have a mini rant about this book on our Instagram page (@nightstands2, follow us!). I picked up this book because of the hype and because I saw a trailer of the movie adaptation on Youtube and decided to just read the book instead, what a bad idea. There was nothing romantic about this book. The heroine is the exact type of character I hate in a romance – think Zooey Deschanel from New Girl, obviously hot girl who is “awkward” and has no idea she’s hot. I rolled my eyes so much reading this book it almost fell out of the sockets.

We hope you have enjoyed talking books with us this year. We’d love to know what your best and worsts were so let us know in the comments. Have an amazing Christmas and we’ll see you in the New Year. Happy reading everybody!

Leggy & Taynement

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan

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“That,” she says, “is an irreversible outcome. Divorce may or may not be. Broken relationships may or may not be. You may never repair those completely, but you’re still here to try. Do you recognize what an amazing gift that is? To still be here to try?”

Yasmen and Josiah were what the kids would call “#couplegoals”. They liked and loved each other, the sex was great, they had two kids and shared a vision and a business together. Until they go through some tragedies and realize that their love was not enough to hold them together and they eventually divorce. Now, they are living in their new normal, still business partners but learning to co-parent. But spending that much time together jogs both their memories and they start to reminisce about the good times. The story takes us down memory lane to the beginning of their story, how they got here and if there is a chance for a future as a couple again.

“Depression,” she goes on, “is a liar. If it will tell you no one loves you, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a burden or, in the most extreme cases, better off dead, then it can certainly convince you that you’re better off without the man you love, and that, ultimately, he’s better off without you.”

Y’all know that I am not one for romance novels and I don’t think I quite knew it was a romance novel but it worked for me and I really liked it. I liked this because it was very realistic and definitely wasn’t a “boy meets girl” story. Ryan did a good job of giving us a clear picture of who Yasmen and Josiah were as a couple from the beginning to present day, so you feel like you know them. I liked how she introduced their traumas in just the right doses and didn’t try to shove it all down at the same time. And when I say traumas, this also serves as a trigger warning for pregnancy loss, depression and suicidal thoughts. Ryan found a way to weave these real life situations into the story while also incorporating the different reactions people have to therapy and the different ways people deal with grief.

“Do people remember the exact moment they fall in love? I’ve learned it’s not one moment, but a million of them”

I have mentioned earlier but I would reiterate that the best thing about the book was how realistic it felt and that is a testament to Ryan’s writing. From something as little as Yasmen acknowledging the versatility of black hair or being kind to her body or her rebellious teenager. As much as I mentioned the TWs earlier, there were fun moments in the book like the great friendship Yasmen develops as an adult, the passion for their restaurant and the healthy friendship between Josiah and his best friend that is open. I have said in previous reviews how I have noticed a lot of books lately seem to be incorporating food into their stories and this was no different

I can’t sing the praises of this book enough. If you are looking for a mature, happy ending having romance novel look no further. This was my first Ryan novel and I was not disappointed. It reminded me a bit of Seven Days in June. Oh , I forgot to add that there’s loads of sex in the book but that’s not why I am recommending 😀

Taynement

Chick-Lit, Fiction, romance

My Favorite Romance Books in 2022

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I’ve really enjoyed reading romance this year. I find that a lot of the books I read this year were quite delightful and everything I wanted in a good book. I’m usually a fan of the romantic comedy genre. I’m not a fan of the angst in dramatic romanceo so, I’m sure my list is going to reflect that. Also, these are my favorite books that I read this year and not just books published in 2022, even though some of them are. Anyway, without any further ado, these are my 2022 favorite romance books!

  1. Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan:

Nora Hamilton is a romance channel screenwriter. She knows the formula for a corny romance novel – two people have a meet cute, fall in love, 90% into the movie they fight and the man leaves, then 99% into the movie the man comes back and they live happily ever after. She’s been churning these out her entire career and taking care of her children and free loading husband. When Nora’s marriage falls apart, she turns the story of the breakup into a screenplay that gets picked up by a big Hollywood director complete with a star studded Hollywood cast including former Sexiest Man Alive, Leo Vance who plays her ex-husband. When Vance comes to film in her house, the two connect in such a deep way and she starts experiencing life like never before. The full review of this book can be found here!

2. Funny You Should Ask by Elisa Sussman:

I’m genuinely shocked that I never reviewed this book on the blog or on our Instagram timeline, I think I just talked about it on Twitter and then thought I reviewed it? Wow. Okay here goes!

Chani Horowitz is stuck writing puff pieces which is not what she went to her MFA program for. All her former classmates are getting book deals but she’s stuck with no way to move forward. She gets hired to write a profile piece of movie star, Gabe Parker. The hottest Hollywood leading man, according to her, and currently her phone screen saver! Chani is so excited and terrified but she knows that if she keeps her cool and nails this piece, it could skyrocket her career. But what comes next proves to be life-changing in ways Chani never saw coming, as the interview turns into a whirlwind weekend that has the tabloids buzzing.

10 years later, she’s still getting asked about that profile piece. No matter what new book she’s promoting, it always came back to Gabe. The speculation of if she slept with him or not. So when Gabe’s PR reaches out and wants a recreation of that amazing profile piece and weekend, she really wants to say no because there is so much that happened during that weekend that she left out of her piece and is only known by the two of them. This book was inspired by an amazing profile piece that a journalist did on Chris Evans that I think you should read before going into this one. It makes the book even more amazing. Link HERE to the real life Chris Evans piece!

3. Book Lovers by Emily Henry:

Emily Henry has become such a reliable author for me. I’ve liked every book better than the last so I’m so excited for what she has coming next and also terrified that she’s reached her peak with this one!

Nora Stephens is an amazing book agent who loves her job and loves living in New York City. She comes to Sunshine Falls with her pregnant sister before the baby comes, to destress. Instead of running into a hot farmer and having a stereotypical Christmas romance (you know those ones!), Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, an editor from the city who is in Sunshine Falls to take care of his aging parents and whip their affairs into order. Charlie and Nora have met many times before but always on days when they both weren’t bringing their best to the world, so this presents a chance for them to start over and get to know each other as people not as an editor and agent. I really loved this one. It was smart and funny and realistic. I love that Nora loves her job and makes no apologies for it. You can read my full review of this one here!

4. It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey:

I reviewed this one on our Instagram timeline where I review a book every Wednesday on the timeline, (follow us!- @nightstands2)

Piper Bellinger is an influencer. She just is. Think Paris Hilton at the height of her fame. She’s from a rich family, has multiple relationships that never last more than a month and she loves to party. After one of her massive parties goes awry and she lands in jail, her step father sends her to a small town in Washington to show some contrition and taxes her with running her dead father’s dive bar – a man who died when she was young and she has no connection to. Piper has not been in Westport, Washington for up to 5 minutes when she meets Brenda, a gruff fisherman, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills, so she sets out to prove him wrong! Don’t be put off by the rich, spoilt girl trope here. Piper is smart, funny and kind but just happens to be spoilt and rich. I found her so likeable and it made it so easy for me to root for her. One of my favorite romance reads of the year for sure!

5. The Deal by Elle Kennedy:

This is another one I reviewed on Instagram (again, follow us! You’re missing out!)

Hannah Wells has a lot of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction but if she wants her crush’s attention, she’ll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice. Even if it means tutoring the annoying, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date to drive up her popularity and make her REAL crush notice her. Obviously, shenanigans ensue. I really enjoyed this book. It was such a fun read, and I hadn’t read anything in recent memory set on a college campus which I utterly enjoyed. Even though I felt this was a fun read, it’s important to note that there are trigger warnings – rape, emotional and physical abuse but all of this happens off the page and in the past, just events referred to.

Which romance books have been your favorite of the year so far? Let me know in the comments!

Leggy

Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, race, romance, Uncategorized, women's fiction

Book Review: Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean

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“It seems the tighter I try to hold on, the more things slip through my fingers. It is a reminder to me of how impermanent life is.”

Mika Suzuki’s life is a mess. She’s 35 and has just been laid off from her paralegal job. She’s living with her best friend but still can’t make ends meet. She is an absolute disappointment to her traditional Japanese parents. Her last relationship ended in flames. Mika is at her lowest when she gets a call from her daughter Penny – the daughter she gave up for adoption 16 years ago. Penny wants to get to know her birth mother and Mika is determined to be a woman who daughter would be proud of. Mika spends the entire month talking to her daughter and making up the perfect life for herself – the perfect career, the perfect romantic relationship, and even the perfect house. As the lies snowball into a fully fledged fake life and Penny decides to come visit Mika in Portland with her adoptive widower dad, Thomas Calvin, Mika must figure out a way to keep up with her lies while forming a relationship with her daughter.

I really liked all the family dynamics portrayed in this story especially the one between Mika and her mother. Mika and her parents have a very difficult relationship where she has never felt understood. Her parents being immigrants has shaped a lot of their experiences and has made it hard for them to understand each other. Their relationship involves church, her parents trying to introduce her to eligible Japanese men and Mika asking them for loans which she always promises to pay back but never does. I like how the author portrayed Mika’s mother as complex instead of demonizing her as an absolutely bad mother. She was just a woman who was limited in her world view and moved to a country she didn’t want to be in in the first place and then was saddled with a daughter who didn’t want the traditional path to success her parents had set out for her to follow. I enjoyed reading about her experiences and what made her into the person she was today.

I didn’t expect this book to grab me as much as it did. Sure, there’s romance in it and a few spicy scenes but that is not all this book is about. The romance lends a certain layer of lightness to this story that would have otherwise been depressing. The relationship between Mika and Penny’s adoptive father, Thomas comes across very organic and believable. The relationship Penny and Mika build throughout the book was so well done to me. Seeing Penny being accepted into Mika’s family and beginning to explore her Asian identity was very touching. This book explores interracial adoptions and some of the pitfalls. Even though Penny’s adoptive parents tried to expose her to Asian culture, their whiteness still gave them a lot of racial blind spots.

I really enjoyed this book. Are there some aspects that felt predictable? Sure. But it explores so many topics and does them in a nuanced way. I really recommend this book. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

literary fiction, Mystery, romance, Uncategorized

Book Review: Some Of It Was Real by Nan Fischer

twonightstands

“It’s important you understand that I don’t have a clear definition for what I do. Psychics use their intuition or spiritual guides to gain information about the past, present, or future. Mediums are channels that deliver messages from those who have passed over. I’ve been called a psychic-medium, and that’s as good a definition as any. But the truth is that I’m not sure why I hear voices, see images, sing at times, or scribble notes—it just happens and I can’t tell you how because I truly don’t understand it.”

Psychic medium, Sylvie Young, starts every show talking about how she discovered her powers but she leaves out a lot. Like the fact that she isn’t actually sure that she’s a psychic, she’s estranged from her birth parents who think she’s a scammer and her publicist insists that she research some of her guests before every show. Journalist, Thomas Holmes, has it out for people he sees as “grief predators”. After a catastrophic reporting error, he’s anxious to get a great story and prove himself to his editor. So he pitches a story about psychics, he’s determined to prove that Sylvie is a crook. He plants some decoys in the audience and Sylvie falls for it having researched them beforehand. He approaches her and asks her to let him shadow her for the full week before her next big show, make sure she doesn’t research anyone, so that he can either expose her as fake or tell his LA Times audience that her powers are real. He insists that if she is indeed real then she should have no problem with his request.

This book is not your typical rom-com. You can feel them connecting but the romance takes a backstage for most of this book. Sylvie and Thomas play a game of cat and mouse trying to out maneuver each other. I personally found myself rooting for Sylvie even though a part of me wasn’t sure if she was actually a scammer or not. Sylvie takes Thomas through a journey to her past to get him to understand the origin of her powers. She goes back to her adoptive parents’ house and tries to trace who her biological parents were and why her adoptive parents lied to her for so long about where she’s from. All the stories about her parents’ death is starting to sound fake to Sylvie and she decides to trust Thomas to figure it out with her. Thomas thinks this is another fact that proves she’s a liar because if she really has the power to speak to the dead, why has she never spoken to her mother?

Thomas is also hiding a lot of family secrets. Grief vampires feel very personal to him because after his father and brother died, his mother completely lost herself to psychics. Spending all her money trying to contact her late husband and son, trying to find closure and neglecting her actual living son. Both Thomas and Sylvie are struggling with their past and there was something so wholesome about watching two broken but very good people try to fix themselves. They spend so much time together in the book that you can actually see them slowly liking each other. There’s a twist near the end of the book that the author didn’t make a big deal of. She dropped it like the readers weren’t going to go “DANG!” but I actually think that is the beauty of this book. It grabs you in a really surprising way and the plot keeps moving at an alarming pace and doesn’t stop till the very end.

Thomas forces Sylvie to reexamine the way she makes a living while she encourages him to confront his demons and let go of the past. Thomas also struggles with the ethics of writing an expose about someone he is now attracted to. This book is told in alternating point of view chapters, both in first person. It allows you to get into the head of what each character is thinking as they play this game with each other. I will say that if you really are primarily looking for romance with this one, then skip it. I would never recommend this book as a rom com. Even though I bought the fact that Thomas and Sylvie would fall in love after spending so much time together, I didn’t quite buy how it was presented on the page.

I think this is one of the most surprisingly good books I’ve read this year. It really took me unawares. I started it and couldn’t put it down till the very end. I absolutely recommend it. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? What did you think?

Leggy