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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!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: beth o'leary, book recommendations, book review, book reviewer, Book Roundup, june book roundup, kerry winfrey, reading roundup, romance novels, seven days in june, the road trip, tia williams, very sincerely yours, womens fiction

May 2, 2021 By Melanie Sweeney 2 Comments

April Reading Roundup

April was a pretty fantastic reading month for me. So many great romance novels came out this month, and I read them aaaallll (okay, not even close to all, but many), including some not-new releases. I read nine books, all as audiobooks. (As always, I apologize if any quoted selections have the wrong punctuation as they are transcriptions from the audio.)

A blue book cover the says The Intimacy Experiment and Rosie Danan with a bearded man and a woman in a red dress standing on either side of a podium.
Fleabag had Hot Priest. Now we get Sexy Rabbi.

One of my favorite books of 2020 was Rosie Danan’s The Roommate, so I was very excited about her follow-up, The Intimacy Experiment, which follows Naomi, adult performer turned sex positive start-up co-founder, and Ethan, a young rabbi looking to boost membership at his struggling synagogue. Naomi wants to teach more formally about modern intimacy and sex, but so far, academia wants nothing to do with her because of her past. But Ethan sees the value in her ideas and thinks the class will attract younger people, who will hopefully then give the synagogue a try. The higher ups, however, aren’t totally on board with the class or Naomi’s history.

The story unfolds over the weeks-long seminar, each class focusing on a particular aspect of intimacy, neatly telegraphing the romantic trajectory between Naomi and Ethan upfront. I love it when the framework of the plot is explicitly and expertly woven into the story as part of its content. It’s what I love so much about Beach Read, which begins with, “I have a fatal flaw,” and uses the POV character’s job as a writer to use the fundamentals of plot and character, the language of stories, in her interiority to illuminate character growth, romantic development, and the story of the book itself.

In The Intimacy Experiment, we learn early on that the course will cover seven milestones: how to find a partner, a first-date framework to assess if you like the person, communication, integrating your partner into your life, physical intimacy, delving deeper into your past and future, and, finally, how to break up. If you read much romance, you know already that a breakup or separation will come at some point, so the laid out trajectory doesn’t exactly spoil anything, but it serves as a constant source of background tension, a reminder, as Naomi and Ethan fall in love, that their happily ever after isn’t a sure thing – a nice little trick to work against the genre’s promise of an HEA or at least a Happy For Now. It also rachets up the anticipation for the fun stuff. (There is legitimate steam here, folks. But like The Roommate, it’s also incredibly heartfelt and sweet.) And when the book exhausts its framework, when the seminar ends, we don’t know what will happen next. It’s a clever structural choice that elevates the book.

Naomi has had to develop a thick skin to survive, and she uses that shield to handle people’s judgment, doubt, and rejection as she pivots to speaking and teaching about intimacy, but a big part of her seminar – and a big part of falling in love – is learning how to be vulnerable. We learn early on that Naomi is pulled toward things that are self-destructive – drinking sugary sodas, drags on cigarettes even though each inhale shortens her life. “There was something about flirting, just a little – the tiniest sip – with her own destruction that appealed to the darkness in her.”

Later, she reveals to the class, “‘I, for example, consistently fall for people I know I can’t have, as a way of avoiding opening myself up to love,” and admits, ‘knowing your weaknesses doesn’t make you immune.’” This is a thinly veiled admission to Ethan, with whom she thinks a relationship would be impossible because of her history, because she’s “not Jewish enough,” because her reputation would be too big of a hurdle for them. She thinks of herself as dynamite at one point – “no great tragedy when dynamite destroyed itself, not when that was exactly what it was designed to do.” In other words, vulnerability is hard for Naomi, and seeing her choose to override all her self-protective instincts and truly open herself, not just with Ethan, but with the class, with the synagogue, with the world at large, is honestly quite moving.

Part of Naomi’s journey is also re-connecting with her Jewish faith. I really appreciate that, while Ethan’s invitation to have her teach at his synagogue helps her start that journey, she seeks further mentorship from a different rabbi at a different synagogue altogether, and it is 100% a choice she makes for herself, not something Ethan pressures her to do, nor something he instructs her in. Ethan accepts Naomi exactly as she is from the beginning, all facets of her, from her previous work to her faith. He also experienced a deepening of his faith after losing his father a handful of years earlier, which led him to leave his job as a physics teacher and devote his life to his faith.

This book is ambitious in how it portrays sex and sex work, how it tackles intimacy and romance alongside religion, and in its deep empathy for its characters. It’s also honestly not a bad guide to modern relationships. Sometimes, books with a premise like this avoid actually giving you the meat of the class the character is teaching (or the book they’re writing, or whatever), but pieces of Naomi’s lectures are on the page, and there’s some pretty great stuff in them, especially the lecture on surviving a breakup.

Like The Roommate, the emotional depth here might be surprising just based on the jacket summary, but these two books together really cement for me Rosie Danan’s aesthetic and talent as a writer – she explores a whole range of emotional and physical intimacy with authentic care. You don’t have to read the first book to start this one, but I highly recommend both.

Content warnings here for mentions of anti-Semitism, revenge porn, verbal sexual harassment.

A blue book cover with an illustrated man towing a woman through water in an inner tube with tropical trees and a bird in the background. The title says Shipped in cursive, and the author, Angie Hockman, is printed below.

Next up is Angie Hockman’s Shipped, which one blurb described as The Hating Game meets The Unhoneymooners – a pretty accurate description. If you liked either of those books, you’ll probably enjoy this one.

Henley works for a cruise company and cannot stand Graeme, the social media guy who works remotely and who once received credit for work that was hers. Now, they’re up for the same promotion, and in order to better prepare for their presentations, they must go on one of the company’s cruises to the Galapagos. This is a classic enemies-to-lovers workplace romance in which we get Henley’s POV exclusively, so our understanding of Graeme evolves along with hers, very much like The Hating Game, right down to the fact that the “enemy” isn’t actually an asshole to the main character and then magically changes his behavior once they get to know each other. He’s more an enemy-by-misunderstanding.

Some side stories I really enjoyed with this one are the relationship between Henley and her sister, who tags along on the cruise, and the acknowledgment on the page of how humans’ interactions with the wild world affect it. There’s an author’s note at the end, further addressing this, and as someone who has recently been doing a lot of reading about climate change and thinking about my specific location on the Gulf Coast, I really appreciated how she wove her convictions organically into the story in a way that didn’t feel preachy or like the hidden point of the book. I have recently been thinking about how the stories we consume in books, TV, and movies rarely reflect warming and the changes we are currently living through and will continue to live through, other than apocalyptic/extreme scenarios, so this was a real bonus to me. It’s still more about conservation of places and species “out there,” but the way conservation plays into the story as a whole feels reflective of our world now, not ten or twenty years ago.

Henley is a very hard worker who struggles to find balance in the rest of her life. She wants her work to speak for itself, to be valued for her ideas, and to earn the promotion because of her efforts, just like she wants others (Graeme) to be evaluated for the same things, but it’s clear that her boss has a better rapport with Graeme. With her, he talks down to her, calls her cutesy nicknames, and casually touches her inappropriately. She feels she is constantly working to prove herself.

So, when Graeme fibs about being a beginner at snorkeling so he can join her, partly because he knows she has anxiety about deep water after a childhood near-drowning incident and partly because he wants to hang out with her, and she realizes he is actually an experienced scuba diver, she accuses him of “bringing the outfield in.” She explains that in gym class, when a girl came up to the plate, the boys would all walk in, not expecting her to hit as hard or as far as the boys. Without giving too much away, I like how this thread of the story is handled, even once we realize that Graeme is not the enemy she thinks he is.

The best part of an enemies-to-lovers story is, of course, the snappy banter, which is delightful in this book. Not only do we learn that Henley’s combativeness with Graeme actually means something deeper to him; but we also get funny/sexy exchanges like this one:

“‘How do you feel about me?’ I whisper.

‘Usually? Irritation and an urge to shove a whipped cream pie in your face. But also desperation, desire, and fuck, I want to kiss you.’”

Content warnings for loss of a parent by terminal illness and mentions of an ancillary abusive relationship.

An illustrated cover with the title, The Flatshare, and author, Beth O'Leary running vertically down the middle, bisecting an image of a man and woman with their feet and heads cropped off.
There was Only One Bed.

A friend recommended Beth O’Leary’s The Flatshare with the heads up that it centers around an emotionally abusive relationship – not the central romance, obviously. Having experienced a similar relationship myself in the past, it brought up some old memories and feelings for me, but I appreciated how authentically Tiffy’s story was conveyed, particularly how she needs distance and time away from the relationship to even begin to understand the dynamic and what it was doing to her and how the residual effects of gaslighting and being otherwise manipulated continue to disrupt her post-relationship life.

Remarkably, this book didn’t feel heavy to me, despite the subject matter, and though I was skeptical about how quickly Tiffy might wind up in a new relationship while still healing from the previous one, I thought a lot of care was given to that journey. The romance with Leon develops very gently, first establishing friendship well before romantic interest, and she has other sources of support besides him, including friends and a therapist.

For perhaps the full first half of the book, in fact, Tiffy and Leon don’t even see each other in person. He works nights as a hospice nurse, so he rents out his one bedroom flat for the off hours, returning during a typical workday shift to sleep. (He sleeps at his ill-fated girlfriend’s place on weekends.) This is technically the Only One Bed trope. They do share the bed, but they are never in the same place at the same time. Even so, she takes the left, and he takes the right.

I love the scene when Tiffy arrives and realizes, for the first time, what exactly this flatshare setup will look like. “I look at my lovely, tie-dyed blanket lying across the foot of the bed, and all I can think is that it really clashes with Leon’s duvet cover, which is manly black and grey striped, and that there’s nothing I can do about that because this is as much Leon’s bed as mine, whoever this Leon man is, and that his semi-naked or possibly fully naked body sleeps underneath that duvet. I hadn’t really confronted the logistics of the bed situation until this moment, and now that I’m doing it, I’m not enjoying the experience.”

One of the highlights of this book for me is how it explores the intimacy of sharing a space, even when the other person isn’t in it. Tiffy and Leon leave each other notes, so they do have an avenue to get to know one another – and Tiffy is quite forthcoming and open, which helps – but they also observe things about each other based on their belongings – how they take their tea, whether they were in a hurry when they left, etc. They cook and bake for each other, leaving leftovers to make life a little easier for the other. Leon, who is usually pretty reserved with both his feelings and his words – even his narration is in clipped statements and fragments – begins to share some of his life in the running conversation on papers strewn about the flat.

Leon finds all of Tiffy’s belongings a little overwhelming, particularly all her throw pillows, lava lamp, and the colorful dresses she leaves hanging around everywhere, though he concedes space to her he hadn’t realized he would need to give her, and he comes around to like her bean bag chair. Tiffy’s discovery of a bag full of scarves under the bed briefly takes her to a funny, if dark, place: “there was quite a large number of scarves in there. At least ten. What if he stole them? Shit, what if they are trophies of the women he murdered? Maybe he’s a serial killer. A winter-based serial killer who only strikes in scarf weather.” (He’s not.)

There’s a nice secondary story about Leon’s brother, who calls the flat occasionally from prison. Ironically, this brother helps propel the romance beyond what Tiffy and Leon are initially capable of despite being even further removed than they are from each other. Leon and his brother also have some understanding of emotional abuse, having witnessed their mother endure similar relationships, which gives them both some insight into Tiffy’s experience. I appreciated this exchange, when Tiffy has a panicked reaction to growing physical intimacy with Leon, a residual trauma response, and he assures her it isn’t her fault. “‘Well, I did date him. Voluntarily.’ My tone’s light, but Leon frowns. “Relationships like that stop being about voluntarily very quickly. There’s lots of ways someone can make you stay with them or think you want to.’”

I definitely can’t speak for anyone besides myself on how authentically this represents emotional abuse in a romantic relationship, but it worked for me, and it reaffirmed just how grateful I am for the same friend who recommended the book. She saw a lot of what I went through, and even though we fell out because of that relationship and choices I made, we’ve since reconnected. I’ll never know just how hard it was for her to witness that or to decide how best to be my friend when I wasn’t ready to leave, but she was one of few sources of absolute joy and love and security to me amidst a dark time, and I can’t imagine how much harder it all would have been without her. So, not to get too emotional in this book review or anything, but to the people who are there, who see, who remember when we’ve gotten all turned around and can’t even tell what’s true about anything anymore . . . you are everything.

Obviously, there’s a big content warning here for emotional abuse but also stalking. The circumstances of Leon’s brother’s imprisonment and some brief mentions elsewhere in the book include racism.

A bright yellow illustrated book cover of Life's Too Short by Abby Jimenez with a man in slacks and a button down at the top right, reaching for a heart, and a woman in black pants and a red shirt at the bottom left. A dog pokes through the second O of the word TOO.
Love this book. Hate that they didn’t capitalize the T in too.

Finally, and in keeping with the content warnings and the big emotional content, I have to talk about Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez. This is the third in a series, though it also stands alone, and according to the author’s note at the end, the main character, Vanessa, was modeled after a real-life YouTuber with a terminal illness. In the book, Vanessa has a genetic strain of ALS, and since it can’t be tested for, only diagnosed by ruling out other diseases based on progressing symptoms, Vanessa opts not to spend her life worrying about whether or not she has it (though she has a possible early symptom) and instead live as fully as possible, which means travelling and posting to her YouTube channel about her adventures to help raise money for ALS research. She already knows that if she develops clearer symptoms of the disease, she won’t seek treatment since there isn’t a cure, and medicines and trials bought her older sister, who died from the disease, very little time while affecting the quality of the time she did have.

Does this sound like an impossible romance? I was tempted to seek out how this one ended. I remembered an absolutely heart-breaking minor character death in another of Jimenez’s books, and even though this is billed as a romance, I wasn’t certain there would be an HEA. I don’t want to spoil the ending here, but as I was reading and imagining the various ways it might end, I considered that notion of happily ever after as well as happy for now. I completely understand why the promise of a happy ending matters to readers of the genre, so this is not at all a criticism of either the genre or its readers, but I started to think, what does it say that someone with a terminal illness is such a tricky protagonist for a romance? (And here I mean the genre definition of romance, not Nicholas Sparks types of love stories where the characters die at the end…) Does it suggest that people who live with a terminal illness aren’t worthy of love, or that their love is any less beautiful or important than someone who may live well into old age (or may not because life is unpredictable)? Does it make a difference if their hand dealt is still bad but they at least survive through the final page of the book?

I’m also a total outsider to the terminal illness/disability community, so I hesitate to review this book and make any assumptions about how Vanessa’s illness and her choices (and Adrian’s reactionary feelings and choices) do or don’t reflect the experiences of those with similar conditions. There’s more here, too, that treads similarly tricky waters, including Vanessa’s younger sister’s addiction, her father’s hoarding, and Adrian’s anxiety and control issues. Content warnings abound, in other words! But for what it’s worth, my own personal reading of this book overall is that it is deeply emotional, that it does a lot of work to earn the ending I thought it was going to have as well as the one I didn’t (how’s that for cryptic), and it is thankfully very funny to offset some quite heavy content.

Also, the meet cute in chapter one is essentially lifted straight out of my fantasies from when my kids were babies. (Mild spoilers in this paragraph and the next, so skip if you don’t want them!) Vanessa has just become the temporary guardian of her infant niece, and the baby’s crying leads Adrian to knock on her door at 4am to ask her to somehow quiet it. Of course, this woman he’s never spoken to before is on the brink of a breakdown because she has tried everything already. She tells him off and slams the door in his face. But Adrian, who has a strong compulsion to fix things and heart of gold, knocks again, and here’s where my fantasy was translated directly onto the page:

“I made a give it here motion with my hand. ‘Give me the baby.’

She stared at me.

‘Go take a shower. I’ll hold her.’

She blinked at me. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘No, I’m not. You obviously need a break. Maybe it will help.’”

Listen, I realize that it’s unrealistic and inadvisable to let a stranger into your apartment to hold your baby in the middle of the night, but in the safe hands of a romance, this is literally the pinnacle of swooning for me. Once, when my twins were babies, and my oldest was a toddler, I carried my inconsolable babies out into my front yard after hours of them crying, praying a nice neighbor would come out and help me do something, so I felt this on a deep level. (Shockingly, they did not.)

There’s some really poignant wisdom in this book as well, like this gem from a side character: “‘Took me a long time to realize that just because you don’t recognize the fight they choose doesn’t mean they’re not fighting.’”

Oh, and if you’re an audiobook listener, the narrators on this one, Zachary Webber (a long-time favorite of mine who just gets better and better) and Christine Lakin, are so good. Such an emotional story really needs narrators who can handle it, and they were great choices.

Not a bad selection for my birthday month! The May release I’m most looking forward to – and probably everyone else so I will maybe shut up about Beach Read ­­– is Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation. Happy May reading!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: angie hockman, april reading roundup, beth o'leary, book review, book reviewer, Book Roundup, emotional romance, reading roundup, romance novels, romancelandia, rosie danan

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