Uncategorized

January 1, 2022 By Melanie Sweeney Leave a Comment

Some Books I Loved in 2021

A collage of 30 book covers, all of which are listed in the blog post.

It’s the end of a year, which is a good time to share a list. If I were beholden to sense, I’d have whittled this down to a neat 21 titles to match the year, but honestly, why cut a few just for that? Here are the books that, for whatever reason – their humor, their swooniness, their language, their bold characters, their heart – stood out as I flipped back through my book log. They are here because I tucked them into my back pocket and carried them with me through all the mundane, terrible, and joyful moments of this year, and they survived the wash.

I set some vague goals at the beginning of 2021 – I wanted to read 100 books, and I wanted to share reviews of them. I also wanted to make book-inspired art. The art didn’t last, sadly, and the monthly roundups fell by the wayside halfway through the year, partly because I tend to write loooooongform (see: well, this exact document) and couldn’t always find the time to do it justice and partly because I hit a reading slump and quit writing reviews because I don’t do this as a job, and I don’t write about books I didn’t like as a rule. This is a space of celebration and joy. I’m not sure that I’ll set any particular goals for 2022.

Some stats: I read 110 books this year, not including the dozens of chapter books, picture books, and nonfiction books I read to my kids. (We homeschool, so it’s honestly too many to count.) Eight of my reads were nonfiction, mainly parenting-/homeschooling-related, craft books on writing, and essay/memoir. 102 were fiction. 91 were romance or romantic women’s fiction. (My six-year-old asks often, “Why do you read so many books about people falling in love?” Because, my dear, it feels good.) The rest of the fiction was mainly apocalyptic/climate-related, haha. (I took Emily Henry’s advice from Beach Read and kept my ratio “More swoon, less doom.”) I counted books I reread in their entirety as another book in my count but none that I reread only pieces of. There were only a few. My list includes books by 74 different authors.

I haven’t analyzed all the tropes and themes in the books I loved, but I know my favorite combination is romance and grief. Some standouts are Emily Henry’s books, Trish Doller’s Float Plan, Abby Jimenez’s Life’s Too Short, Sierra Simone’s Sinner, N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy (which begins with The Fifth Season), Alison Stine’s Road Out of Winter and Trashlands, and Miriam Toews’ Women Talking, all of which made my heart ache and, in some cases, made me cry.

My most compulsive, couldn’t-put-it-down, stayed-up-all-night-to-finish book was Alison Stine’s Road Out of Winter. My ugliest cry (and a big surprise on this front) was Sierra Simone’s Sinner. My favorite nonfiction book was Phillip Hurst’s essay collection, Whiskey Boys. My comfort book was Emily Henry’s Beach Read. My biggest laugh was Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material. My swooniest, gentlest read was Kate Clayborn’s Love at First.

Audiobooks continue to be the real star of my reading life. (Audiobooks are real books! Listening counts! #AudiobookDefenseSquad) All but seven titles I read this year were audiobooks, though I bought a handful in print after listening to them. My favorite audiobook narrators in no particular order were Julia Whelan, Rebecca Lowman, Zachary Webber, Jacob Morgan, Maxine Mitchell, Joe Jameson, and Robin Miles. Some standout audiobooks for me, also in no particular order, were N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy, read by Robin Miles; Emily Henry’s Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation, read by Julia Whelan; Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, read by Joe Jameson; Sierra Simone’s Sinner, read by Jacob Morgan; Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez, read by Christine Lakin and Zachary Webber; The Hook Up by Kristen Callihan, read by Maxine Mitchell and Teddy Hamilton; and Kate Hope Day’s In the Quick, read by Rebecca Lowman.

The other star was my library. I didn’t differentiate between books I checked out from the library and those I read via a paid subscription service (Scribd mainly, some Audible), but I feel confident in saying more than half came from my public library. Shout out to Harris County Public Libraries and in particular my local branch, which is nothing more than a shack with a single window after our library flooded in Hurricane Harvey. Our librarians are wonderful, and interlibrary loan and e/audio loans have been vital in my access to books this year.

I don’t have a plan for this year-end roundup. I keep a book log, and for some books, I copied dozens of quotations and wrote extensive summaries, and in others, I merely rated the book. So, how about I just share the things I best remember or my favorite quote/moment, and we won’t worry about consistency or the illusion of order? Good? Good.

A book cover with red and blue blocks reminiscent of the Union Jack flag with white outlines of London landmarks and an illustrated man in a suit and another in casual clothes. The title is Boyfriend Material. The author is Alexis Hall.

Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall: Super funny. Super swoony. Grumpy/sunshine. Fake dating. Luc makes Oliver an “emotional support sandwich.” A quote: “They got this idea that if I turned up and told you how much I cared about you that you’d fall into my arms and we’d live happily ever after. But frankly, they’ve wildly underestimated how fucked up you are.

Women Talking, Miriam Toews: This is a fictional imagining of a true story about Mennonite girls and women who were drugged and raped by a group of men in their community and had to grapple with those men remaining in the community. It uses a frame – the book is a written as a recording of minutes of the women’s meetings in which they decide whether to stay and forgive the men (they will be forced to) or leave. For the heavy subject matter, I found it surprisingly hopeful and not too overbearing. A quote: “There must be satisfaction gained in accurately naming the thing that torments you.”

An abstract book cover with a black background and bright blue shapes -- bird, plane, fish, apple. In pink, the title, Such a Fun Age, and author, Kylie Reid.

Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid: Smart, funny, deeply empathetic. The first chapter and the final scene are perfection.

A book cover with a city skyline on a purple background that fades from dark purple at the top down to a lighter purplish-pink. One apartment building is in color among line art drawings of others, and it has hearts floating out from a lit window. The title is Love at First, and the author is Kate Clayborn.

Love at First, Kate Clayborn: A hug in a book. A quote: “It was the way you said your lover’s name, the way you sometimes softly asserted the fact of their being there, of their being yours.”

A book cover with white and blue shapes that appear to indicate human figures among trees in the snow. In bold orange lettering, the title, Road Out of Winter, and the author, Alison Stine.

Road Out of Winter, Alison Stine: I could not put this book down. It’s set in a near-future Appalachia where winter has come and never lifted. The main character is separated from her only family. She possesses some seeds and skill at growing things. She sets out to reunite with her mother and find somewhere more hospitable. I particularly love how Stine writes about gender in such an environment. A quote: “There had been suffering here forever, even before the cold came. Long ago, we had been forgotten in the holler, forgotten and left to make it on our own with no jobs, no hope of jobs. Now, cold wrung the worst from us.”

A bubblegum pink book cover with an astronaut in full suit, floating. The title is In the Quick, and the author is Kate Hope Day.

In the Quick, Kate Hope Day: It’s Jane Eyre in space! No, really! My favorite aspect of this book was how well Day captures a creative mind at work, especially one creative mind collaborating with another. It’s heady and crackling in the same way that love stories are. Rebecca Lowman’s narration is the perfect accompaniment/vessel in the audiobook.

A bright blue book cover with an illustrated man and woman standing on either side of a podium. The title is The Intimacy Experiment -- intimacy in neon pink lights -- and the author is Rosie Danan.

The Intimacy Experiment, Rosie Danan: The Roommate surprised me in the best way in 2020, and this follow-up lived up to my hopes. The female main character is a former adult performer turned sex educator and CEO. She’s bold and a little brash, a woman wrapped up in many layers of defense, but her vulnerability is what put this book on my keeper shelf. Also, this is essentially a handbook for romantic intimacy. There’s legitimately good advice in it.

A blue book cover with an illustrated man tugging a woman in a ring float through water. There are tropical plants and a bird in the sky. The title is Shipped, and the author is Angie Hockman.

Shipped, Angie Hockman: This is like The Hating Game but on a cruise ship. I liked the audio quite a bit.

A yellow illustrated book cover with a woman at the bottom blowing bubble hearts up to a man at the top. A small dog hangs in the O of the title word, "too." The title is Life's Too Short, and the author is Abby Jimenez.

Life’s Too Short, Abby Jimenez: Check your content warnings before you dive into this one. What sold me immediately with this book is that, in the very beginning, the male main character goes to do something about the incessantly crying baby keeping him awake in the adjacent apartment and winds up offering to help the woman caring for said baby, telling her to go take a shower. As a mother, this is peak fantasy stuff. (No, we would not entrust babies with strangers in real life, but shhhh.) This book was quite emotional. Zachary Webber’s narration absolutely sells heartbreak and helplessness in the audiobook like no one else could.

An illustrated book cover over a man and a woman on a sailboat. The title is Float Plan, and the author is Trish Doller.

Float Plan, Trish Doller: More content warnings with this one, just FYI. The female main character sets out on a sailing trip she was supposed to take with her fiancé who died by suicide. She’s not skilled enough to do the trip solo and winds up taking on an experienced sailor. They follow the itinerary at first but have to start charting a new course. Anna’s journey through grief and into self-sufficiency and acceptance is the heart of this book, but the romance is integral, too. I wanted very much for a Happily Ever After with the two of them together, but this is the only romance I’ve read where the Dark Night of the Soul/the lovers’ separation actually felt like it brought color into the book, like it allowed the story to breathe more fully, and I found myself not needing the HEA. (It is a romance, though, so don’t worry.) Those pages that are usually so fraught and depressing open up the entire book in a way that I found surprising and skillful and very moving.

An orange illustrated book cover with a man and a woman lying on separate pool loungers in their bathing suits. The title is People We Meet on Vacation. The author is Emily Henry.

People We Meet on Vacation, Emily Henry: After Beach Read, I had very high hopes for this book, and Emily Henry did not disappoint. She’s been compared to Nora Ephron for her romantic banter – a fitting comparison, especially since this book pays homage to When Harry Met Sally. It’s about two friends who take an annual vacation together, but they haven’t spoken in two years after something happened in Croatia, and now Poppy intends to salvage their friendship with another trip. There are so many moments I love in this book. The sick/care scene which should not be so . . . hot? The inside jokes that run throughout the book. A monologue in which Alex expresses his worry that he’ll “find out I have fucking dick cancer or something and it’s too late for me.” When he carries her, injured, down a mountain with the caveat that she’s not allowed to call him “Seabiscuit.” A quote: “You make me weird. I’m not like this with anyone else.”

A green illustrated cover of a girl swirling green magic with her hands in a forest and a young, white dragon looking on. The title is Seekers of the Wild Realm. The author is Alexandra Ott.

Seekers of the Wild Realm, Alexandra Ott: This is a middle grade chapter book I read with my kids. Brynn wants to become a Seeker but she’s up against sexism – there’s never been a female Seeker in her village before. She’ll have to compete with all boys for the sole spot, but she’s not even allowed to participate in the training. Meanwhile, Ari proposes a trade: he’ll pass along the training to her if she’ll help him with the baby dragon he found, which he’s been taking care of in secret. The characters all have a magic gift – healing, defense, nature, etc. – and I love that Ari’s is empathy. He does a lot of the work in and for the book that female characters tend to do.

A book cover with a child sitting on multicolored stairs. The title is The Brave Learner. The author is Julie Bogart.

Brave Learner, Julie Bogart: This book is about homeschooling, but it’s more widely applicable to parents, teachers, and anyone working with kids. The part that blew me away: “When adults ask kids to love learning, they’re asking children to find academics pleasurable so that adults will be relieved of the obligation to nag.”

An illustrated book cover. The background is a manila envelope. A man and a woman sit on the top of a red typewriter. The title is Very Sincerely Yours. The author is Kerry Winfrey.

Very Sincerely Yours, Kerry Winfrey: Hot Mr. Rogers. Need I say more? Okay, fine, I’ll say more. I think this book captures a Romance Hero Type that specifically ties into my next book on the list, The Heroine’s Journey. I intended to write an essay at some point about such romance heroes, but alas, I never got to it. So, without a bunch of useful context, I will just say, I think Everett is a romance hero who is on a Heroine’s Journey, and I think such romance heroes are very appealing because of their willingness to collaborate, the fact that they value community and tend to have solid relationships and supports, their performance of caretaking that is typically coded as feminine, and much more. Everett’s job is literally to host a children’s show about feelings, and while he has his own character arc that gives him nearly equal billing as a main character, he also serves as a prominent support person for the messier female main character. Listen, sometimes, we want a romance hero who does all the stuff women have been doing in books forever is what I’m saying. A quote: “‘Buck up, you idiot,’ he told himself, which made him feel like a fraud because he would absolutely destroy someone who told any of his child viewers something like that. He decided to try a different approach. ‘It’s okay to feel your feelings,’ he told his reflection, which made him frown further because how the hell was he supposed to feel a feeling if he didn’t know what it was?”

A black book cover with a gray sculpture of a woman's head which turns into a spiral staircase. Along the stairs, the title is The Heroine's Journey. The author is Gail Carriger.

The Heroine’s Journey, Gail Carriger: The Hero’s Journey but for Heroines! This book compares the two and gives practical advice for writers who wish to craft a Heroine’s Journey.

A book cover with a black and white photo of a couple, the man embracing the woman from behind, around the shoulders. The photo is broken up with large abstract blobs of pink, red, and white, all on a blue background. The title is Seven Days in June. The author is Tia Williams.

Seven Days in June, Tia Williams: Writers are always told not to write books about writers, but – as a writer, ahem – I love them a whole lot! This one is about two writers who, as teenagers, had a brief but intense relationship, and now, as adults, their paths have re-crossed, only to reveal that they have been writing to and about each other in their books! Check your content warnings on this one. A quote: “I’ve changed. [. . .] I believe this is what writers call a character arc.”

A book cover with a close up photo of a man sitting backwards in a chair, loosely holding a microphone and leaning on the chair back. The title is Lead, and the author is Kylie Scott.

Lead, Kylie Scott: Another heads up on potentially tricky content. This is the third book of Scott’s Stage Dive series, which is about a fictional rock band. Scott’s books, to me, are pure escapism with fun tropes and crackling humor and surprising emotional beats. (I don’t mean escapism in a pejorative way.) Jimmy’s sober companion, Lena, realizes she’s in love with him right as he goes through a heartbreaking loss that threatens his sobriety. In the audiobook, Andie Arndt captures the voice of the plucky-but-vulnerable-but-takes-no-shit heroine really well. A quote: “‘You used to drink here. This place is a trigger for you.’ He scoffed and spread his arms wide. ‘This whole world is a trigger for me.’”

A book cover with a photo backdrop of a snowy, Alaskan mountain range. From behind, a woman holds onto her hat and looks down a highway toward the mountains and the title, written like chem trails by an airplane in the sky, Wild at Heart. The author is K.A. Tucker.

Wild at Heart, K.A. Tucker: This is a true sequel to The Simple Wild. It sticks with the same couple and picks up right where the first book left off, so don’t skip the first one. Kind of a marriage-in-trouble book, though they’re not married yet. My favorite thing about it is that both characters get to be grumpy. I love a mildly bratty, petulant heroine, probably because I am one myself. When Calla struggles to adapt to life in Alaska and complains about having to pee in the cold and dark “with wolves and shit around,” Jonah laughs and says, “God, I missed your bad attitude.”

A tropical illustrated cover or a man and a woman on an island with a plane flying overhead and vibrant flowers in the foreground. The title is The Layover, and the author is Lacie Waldon.

The Layover, Lacie Waldon: Another book reminiscent of The Hating Game, but in this one, they’re both flight attendants. The romance is great and gave me all the swoony, swoopy feelings in my stomach, but what I really love about this book is its focus on wanderers. Ava’s parents are wanderers, and she’s spent most of her life apologizing for her own rootlessness, even convinced herself she wants stability, to stay. But on her last trip as a flight attendant before marrying her fiancé and staying put, she faces the reality of giving up her job and her lifestyle, and she finds in co-worker Jack a kindred spirit.

Sinner, Sierra Simone: This book. So, it won’t be for everyone. It’s about a guy who grew up Catholic, but a tragedy in his family made him leave the Church and any real semblance of religious faith. He runs into a friend from his youth – his best friend’s younger sister, Zenny – who is about to join an order of nuns. She worries that she hasn’t been tested enough to know if she’s really ready to take her vows and leave behind a layperson’s life. (Yes, that means sex, among other things.) She asks Sean to help her out with the matter, and despite a lot of guilt and resistance, he agrees. Now, listen, if you’re here for the steamy scenes, you probably won’t be disappointed? They are not, for me, the main draw of the book. I wasn’t as interested in the “taboo” aspects of their relationship as I was in the book’s concern with faith and forgiveness and grief, though the sexual relationship is important and central to the romance and Sean’s character arc. (On that note, definitely check for content warnings.) This book made my list for three reasons: 1) the theological discussions the main characters have and how the book specifically addresses the tension of finding true comfort in Catholicism’s particular rituals and prayers (things that, to me, a lapsed Catholic, feel unreproducible outside of the Church) while rejecting the institution, aspects of which are personally irreconcilable; 2) the methodical interrogation of Sean’s faith, which culminates in one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read; I was so moved, I openly sobbed; and 3) Jacob Morgan’s narration, which is so emotionally layered and authentic and masterful. A quote: “I could tell him every single ugly truth about watching a body fail, watching a body fail as it still holds a person you love beyond measure.”

A red illustrated book cover with a woman in an apron and jaunty illustrations of cakes and baking utensils. The title is Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake, and the author is Alexis Hall.

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake, Alexis Hall: If you like the Great British Bake Off, you’ll like this book for the judges’ comments alone. It’s set on a similar baking competition show in the UK. The main character is a single mom trying to get out from under the help (and judgment) of her parents. Her daughter is precocious and delightful, and the romance is unpredictable.

A book cover with a stack of books, a glass of whiskey on top, and a chair arm in the background. The title is Whiskey Boys, and the author is Phillip Hurst.

Whiskey Boys, Phillip Hurst: Full disclosure, Hurst is a friend from my MFA, but I have long-admired his writing, and this collection of essays about a lifetime of bartending is achingly tender and funny and empathetic. Hurst renders other people with the kind of care you’d hope for only from your closest loved ones. One of my favorite essays follows a band of craft beer bartenders on a road trip to the headquarters of the new ownership for a training, where they’re convinced they’re going to be drug tested and that the offering of beer at lunch is a trap. As much love letters to people and places and the noble pursuit of a creative life as they are humorous and exciting tales from behind the bar, these essays hold a lot of unexpected wisdom.

Three book covers, each with close ups of architectural details. The titles are The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky, all by N.K. Jemisin.

The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin: The whole Broken Earth trilogy is great, but the first book slowly grew on me until I was completely captivated by the end. Syenite may be my favorite female character in a book ever. She’s prickly, and she tends not to recognize love until she has lost it, but she is trying.

A blue illustrated book cover with a woman in a white lab coat pulling down a surprised looking man for a kiss. Beakers with red potions are in the background. The title is The Love Hypothesis, and the author is Ali Hazelwood.

The Love Hypothesis, Ali Hazelwood: Grad school romance! Girls in STEM! Found family and fake dating! I loved this one. It hit a whole bunch of swoony buttons for me.

A book cover with a school bus driving away down a road covered in water. An eerie sky looms ahead with a gradient of blues, greens, and purples. The title is Trashlands, and the author is Alison Stine.

Trashlands, Alison Stine: The characters in this book are named after real-life endangered things like plants and coastal cities – Coral, Trillium, Miami. It’s set in a future Appalachia (“Scrappalachia”) where pluckers collect plastic trash, the currency of the climate-changed future, which then gets remade into plastic bricks by child laborers and shipped off to the elite cities to the benefit of others. The bricks are used to build homes and other buildings. You will not think of plastic the same way again after reading this book.

A book cover with a cropped photo of a man's bare chest and his hand holding a football. The title is The Hook Up, and the author is Kristen Callihan.

The Hook Up, Kristen Callihan: I expected this to just be a fun escape, but it went to places I didn’t expect. The set up is that a late bloomer and a star college quarterback fall for each other, and they have to deal with his fame and her aversion to the spotlight. I won’t give anything away, but there is a plot twist that turns the setup on its head in a big way, and I found the entire back stretch from that point on really nuanced and interesting. Maxine Mitchell’s narration is really great. And honestly, I love Teddy Hamilton as much as the next lady, but Mitchell’s guy voice gives him a run for his money.

Look at that! Another Extremely Long Book Roundup! If you read this far, I hope you’ve found a book worth giving a try. As always, if you ever want to gush about books with me, I am here for it. Comment or come holler at me on Instagram (@microaffections). Wishing you so many wonderful reads in 2022!

July 30, 2021 By Melanie Sweeney 2 Comments

July Book Roundup

A collage of three book covers on a bright yellow background with the title, "Melanie's June Book Roundup" in pink font. The books are It Happened One Summer, Wild at Heart, and The Layover. — I’m clearly in the mood to go somewhere else!

My lesson from July is that reading more books does not always equal more great reads. I read fourteen books this month, but only a few were standouts. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Luckily, I finally started watching Ted Lasso. (Hello, Roy Kent!) Between that and the Olympics, I’ve had plenty of non-book-related content to keep me busy. I appreciated these few gems as well.

As always, in these reviews, excerpted quotes are transcribed from audio, which is my primary reading method these days, so I apologize for any discrepancies in punctuation.

A book cover with a photo image of a person facing away from the camera, hand holding her hat onto her head, looking out at a forest of trees and a plane in the sky. The title, The Simple Wild, is written in brushstroke font in the sky. The author is K. A. Tucker. — Book 1

One of my July books was a re-read of K.A. Tucker’s The Simple Wild, which I loved last year. It’s about a city girl and fashion blogger who grew up in Toronto and has been estranged from her father, an Alaskan bush pilot. When Calla learns her father has lung cancer and time is running out to get to know him, she flies out to stay with him, where she’s a classic fish out of water. There, she also butts heads with one of her father’s pilots, Jonah. It’s a romance, so of course their combativeness yields to attraction and feelings.

A photorealistic book cover with a woman facing away from the camera, looking at an empty road, fiery red trees in the process of changing colors, and a snowy mountain in the distance. A plan flies in the sky, and she's holding onto her black hat with one hand. The title is in red brushstroke font in the sky: Wild at Heart. The author's name appears over the road: K.A. Tucker.

I still enjoyed this book on my re-read, but the book I want to gush about is the second in the series, a true sequel where we stick with Calla and Jonah as they try to make their relationship work, called Wild at Heart. As such, there are some unavoidable spoilers for book one here.

So, if book one is Calla falling in love with both Alaska and Jonah, book two is when the figurative honeymoon phase wears off. Jonah compromises to get Calla back to Alaska, agreeing to relocate from the rural interior closer to Anchorage so she’ll be near a city and its amenities. Their plan is to start up a new charter service together with Jonah flying and Calla managing the business.

But pretty quickly, Jonah pushes for a cabin quite a bit outside of Anchorage because it has an already established air strip – he could fly straight out of their property instead of from a public airport. He also struggles to stick to his flight plans, sometimes taking detours, coming home later than he promised and worrying Calla. He’s already crashed a plane in front of her, and she fears it happening again.

Meanwhile, Calla’s lack of a driver’s license and the general threats of the outdoors leave Calla stuck at home a lot. She winds up waiting around for Jonah to come home and resenting that her exact worry of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere, just like her mother had been years ago, seems be coming true. With her world shrunk down to their outdated cabin, she starts buying things to fix it up and create an Instagram-worthy home. Though she has quite a bit of money from her father’s will, they fight over her excessive spending. Jonah accurately reads it as a symptom of her misery there, a way to make the surface prettier when the deeper issues remain: her isolation, her lack of a purpose in Alaska, and all the challenging elements of the environment. These elements include an unwanted goat left on the property, bears, a crotchety neighbor and his scary wolfdogs, enormous mosquitoes, the waning sunlight, and a pushy local named Muriel who forces to Calla get her garden started (even though Calla never intended to start one), join a running club, and volunteer with the winter carnival.

Calla laments to Jonah, “I’m trapped in a log cabin in the woods with a goat and a raccoon and no driver’s license. A crazy woman with a gun just told me I’m making strawberry jam and growing cabbage this year. Frivolous spending is all the joy I have.”

This book reads a lot like a second chance romance even though Calla and Jonah are still in the beginning of their relationship. They’re not even engaged when they buy their cabin and start their business together. But they work through some pretty big issues, many of which have been there since the first book. When Jonah initially asks her to come back to Alaska to be with him, she asks what they’ll do if she can’t be happy there, knowing that being an Alaskan bush pilot is essential to his identity. He tells her he doesn’t want Alaska without her.

It’s a beautiful line, but what we see in the bulk of book two is that the weight of their decision to be together really falls disproportionately on Calla’s shoulders. She’s the one who has to adjust the most, and she’s the one who lacks a purpose beyond their relationship, though she’s competent at running their business. Jonah’s main sacrifice is that he turns down bigger jobs he’d love to take because he knows Calla can’t handle him leaving for extended periods.

This is a single-POV book, so we are really immersed in Calla’s experience. K.A. Tucker smartly gives us a lot of time with Calla and Jonah, including some much-needed playful and swoony moments, while also delving deeply into Calla’s personal journey outside of Jonah. The relationship, it becomes clear, cannot be all Calla has to cling to. This is where Muriel’s pushy presence is vital. The ways she pulls Calla out of the safety/confines of the cabin help her to make more meaningful connections to the place and community. Calla resists the garden in the beginning, but when her labor produces actual food, she feels proud. And her volunteer work with the winter carnival gives her a chance to contribute and shine at something she’s truly good at.

Oddly, I love how unromantic parts of this book are. Not only do we see the couple struggle to make their relationship work, but even the landscape and community could easily have been romanticized but aren’t. In the first book, Calla comes to appreciate the beauty of Alaska and the resilience of the people living there, which helps her see her own privilege and expectations for convenience and comfort, to distill what really matters. Honestly, I picked up The Simple Wild in the first place because I have my own romantic notions of Alaska and sense that living somewhere so beautiful would make my life somehow more beautiful. But Wild at Heart puts that fantasy to rest for me. Which sounds like a complaint, but it’s not. As a person who often wonders how much easier life would be somewhere else (like right now, at the peak of summer in Houston), I really feel for Calla. I like that she must see both the environment and the person before her for exactly what they are and decide to love them anyway.

Speaking of unromantic, there is also a brilliant, botched proposal scene in this book that’s as satisfying as any successful one.

Ultimately, this book threads the needle of pushing a character to grow and maintaining her core self. It doesn’t twist the ways she’s mismatched with her environment into blatant flaws or judgments of her. Calla still loves beautiful things, still wants expensive raw-edge wood tables and fancy chandeliers and to share them via Instagram. Her social media and PR skills are valuable in both her and Jonah’s business and the charity work she does with Muriel.

Early after her return to Alaska, she complains to Jonah about having “to walk through ten feet of snow, in the dark, probably with wolves and shit around, and freeze my bare ass every time I need to pee.” Instead of telling her she’s overreacting or taking her complaints too seriously, he says, with affection, “God, I missed your bad attitude.” As a person who often has a bad attitude about things, I adored this moment. Because just as Calla has to accept Jonah and Alaska for what they are, Jonah also has to do the same for her.

This second book shows what happens after the couple decides to make a go of things, the hard part where they have to really work for their relationship. I found it really moving and grounded. If you love these first two books, don’t miss out on the follow-up novella, Forever Wild.

A blue illustrated book cover with a blond woman in an off-the-shoulder red cocktail dress and white heels and a man in a red beanie, white long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and boots. There are birds in the sky, water lines, and a lighthouse in the background. The title is It Happened One Summer, and the author is Tessa Bailey. — Very important that the cover artist did not leave out the beanie

Next up is Tessa Bailey’s July release, It Happened One Summer. If you like Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek, you’ll probably have a soft spot for Piper, a rich girl Hollywood socialite whose misguided public antics land her exiled for three months by her step-father to a coastal town in the Pacific Northwest to learn a lesson. The place is full of fishermen, including grumpy local captain, Brendan. Piper’s biological father was also a fisherman and died in this town, leaving a bar behind, which she and her sister (along for moral support) move into and decide to refurbish with hopes of demonstrating that Piper isn’t as entitled and frivolous as her step-father thinks and, hopefully, shortening her punishment.

Brendan, steady and loyal and skeptical of outsiders, initially judges Piper for her ridiculous outfits and her complete lack of basic life skills, but he soon sees her big heart, her resilience, and her willingness to work hard, even when everyone doubts her. Not only are Brendan and Piper opposites – she’s the life of a party, well-liked everywhere she goes, and spontaneous while he’s grumpy, clings to routines, and resists trying new things – but there’s also the fact that his job is so dangerous. Even if Piper’s life weren’t back in Los Angeles, she’s not sure she has what it takes to be a captain’s partner if they pursue things long-term.

I love the communication in this book. While there is a significant plot point that hinges upon a lack of cell service, the rest of the time, Brendan reads Piper so well that he can tell when she clams up and presents the mask she’s used to showing the world instead of being real with him. He wants meaningful intimacy with her, not casual sex. And when it’s clear that they need to have an honest conversation about their relationship, he gets her out on his boat where she can’t run from it.

One of my favorite lines in the whole book is a quiet moment when they could argue and Piper says instead, “You’re actually really thoughtful and wonderful, and I don’t want to argue with you.” Simple, mature, and lovely.

While Brendan fits the bill of a typical Tessa Bailey alpha hero in some ways, he is also quietly dependable, observant, loyal, and motivated by duty to others – sometimes to his own detriment. He fixes little things without being asked. And he’s absolutely enamored with Piper’s sparkling presence. She hasn’t been truly seen or appreciated by anyone else before this, except maybe by her sister, but Brendan appreciates the immense force of her heart and wants to protect her from the judgment and dismissal and rejection she’s used to.

There’s a great scene when Piper encourages Brendan to try a different meal than his usual – the pot pie, perhaps. He explains, “I don’t try things. If I make the decision to eat the pie, I’ll have to eat the whole thing. I don’t just go around sampling shit and moving on.”

I won’t spoil the pot pie story thread, but just know that it comes back later, and it’s adorable. This book is heartwarming and tender. It also packs some steam. I would expect nothing different from Tessa Bailey.

An illustrated book cover with vibrant, tropical floral details, a beach, and a white plane flying overhead. On the beach stand a woman in a summery dress and a man in a t-shirt and shorts. The titles is The Layover, and the author is Lacie Waldon. — I want to go to there

My final great read of July is billed as The Hating Game meets The Unhoneymooners, which, fun fact, is also exactly the comp titles used in promos for Angie Hockman’s Shipped. In both cases, I think those titles are exactly right, so if you loved them, you’ll probably really enjoy this debut by Lacie Waldon, The Layover.

The hook here is enemies to lovers, but they’re flight attendants! Lacie Waldon is a flight attendant herself, which I didn’t know before I read it but which doesn’t surprise me at all. The details in this book really sell the world and the lives of the characters, from Ava’s specific routines around packing to their duties aboard the plane and the kinds of people they interact with.

Ava is a lifelong wanderer, raised by wanderer parents, who has always felt that she should settle down and choose stability over adventure. She’s newly engaged and decides to quit flying, finally lay down her roots. She embarks on her final trip, which includes a rare, full 24-hour layover in Belize. It would be the perfect sendoff if not for Jack, former pilot turned flight attendant and Ava’s nemesis, though she doesn’t actually know him very well. Usually a polite and warm person, Ava finds herself accessing surprising hostility around Jack, but close proximity on the plane starts to chip away at her dislike of him. Being in the air also forces Ava to confront the fact that she loves flying and maybe isn’t ready to quit. By the time they reach Belize, she has a lot to consider on both fronts, and it’s all exacerbated when their layover gets extended by an issue with their plane.

First of all, if you’re having pandemic fatigue and want to travel somewhere vicariously through characters, this is a terrific book for that. Not only might you enjoy the more mundane delights of airports and flying in a world without masks, a kind of old, familiar normal, but you can also escape into the beauty of Belize with dance lessons on the beach, night swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, and lounging poolside. I wanted to be in just about every scene of this book.

But the real heart of The Layover for me is really Ava’s central question of whether to do the typical, “responsible,” “grown up” thing and settle down somewhere or keep adventuring and own that wanderer’s spirit even though, at times, it has cost Ava relationships, made her nervous and unmoored, and been misunderstood by others. As a child, because of her parents’ traveling, Ava missed important school tests and sleepovers with friends, which had a detrimental effect on both her grades and her relationships. As an adult, she still struggles with maintaining friendships when being on call and missing events makes her appear flaky and undependable. She insists at the start of the book, “Life on the road was what I grew up with, my parents’ ideal. My dream has always been to stay still.”

But the certainty of this declaration gets eroded as we see Ava in the air, doing her job, marveling at the view of the blue sky around her. We start to understand that her sense of self worth and the kind of stable life she hopes will be fulfilling have been shaped by others’ opinions – people who are not wanderers themselves and don’t see the value in it, only flightiness and broken plans.

As she gets to know Jack better, she discovers a likeness in him that she doesn’t share with her fiancé or her friends back home. “I think I saw it in him that first night at the bar. I took one look at his crooked smile and that dark hair, windswept like he’d been driving with the windows down, and I recognized him as one of us. The wanderers. The people I’ve tried so hard not to be like even though I can feel the fibers of them woven into my skin, my restless feet leading me our of my room on overnights, out into the world.” This recognition of herself in Jack is central to both their developing relationship and her own self-acceptance.

The relationship, too, is really lovely, Jack grounding so many of their scenes with his easy charm, unflappable nature, and disarming honesty. Though he finds Ava’s hostility toward him amusing, at a certain point, he tells her, “I don’t want to play this game anymore. I want to be allowed to like you, and I want you to like me,” and it’s refreshingly straightforward and sweet.

This book was a total delight for me. It made me feel all the giddy, swoony feelings I want from a romance, and it’s a perfect summer escape.

I wish you an armload of great books in August!

July 1, 2021 By Melanie Sweeney Leave a Comment

June Book Roundup

An orange block with three book covers for Seven Days in June, The Road Trip, and Very Sincerely Yours and a block of text that says Melanie's June Book Roundup.

We are halfway through 2021! Can you believe it? If things continue as they have gone thus far, I’m on track to read about 120 books this year, which, as a historically slow reader, kind of blows my mind. (I still read slowly. Audiobooks help, but I also simply read for more hours of the day than I used to.)

I’m also about to run out of space in my reading journal, which has unfortunately been discontinued, so if you have any recommendations for great ones, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck using a regular journal and formatting the pages in some fashion… Real problems, I tell you.

This month, I read ten books, primarily in audio. #AudiobooksCount #AudiobookDefenseLeague

As always, I’ve transcribed the excerpts below. I did my best to punctuate them accurately, but I apologize for any mistakes.

My standouts also happen to all be June releases, so place your holds now if you’re a library patron as these are all pretty hot, new titles.

An aqua-colored book cover with an illustrated young man and woman leaning on opposite sides of a red Mini Cooper with luggage inside. She's wearing overalls and has short, purple hair. He's in khaki shorts and a white t-shirt with brown hair, looking over the roof of the car at her. The title is The Road Trip in script at the top with the author, Beth O'Leary printed at the bottom. The tag line reads, "This is going to be one bumpy ride." — Look at the fresh summery vibes in this cover

My first favorite book this month was Beth O’Leary’s The Road Trip. I was looking forward to it after loving her debut, The Flatshare, and I liked this one even more.

The setup here is pretty great. Addie and Dylan broke up almost two years ago. Now, they’re each on their way in separate cars to a mutual friend’s wedding in Scotland. Romance reasons place Dylan’s car directly behind Addie’s near the start of the trip, and he accidentally rear-ends her. They, along with their passengers (Addie with her sister and another acquaintance, Dylan with his best friend, Marcus), wind up all cramming into Addie’s Mini Cooper to complete the long drive to the wedding.

One fiasco after another slows them down, prolonging the awkward reunion and forcing them deal with unresolved feelings. And the tension isn’t only between Addie and Dylan. Addie has about as much emotional baggage with Marcus, who played a key role in the events of the past. Through yo-yo-ing timelines, we get the full story of Addie and Dylan’s relationship and breakup alongside their present-day ill-fated road trip.

First of all, I’m a sucker for second chance romances. I don’t always love how heavy these books can be on flashbacks or full-on Then and Now timelines, but I do enjoy the unfolding of details about what went wrong the first time and getting to see the characters change to make it work this time. It’s the dark night of the soul or low moment but right there at the beginning of the book. There’s something deeply uplifting, when the story is handled well, about seeing what is usually just that last stretch where they have to make amends, change their ways, etc. as the meat of the story.

Early in the book, once they’ve begun the drive together, Dylan thinks, “If one could harness secrets for energy, we wouldn’t need petrol. We’d have enough grudges in this car to take us all the way to Scotland.” This right here is my catnip. Secrets, grudges, and no way to avoid them!

This particular book hits these buttons for me, but it also does something a little more complex in how it uses Marcus. Marcus is charismatic, wealthy, and loyal, and he and Dylan have been through some experiences that have really bonded them. Their friendship is also toxic and co-dependent. Dylan’s take on Marcus is this: “He brings out the bravery in me. With Marcus by my side, I’m somebody. The sort of man who throws caution to the wind, who defies his father, who chooses [to study] poetry when he ought to know better.”

It’s clear in the past storyline that whatever Marcus does to augment Dylan’s life, he also pretty easily influences and leads Dylan around. Prior to Addie, the two men slept with the same woman, essentially sharing her and highlighting a lack of boundaries in their friendship. When Dylan gets serious with Addie, Marcus grapples with the changing dynamic in his own relationship with Dylan in ways that undermine Addie.

I was pleasantly surprised by this nuanced portrayal of not only such a unique male-male friendship within a romance novel, but also the acute representation of the toxic aspect of it and how forgiveness plays out in more than the romance. Dylan asks Addie when you should give up on a person, and she replies easily, “When they’re bad for you.”

It’s not that simple in Dylan’s eyes. But we learn that, in the present storyline, Dylan and Marcus went through their own breakup of sorts after things fell apart between Dylan and Addie. Marcus is so central to Dylan as a character and to what happens between Dylan and Addie that it really feels like the book is about the whole triad rather than just the couple. I found it very complex and satisfying.

I always note favorite lines or moments in a reading journal, but this book is odd in that it wasn’t hugely quotable for me despite being very funny and sharply insightful. The humor often comes from relatable asides from the POV characters, things that genuinely made me chuckle to myself, as well as from the disjoint of “straight man” POV characters dealing with somewhat absurd people and situations. Overall, it’s a funny book that also goes to some heart-wrenching places.

Content notes for mental illness, sexual assault, stalking, and toxic relationships, but even with some heavy themes, this is an uplifting summer read.

A book cover with a beige envelope in the background and an illustrated man and woman, sitting atop a large red typewriter. She has a short brown bob hairstyle and wears a yellow dress with blue shoes. He has brown hair, a blue suit jacket and tie, and gray pants with a pop of yellow socks. The title is in script across the top in red and blue lettering: Very Sincerely Yours. The author's name, Kerry Winfrey, is print at the bottom in red. — “You dress like hot Mr. Rogers.”

Next up is Kerry Winfrey’s new release, Very Sincerely Yours, which actually reminded me a little bit of Beth O’Leary’s first book, The Flatshare. This one also gives us a main character, Theodora, aka “Teddy,” who has just gotten out of a relationship with hallmarks of emotional abuse, including damaging criticism and forced isolation from her friends.

Teddy is strengthened by those same friends in the aftermath of the breakup, and she embarks on a mission to do something that scares her every day in the hopes of rediscovering herself and finding some direction. She also begins to email the host of Everett’s Place, a local children’s puppet show, who happens to look, as one side character notes, like “a hot Mr. Rogers.”

Everett has his flaws – mainly, he’s a workaholic and a perfectionist, and his drive to make his show a success sometimes back-burners his relationships – but he is a refreshing male main character in that he has emotional intelligence and relationship skills that are typically coded feminine. He is a hero who doesn’t need to be saved, fixed, or trained to be on equal emotional footing and able to love the heroine well.

I have a theory about a crop of newer heroes like Everett, but my main guess about why they work (for me anyway) is that these dudes don’t require as much effort from their potential romantic partners. Often, they are the ones helping the heroine get her messy life back on track. In other words, they are doing the work heroines (and real-life women) have been doing forever. They have solid support systems in friends and family. They go to therapy. They can talk about their feelings.

In Everett’s case, he straight-up teaches children how to manage their emotions in healthy ways. He takes his role very seriously in his daily life, not just when he’s on camera. In a moment of self-doubt, when he feels unfulfilled but can’t figure out why, he tells himself, “Buck up, you idiot,” but quickly backtracks “because he would absolutely destroy someone who told any of his child viewers something like that.”

Instead, he tells his reflection, “It’s okay to feel your feelings.” It doesn’t solve his problem, which is more complicated than what a lot of his viewers need help with, but it’s a nice moment where we see a man treating himself tenderly and earnestly exploring his deeper feelings, even though it feels kind of unnatural at first, and I don’t know, I find that remarkably beautiful. This is something we could afford to normalize.

By contrast, Teddy has been mired in her ex’s criticism and neglect. “When I was with Richard,” she confides to Everett, “I didn’t ever feel like he was really listening to me when I talked, or like he valued what I said. It seemed like I was some sort of instrumentation for him, like a hood ornament on the BMW of his life. And when I saw your show for the first time, I couldn’t get over the way you talked to kids, like they mattered. Like you saw them all for the people they were, not for the people you thought they should be.”

This book really sings during Teddy and Everett’s email exchanges. They’re snappy and funny and playful, and they lay an honest and authentic foundation for their relationship. I particularly love when Teddy feels anxious about joining her boss at her jazzercise class – a new thing that scares her – and Everett first muses about going to the class himself. He ponders whether a very tall man like him would be unwelcome to the women in that space – another moment of self-awareness and empathy – then shifts to encouragement, writing, “I hope you gain so much strength through jazzercise that you’re able to dropkick your shitty ex in the face.”

A book cover with a blue background and pink and red blobs over a black and white photo of a Black man and woman. He embraces her from behind, face turned down toward her shoulder, and her head leans back against him. The title is printed in white: Seven Days in June. The author, Tia Williams, is printed in teal. — “She was a fire he’d started ages ago…”

My last great read this month was Tia Williams’s Seven Days in June. I know writers aren’t supposed to write about writers, but as one myself, I’ll admit to loving it. My favorite romance is still Beach Read, also a book about two writers, and this one is a great new title in that vein. And hey, it’s also a second chance romance!

At seventeen, Eva and Shane, both in the throes of pretty rough childhoods, meet and share an intense week together. They fall fast and hard, only to split just as quickly under traumatic circumstances. Now, as adults, they are both successful writers. He’s a literary darling. She has a rabid fanbase for her fourteen-title paranormal erotic romance series. By chance, they reunite at a book event and realize the passion they once had is still there, mixed in with unresolved hurts. The bulk of the book takes place during the week of this reunion with several glimpses into the week from their past.

I have never dropped more bookmarks than I did in this book. It has so many great quotes, and there’s an entire scene I’d transcribe in its entirety in my reading journal if I had the space. I can’t share from that scene (if you’ve read it, it’s the café scene when they first talk as adults) because it would spoil one of the book’s main plot twists, so instead, here’s an example of something I love in books about writers, when things get a little meta: “‘I’ve changed.’ His confident smile made it believable. ‘I think this is what writers calls a character arc.’”

Also, this bit of wisdom from a side character: “Prose before bros.”

This book tackles so many Big Things. Eva struggles with chronic, debilitating migraines that she masks as much as possible to do book events and to parent, even when she has to “mother from bed.” Eva articulates the differences between what women in the industry have to do versus men – being present on social media, networking, doing events, while Shane can disappear and stay relevant. At one point, when her series gets optioned for a film adaptation, she has to deal with a prospective director wanting white actors to play her Black characters. Both Eva and Shane have deeply traumatic histories encompassing addiction, self-harm, sexual harassment and assault, neglect, etc. Eva has worked very hard to end generational trauma for her own daughter. Shane has similarly put in the work to get and stay sober and make a meaningful difference in the lives of kids like him. They are both messy in authentic ways, but they are trying.

Audre, Eva’s daughter, is an unexpected standout character. She brings a lot of levity and heart to the book. It’s clear that Eva’s determination to give Audre a life of secure attachment and love has resulted in a girl with exceptional emotional intelligence and the related vocabulary to go with it. She is a perfectly delightful blend of wise-beyond-her-years sage to adult and child characters alike – she has a hilarious side hustle as a therapist to her prep school peers – and TikTok savvy tween who dresses to express her moods and still needs her mom. She steals every scene she’s in, and I’d frankly read a whole book of her doling out life advice.

I love this moment when she and Eva are arguing, and Audre declares that she only does art because she’s great at it, but it’s not her real dream. “My dream is to be a celebrity therapist, possibly with a nail salon franchise, which you’ve never supported BTW.” It’s a moment that reminds Eva and the reader that Audre is still a child despite her confidence and adult vocabulary.

The central romance is really beautiful, of course, and there’s an interesting structural choice in the final chapter/epilogue that I’ll be thinking about for a while.

There it is, folks. My June Roundup. I hope July and the second half of the year bring you some wonderful reads!

June 2, 2021 By Melanie Sweeney Leave a Comment

May Book Roundup

May here in Texas has been rainy with no reprieve on the horizon, but while my kids have gone a little stir crazy, it’s been pretty good for reading books. I read fifteen books, including romance, women’s fiction, a pretty great middle grade fantasy novel, and two nonfiction books about homeschooling. Let’s dive in!

An illustrated book cover for Float Plan with a sailboat on the ocean over a yellow background. A man with a prosthetic leg and a woman face each other from opposite ends of the boat. — If you have pandemic-fueled wanderlust, you’ll love this trip through the Caribbean!

I kicked off the month with a book I’m pretty certain will end up on my Best of 2021 list this December, Float Plan by Trish Doller. Ten months after Anna’s fiancé dies by suicide, she sets out on the sailing trip he planned for them to take through the Caribbean. She struggles through a rough first leg of the trip and realizes she needs to hire a more skilled sailor to help her hit every island stop on Ben’s detailed itinerary. Enter Keane, an expert sailor whose prosthetic leg has limited his opportunities but not his ability on a sailboat. He offers to help Anna for a drop-off later in the trip. (Also, *alert* he’s Irish.)

Okay, so first, be warned there is a suicide note on page one. I was skeptical about how a romance was going to develop from this beginning in a way that felt believable and, frankly, okay. Anna’s grappling with Ben’s suicide is not a minor part of the book, and while I think Doller takes great care in handling the subject matter, the characters do occasionally have thoughts about Ben’s suicide that are realistic and emotional, if not always entirely free from judgment. I don’t read these as authorial judgments, given the sensitivity elsewhere in the writing.

My favorite romances often have a central thread of grief woven through them. What can I say? I’m a sucker for angst. This one explores that range of pain and happiness thoroughly and with acute insights. Anna begins by following Ben’s itinerary to the letter, so it’s no wonder that every mile she sails, she considers what the trip and her life would have been like with him. “The never knowing is lodged in my heart like a stone, a constant dull ache that throbs during moments like these, when I wonder what our future would have been.” But over the course of the trip, she starts to deviate from the plan. She goes places that weren’t on his list and bypasses others entirely and eventually understands “how sadness and happiness can live side by side within a heart, and how that heart can keep on beating.”

The only way I think the romance part of this works is as a slow burn. It’s a very slow burn, and I was glad for it. It’s also one of the few romances I’ve read where I thought the two characters were very well matched and wanted them to make a relationship work while also being entirely okay with them going their separate ways if that was the outcome. A huge portion of the book is centered around Anna’s journey through her grief and toward finding her own way in the world, gaining true competence at sailing and overall self-sufficiency. She needed Keane after that first rough solo journey, but she truly comes into her own, and it’s so empowering to read.

I knew there would be a point when they fought or separated for whatever reason, (spoiler alert, I guess?) as is usually the case, but while that dark moment often reads as loss, depression, pain, and darkness, this book opens up in a truly breathtaking way. I was so moved and so willing to go anywhere Trish Doller wanted to take me, both through her vivid descriptions of the Caribbean and on the emotional ride.

And it looks like she’s adding at least two more books to this fictional world. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

An illustrated book cover that lists Emily Henry, the author, at the top, and People We Meet on Vacation across the middle. It's a bright orange cover with green palm trees and two figures reclining in pool lounge chairs. — It speaks to me.

My most-anticipated book of May was Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation. I went in with tempered expectations because I didn’t want my love of Beach Read to make me disappointed by an otherwise great book, and that was a good call. It didn’t push Beach Read out of my favorite spot, but it definitely earns a place in my top reads for this year so far.

Poppy has “Millennial ennui” despite having a great career and her life basically in order (“My life turned out how I hoped it would, and now I just miss wanting something”), and her solution is to repair her decade-old friendship with Alex by going on one of the annual summer trips they used to take before something happened in Croatia two years ago and they stopped talking. The story unfolds with yo-yo-ing timelines, splitting between the current summer and summers past, so we see their friendship grow and change while present-day Alex and Poppy navigate what feels like a point of no return. This trip will likely change everything.

The best part of an Emily Henry book is the crackling banter between her main characters. The things they say to each other, usually funny in the moment, get further mileage as call backs and inside jokes, ones that bond them to each other but also bring the reader in on the dance in a rare, magnetically intimate way that feels a little like falling in love yourself. One such inside joke: on a past trip, a gallery employee tries to sell them a $21,000 bear sculpture they could never afford, arguing that “when art speaks to you, you find a way to make it work,” and after that, the question, “Does it speak to you?” becomes the criteria for every bizarre or embarrassing souvenir they might buy.

But these little jokes also pay emotional mileage. Present-day Poppy worries, “It’s possible that all those little moments that meant so much to me never meant quite the same thing to him. It’s possible that he didn’t reach out to me for two years because, when we stopped speaking, he didn’t lose something precious the way that I did.”

There is also weirdness deeply embedded into the characters, a weirdness that endeared them to me immediately and which gives the book a warm and tender essence. This is a weighted blanket in book form. When Poppy role-plays picking Alex up in a bar, he tells her he doesn’t live around here, and “even if I did, I have a cat with a lot of medical needs that require specialized care. Makes it hard to get out.” This, it turns out, is true. And the cat’s name is Flannery O’Connor, which probably gives you a good glimpse into the academic-minded “study in control” that is Alex Nilsen.

“I love when you get weird,” Poppy tells Alex, speaking for us all. He replies, “You make me weird. I’m not like this with anyone else.” Don’t we all want to be seen as our strangest, most uninhibited selves and loved for it? Don’t we all want to know someone so well that we get a version of them reserved only for us?

This book is swoony as hell is what I’m saying. It speaks to me.

A yellow book cover with a heart and DNA strand below it. Christina Lauren is listed at the top and The Soulmate Equation at the bottom. — Would you want to know if your partner was your genetic soulmate??

I was saving Christina Lauren’s latest release, The Soulmate Equation, so I’d have a likely solid book to fall back on when needed, but I gave in and read it right at the end of the month. No regrets!

Jess is a freelance statistician and single mom who is starting to feel lonely despite having a charming kid, engaged and loving grandparents, and one of the best friends I’ve seen in a book in a while. Dr. River Pena is a geneticist and CSO for an emerging company, GeneticAlly, which predicts soulmate matches from genetic markers. (I’m summarizing, but it’s real science-y!) Jess finds River uptight and rude, but his sample (it’s just saliva!) gets flagged as a diamond level match with her. The algorithm gives them an unheard of 98% likelihood of lasting happiness together. Despite River’s scientist skepticism, this is his life’s work, so if the algorithm is wrong about him and Jess, it could threaten everything. He and his company’s executive board ask her to spend some time getting to know River, hoping to confirm the findings, and to be available for PR that would use their match to boost the company, which is about to go public.

It’s pretty hard to pull off a modern story that hinges on fate, or in this case, seemingly iron-clad science. What I love about this book is that the characters routinely ask the big questions. If you love someone, but you find out your compatibility rating with them is low, would it change how you feel about the relationship? Or, in Jess and River’s case, does a high number sway you to feel something you otherwise wouldn’t have been open to? How much weight do you give the algorithm, and how much choice is left in the face of something so persuasive?

I love that River identifies right away what Jess’s priorities are, how she operates, and what she needs. When she winds up in a bind and every other person in her orbit can’t step up like usual, he tells her, “I want you to call me for help without an apology on the tip of your tongue.” They are attracted to each other physically, but he marvels at her competence at her job, too. They share a respect for the honesty of good data.

I also love the friendship between Jess and Fizzy, her romance novelist best friend, who mines daily interactions for material and pushes Jess to not feel guilty for wanting just a little bit more for herself beyond her work and her child. She’s the one who convinces Jess to enter her sample into the database in the first place. Their relationship feels just as fated to me as Jess’s relationship with River, unconditional and iron-clad, but also, as becomes important with Jess and River, too, a chosen relationship. I laughed out loud when Jess confesses to Fizzy, “I’m lonely, and I feel like such an asshole complaining, but you’re always going to be a bigger asshole than I am, so I can complain to you.” We all need a Fizzy in our corner.

Instead of writing in-depth about one more book, I want to quickly shout out some other titles I really enjoyed this month.

A blue, illustrated book cover for Talia Hibbert's Act Your Age, Eve Brown, with a lavender-haired woman embracing a man, the suggestion of sheet music trailing behind her. — “Surprise! I live here.”

I laughed hard and often at Talia Hibbert’s latest Brown Sisters book, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, and in fact transcribed an entire scene about the invasion of ducks in a pond that ends with the hero exclaiming, “Christ, woman. Read a waterfowl blog!” Someone somewhere needs that tattoo. The gist is that Eve needs a job, and after doing poorly in the interview for a chef position at a B&B, she accidentally hits the potential employer with her car. She winds up working for him and living on the property, and he never stops reminding her that she HIT HIM WITH HER CAR.

An illustrated book cover of Seekers of the Wild Realm by Alexandra Ott with a young girl summoning green magic and looking at a white dragon among trees. — Magic. dragons. and challenging gender norms. A perfect combination.

My kids and I also really enjoyed Alexandra Ott’s Seekers of the Wild Realm, which is a middle grade book about a girl who wants to be her village’s first female seeker and a boy who trades her the training she’s been excluded from in exchange for her help with a baby dragon he’s not supposed to have. There are dragons, magic, and beautiful friendships – and no super scary parts for sensitive hearts. The next book will be out in a couple weeks, and we’ll definitely be reading that one, too. We are currently reading her other series, Rules for Thieves.

A book cover for The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart with the subtitle, "Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life" and a photo of a young child sitting on a colorful staircase. — There’s a free journal that pairs with the book on her website, too!

And finally, I’ve seen Julie Bogart’s The Brave Learner recommended all over the place in homeschooling circles, and I finally got my hands on a copy. Whether you homeschool or teach children in a more formal setting or are a parent whose kids are educated primarily outside the home, this book is so valuable! We often say that we want our children to love learning, but Bogart interrogates that claim early on in the book and argues, “When adults ask kids to love learning, they’re asking children to find academics pleasurable so that adults will be relieved of the obligation to nag.” What we really want, usually, is for our kids to joyfully cooperate with what we have already planned for them. But education isn’t something we should do to our kids. Bogart gives practical tips for fostering that elusive love of learning by meeting kids in their own interests, letting “way lead to way,” and inviting them in with mystery, surprise, enchantment, and more. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

On to June!