The authors of four acclaimed young adult novels, Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka enjoy a friends-to-lovers romance that is better than fiction. Long before they even thought of writing romance, they were childhood rivals-turned-friends who fell in love. But the characters in their adult debut, The Roughest Draft, have a far thornier path to happily ever after.
Nathan Van Huysen and Katrina Freeling were once close friends and writing partners. Their relationship fell apart shortly after releasing a bestselling novel, and the pair haven’t spoken in three years. But unfortunately for them, they signed a two-book deal, and the deadline for their second novel is looming. Nathan and Katrina return to Key Largo, Florida, where they wrote their first book, to fulfill the requirements of their contract and write one final love story together. But the line between a polite peace and real affection proves slippery and hard to maintain.
In a call to their home in Los Angeles, Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka readily admit that they’ve known each other so long that it’s hard for them to pinpoint when they first met. Their literary doppelgängers in The Roughest Draft, on the other hand, had a far more turbulent start to their relationship. Nathan and Katrina had amazing innate chemistry at first, but they met at a complicated stage of life and never enjoyed good timing. Whatever pining bubbled up as they wrote during intense, secluded periods was suppressed in real life, only to be expressed through their fiction.
“Writing is putting yourself on the page . . .”
You can see the imprint of Wibberley’s and Siegemund-Broka’s personalities, palpable chemistry and, most of all, interests stamped onto these characters. That’s very much intentional, and both authors describe the metafictional commentary on narrative in The Roughest Draft as an essential part of the book’s premise. “We liked the idea from the beginning that writing is putting yourself on the page,” Wibberley explains. “So you’re sharing . . . a layer of yourself there that you wouldn’t normally.”
That, Siegemund-Broka says, is “the thematic wellspring of this book. . . . You are creating professionally, and you’re doing it to write for an audience and to craft stories that you think people will engage with. But at the same time, there’s no avoiding the degree to which it also springs from your own passions, your own preferences, the things that you think are exciting and lovable.”
Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka’s collaborative, reflective and intellectually curious sensibility comes through loud and clear on the page, especially in their approach to tropes. Both authors are very conscious of storytelling traditions and structures, and The Roughest Draft leans on beloved conventions such as estranged friends, friends to lovers and a second chance at love.
Nathan and Katrina’s relationship at the beginning of The Roughest Draft is similar to fake dating, but rather than performing a relationship for others, they’re performing a friendship for themselves. To diffuse tensions at the start of their time in Key Largo, Katrina suggests that they should, in essence, fake it till they make it: “You and I will be creating fiction together. So let’s embrace it. Let’s live a fiction.” This creates a safe space to enjoy each other’s company without having to address the tensions that broke up their partnership in the first place.
“It’s a very ‘us’ preoccupation . . . how, in life, we are often telling stories.”
The Roughest Draft explores this dynamic in extremely effective ways. Here, it’s not simply about getting the characters into close proximity or forcing them to go through the motions. It’s about giving them permission to do things that they wouldn’t feel they had license to do otherwise. Siegemund-Broka points to a scene in which Katrina acts out choreography for a love scene in front of Nathan. “She’s performing for a very logistical, clear reason,” he says. “But the actions are what they are, and [so are] the feelings.”
Speaking of love scenes, what is it like writing them with your life partner? “It was the hardest part of the book for us,” Wibberley says.
Siegemund-Broka agrees. “It’s too [much] like you’re being watched while you’re trying to channel those feelings,” he says. “It makes it difficult to write and difficult to edit and difficult to negotiate.” These are the only parts of the book they wrote separately from each other, and this potential for awkwardness when writing about sex with another person carries over for the characters in The Roughest Draft. “We wanted to include those moments in the book, both for the obvious character tension but also for the humor, because of course, you have them sitting on the couch being incredibly awkward together,” says Siegemund-Broka.
These sorts of layered interactions between fiction, the craft of storytelling and real life are at the heart of The Roughest Draft, and it’s a cerebral yet swoony way to depict a love story.
“It’s a very ‘us’ preoccupation, these kinds of meta questions of how stories resemble life, but also how, in life, we are often telling stories,” says Siegemund-Broka. “They are spinning a fiction within their own lives, pretending that they are co-workers who are completely fine with each other.”
As Wibberley points out, we all tell stories, smoothing out the rough parts or blowing up the things we find significant. Even “people who don’t write novels . . . might see themselves [in the book] and be like, OK, yeah, sometimes you [do] tell yourself a story to get through the day.”
Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka plan to continue writing adult romance that explores long-term relationships. As Wibberley points out, they certainly have a lot of experience to draw from, having been together since they were 17.
The idea of characters who have seen many different versions of each other is creatively inspiring, Siegemund-Broka says. “We are very attracted right now to writing characters who’ve been in each other’s lives a long time . . . whether it creates tension or longing or, alternatively, stasis, and figuring out how you deal with that weight of time.”
After reading The Roughest Draft, many readers will make a similarly long-term commitment to having Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka’s work on their shelves for years to come.
Author photo by Sue Grubman.
The YA author duo's adult debut is a cerebral yet swoony love story.
In Sara Gran’s sexy and captivating thriller The Book of the Most Precious Substance, a rare books dealer embarks on an epic hunt for a shadowy tome that could change the trajectory of her life.
A few years ago, Lily Albrecht had it all: a once-in-a-lifetime love and a thriving writing career. Now Lily’s brilliant soul mate, Abel, has a neurodegenerative disease and can no longer communicate, move or even eat on his own. He is like a locked box on a high shelf, one she can guard but never reach.
Lily loves and advocates for her husband fiercely but is worn down by financial pressure, anxiety and grief for the incredible life they once shared. For years she’s been their sole breadwinner. Now her promising writing career has dissolved, and she’s caught between dedication, loneliness and frustration as she sells off their precious collection of books.
By the time she’s asked by Shyman, a fellow books dealer, to find an elusive 17th-century book about the occult and “sex magic,” Lily’s life has shrunk into a joyless routine of work, worry and care. The high six-figure finder’s fee for this magical tome—“the rarest, most sought after book in the entire bibliography of the occult”—could stabilize her finances and give her the means to pursue more treatment for Abel. However, Lily finds it odd that so little information is available about such a legendary book.
Then Shyman dies suddenly and violently, and with no middle man taking a cut, her commission becomes potentially even more lucrative. Lucas, a friend and colleague, becomes her partner in the quest, and their collaboration presents its own potential rewards and temptations.
Lily is a sympathetic yet formidable figure. She’s dedicated but still human, alternating between numbness and mourning, loyalty and long-sublimated desire. Gran is uniquely talented at bringing such complex feelings to life. Her writing is effective, economical and moving, and while Lily’s hunt propels the story forward, it is Gran’s frequently exquisite prose that demands investment from its audience.
Readers will ache for Lily and Abel and envy what they once had. Brief but evocative moments reveal not just Lily’s lack but also her desire, and possibly what’s to come. These scenes are just one small part of what makes Gran’s thoughtful and erotically charged thriller so well worth reading.
Readers will ache for Lily and Abel and envy what they once had. This is just one part of what makes Sara Gran’s erotically charged thriller so worth reading.
Despite a disastrous first meeting, sparks eventually fly between a grumpy duke and a scandalous opera singer in Julie Anne Long’s After Dark with the Duke.
When Miss Mariana Wylde meets James Duncan Blackmore, the Duke of Valkirk, it’s disdain at first sight. Mariana’s bad reputation precedes her: A disastrous duel was fought over her favor, and she was lambasted in the press as the “Harlot of Haywood Street.” Although Mariana didn’t encourage the duel or welcome the media attention that followed, this is 19th century England, and women are usually blamed for men’s bad behavior. James, an upright former general who places a great deal of importance on reputation, needs no further information to judge her harshly.
The Grand Palace on the Thames, a somewhat pretentiously named but very cozy boarding house, is a safe haven for Mariana, but her presence there doesn’t sit well with the duke, a fellow boarder. He cannot abide Mariana’s supposed recklessness, having lost too many men to foolish actions during the Napoleonic wars. The dislike between them is instant, but the duke takes it too far by lording his education over Mariana and making her the object of ridicule. Having violated the house rules of harmony among guests, James is in danger of being kicked off the premises entirely, until the house’s proprietors strike a deal: He can stay if he apologizes and helps Mariana learn Italian so she can understand the words she sings.
Long has a gift for language and razor-sharp descriptions that pinpoint a character’s essence. In After Dark with the Duke, she offers a master class in characterization, even by her high standards. Mariana’s vibrance and sparkle contrast strongly with James’ uncompromising virtue, which Long describes as being “as stark and strange as if an obelisk had been dropped into the sitting room.” But Long takes care to make sure that readers know exactly why James’ respectability means so much to him. He rose from humble beginnings to the aristocracy on his own merit and is thus painfully aware of all the rules he must follow to keep his reputation intact.
Mariana and James should make no sense together, but their interactions are delightfully chaotic and charged with an explosive sexual chemistry that shakes them to their bones. The more time they spend together, the more they see past each other’s outward appearances. The combustible chemistry of opposites breaks down their defenses, leading to mutual respect, support and love in this sublime and steamy historical romance.
Julie Anne Long’s sublime and steamy historical romance is a master class in characterization and the combustible chemistry of opposites.
The uber-talented Olga Acevedo, the titular heroine of Olga Dies Dreaming, grew up in a working-class Nuyorican family (New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent) full of strivers and revolutionaries. But as an adult, she makes her living as a wedding planner, catering to New York City’s elite and fiercely chasing the American dream. Through Olga’s story, first-time novelist Xochitl Gonzalez brilliantly calls into question what that dream really means.
Gonzalez is the Brooklynite daughter of militant activists from the 1970s Chicano Power movement: her mother Nuyorican, her father Mexican American. After many years as an event planner and entrepreneur, Gonzalez’s journey to transform her own story into Olga’s fictional tale led her to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was honored as an Iowa Arts Fellow and won the Michener-Copernicus Prize in Fiction. She was also the winner of the 2019 Disquiet Literary Prize in Nonfiction. We reached out to Gonzalez to unpack the ideas behind her striking debut.
This is a complex book with many intriguing layers. What are its origins? When I first started writing—writing creatively as art, versus commerce like marketing materials—I was intimidated by fiction. So I went to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference with an essay about being abandoned by my activist mother as a kid so she could go out and “save the world.” People really responded to the themes but basically told me it was a book.
I had no interest in writing a memoir. But in time, I found the courage to write some fiction and had scratched out some stories about upwardly mobile Latinas—mainly Puerto Rican—living in a very different Brooklyn than the one they had grown up in.
I had for years been extremely frustrated by the situation in Puerto Rico, that the U.S. has a colony in contemporary times. It was just a news story that never could break through, not even after Hurricane Maria. One day while commuting, I was reading the book The Battle for Paradise by Naomi Klein, which is about disaster capitalism, and listening to Alynda Segarra’s album Navigator. I realized that if I borrowed just enough biography from myself, I could weave a pretty entertaining, hopefully beautiful story that would personalize both one version of a contemporary Latinx experience as well as the real-world emotions and experiences of gentrification, colonialism and resilience. I ran out of the train to get a napkin to scratch the ideas out.
“It was like I had to get this story out before Brooklyn changed even more, somehow.”
You sold the manuscript for Olga Dies Dreaming to Flatiron in a 10-way auction and made a TV deal with Hulu before its release. First of all, congratulations! That can look like overnight success, but I understand that the real story is more complex. Can you tell us about your journey as a writer and path to publication? I will try to be concise! The long story is that I went to college—Brown University, after having attended a big Brooklyn public school that I adored and thrived in—thinking that I would do creative writing. But when I got there, my freshman roommate was such a rock star in this arena. I was so intimidated that I thought it was a sign to find my own lane. (I was 18 and didn’t drive, what did I know of multilane highways?) But I always wanted to write, and so later as a wedding planner, I started a blog that became kind of popular and led to freelance writing opportunities around etiquette and weddings and the like.
Eventually, though, someone thought I should try a memoir about my life and back then—this was probably 10 years ago or more—I was more open to that. So I put together a proposal and it—ironically—landed with the agent who is now my agent today (Mollie Glick). She loved the writing but ultimately passed because “it was a very dark book about a wedding planner.”
I put writing to the side completely for another five or six years while I was hustling to get my business back together after the Great Recession and pivot to more than weddings, and just managing life and family more generally. Then I turned 40 and the last of my grandparents who had raised me passed away, and I suddenly just felt like life was short. Writing was the one constant, nagging thing I felt I’d always needed to try and do. The thing is, owning a small business, especially one that focuses on customer service like my event-planning business, well, it’s a hustle. It doesn’t leave a lot of creative space.
So the first thing I did was sell my part of the business and get a nine-to-five job. Then I applied and went toBread Loaf—for nonfiction—which really immersed me in community and craft, which was so important. It was so helpful to refine who I could be as a writer that I decided to pursue my MFA. I applied to only NYC programs except for—encouraged by my Bread Loaf friends—Iowa. I never thought I would get in, but I started Olga Dies Dreaming almost the same day that I found out that I did.
I was terrified to leave my whole life and my rent-stabilized apartment and pretty great job, to be honest. But I believed in this book and understood the rarity of this opportunity and the blessing, in that moment, that being single was. It was emotionally hard, but not logistically hard. I was able to literally put every waking hour that I wasn’t at work into the novel. Eventually I gave up exercising because I was so obsessed, but before that happened, I ended up reconnecting with Mollie at an exercise class. We had a mutual friend there, and she told Mollie about me and Iowa and the Disquiet Prize, and I shared the first 100 pages of Olga with her. So I was fortunate in that by the time I arrived at Iowa, I had drafted about half the novel and had an amazing agent who saw the possibility of what this was going to become—but who also stayed out of it until it was done.
And honestly, at 42—which is the age I turned when I started the program—two academic years doesn’t feel long. I had the fortune of Sam Chang offering a novel workshop, so I just put my nose down and worked around the clock. I was barely eating or sleeping, to be honest. I don’t know what made it feel so urgent. It was more than just the time at grad school, it was like I had to get this story out before Brooklyn changed even more, somehow.
From the start, the reader gets to see, in a kind of humorous way, the fighting spirit and rage brewing in Olga. This makes her such a complex and original character, especially because she’s a woman. At one point she even calls herself a “terrible person.” Do you think of Olga that way, or is she judging herself too harshly? First, thank you for saying that about her. I don’t think of Olga as a terrible person, but I think there are massive moments when she feels this way—when she feels that she isn’t succeeding with her family because her time is so devoted to her economic pursuits, but her ambitions in that arena leave her feeling emotionally empty. She has some peccadilloes, but really, she is not terrible; she is lonely. Her upward mobility has left her, as the saying goes in Spanish, “Ni de aquí, ni de allá.” [Neither from here nor from there.] I felt this was an experience I personally had, and one that I think is reflective of many Latinx women, women of color and any person who has tried to “excel.”
Something else that sets Olga apart is that she seems to live by her own rules. When she cuts corners in her business, she sees it as equalizing: the little guy scoring one over the exploitative uber-wealthy. But she’s also loyal and can be generous. She has high expectations of her congressman brother, Prieto, and she struggles when he is not as compassionate as she’d like. How would you describe Olga’s moral compass? I would say she is very Old Brooklyn. Loyalty, spreading love—that’s more than a Biggie lyric. (There’s a reason he’s our borough representative, even posthumously.) It’s really how people who are from here so often are. Do you need money to eat? Is there something that’s not that hard for me to do that will make a huge impact on your day? Tell me, and I’ll try and do it. She grew up with that value system.
I also think, despite the place that it is now, the Brooklyn she was raised in was a place of underdogs. Taxis wouldn’t even come here. So it’s ingrained in her to always help the underdog.
There’s some bits of her that maybe are spiteful. Tiny acts of revenge. But the Robin Hood gestures that we see, that’s her strange way of reconciling her parents’ values with her own perceived discarding of them. When she “levels the field” in these tiny ways, it’s her version of not being completely disconnected from her parents’ values about money and class.
Growing up, rules were suggestions, to be honest. The most important thing was not that you live by any black-and-white code but that you were doing the “right thing,” and I think what we see is that “right” for Olga depends on evening out the balance of power.
“I haven’t seen this larger history in fiction in a minute and felt it important to my community that it was correct.”
Because of what Olga and Prieto do for a living and the circles in which they operate, there are lots of fun details about luxury weddings and the lifestyles and excesses of New York’s elite. As a former wedding planner yourself, did you approach these parts as an insider writing a comedy of manners, or did you step back to unpack it all, more in the tradition of true crime? Ha. Probably more a comedy of manners, though it’s truly a bit of a mix. I know a lot of people in politics, and while I took a number of liberties, that area was a bit more tactical in my thinking. But the weddings were definitely in the spirit of a comedy of manners. Mainly, it was so important for me to show how these two characters have to have vast fields of knowledge and cultural fluency to move throughout the world, and also the toll and exhaustion of slipping in and out.
Olga’s mother, Blanca, is a fascinating, destabilizing character. Her absence from her children’s lives (in combination with her husband’s addiction) was devastating for Olga and Prieto. But Blanca’s mission is righteous, and some of the difficult, harsh things she tells her children are important and true. What did you want people to take away from Blanca and the choices she makes? Sort of, exactly that. None of us are purely bad or purely good, and that is the most starkly true with Blanca. She made choices, and they are the extreme choices of a woman who thinks in absolutes. In many ways this is how truly revolutionary thinkers need to be; we just don’t see them in intimate settings too much, such as in letters to their children.
But the main point I wanted to make with Blanca is that even when she’s wrong, she’s always also a little bit right. Motherhood is so, so fascinating. That bond, that knowing. Her actions beyond her insights are what’s problematic, but her ability to know—that felt very real to me and also important to show.
This is beyond your question, but this is a mirror of how Olga and Prieto feel about Puerto Rico itself: It’s a place they only sort of know, and yet it cuts through to something bigger than familiarity.
Listen to an audiobook excerpt from Macmillan Audiobooks. Read by Almarie Guerra, Armando Riesco & Inés del Castillo.
Puerto Rico’s plight, both past and neocolonial present, plays a big role in the story. Tell us about your approach to this element. Did you undertake additional research? I did. My day job when I started this book was at Hunter College, so I would jet uptown from the main campus to CENTRO, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, and research Maria data, the Young Lords, eco-pollution in Latinx communities and waves of activism. Some stuff was ingrained in me; my parents were activists, and I don’t remember not knowing about sterilization on the island or the Nuyorican poets, to be honest. Fania and that era of salsa and the cultural history of freestyle are things I dork out on anyway.
But generally speaking, I spent lots of time on colonial history and the history of activism in the diaspora. I spent tons of time watching Maria footage, researching HIV and AIDS in the 1990s—another era I lived through but wanted to refresh. I talked to Puerto Ricans who had been on the island and were displaced because of Maria—that was important. But I tried not to get bogged down in it, writ large. I tried to absorb it, forget it and then go back and write, because it all needed to come from character and story, not messaging. I just wanted to be sure I got it all correct, because I haven’t seen this larger history in fiction in a minute and felt it important to my community that it was correct.
The title, Olga Dies Dreaming, is particularly striking. Can you tell us about how it came to you and its significance? I sought a politically relevant name for the protagonist, and I settled on Olga Viscal Garriga, who was an activist for Puerto Rican independence who was born in Brooklyn. That felt right. Very, very right. In the earliest phase of the book, which would have been a million pages long, I wanted to write more of Blanca and Johnny’s story, and so I did lots of deep dives into the Young Lords and the Nuyorican poets. As I was writing, I was inspired by Alynda Segarra’s album and kept listening to it on repeat. In her song “Pa’lante,” she samples audio of the Pedro Pietri poem “Puerto Rican Obituary,” where he chronicles the dangers of assimilation and losing culture through the lives of four Puerto Ricans in New York: Juan, Miguel, Olga, Manuel. They lose their way by getting caught up in a mainland American notion of success. The characters repeatedly die, dreaming. Olga dies dreaming of a five-dollar raise, of real jewelry, of hitting the lottery. And that felt very right, too. But more than anything, it felt like the right title because it connected this moment—and Puerto Ricans and diasporic people—to our intensely long lineage of using art to speak truth to power.
Was it hard to find a balance between the personal and the political in telling this story? How did you approach that challenge? Yes and no. I wanted to write a book for my people. I mean that in a few contexts, but to direct it back to the question, when I saw Donald Trump throw paper towels at people in Puerto Rico after Maria, that was not political. That was personal. When I see the city council vote on an 80-story high-rise of multimillion-dollar apartments that only creates 150 school seats and blocks out a community garden, that doesn’t feel like a political story to me. It hurts me in my soul. As an artist, one goal was to try and put that on a page: that for many populations, the political is personal. But technically, my approach was to make these characters feel so real so that their pains are your pains.
“My approach was to make these characters feel so real so that their pains are your pains.”
There are many complex characters in this book with different perspectives on progress, power and effective strategies for change. But Dick, the libertarian capitalist paramour, is more obviously flawed than most. What was the inspiration for him? My strange life and professional experiences have given me the opportunity to have access to a wide variety of people—many of them people of power who are well-intentioned, in their own ways of thinking. Not stereotypical “bad people.” With Dick, I wanted to show how someone relatively self-centered, with theoretical justification for their self-interest, can cause great harm by simply existing, even if they never overtly seek to cause great harm. He can be seen, in many ways, as the U.S.’s stance and effect on Puerto Rico itself.
Olga’s family has an ancestral history of enslavement, and they and the people in their Brooklyn neighborhood are specifically referred to as Black and Brown. The text pays attention to color as well as culture, social class and ethnicity, and getting those details right is vital to the story. Olga is “pretty and fair,” her and Prieto’s father is “brown-skinned,” Reggie is Black, and Matteo is a biracial Black Jewish man with “lightly freckled café-con-leche skin.” Does the casting of the Hulu series adaptation reflect the vision you had when you were writing? Hollywood has a tendency to whitewash or flatten those layers in the movement to screen. How do you mitigate that? This is such a thoughtful question. Everyone, from my co-executive producer Alfonso Gomez-Rejon to our partners at 20th Television and Hulu, understood the importance of reflecting our community and illustrating the dynamics of colorism—and the intersectional ripples—that exist in Caribbean Latinx families and communities. And I never felt pressure to flatten roles at all. Olga’s privilege as a white-passable Latina is part of her experience and what has shaped her character itself and in relation to, say, her cousin Mabel. Both characters are successful and beautiful, but the messaging that they get about it—in school, at home—is different. It was exciting to see Aubrey Plaza and Jessica Pimentel in those roles.
There is a line of dialogue in the pilot where a DJ interviewing Reggie says, “I forget you’re Puerto Rican.” And that needed to feel plausible. That is a giant part of Reggie, too, that he gets boxed into one identity for so long, when in reality it’s much more complex, his Afro-Latinidad. On set, I spoke with Laz Alonso, who plays the role, about how moving and exciting it was for him to get to be his full self—a Puerto Rican version (he is Cubano)—but how rarely he gets roles where he can be who he is, an Afro-Latino.
And with Matteo, yes, it was important that he be plausibly racially ambiguous. We were very fortunate in that Jesse Williams, who plays him, is biracial (though not Jewish) with a lot of lived experience around Puerto Ricans and being mistaken for one. So that was a fortunate coincidence that he got to bring that to the role. But mainly we were extremely pointed in this, using this chance to see our spectrum of bodies and complexions and hair types that make Puerto Rican people so beautiful and that reflect our full history and story.
Can you talk about your creative influences? Were there specific authors or literary forebears you looked to as you developed the story? Yes! I spent a lot of time rereading books before I started. I was very taken with Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem and The Sellout by Paul Beatty. These books have a love of community, and Lethem that heart, and Beatty that razor wit, and I took a lot from both of these novels. I reread The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao because of history and diaspora and language. I reread One Hundred Years of Solitude, because it’s a religion to me, but also for scale and scope and to not be afraid of being big, and The World According to Garp for how to talk about complicated, flawed people. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and The Bonfire of the Vanities for inspiration on capturing New York and its multitudes. And finally, The House on Mango Street because I wanted to remember who the girl was that Olga would have been when she gets the letter from her mother that changes the trajectory of her life.
With her roots in Puerto Rico and heart in Brooklyn, the heroine of Xochitl Gonzalez’s vibrant and raw debut novel finds that politics and family are hopelessly intertwined.
In Xochitl Gonzalez’s vibrant and raw debut, Olga Dies Dreaming, love and family drama crash into politics.
Proudly Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorker) Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, faced some serious challenges when they were growing up in their diverse, working-class neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They were devastated when their uncompromising, demanding mother abandoned them to chase revolution, and again when their troubled father, who loved them unconditionally, died. And yet, all told, Olga and Prieto were fortunate. As driven, bright children, they had each other and a fiercely loving grandmother as a parental surrogate, and they grew up to become complicated, charismatic adults.
In the summer of 2017, at the start of the novel, Olga and Prieto should both be in a good place. They have thriving, high-profile careers and a chaotic, mostly supportive extended family. However, this ostensibly glittering present is overshadowed by the past and divided loyalties. Identity is complex and slippery for both Olga and Prieto, and individual successes don’t negate that. A new love is a tantalizing possibility for Olga, but with their family history, it’s a dream she’s never dared to have.
Olga and Prieto are both haunted by the devastating decline and exploitation of the island where they’ve never lived but always felt connected to. They’ve built more conventional lives than their mother, who chose the fight for Puerto Rican independence over her family, but both siblings remain conflicted. As a congressman, Prieto is the pride of the family, but he has a mandate to advocate for his largely Puerto Rican constituency, and a lot of people don’t think he’s lived up to the hype. Meanwhile, as a luxury wedding planner catering to wealthy New Yorkers, Olga’s chosen profession serves her quest for stability and security but is at odds with who she is and what she values. Highly educated and hypertalented, she’s an artist and a fierce Puertorriqueña, and although she’s great at her job, people in the fiercely status-conscious New York scene still treat her like she’s “the help.”
The real center of the story, which sometimes moves between the past (often in the form of letters) and the present, is Olga and Prieto’s reckoning with the tensions and contradictions that have made them who they are. The siblings have to come to terms with their identities and their mother, and what it would look like to authentically achieve something approximating the ”American dream” or maybe just happiness.
That’s equally out of reach for Olga and Prieto as they contend with the intersections of love (romantic and familial), identity, politics and history. With so many different moving parts and conflicts, Gonzalez’s story sometimes seems overstuffed, with writing that isn’t quite as beautiful as the journey. But the characters and the issues they’re grappling with are deeply compelling. Olga Dies Dreaming delivers a roller coaster’s worth of beautiful highs and lows. All told, it’s an experience worth savoring.
In Xochitl Gonzalez’s vibrant and raw debut, family drama crashes into politics.
Charlotte Holmes has never been in more danger and the ride has never been more exciting than in Miss Moriarty, I Presume?,Sherry Thomas’ sixth Lady Sherlock mystery.
Defying her parents’ most fervent wishes and every rule of polite Victorian society, the singular Miss Holmes has successfully contrived to live freely, both professionally and personally. Having put her talents and temperament to good use as a “consulting detective” under the guise of a fictional brother named Sherlock, Charlotte now helms a thriving business. She’s forged a lasting friendship with Mrs. Watson, her professional partner, confidante and landlord, and has finally found love and peace with Lord Ingram Ashburton, the man she’s admired since they were children. (Their surreptitious and sexy flirtation reaches new heights in this outing.)
Despite these happy circumstances, there is one thorny problem. Over the course of her previous cases, Charlotte attracted the dangerous attentions and ire of the criminal mastermind known as Moriarty. In Miss Moriarty, I Presume? that shadowy figure finally comes calling. Moriarty enlists Charlotte to verify the health and welfare of his errant adult daughter, who now lives on a mysterious commune and from whom he has recently stopped receiving scheduled updates. Alighting to Cornwall to see what has become of Miss Moriarty is a mission Charlotte doesn’t dare refuse, given that beneath Moriarty’s unsubtle demand lies an unspoken threat of violence.
Moriarty’s daughter’s whereabouts offer a complex and satisfying puzzle: She may be on the run, sick or even dead. The questions surrounding her and her motivations are plentiful and compelling, and her home, the pseudo-religious Garden of Hermopolis, is a superlative setting. Simultaneously quirky and dark, the walled and guarded compound provides a fertile environment for the mystery to grow.
With a plot hinging almost entirely on Moriarty and his kin, Miss Moriarty, I Presume? does much to mend Moriarty’s vague characterization and motives in the series’ earlier books. The mystery man becomes a little less opaque, and disparate threads involving other recurring characters come together as well. Key elements at the center of the series—the cold war with Moriarty and the romantic relationship between Charlotte and Lord Ingram—progress by leaps and bounds. Readers will revel in seeing Charlotte and her dearest companions at the top of their game in this eventful and pivotal entry in the formidable series.
Charlotte Holmes has never been in more danger and the ride has never been more exciting than in Miss Moriarty, I Presume?,Sherry Thomas’ sixth Lady Sherlock mystery.
All the Feels, the second book in Olivia Dade’s smart and sexy Spoiler Alertseries, follows a dreamy actor with a bad reputation and his down-to-earth soulmate.
Alex Woodroe stars as the mythical Cupid on “Gods of the Gates,” a prestige fantasy TV show similar to “Game of Thrones.” Following a rocky penultimate season and some embarrassing publicity, the producers have imposed a tight rein on the production of the final episodes. So when Alex gets into a headline-making bar brawl, a tense situation goes from bad to worse—and totally viral.
Enter Lauren Clegg, an even-tempered but burned-out emergency room psychotherapist. While decompressing between jobs in Europe, she receives a message that Ron, her estranged cousin and childhood bully who also happens to be a producer on “Gods of the Gates,” needs her help to get control of his star. Lauren signs on as Alex’s “minder.” She’s essentially his sober companion, but for issues with impulse control and volatile behavior instead of alcohol or drugs.
It’s a uniquely awkward meet cute that immediately results in intense close proximity. But Alex’s first reaction to Lauren isn’t love struck. For one thing, he thinks that his “new nanny looked like a bird.” More importantly, Alex objects to the entire idea that he needs minding.
Yet even though he teasingly dubs her “Nanny Clegg,” Lauren doesn’t treat him like a child, and the two begin to warm to each other. Soon the main question is whether close work friends, who not only met under inopportune circumstances but also have some inner healing to do, can become lovers.
All the Feels is a tender, slow burn romance that focuses first on Alex and Lauren’s friendship and then on the love that grows between them while they both take their own, separate journeys towards greater emotional well-being. Between her work as a therapist and the judgment she’s endured since childhood concerning her appearance, Lauren’s shell is hard to penetrate. Dade spends a lot of time depicting how Lauren attracts negative attention but is never surprised by it. After all, Lauren has been bullied before, even within her own family.
But the spotlight of celebrity makes the hostile scrutiny stronger. Alex is a wealthy celebrity, while Lauren is a respected but decidedly middle-class professional who is more comfortable in T-shirts than designer clothing. Due to his troubled family history, Alex has a strong sense of justice and ferocious protective instincts. And while that’s certainly noble, All the Feels doesn’t put his behavior on a pedestal. Alex might not be as out of control as Ron says he is, but being so reactive is something he needs to learn to manage, especially since he is a public figure.
It can be difficult to balance realism and romance in love stories about two people of unequal status and power. All the Feels delves deeply into the imbalances between its central couple, from looks to finances to fame. It succeeds because Dade ensures that there’s far more to Alex and Lauren than their value on the modern-day marriage market. Alex and Lauren’s progression toward romance is rooted in their friendship, which blossoms into a mutual care and compassion that is stunning to behold. Their romance is one to cry over and cheer for.
All the Feels, the second book in Olivia Dade’s smart and sexy Spoiler Alert series, follows a dreamy actor with a bad reputation and his down-to-earth soulmate.
Natashia Deón’s The Perishing is a dark, gritty and slow-burning mystery involving an immortal protagonist.
In Depression-era Los Angeles, a Black girl wakes up naked and alone in a downtown alleyway. She doesn’t know who she is, not even her name. Her body and mind are bruised but not broken, her origins a mystery. She’s placed with a Black foster family, and her foster mother suggests the name Louise, which gets shortened to Lou.
Lou may not remember her previous life, but her intelligence and talent are evident. She goes to high school and becomes a trailblazing journalist at the Los Angeles Times. But her feelings are divided; she vaguely thinks there might be a birth family out there for her, and a face continually haunts her, showing up in her sketches and dreams.
This is just one part of a story that hops between various time periods, including the future. As an immortal being, the woman known as Lou has lived many lives and has seen many things. Her storytelling is peppered with social observations and grim philosophical pronouncements about gender, race and the inhumanity of humankind. “We fight among ourselves in this village of earth,” she says, “wars to maintain elitism and its bounty, wars we should have never been fighting, where both winners and losers are traumatized and not just in war. But in love.”
The 1930s mystery of Lou’s family is a throughline in each era, as are recurrent themes of death and despair. As a new reporter, Lou’s beat is to report on the “tragic deaths of colored people,” and death touches her on a more personal level as well. In 2102, now named Sarah Shipley, the protagonist finds herself on trial. Acting as her own attorney, she pleads not guilty. “He got what he deserved,” she says. “I can defend all my lives. . . . And anyway, no woman kills unless in self-defense. If not in defense of a current wrong, for all the wrongs that came before without justice.”
Deón’s writing is beautiful, with a rat-a-tat quality, like brutal poetry mixed with fierce prose. The noirish plot is sometimes hard to penetrate, but fans of challenging and ambitious speculative fiction should be pleased.
Natashia Deón’s The Perishing is a dark, gritty and slow-burning mystery involving time travel and multiple lives.
The celebrity or public figure love interest has long been a popular staple of the romance genre. What’s nice about this particular trope is that it evolves with the times, and with new social contexts comes renewed relevance. That’s definitely the case as these two romantic comedies by bestselling authors shine a spotlight on the agony and the ecstasy of love in the 21st century public eye. The results are entertaining and enlightening. Both books weave solid doses of social observation and critique in with the love story, and both center characters dealing with the complications of being in the public eye while belonging to a marginalized group.
Jasmine Guillory’s Party of Two is a sweet and gently funny interracial romance about Olivia, an African American lawyer who dearly prizes her privacy and yet can’t helping falling for a wealthy, high profile white United States Senator. Max is simply delicious—handsome, smart and smitten, with a penchant for courting with baked goods—but getting entangled with him threatens to upturn Olivia’s carefully guarded life. The book follows their efforts to get to know each other and have a normal romantic relationship outside of the spotlight.
Though Max and Olivia navigate rarefied social worlds, this might be the most relatable of Guillory’s novels so far. It’s definitely the one most grounded in social reality. It is easy to connect with Olivia’s conundrum: She meets the man of her dreams, but finds that he comes with a lot of baggage and constraints that make a relationship with him far from ideal. That could be a relationship killer no matter how dreamy the guy may seem.
Guillory also ably addresses how race influences Olivia’s response to Max and how it exacerbates the difficulty of being in the public spotlight. Olivia researches Max’s social media and his political positions before agreeing to go out with him. His stance on Black Lives Matter, for example, was a potential deal breaker (turns out, they are both strong supporters). Now more than ever, that totally tracks.
Olivia and Max actually have a lot in common. They’re both accomplished in their own right. He’s a socially conscious, liberal senator and Olivia is an idealistic, Harvard-educated lawyer starting her own practice after making partner in a large, frustrating firm. But as a Black woman, Olivia is subject to more scrutiny from the public and the press than Max, or than she would be if she were white. Guillory skillfully portrays the nuances of Olivia’s social position and the precariousness of her privilege. Though the book takes place in the United States and not the U.K., Olivia and Max’s relationship contains definite parallels to the relationship between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Having watched one of the world’s most beautiful and accomplished women get virtually maimed by the tabloids, it’s not hard to imagine that a woman who has worked hard to overcome obstacles wouldn’t want to subject herself to similarly intense public scrutiny.
That said, despite its adept handling of its subject matter, a few elements didn’t entirely gel. The novel is strangely cagey about Max’s political party. It’s obvious that he’s a Democrat, but only through allusion. In a politically themed novel, the party names never appear, which is distracting and seems overly cautious in the current political moment. The characters’ internal monologues can also be a bit awkward at times. Those issues aside, I was happy to spend time in this world, and the issues and conflicts the couple navigate resonated. Party of Two is easily Guillory’s best book to date, and fans of the series will be thrilled with this entry and the growth Guillory displays as a writer.
While Party of Two looks at life in the eye of the political storm, Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material offers an entree into the treacherous world of celebrities and dating as reputation management. Luc, the lead character, is the child of a notoriously dissolute and neglectful rock star. His relationship with his lout of a father is nonexistent and has been nearly all his life. As a result of their estrangement, Luc has experienced almost none of the privileges of fame, but must manage all of the public scrutiny that comes with being the child of a famous person. His every move is hounded, his every breakup and alcohol-infused misstep fodder for the tabloids.
Herein lies the beauty of Hall’s novel. The fake-dating trope can be challenging to do well; it comes with a high bar for believability. There has to be a good reason why, in the year 2020, anyone would feel such social pressure that they would put the effort into constructing a fake relationship for public consumption. Boyfriend Material doesn’t merely meet that bar; it leaps over it with room to spare. Hall gives us a hero with a PR problem that actually matters.
The crux of the issue is that Luc has a tabloid life, but his career demands he live up to a fairy-tale ideal. As the lead campaigner for an obscure but important environmental charity, Luc’s job relies on the public’s goodwill for its success. Being the living embodiment of scandal is not just inconvenient or embarrassing. It’s a career killer. Big donors don’t like their money being associated with impropriety; their contributions are meant to burnish images, not tarnish them.
As a result, Luc’s presence in the tabloids is taking a real toll on the charity’s bottom line. The fact that Luc is a gay man further complicates his celebrity and notoriety. In theory, his sexuality should be irrelevant. His employer’s donors are proudly and loudly liberal. But in practice, Luc finds that attaining respectability is harder as a gay man. Because of society’s problematic double standards, Luc needs to show that he is the “right kind” of gay person, meaning that he’s neither promiscuous nor dissolute. Boyfriend Material deftly names and shames the hypocrisy in which being gay is great, as long as you strictly hew to traditionally heteronormative and conservative standards of behavior, lest you become a “bad gay.” Enter the fake boyfriend Oliver, a highly respected barrister who is as buttoned up as Luc is messy. Luc rightly bristles at the idea that he needs someone like Oliver at his side to do his job:
“Okay so”—Priya seemed a tad frustrated with me—“when you said a man, any man, you actually meant any man who fits into a very narrow, middle-class, and slightly heteronormative definition of acceptability.”
“Yes.”
All of this could get terribly heavy, but in Hall’s expert hands, it doesn’t. The critique of respectability politics as applied to the queer community runs throughout the book, but it never derails or detracts from Luc and Oliver’s story; it deepens it.
Another factor in the book’s success is the fact that these opposites have excellent chemistry, and their banter is first class. Hall positively insists that readers laugh and think at the same time. Every other sentence elicits a chuckle, but the laughs are continually tied to insight. The result is both laugh-out-loud funny and authentic.
Perhaps the best way to capture the magic of Boyfriend Material is to think of it as a literary, millennial version of a 1930s screwball comedy. The writing is vivid and visual like a movie, and the requisite elements—absurd situations, a seemingly mismatched couple, disguise and secrecy—are all there, though the true pandemonium is mostly confined to Luc’s hyper-aware and anxious brain. The tight-knit, hilarious ensemble of coworkers, friends and family surrounding Luc and Oliver are reminiscent of Richard Curtis’ brilliant romantic comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill.
Both Party of Two and Boyfriend Material are romances worth reading and thinking about. They tell sweet, funny and deeply romantic stories while exploring the challenges and contradictions of public and private life in the 21st century.
The celebrity or public figure love interest has long been a popular staple of the romance genre. What’s nice about this particular trope is that it evolves with the times, and with new social contexts comes renewed relevance. That’s definitely the case as these two…
More than any other category in the romance genre, small-town romances promise warmth and comfort, the narrative equivalent of a security blanket in anxious times. Three romances deliver on that mission while also incorporating a surprising amount of contemporary social reality into the mix. They retain many hallmarks of the traditional small-town romance: conventional couples; tight-knit, if mostly culturally homogenous communities; and towns so tiny and remote they take extra effort to reach. But much like Sarina Bowen’s popular True North series, they avoid presenting the small town as a bucolic paradise that renders a prodigal son or daughter whole. Instead, these towns have their own struggles and challenges, much like the books' protagonists. These are stories about communities and how they adapt and change in order to thrive.
The Cowboy Says I Do, Come Home to Deep River and Paradise Cove all begin with significant disruptions: a threatened real estate development, the discovery of oil, the closing of a factory, the death of a loved one or the scourge of new, deadlier drugs. These changes threaten relationships, livelihoods and the way of life. The path to happy ever after, which is the right of every couple in the romance genre, requires learning to cope with that change. In each of these books, that means both respecting the old ways and embracing the new; after all, there’s as much comfort to be found in change as in tradition, and all three books skillfully negotiate this balance. All three are softly, swooningly romantic in traditional ways, but the modern and even feminist flourishes are clear too. The men may wear cowboy hats and work boots, but not a single one strictly embodies the traditional alpha male archetype. The women know how to lead, and the men know how to nurture.
In The Cowboy Says I Do, Dylann Crush explores the seamier side of small-town life, demonstrating that not all traditions are good, and sometimes you have to break with the past to secure a better future.
In Idont, Texas, corruption has been the custom for a very long time, and prospects are looking grim. The newly elected mayor, Lacey Cherish, is digging her way out from under the public embarrassment her father, the disgraced former mayor, created, and a major employer has just shut its doors. Lacey is determined to save both her family name and her town by rebranding Idont as “Ido,” and transforming it into a one-stop wedding destination. It’s a long shot, and Lacey is a real underdog—she’s a waitress with no relevant experience, a shaky reputation and a chip on her shoulder—but she’ll do just about anything to turn things around. Her older brother’s best friend Bodie, the deputy sheriff, is her greatest ally and former crush, but she’s not sure she can trust him.
With that setup, Crush effectively anchors the story in several familiar tropes that work well together. Bodie and Lacey grow from childhood frenemies to lovers, and there’s also a fake relationship/fake engagement with a significant dose of best friend’s little sister tension woven in. Lacey and Bodie's connection is undeniable, but so too are their conflicts, and it all makes for excellent banter. There’s also an interesting subplot involving a pitbull rescue and suspected dog-fighting ring. It’s a nice touch as it brings out Bodie’s nurturing side as he takes on a foster dog whom he showers with loving care, and it begins a thread that will carry on through further books in the series.
What distinguishes this book the most, however, is its unexpected intrigue. For reasons that aren’t at all transparent to her at the start, Lacey faces a lot of friction from Bodie’s ethically challenged family members as she proceeds with her revitalization plan. Bodie’s family is definitely hiding something and it’s clearly not good. This creates a tug of war as Bodie is torn between his professional responsibilities, his burgeoning attraction to Lacey and family loyalty. As the deputy sheriff, Bodie must break from the way the good old boys in his family have used their stature and family name to skirt the law. With divided loyalties and high stakes, these external conflicts complicate an already fragile connection, and the crime and corruption provide a nice contrast to the novel’s otherwise frothy romantic comedy vibe. There are no real cowboys in this story, just a well-crafted cocktail of romantic comedy and suspense in a struggling Texas town.
Jackie Ashenden’s Come Home to Deep River strikes a more somber tone. In this second-chance romance, a bush pilot returns to his isolated Alaskan hometown for the first time in 13 years after the death of his closest friend. When Silas Quinn left Deep River to join the Army with his best friend Cal West, they both left their childhood friend, Hope, behind. Cal’s connection, though, was never severed. The Wests have effectively owned the town for generations, and in the years since, Cal returned multiple times, while Silas intentionally stayed away. For Si, good memories were overshadowed by familial loss and unrequited love. But when Cal dies, he leaves Silas and their business partners both ownership of and responsibility for stewardship of the town.
The discovery of valuable oil reserves in Deep River further complicates the situation, putting the town on the cusp of change with the potential to destroy the environment and the very nature of the community as outside developers try to purchase the residents’ property. It also thrusts Hope and Silas back into each other’s lives. Thirteen years of absence means 13 years of simmering resentment and loneliness. There is a lot of drama there, but there’s also deep, abiding (though unacknowledged) love and a chemistry that has been simmering and left unsated for over a decade. Silas is the most traditional of the three men in these small-town stories. He’s got a subtly dominant streak, and it turns out that Hope likes it. But even in the most traditional of this trio of small-town stories, Silas puts Hope’s future above his own.
Silas and Hope's story has a haunting tone. In their years without each other, it’s unlikely that either Hope or Silas has ever felt whole or wanted, even though Hope stayed behind in Deep River to take care of her mother. She put every dream she ever had for herself aside, but it was never enough. This is a story about coming to terms with ghosts and grudges that no longer serve any purpose. The book's greatest strength is the chemistry between Hope and Silas. Alone, each one makes a semi-tragic figure. Together they ignite. Their love scenes are what romance writers dream of—arresting and affecting, sensual explorations of a deep emotional connection.
Jenny Holiday’s Paradise Cove is the most personal and poignant of the three books, as both of its leads are recovering from life-changing loss. After a soul-crushing betrayal by her longtime partner, Dr. Nora Walsh leaves her big-city job and her expensive apartment to become the local family doctor in tiny Moonflower Bay. There she meets Jake, a grieving father who’s short on words but generous in spirit. Holiday writes beautiful prose, and while her story is incredibly emotional, she leavens its heaviness with quirky secondary characters and generous helpings of humor.
Holiday also devises the most adorable of meet-cutes for her leads:
"The first time Nora Walsh saw Jake Ramsey, he was getting his hair braided. He was sitting in one of the chairs at Curl Up and Dye reading a copy of Field & Stream while a stylist did some kind of elaborate Maria von Trapp cross-scalp braiding thing to his long brown hair. The image was almost comical: this giant, beefy man sitting on a chair that looked like a piece of dollhouse furniture compared to him. It was like Jason Momoa’s paler twin had shown up to play beauty parlor."
For that moment on, in Nora’s eyes, the taciturn Jake is both Aquaman and man-god. She soon finds, however, that Jake is much more than his looks, and Moonflower Bay is more than a place to hideout and regroup. Jake becomes Nora’s best friend and the community becomes her home. He cooks for her. He builds a deck for her. He takes care of her in every way he can, even as he still reels from the loss of a child.
Though the bones of this story are familiar, Jenny Holiday makes them fresh by giving Nora and Jake's friends to friends-with-benefits to lovers arc a rock-solid emotional rationale on both sides. Plus, the town has real, recognizable public health problems that Nora commits to helping solve. Jake and Nora’s chemistry is red hot, and they suit each other more than a little right from the start, so their primary quest is overcoming their pasts to come together whole. Their love story will break your heart and put it back together again better than before, and you’ll be grateful for having experienced it all.
More than any other category in the romance genre, small-town romances promise warmth and comfort, the narrative equivalent of a security blanket in anxious times. Three romances deliver on that mission while also incorporating a surprising amount of contemporary social reality into the mix. They…
Wild and wicked women—long may we praise them. Long may we be them.
Three magical tales mine the rebellion and persecution of willful women in America’s past and present to chilling effect. If you have any feminist leanings, these books will inflame them. If you don’t, these books may incite them.
There’s a fascinating interplay of past and present, and fiction and reality, in Plain Bad Heroines, Emily M. Danforth’s debut novel for adults. Two stories unfold in parallel. One begins shortly after the turn of the 20th century, when the scandalous and not-so-subtly titled bestselling book I Await the Devil’s Coming—an incredible, quotable and, best of all, real piece of queer history—ignites a dangerous fervor at a tony Rhode Island school for girls. The book’s author, Mary MacLane, writes about ambition, sensuality and lust, including her attraction to other women. Two girls in particular, Clara and Flo, become gloriously, passionately entangled with the book and with each other. They see themselves in the text in ways they never have before, and they form a club to honor MacLane. When MacLane writes, “Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?” and “I wish someone would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her,” it is easy to see the appeal.
But the book becomes both talisman and curse. Soon Flo, Clara and another classmate end up dead, all three found with the same copy of the infamous red book, leaving the school’s principal and her partner to sort through what happened and manage both the guilt and the ongoing threat.
Alas, the curse doesn’t end there. A century later, another rebellious teenager becomes obsessed with MacLane, as well as with Flo and Clara’s story, and writes a history that gets optioned for film. This second storyline focuses on the conflicts and passions surrounding the film’s production, which is plagued by some of the same omens that bedeviled Clara and Flo.
Plain Bad Heroines is smart, feminist and funny (as well as beautifully illustrated by Sara Lautman), and invites more psychological reflection than fright despite its significant body count. A sense of dread builds, then dissipates and builds again, without ever truly finding release. Danforth propels her story not with scary moments but with beautiful writing, indelible characters and complex relationships.
In contrast to Danforth’s metafictional take, Alix E. Harrow’s second novel, The Once and Future Witches, is a more traditional witches’ tale. Magic and history abound in this suspenseful saga, which boasts an impressively rich and notably inclusive cast of secondary characters.
In 1893, put off by the elitism and stodginess of the local suffragists, three long-estranged sisters reunite to form a more inclusive movement for women’s rights, one that encourages the embrace of their magical powers. In doing so, the Eastwood sisters make an enemy of a dangerously overzealous politician who is both more and less than he seems. Witchcraft is far from the only activity Gideon Hill wants to suppress. He criminalizes suffragists, unionists and all manner of “unnatural women” and threatens anyone who would give them aid. The only thing the women he targets have in common is their refusal to cooperate with the powers that be. Still, they unite against the common threat, sparking a magical battle royal in the town of New Salem. Fairy-tale elements and the sisters’ tentative, tender steps toward forgiving past wounds add depth to the struggle.
Magic Lessons, Alice Hoffman’s new prequel to her beloved 1995 bestseller, Practical Magic, organizes its strong feminist themes organically. Heartbreaking and heart-healing, this intense and gorgeous novel answers a unique question: How does a bastard and orphan, criminal and daughter of a witch, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean, grow up to become a heroine and mother in Massachusetts? Lush and enchanting, Magic Lessons reveals the nearly tragic but ultimately triumphant origin story of Maria, matriarch of the illustrious Owens clan introduced in Practical Magic.
As an infant, Maria was found abandoned in a field. By the age of 19, she had witnessed ample evidence of love’s destructive power in the lives of countless women who were beaten, betrayed, bought and sold by men who should have protected them. Maria’s birth mother had to give up her child to protect her from her father, who supposedly loved her too much. Maria’s adoptive mother, Hannah, was accused of being an abomination by a man she thought loved her. So when Maria meets the right man, a good man who only wants to love her, she doesn’t trust him. Plus, she’s already met the wrong one, who cemented her distaste for romantic love.
This is an impressive tale—equal parts love story, history and horror. One of the novel’s most terrifying aspects is that, much like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, this fictional tale is grounded in the well-documented persecution of women in 17th-century New England. Eventually love wins out, but that is only one part of a broader story in which an abused, neglected and discounted woman rises, finding a way to save herself, safeguard her family for generations and make systemic change for others along the way. The whole thing is absolutely riveting and rewarding from start to finish.
Three magical tales mine the rebellion and persecution of willful women in America’s past and present to chilling effect. If you have any feminist leanings, these books will inflame them. If you don’t, these books may incite them.
These contemporary romances encompass an incredible range of topics: a political marriage of convenience, a big-city cop escaping sexual harassment in a small town, a cold-case murder mystery and a second chance for first love. But one theme runs through them all—powerful, complicated women fighting for autonomy and, somewhat secondarily, finding themselves falling in love.
Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
MaryJanice Davidson blends romance, horror and cozy mystery into a frothy tale of a star pilot who teams up with a hot medical examiner to solve her best friend’s murder on the 10-year anniversary of said friend’s death. When Captain Ava Capp finds herself in Minnesota at the same time as the memorial service, she receives a hostile welcome from her friend’s family, who suspect she may have had something to do with the murder, but finds an ally in the stern but sexy local M.E. Tom Baker. As a series of strange things start happening around her that may or may not be tied to the anniversary, Ava needs the support. She’s been pretty much alone for the past decade, with her career as her only constant. She’s used to hotel rooms and functional, transitional friends-with-benefits arrangements but no real personal connections. Grounded and family-oriented Tom offers something more (he's also on the autism spectrum, which Davidson refreshingly depicts with the same good-spirited and zany humor she bring to everything else).
Reading Truth, Lies, and Second Dates feels like riding a roller coaster—twisty, turny and full of surprises. Davidson delivers a really good time if you enjoy the book's somewhat frantic, sometimes stream-of-consciousness third-person narration, which puts you in the center of Ava’s chaotic point of view. There’s a diary-like quality to many chapters, which frequently leap from one topic to another, sometimes mid-sentence, as we follow Ava’s trajectory. There’s also wonderful, flirtatious banter between the two highly intelligent and distinctive main characters, an element of their relationship that is particularly important to Tom, since he is demisexual (he doesn’t feel attraction until he has formed an emotional connection to someone). But the mystery element can also be hard to follow at times, so don’t expect a clear or solid trail leading to the culprit. Overall, this is an uncut gem with only a few slightly ragged edges.
How to Catch a Queen
How to Catch a Queen is a finely polished jewel of a novel about opposites not only attracting, but making each other whole. Cole has been doing this for a while and it shows: How to Catch a Queen is the first book in her Runaway Royals series, which is a spinoff from her critically acclaimed and award-winning Reluctant Royals trilogy. King Sanyu of Njaza is wracked with anxiety and self-doubt about his destiny. But when his father’s health takes a turn for the worse, he’s expected to find a queen at short notice. His union with Shanti Mohapti is a temporary and hastily arranged formality, a “trial marriage” facilitated through a royal matchmaking website, of all things. No one expects true love to take hold between a man who was born to be king but doubts his own fitness to rule, and a brilliant farm girl who believes it is her destiny to be a queen. Shanti is a consummate and focused professional who has prioritized career goals over her personal life—she’s studied politics and economics, sits on the board of several charities and has never given up her childhood dream of becoming a queen. She is very good at what she does, and sometimes attracts friction because of it.
Cole has crafted a compelling story about opposites and allies falling in love that is rich in political intrigue and social observation. Her depiction of the dynamics of politics, gender and ideology in this ostensibly fairytale-esque land is shockingly astute. It’s fascinating to see how these two individuals interact with each other and how larger social forces act upon them while they get to know each other. Shanti arrives in Njaza armed with dreams and binders full of research and strategic plans. She has education, confidence and political savvy enough for them both, and is just the partner Sanyu needs to move his country forward. However, it’s difficult for her to find her footing in the traditional, patriarchal monarchy she’s found herself in, since she’s both an outsider and a woman. Plus, there’s quite a bit of palace intrigue and jockeying for power among different factions working against them as well. Though Shanti is an ideal ally, Sanyu wasn’t raised to believe in love or to think that a woman could be his true partner, let alone that they could work together as equals. So he wastes quite a bit of time dodging their obvious attraction, and How to Catch a Queen ends up being a really slow burn as a result. Cole also does impeccable work with the diverse, fully formed and sometimes very funny supporting characters. These layers enrich Shanti and Sanyu’s journey and make the payoff that much sweeter.
Bayou Dreaming
Though it’s a more conventional novel, sexual politics also inform Lexi Blake’s small-town romance, Bayou Dreaming. Former military sniper Roxanne King’s divorce and her subsequent move to Louisiana were precipitated by the sexual harassment she suffered in the New York Police Department and the lack of support she received from her family. After filing a complaint that didn’t go anywhere and getting ostracized for it, Roxie starts over in rural Louisiana and finds herself inexplicably attracted to a local bad boy with a heart of gold.
Starting over as a deputy in a very small town suits Roxie fine. She likes her neighbors and she’s good at her job, even if it's less challenging than she’s used to. One year after the big move, though, Roxanne’s family turns up in what they call a visit but looks a lot like an intervention. Their unexpected, unsolicited and frankly unwelcome invasion threatens to overturn Roxie’s hard-earned peace of mind and independence, so she lies and says she has a boyfriend to keep her mother from interfering in her life.
Desperate for someone to play the role, she turns to Zep Guidry, a local wildlife expert and Roxie’s one-time hookup partner. After her disastrous marriage and the sexism she fought on the job, Roxie has learned to keep men at a distance. But she can’t quite keep Zep out of her system. She doesn’t want to want him, but she’s inexorably drawn to him anyway. He so haunts her that she finds herself repeatedly arresting him just to have an excuse to keep him near (subconsciously). Zep is hip to her game. After all, he understands animal psychology, and “It wasn’t the first time he’d had some beautiful creature snarl his way even though it was obvious she needed some affection.” Roxie sees Zep as a charming layabout—even his muscles seem unearned—but there’s far more to the “baddest boy of the parish” than she gives him credit for, and her family’s visit forces them into close proximity, allowing these two to explore what’s really between them. Bayou Dreaming is straightforward and perfectly executed. The writing is tight, the characters are well drawn and Blake is especially good at writing swoony love scenes that deepen character and advance the central relationship.
The Way You Hold Me
Skye Palmer, the heroine of Elle Wright's The Way You Hold Me, shares Ava, Shanti and Roxie’s ambition and career focus, but emotionally, she’s more of a mess and she knows it. Thankfully, she’s seeking help. This book is really about Skye’s journey, through therapy and the support of family and friends, towards having the confidence to claim the love that’s always been there for her. What’s particularly challenging is her history of somewhat inexplicably mistreating the man who loves her, and she knows it: “I feel like I suck for treating him that way. Transferring my anger at myself to him is the only way I’ve been able to see him and not either fall apart or beg him to have sex with me.” As this deep history unfolds, Skye’s choices start to make more sense. Garrett was Skye’s first love, and when his mother died, he took responsibility for raising his 10-year-old sister. Garrett's new familial role would have thrust Skye into a step-parent-like position, which she wasn’t ready for, so she broke it off, but never got over him. It was the right move, but it wasn’t executed in the kindest way, and their subsequent run-ins have been less than ideal, with Skye punishing Garrett for transgressions he didn’t commit as a form of self-protection.
Many years later, Skye is working hard on her emotional health as well as her career, and the former lovers find themselves on opposite ends of a celebrity scandal. Garrett is an attorney doing crisis management for Julius Reeves, one of the hottest Black directors in the industry and an “unapologetic ladies’ man” who’s just been accused of sexual harassment. Skye is a public relations expert representing Reeves’ wife, an actress known as “Black America’s Sweetheart.” The case throws them together and their romance finally starts to take root again, despite Skye’s ongoing anxiety and guilt. Over the course of the novel, Skye learns to own her choices and her missteps, but there isn’t quite the amount of groveling that would be expected (and required) were their gender roles reversed. Skye’s anxiety also remains a bit of a mystery. She learns how to better manage her irrational responses, but the book doesn’t really dive into their origins as much as it could.
All four of these books skillfully negotiate a balance between familiar story beats and innovation. All are softly romantic in traditional ways, but also fiercely contemporary and feminist in how they prioritize self-determination for their heroines.
This month’s crop of contemporary romance encompasses an incredible range of topics. But one theme runs through them all—powerful, complicated women fighting for autonomy and finding themselves falling in love.
People say that timing is everything in romantic relationships. It’s a well-worn aphorism, but one endorsed (at least partially) by psychologists, life coaches and parents alike. Romances that center unexpected babies therefore have massive conflict built in. Bringing new life into the world is always a monumental task, but doing so while you’re forging a new connection with another human being amps up the degree of difficulty to 10. While unplanned parenting would be a game changer for any couple, characters with already challenging lives in both Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez and Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl by Hettie Bell meet new partners at the most inopportune time, and fall inexorably in love nonetheless.
Soapy rather than frothy, Abby Jimenez’s first two novels, The Friend Zone and The Happy Ever After Playlist, seamlessly combined romance, comedy and drama. Life’s Too Short, in which a globe-trotting YouTube star with a deadly neurodegenerative disease becomes guardian of her sister’s baby and falls in love with her workaholic neighbor who’s afraid to fly, further showcases Jimenez’s masterful blend of genres and tone.
For Vanessa Price, “yolo” (you only live once) is more than a catchy slogan; it’s the philosophy she lives by. At 28 years old, with a family history of ALS, she’s seen what the disease can do firsthand—the survival time from onset of symptoms averages just three years—and she’s determined to make the most of the time she has. Vanessa roams the world as a travel YouTube star, broadcasting her latest adventures and donating the bulk of her hefty earnings to ALS research. Neither settling down in one place nor long-term romantic commitments are part of the plan. And parenting is out of the question. So when her younger sister drops her infant daughter, Grace, on Vanessa's doorstep, Vanessa is very believably not equipped to take on the parental role.
One particularly challenging night, help arrives in an unexpected package. Grace won’t stop wailing and her meltdown brings Vanessa’s sexy next-door neighbor, Adrian, to her door. Their first meeting demonstrates Jimenez's flair for character and conflict. A thoroughly lovely hunk, Adrian is smart, supportive and just a little wounded, coming off a yearlong relationship with a woman he didn’t realize was married. He’s as buttoned up and controlled as Vanessa is spontaneous and risk-taking, but he’s a natural baby whisperer and they make a great team. Though her chaotic family sees Adrian as a “Fancy Hall Cop,” Vanessa gawks admiringly at his calming effect on Grace—a “sorcery” that makes her “clutch a hand over [her] heart.” Impulsive jetsetter meets attorney who’s afraid to fly works well as an effective and creative variation on the idea that opposites attract, but the angst could easily be overwhelming. Instead, Jimenez successfully plays up the contrasts for welcome comic relief, as seen here in Vanessa’s first thought about Adrian:
"This is the hottest guy in my building. Maybe the hottest guy on my block. He is so attractive that if he rolled up on me in an alley in a windowless white van, wearing rubber gloves and waving duct tape, claiming he had candy—I’d get in."
Adrian and Vanessa's vibrancy, paired with Jimenez’s funny and irreverent writing, carry the reader through. The banter, mutual adoration and chemistry between Adrian and Vanessa are more than enough to trigger a swoon. These are irresistible characters, and Life’s Too Short will win readers over with its charm.
In Knit, Purl, A Baby and a Girl, single mother-to-be Poppy Adams’ life is much less glamorous than Vanessa’s. But they have one essential thing in common: becoming a parent was not part of their plan. Poppy is not in a good place emotionally, even before she learns that she’s pregnant. The 22-year-old is insecure, isolated and struggles with negative self-talk and self-loathing. Finding out that she’s pregnant after a drunken round of sex with her ex is the last thing she needs. After drugstore tests come up positive, she goes to Planned Parenthood almost set on having an abortion (though she’s internally unsure as to why), but comes out encouraged and determined to have the baby. Impending motherhood also leads her to join a knitting group where she runs into the very cute and supportive Rhiannon, who also happens to have been her kindly clinic escort.
In her first contemporary romance, Canadian author Hettie Bell (who also writes as Heidi Belleau) creates a sensitive, information-rich portrait of the experience of visiting a Planned Parenthood clinic in the early stages of pregnancy and all the factors that affect what happens next. As Poppy arrives at Planned Parenthood, Bell describes the gauntlet of protest many clients have to face just to get to the front door, the clinic escorts who help them navigate it and the counselors inside who clearly outline the options. Though she is strongly pro-choice, the conclusion Poppy arrives at is this: It’s time to grow up, and she wants to be a parent.
This is a particularly big step since a lifetime of harsh parental criticism has left Poppy with a damaged sense of self, and she struggles with social comparisons and a kind of failure to launch syndrome as a result. You know someone's not in a good place with their family when an innocuous declaration that she’s taking up knitting triggers the response of “Yeah sure, good luck with that” from her sister. Bell paints a consistently convincing portrait of Poppy as someone whose biggest challenge is psychological well-being and maturity. But Poppy also recognizes that she has the fundamental stability needed to take care of a child. Though she beats herself up for being a college dropout, that’s largely due to her family’s expectations. Financially, she’s doing ok. She has a small but comfortable home and a reliable job with health insurance. Similarly to how director/writer Gillian Robespierre’s rom-com Obvious Child normalized abortion, Knit, Purl shows the experience of choosing to become a young, single mother in a complex, loving, but still pro-choice way.
Maturity and a combination of family and pregnancy-related complications end up being the biggest barriers to Poppy’s relationship with the wonderfully sweet and hot Rhiannon, who leads the knitting group. There’s no question that they’re drawn to each other, and Rhiannon likes and appreciates Poppy from the start. They enjoy undeniable sexual chemistry, which Bell brings to vivid life on the page, but Rhiannon is understandably cautious about jumping into a committed relationship with a pregnant woman she’s just met and committing to being part of a child’s life. They’re mulling over the potential for co-parenting before they’ve even begun to formally date. The primary push-pull centers on the complexities of forging a new relationship under those circumstances and Poppy’s instinctual desire to make Rhiannon an instant partner.
Poppy’s loneliness and insecurities are palpable and vividly rendered. But she’s given no support system outside of the new knitting group and her girlfriend Rhiannon. All the spotlight is on the emotional growth of this one character whose near total isolation and alienation are confusing given her personality. As a result, Bell’s romance is largely a coming-of-age story about a woman on the cusp of adulthood as much as it’s a love story between Poppy and Rhiannon.
Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl is an imperfect but original and emotionally engaging story that is worth reading for its messy but realistic portrayal of unplanned pregnancy and a young woman coming into her own.
Bringing new life into the world is always a monumental task, but doing so while you’re forging a new connection with another human being amps up the degree of difficulty to 10.
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While Party of Two looks at life in the eye of the political storm, Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material offers an entree into the treacherous world of celebrities and dating as reputation management. Luc, the lead character, is the child of a notoriously dissolute and neglectful rock star. His relationship with his lout of a father is nonexistent and has been nearly all his life. As a result of their estrangement, Luc has experienced almost none of the privileges of fame, but must manage all of the public scrutiny that comes with being the child of a famous person. His every move is hounded, his every breakup and alcohol-infused misstep fodder for the tabloids.
In The Cowboy Says I Do, Dylann Crush explores the seamier side of small-town life, demonstrating that not all traditions are good, and sometimes you have to break with the past to secure a better future.
Jackie Ashenden’s Come Home to Deep River strikes a more somber tone. In this second-chance romance, a bush pilot returns to his isolated Alaskan hometown for the first time in 13 years after the death of his closest friend. When Silas Quinn left Deep River to join the Army with his best friend Cal West, they both left their childhood friend, Hope, behind. Cal’s connection, though, was never severed. The Wests have effectively owned the town for generations, and in the years since, Cal returned multiple times, while Silas intentionally stayed away. For Si, good memories were overshadowed by familial loss and unrequited love. But when Cal dies, he leaves Silas and their business partners both ownership of and responsibility for stewardship of the town.
Jenny Holiday’s Paradise Cove is the most personal and poignant of the three books, as both of its leads are recovering from life-changing loss. After a soul-crushing betrayal by her longtime partner, Dr. Nora Walsh leaves her big-city job and her expensive apartment to become the local family doctor in tiny Moonflower Bay. There she meets Jake, a grieving father who’s short on words but generous in spirit. Holiday writes beautiful prose, and while her story is incredibly emotional, she leavens its heaviness with quirky secondary characters and generous helpings of humor.
How to Catch a Queen
Bayou Dreaming
The Way You Hold Me
