Carole V. Bell

RomanceContemporary Romance

People We Meet on Vacation

Review by Carole V. Bell

Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation is an inspired and achingly romantic reimagining of Nora Ephron’s beloved rom-com When Harry Met Sally, which famously questioned whether men and women (heterosexual pairings specifically) can ever truly be just friends. And the answer, then and now, is . . . probably not if they act like these characters do.

Like Ephron and Jane Austen before her, Emily Henry paints a specific and nuanced picture of first impressions gone perfectly wrong in a prelude to a relationship that is nonetheless incredibly right. When Alex meets Poppy during the first night of orientation at the University of Chicago, neither one is particularly impressed. He is wearing khakis; she wears what look to him like a ridiculous costume. Alex quickly sizes Poppy up, reacting to her “neon orange and pink floral jumpsuit from the early seventies” with skepticism and disapproval. They’re sure they have little in common apart from “the fact that we hate each other’s clothes.” But it takes just one more meeting—a shared ride home to their mutual hometown in Ohio over break—for an enduring mutual fascination, fueled by those same differences, to firmly take hold.

The rest is the stuff of legend or infamy, depending on your vantage point. From the perspective of Alex’s long-term, long-suffering, on-again, off-again girlfriend, Sarah, Poppy’s connection with Alex hangs over her own relationship with him like a constant threat—Chekov’s unresolved sexual tension. From the perspectives of Alex and Poppy, who are deeply committed to denying their palpable physical attraction to each other, the two are devoted best friends, almost like siblings: 95% platonic and just a tiny bit “what if.” But that pesky 5% is a killer. Poppy is continually surprised when it rears its head.

Even worse, Poppy, from whose perspective the story is told, misguidedly but truly believes she’s alone in this torture. Alex is a buttoned up English major-turned-high school teacher and a surrogate father to his younger brothers. Poppy is a freewheeling former weirdo-turned-travel writer and internet personality who’s determined to make up the time she lost to bullies when she was young. Both are seemingly committed to the idea that someone like him could never want someone like her and vice versa.

Partners come and go, but for over a decade Alex and Poppy keep in close touch and continue the ritual of an annual summer vacation. The first years are lean ones: She blogs about her travels; he goes to graduate school to get an MFA in creative writing and then a Ph.D. in literature. They save and scrimp and take on extra jobs to fund their budget adventures. Eventually Alex returns to Ohio to teach, and Poppy secures a dream job at a glamorous travel magazine called Rest and Relaxation (a thinly veiled version of aspirational publications like Travel + Leisure). After that, the vacation locales go upscale: a villa in Tuscany, high-end European hotels. Though the style of travel evolves, Alex and Poppy’s devotion—their heartfelt intrigue and obsession with each other and the unspoken attraction that pulls them together like magnets wherever they roam—never changes.

In When Harry Met Sally, Harry claims this type of close, sustained platonic friendship can’t be done, at least not in the way Alex and Poppy are doing it: “What I’m saying is . . . that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.” The gorgeously written, delightfully original People We Meet on Vacation will not do much to contest that claim. It’s a wonderful tribute that puts Henry firmly on the path to becoming the millennial Nora Ephron.

Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation is an inspired and achingly romantic reimagining of Nora Ephron’s beloved rom-com When Harry Met Sally.

YA FictionYA

A Sitting in St. James

Review by Carole V. Bell

A Sitting in St. James is a mesmerizing, confounding and vividly rendered portrait of the thoroughly putrid institution of slavery in antebellum Louisiana. Though author Rita Williams-Garcia’s writing is exquisite, the history she so skillfully captures is ugly and therefore sometimes difficult to read.

Filtered through the story of the Guilberts, a plantation-owning white Creole family who experiences both economic decline and moral decay, A Sitting in St. James does many things well. First and foremost, it attaches human faces, flesh and blood, to seemingly distant history and to abstract ideas such as white supremacy. It also forces readers to confront the routinely brutal, dehumanizing realities of family separation and sexual exploitation and abuse that were intrinsic to the plantation system, as Williams-Garcia brings these heartbreaking acts to life on the page. 

Prideful and aristocratic Sylvie Bernardin de Maret Dacier Guilbert is the product of another corrupt system, the French royal court. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Sylvie was offered a choice: “convent, guillotine, or plantation lord’s wife.” She chose the latter under some duress and never fully acclimated to her fate. This layer of privilege only makes Sylvie more demanding, more entitled and more aggrieved. It’s why, many decades later, even as the plantation fails, Sylvie insists on having herself memorialized by a famed French painter like the aristocrat she was born to be. Her demand sets the novel in motion. 

That sense of privilege is also why Sylvie plucked her personal servant, Thisbe, from her family’s quarters like a puppy from a pound and named her after Marie Antoinette’s prized pet dog. Like a pet, Thisbe is constantly forced to shadow Sylvie, even sleeping by her feet. “You are a body,” Sylvie tells Thisbe at one point, “not a whole person.” It’s a stunning encapsulation of the novel’s white characters’ emotional attachment to notions of Black inferiority and inhumanity. The belief that Black people are less than human was fundamental to slavery, and the Guilberts will go to any length to uphold it. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Rita Williams-Garcia reveals the interaction that inspired A Sitting in St. James.

The racism of Sylvie’s loutish, dissolute and disappointing American-born son, Lucien, manifests with more complexity and more horror than his mother’s. He can be charming and has complicated relationships with his biracial daughter and half brother. Lucien spends most of the novel trying to find a way to save the plantation from its crushing debt. But he has also raped an unspecified number of the women over whom he has dominion, ordered forced breeding for profit, separated children from their families as a matter of course and generally handles and refers to Black people in dehumanizing terms.

Lucien’s actions are bound up in his roles as the steward of the plantation and the Guilbert patriarch. The historical record shows that his actions are representative of the abuses enacted in this system by men in his position. Even at Lucien’s violent worst, his justification for doing deliberate harm is clear: “His was the act of a master pruning the vine that would kill the harvest. He did what a farmer must: rid the virulent worm that would contaminate the vineyard and cause it to bear no fruit.”

Though this is a multilayered and expansive ensemble story with a significant queer romance, Williams-Garcia places villains Sylvie and Lucien firmly at its center. In an author’s note, Williams-Garcia reveals that her goal was to make them answerable for their crimes and their system of belief, because they’re the ones who deserve scrutiny. In this, A Sitting in St. James succeeds spectacularly. Williams-Garcia presents the ideals of Southern gentility and femininity as inextricable from the atrocities and unearned privilege that propped them up, thus deconstructing cultural myths about their virtue. In light of the Guilberts’ crimes against humanity, both mother and son could be fairly labeled monsters, but Williams-Garcia instead makes them appear ordinary—greedy, grasping and brutal, but human. 

Indeed, readers will find Sylvie’s psychology in particular to be maddening. Having lost “too much” over a lifetime, she clings to her autonomy and authority over others, desperately upholding the system that affords her a position of privilege. Other characters’ motivations remain more opaque, the result of a narrative style that holds readers at arm’s length as it focuses more on dialogue and actions rather than on personal thoughts. However, this makes rare glimpses into the characters’ minds all the more impactful. 

A Sitting in St. James is a multigenerational saga that brilliantly depicts Southern plantation life and systemic rot. It thoroughly exposes how oppressive hierarchical systems, including patriarchy, heteronormativity and racism, corrupt the individuals who benefit from them even as those same individuals victimize others. There’s obviously no single bad apple on the Guilbert plantation; the whole orchard and everyone who eats its fruit are poisoned.

A Sitting in St. James is a mesmerizing, confounding and vividly rendered portrait of the thoroughly putrid institution of slavery in antebellum Louisiana. Though author Rita Williams-Garcia’s writing is exquisite, the history she so skillfully captures is ugly and therefore sometimes difficult to read.

FictionFamily Drama

The Last Thing He Told Me

Review by Carole V. Bell

In this era of domestic thrillers, a novel about a functional, loving family can feel refreshing and downright unexpected. Extraordinary circumstances severely test the bonds of one such family in Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me.

Hannah Hall’s adoring husband, coding genius Owen Michaels, vanishes on the same day that his company is raided by the FBI for massive securities fraud. He leaves behind a suspiciously large duffel bag full of cash for his 16-year-old daughter, Bailey. And for his bewildered wife, who is Bailey’s stepmother, he leaves a cryptic note with a single directive: “Protect her.”

Hannah desperately wants to fulfill his request, but she also wants answers. As she searches for the truth about her missing husband and contends with the legal troubles caused by his disappearance, she also tries to nurture a stepdaughter who barely wants anything to do with her.

As these events unfold in the present, flashbacks show how Hannah’s relationships have developed and offer clues about her husband’s story. Along the way, her own history also comes into play. Deep-rooted abandonment issues shape her choices in the present, and the attorney she reaches out to for help navigating these treacherous waters is her ex-fiancé.

The drama gets a little thin in spots. The novel’s backdrop is a half-billion-dollar financial disaster, but despite Owen’s high-profile role, there’s no press hounding Hannah and Bailey. They primarily encounter friction from authorities, Bailey’s classmates and Owen and Hannah’s friends. Beyond that, stepmother and stepdaughter are able to maintain anonymity as a firestorm of drama unfolds around the company’s CEO.

Downplaying the conflict might be a trade-off for the novel’s greater focus on character development and relationships. Hannah’s insights and epiphanies about how to parent an untrusting teenager aren’t all that revelatory, but they certainly are reminders of what’s most important.

As a result, Dave pulls off something that feels both new and familiar: a novel of domestic suspense that unnerves, then reassures. This is the antithesis of the way novels like Gone Girl or My Lovely Wife are constructed; in The Last Thing He Told Me, the surface is ugly, the situation disturbing, but almost everyone involved is basically good underneath it all. Dave has given readers what many people crave right now—a thoroughly engrossing yet comforting distraction.

In this novel, now an Apple TV+ series, Laura Dave has given readers what they crave most—a thoroughly engrossing yet comforting distraction.
RomanceContemporary Romance

Sandcastle Beach

Review by Carole V. Bell

In Jenny Holiday’s Sandcastle Beach, Maya Mehta and Benjamin Lawson have a longstanding rivalry whose foundation is as sturdy as a castle made of sand. He rigs the Mermaid Queen election in her favor every year, which she supposedly hates (but secretly enjoys). She boycotts his brick oven pizza while still regularly frequenting his bar, where Ben reserves her favorite wine for her exclusively and surreptitiously slips her freebies all night long.

Watching these two find the pettiest of ways to hate on each other while sneakily admiring each other is great entertainment for their friends and the matchmaking elders who populate the small town of Moonflower Bay. It makes for a mildly frothy read, but the tensions underlying the hate side of their unacknowledged love/hate relationship might feel a bit lukewarm for connoisseurs of the enemies-to-lovers trope who prefer more heated relationships such as those depicted in Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game, Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Party or Kennedy Ryan’s Hook Shot. As Maya’s brother Rohan tells her about his most recent failed relationship: “’For a massage to work, you need some pressure, you know? Some friction.’” He shrugged. “’I started to think maybe that’s true in life, too?’”

Handsome, generous and generally single Ben just isn’t particularly hateable or even rakish. He enjoys sparring with Maya but scarcely remembers how their rivalry started. He just knows that she’s been inexplicably spikey with him since she was 19. Maya’s motivations are clearer—he carelessly did her wrong years ago—but her perception of Ben is similarly cloudy and as a result, the friction on her side is fuzzy too, at least at first.

Fortunately, their initial rivalry is a prelude to a more complex, satisfying and steamy enemies-with-benefits arrangement in which hostilities are intermittently suspended for Premier League football and wine. Their slow burn gets exponentially hotter as the two become more sure of themselves, and their quick-witted banter and mutually obsessed attentiveness impressively echoes Beatrice and Benedick’s dynamic in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, a production of which Maya directs and stars in during the novel. When the town council announces a lucrative grant program for local entrepreneurs, placing Maya and Ben in direct competition with each other, it magnifies the stakes of their rivalry tenfold. The $100,000 prize would be life-changing for either Maya or Ben, who are both at professional crossroads. When these aspects of the story take off, their chemistry really begins to sparkle. The result is effervescent, joyous and rewarding fun.

In Jenny Holiday’s Sandcastle Beach, Maya Mehta and Benjamin Lawson have a longstanding rivalry whose foundation is as sturdy as a castle made of sand.

FictionLiterary Fiction

Red Island House

Review by Carole V. Bell

Andrea Lee’s lush and lyrical Red Island House is an episodic novel of race and culture that flirts with fabulism as it portrays a couple at odds with each other and their island home. It’s set in Madagascar, an island nation that floats between Africa and India both culturally and geographically. “Though defined by cartographers as part of Africa, Madagascar really belongs only to itself,” Lee writes. 

The novel is a bit like that as well. The protagonist, Shay, is a refined academic and an expatriate American. Senna is a big and brash Italian man. They meet at a wedding in Como, Italy, and fall inexorably in love. He’s older and wealthy, and it’s a second marriage for them both. 

When Senna builds his dream vacation home in the rough northwestern reaches of Madagascar, on the tiny island of Naratrany, he tells Shay that it’s for her, like an elaborate wedding gift. But she knows better. The house is a fantasy of Senna’s that long precedes her arrival, and it proceeds regardless of her wishes or comfort. Their visits to Naratrany expose and exacerbate the space between them, and each time they touch down there, Senna becomes a terrain that Shay doesn’t recognize and can’t navigate. With time, tiny cracks become cleavages. 

In Madagascar, Shay is thrust into a role she doesn’t want, as mistress of the Red House, a vast neocolonial manse that requires nearly a dozen staff members to maintain. The fact that Shay is Black complicates things in ways she can’t quite come to terms with. The Red House is not a plantation, the people who work there aren’t enslaved, and yet there is something deeply discomfiting in its hierarchical social arrangements. What can Shay make of the man and the marriage that put her in this position? “Through years of her Naratrany holidays, she never shakes the sensation that her leisure is built on old crimes,” she thinks. The tableau haunts and unsettles her. 

At first Shay believes she can wall off these problems at the Red House, but the rot cannot be contained. The ebb and flow of Shay’s marriage is just part of the story, as Red Island House contains vignettes about a fascinating array of characters and entanglements in the Naratrany society that surrounds though never quite embraces the couple. From the feuding female entrepreneurs whom Shay calls “Sirens” to the local éminence grise who may or may not have spiritual powers, it’s a complex and seductive tapestry.

Shay’s volatile, uneasy relationship with the island, a place she and Senna can occupy but never possess, parallels the one she has with her husband. She knows her relationship with her second home “is incomplete, deliberately detached, based in guilt and fear—unworthy of the people and place.” What’s more interesting is that she also admits that her attitude is “in no way superior to that of Senna, who, for his part, has always viewed the country as his personal playground; as if it were indeed Libertalia, the fictional pirate colony that has captivated Western imagination since it was first born from Daniel Defoe’s pen.” This description captures both Shay’s ambivalence and Lee’s style, which is rife with cultural allusions of all sorts.

Lee’s striking writing is layered and thick with evocative descriptions of people, landscapes, feelings and foreboding. Sociological and psychological, it’s prose with the abstract feel of poetry. The stories of Red Island House are vibrant and enchanting despite the current of dread that runs through the novel from the start.

The stories of Andrea Lee’s Red Island House are vibrant and enchanting despite the current of dread that runs through the novel from the start.
RomanceContemporary Romance

Act Your Age, Eve Brown

Review by Carole V. Bell

Talia Hibbert has quickly become the go-to writer for those who like their romances to be heartwarming, thought-provoking and fun in equal measure. Building on the success of the first two novels in her Brown Sisters trilogy, Hibbert’s formula is burnished to perfection in Act Your Age, Eve Brown, a delightful comedic confection.

Hibbert unites many beloved romance tropes in one tremendously fun package, flawlessly and creatively executing all of them. Eve and Jacob are the embodiment of the grumpy/sunshine trope—she’s a delightful, chaotic ray of light, while innkeeper Jacob is an order-obsessed grouch. They are opposites very reluctantly attracted, and their meet-cute (which is more of a meet-disaster) leads them into forced proximity and helps their attraction grow.

When the going gets tough, pampered 20-something Londoner Eve Brown gets going—right out of town. Eve is a gorgeous hot mess. She’s tried and failed and tried again on a number of different career and life paths. Through it all, she’s enjoyed the backing of her wealthy and accomplished family. This time, however, when her nascent wedding planning business goes bust, Eve loses the financial backing and patience of her frustrated parents. She flees to the countryside where she runs into Jacob Wayne, the proprietor of a bed-and-breakfast, and applies for a temporary chef position. Eve is eminently qualified, but has great difficulty proving it because (of course) she fails to produce anything like a resumé. Turned off by her apparent lack of professionalism, Jacob rejects her application. But when she accidentally hits him with her car and breaks his arm, a horrified Eve insists on working at the B&B to help while he recovers. Though there’s a fair amount of hostility and distrust between them as chaos meets order, hate soon gives way to friendship and then to love in the sweetest, most natural progression.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Talia Hibbert explains why she thinks Jacob and Eve are so perfect for each other.

Though their romance is delightful, Jacob and Eve also face significant personal challenges and Hibbert handles these serious topics with finesse. They are both on the autism spectrum, and Hibbert sensitively portrays their perspectives while also exploring how their autism intersects with other facets of their lives.

Confident and vulnerable in equal measure, Eve values herself for the fabulous and vibrant woman she is, but she’s also cognizant of how aspects of her identity—including her race, color, size and shape—are devalued in society, especially in the performing arts. As Eve discloses to Jacob, her talent for acting was supposed to be her saving grace. Unlike her academically high-achieving older sisters, Eve struggled in school but knew she “was meant to be a star.” And yet, even in the theatrical world, being different got in the way. Her memory issues were a problem, taking direction was challenging and maybe most frustrating of all, she did not have “the look.” Eve decided a long time ago that “she was beautiful, and her body was lovely, and she would accept no other judgment on the subject.” But she also admits that she used to care. Because she was, in one view, “too fat and too dark and not entirely symmetrical,” the powers that be at her performing arts school relegated Eve to playing “the evil background character or the comedic relief.” And that hits her hard, as Hibbert demonstrates in a gorgeously written and intimate scene:

She pressed her lips together and flicked a glance at Jacob because, well, this part was so excruciatingly awkward to speak about . . . there were the people who acted like it shouldn’t hurt, being rejected by the status quo like that. As if, because it came from a twisted place of inequality, it shouldn’t have any hold on her. Which was a nice idea in principle, but Eve found it mostly came from those who’d never been personally crushed by the weight of all that disapproval.

Jacob wasn’t reacting like one of those people, though. He was simply sitting quietly, watching in silence, letting her speak. Because he was like that, when it mattered. He was like that.

What’s especially lovely is that this conversation leads to discovery and revelation for both characters, even though Eve is the primary focus.

Throughout Eve and Jacob’s story, Hibbert exhibits masterful control of plot and character. Act Your Age, Eve Brown is a wonderful blend of tropes and reality. It’s the kind of book that inspires myriad feelings: It will make you laugh, cry, sigh and swoon. But more than anything else, the experience of reading Act Your Age, Eve Brown is pure pleasure.

Building on the success of the first two novels in her Brown Sisters trilogy, Hibbert’s formula is burnished to perfection in Act Your Age, Eve Brown, a delightful comedic confection.

RomanceHistorical Romance

Highland Treasure

Review by Carole V. Bell

Lady Elysande de Valance finds love in the arms of a Highlander in Lynsay Sands’ suspenseful 14th-century romance, Highland Treasure.

Elysande is the intelligent and beloved daughter of a wealthy family loyal to King Edward III. Though she’s lived in England all her life, Elysande’s Scottish-born mother, Lady Mairghread de Valance, Baroness of Kynardersley, has long maintained close ties with friends and families in the land of her birth. So when unexpected political intrigue lands the family in grave danger, Elysande places her hope in the most trustworthy men she knows.

Rory Buchanan is a renowned healer and the seventh son of the illustrious Buchanan clan. Although he’s generally loathe to spend any time in England, he makes an exception to cure ailing British aristocrats. The extravagant pay funds the work he does back home and helps him build the independent fortune he will need to secure his own way in the world as a younger son. When trouble strikes Elysande’s family, he has just finished treating an English baron and is well positioned to assist. Along with his brother Alick and several of their men from home, he commits to getting Lady Elysande and the critical cargo she carries to her Scottish kin.

But the mission is not as simple as it sounds. Intrigue swirls around them. Betrayal stalks them. It’s not always clear who’s a friend and who’s a foe, and Lady Elysande has been beaten so badly that when she and Rory first meet, she’s being carried in the back of a cart and wearing a full veil to obscure the damage done to her face. While the brutality of what she’s been through is disturbing, it’s also crucial to the story Sands is telling. Much like the infamous Red Wedding or Bran being thrown from the tower in “Game of Thrones,” what happens at Kynardersley (the de Valence’s family seat) animates everything that comes after. Elysande’s condition complicates an already physically grueling journey, and for a long time, no one, including Rory, can see what she really looks like.

This also allows the connection between Elysande and Rory to grow in a unique way. They’re attracted to each other through conversation and collaboration. They forge a mutually respectful alliance and, eventually, a strong emotional connection without the barrier or benefit of her looks. Elysande may start out as a damsel in distress, but she inspires admiration rather than pity from those around her. That said, some readers may be uncomfortable with how Elysande is fairly explicitly framed as “not like other girls,” and with the fact that her trauma is repeatedly referenced and discussed. Overall, though, Highland Treasure is a page-turning, propulsive and, at times, bloody historical romance.

Lady Elysande de Valance finds love in the arms of a Highlander in Lynsay Sands’ suspenseful 14th-century romance, Highland Treasure.

RomanceContemporary Romance

Someday My Duke Will Come

Review by Carole V. Bell

In Christina Britton’s solidly crafted Regency romance, Someday My Duke Will Come, a fake engagement and close quarters spur friends to become the lovers they were meant to be. Quincy and Clara are two of a kind. Both are aristocratic underdogs: despite being the children of dukes, they grew up on the periphery of the noble circles to which they belong. And both harbor dark secrets and not quite fully healed childhood wounds that they think make them less than ideal partners. Plus, for different reasons, they’re both desperate to avoid the matchmaking machinations of nosy relatives.

Quincy is the brand new Duke of Reigate. As a boy, he revered and loved his father and was loved and adored in turn. But his mother always seemed to despise him, and he never understood why he felt so at odds with almost everyone in his family. At 14, with his father gone, he ran off to prevent his mother from consigning him to the Royal Navy. Having grown up as fourth in line to the dukedom, Quincy never thought he’d inherit. When he returns home for the first time in 14 years, he learns to never say never. Due to a series of unfortunate events, he’s the new Duke of Reigate and there’s no money left in the estate.

Lady Clara’s family is far warmer, but she’s a spinster and feels pressured by her Aunt Olivia to finally make a match lest she be permanently left on the shelf (unbeknownst to Aunt Olivia, this is Clara’s preferred life plan). Clara was just 9 years old when her mother died, and she all but traded her childhood to make sure her siblings, a younger brother and sister, felt secure. From then on, she watched them play and stood on the sidelines, more caretaker than sister to them both. Later, at 16, she went through a short rebellious period that ended in tragedy, plunging her into despair and making her believe that her past disqualified her from marrying the type of man that would otherwise be her match.

When an upcoming family wedding throws Lady Clara and the new Duke together, they both find themselves in need of a fake partner, and renew a warm friendship formed in Britton’s first Isle of Synne novel, A Good Duke Is Hard to Find. Quincy is warding off his mother’s ill-tempered demands that he marry to refill the coffers. As determined and disapproving as Lady Catherine de Bourgh scheming over Fitzwilliam Darcy’s future in Pride and Prejudice, the Duchess of Reigate has an intended wife picked out for the prodigal son she barely acknowledges—and it is not Lady Clara, his own desires be damned. The rather two-dimensional duchess is pushy and vicious, and her purpose is solely to act as the villain that propels the action forward, but it mostly works. When she ambushes Quincy with the match she’s chosen for him, Clara steps in as his fake fiancée, a claim that also conveniently wards off her aunt’s more generous but annoying matchmaking entreaties. More importantly, it throws them in close proximity even though they’d both sort of like to avoid the attraction they feel but haven’t acknowledged.

In addition to the fake engagement, the events of Someday My Duke Will Come revolve around Quincy’s bankrupt dukedom that needs saving and family secrets that need unraveling. Over the course of their arrangement, Clara and Quincy learn that the things they survived make them perfect partners for each other. This is a solid if not wholly original Regency romance between two likable underdogs who both deserve a happy ending.

In Christina Britton’s solidly crafted Regency romance, Someday My Duke Will Come, a fake engagement and close quarters spur friends to become the lovers they were meant to be.

FictionLiterary Fiction

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

Review by Carole V. Bell

In her engrossing and darkly lyrical debut novel, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, Bajan author Cherie Jones unspools a discomfiting allegory of race, class and intergenerational trauma in a far from idyllic fictional Caribbean community.

It begins with a bloody fable about an act of rebellion gone wrong: A disobedient girl loses her arm to a monster because she didn’t heed her mother’s warnings about the dangers of the tunnel, that it has “monsters that live down in there, how any little girls go in there they never come back out.”

This allegory becomes a touchstone—and the rest of the novel an elaboration on that cautionary tale—as headstrong Lala finds her life quickly unraveling after she marries a man that her grandmother characterizes as “a louse.” By leaving her grandmother’s house for a man whose slickness is easily mistaken for charm, Lala chooses a life she thinks will mean freedom but only brings pain and even more restrictions, setting in motion a series of tragedies with wide-reaching ramifications.

Several related events—Lala’s act of defiance, her husband’s botched and deadly burglary of a wealthy British visitor and the traumatic death of their baby—occur in quick succession, but their consequences and interconnectedness are revealed at a slower pace. However, one thing is clear from the start: Life in this place they call “Paradise” is nasty, brutish and fragile, if not always short.

Even as tragedies and indignities pile up, the murkiness surrounding the novel’s events will compel readers to continue reading. Questions arise about how a simple robbery went so wrong and how Baby died—but most importantly, why? What are the roots of these characters’ discontent and recklessness?

A bleak and complex picture emerges through this ensemble story, with chapters that alternate between generations and time periods as well as individual points of view. When Lala’s grandmother Wilma tries to make sense of it all, her answer is all too familiar: Willful women who tempt men, who don’t listen, sow the seeds of their own destruction. In the fable, the monster might have stolen the girl’s arm, but she was “slack-from-she-born” and “force-ripe” (sexually precocious) and above all, “own-way” (disobedient). She brought it on herself; bad girls reap what they sow. On this topic, both Wilma and Lala’s husband agree. Even the police officer tasked with investigating Baby’s death identifies with Wilma’s worldview.

Like the fearsome Wilma, author Cherie Jones is a powerful storyteller. Like the policeman, many readers will feel compelled to follow her into the dark even though there’s precious little joy or light to be found there.

In her engrossing and darkly lyrical debut novel, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, Bajan author Cherie Jones unspools a discomfiting allegory of race, class and intergenerational trauma in a far from idyllic fictional Caribbean community.

RomanceContemporary Romance

If the Boot Fits

Review by Carole V. Bell

One of romance’s brightest stars, Rebekah Weatherspoon is known for her sweet and steamy stories. With If the Boot Fits, the second in the Cowboys of California series, she  burnishes that reputation further, delivering a thoroughly modern Cinderella story about an aspiring screenwriter hesitantly falling for a sexy, celebrity, cinnamon-roll-sweet hero with swagger.

Weatherspoon deftly translates the classic rags to riches fairy tale's core elements into a 21st-century context. As an overworked and underappreciated assistant, Amanda McQueen is the perfect contemporary equivalent of a put-upon poor relation—an invisible underling with proximity to the glitter and glam of Hollywood, but no meaningful access. Cinderella’s stepsisters and wicked stepmother have merged into a single figure, the pampered and punitive starlet Dru Anastasia, who uses Amanda as an emotional sounding board but provides little pay and no respect in return. Sam Pleasant, a former cowboy and scion of a venerable Black Hollywood family, makes an excellent 21st-century prince, and the Vanity Fair Oscar party easily stands in for a royal ball.

While it’s great fun to see this fantasy transformed, the relationship between Amanda and Sam is the beating heart of the story, and the way their connection develops is brand new. After all, Cinderella and Prince Charming didn’t hook up after the ball. Also new is Amanda’s irreverence and incredulity the morning after, when she wakes up in a hotel room and can’t help but think, “The night before must have been a dream.” Her mind boggles as she contemplates the series of events that led from the Vanity Fair Oscar party to an A-list after-party, and, eventually, to Sam’s bed. Her conclusion: “There was no way. . . . There was absolutely no freaking way she’d run into Samuel Pleasant at both events, and surely you’d be joking if you told her that sometime in the night she and Sam had completely hit it off.”

This is Amanda’s voice throughout— lively, skeptical and incredibly relatable. Thinking this can’t happen or it’s just one night is incredibly freeing, and Amanda could use some freedom from her grind. One moment, she and Sam are having fun, with no names exchanged and no expectations. The next, he’s asking for her name in the middle of her “enthusiastic rendition of the cha-cha slide.” But she’s still skeptical, so she plays it cool and keeps it moving. “Sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m dancing,” is Amanda’s reply, and she assumes that’s that.

It’s a joy to read those initial scenes and watch Sam and Amanda's warring instincts battle it out. Weatherspoon creates vivid, specific characters and gives them wonderful interior lives and excellent banter. Their romance begins with that one-night stand, and the initial spark grows through a shared sense of fun, common values and tastes. Sam recognizes something in Amanda, and he invites her into his home and his inner circle without hesitation.

It should be obvious that they belong together, and yet, despite the chemistry and all their commonalities, according to the conventions of Hollywood, romantic fiction and fairy tales, Sam and Amanda qualify as an “unlikely couple,” defying major societal norms. Sam comes from a wealthy family and has just won an Academy Award, whereas Amanda is “a D-list actress’s lowly assistant” who is struggling to find her footing in the entertainment industry and to just make her rent each month. And even though they’re both African American, Amanda is a beautiful, dark-skinned, plus-size Black woman. In a culture that still holds fast to narrow definitions of what constitutes beauty, this reduces her status and eligibility. To be clear, Amanda has confidence in her talent and her looks. She’s also very aware, however, and sometimes overtly reminded, that successful Black women in Hollywood don’t often look like her. The contrast to her boss, Dru, a thin, light-skinned biracial woman, is especially prominent.

It’s not often that distinctions like this are directly challenged on the page in traditionally published romance, and Weatherspoon handles it all with grace, allowing discomfiting truths and subtle social critique to emerge organically from the events of the story. Conflicts around class, color and size are just part of this romance, however. It’s really about character and family. Though If the Boot Fits places Amanda in a professional context in which she cannot fully escape toxic standards, much of the central relationship develops on Sam’s ranch, a hundred miles away from the image-obsessed center of the storm. As a result, their love story never feels didactic and the romance never gets weighed down. There’s warmth and lightness throughout this very contemporary, yet ultimately classically romantic retelling—Amanda thrives on the support from her own friends and family, and Sam’s family may be Black Hollywood royalty, but they're also grounded, kind human beings, who embrace her and remind her of home. Readers who want romance to explore some of the real issues that women like Amanda face and see her beautifully celebrated and cherished will absolutely adore this book.

One of romance’s brightest stars, Rebekah Weatherspoon is known for her sweet and steamy stories. With If the Boot Fits, the second in the Cowboys of California series, she  burnishes that reputation further, delivering a thoroughly modern Cinderella story about an aspiring screenwriter hesitantly falling…

FictionHistorical Fiction

The Prophets

Review by Carole V. Bell

Robert Jones Jr.’s remarkable first novel, The Prophets, accomplishes the exceptional literary feat of being at once an intimate, poetic love story and a sweeping, detailed and excruciating portrait of life on a Mississippi plantation.

One of the most outstanding things about this novel is its artistry, both in its language and its use of multiple perspectives. Jones excels at ensemble storytelling, treating each character with compassion while also being brutally unsparing. From one point of view, certain actions seem perfectly reasonable, but another storyline may reveal their harm. In particular, two of these stories are on a collision course. The most important and sympathetic thread involves Samuel and Isaiah, two enslaved boys who grow up as best friends and eventually become lovers. The other involves an older enslaved man, Amos, who decides to take on the role of preacher as a way to attain power for a worthy goal: He wants to protect his female partner from the plantation owner, Paul. Amos negotiates with Paul and offers to use his role as a religious leader to help run the plantation and keep the peace.

Like James Baldwin or Toni Morrison, Robert Jones Jr. gets to the root of some of our culture’s thorniest problems through specific, accurate storytelling.

Those sound like reasonable objectives given the constraints Amos is under, but the exercise of power is never that clean, and a multitude of betrayals, cruelties and tragedies arise from that Faustian bargain. Amos’ new responsibility means encouraging his fellow enslaved people to cooperate with Paul’s plans to force them to have children in order increase his workforce. Samuel and Isaiah’s love violates these plans because they only want to be with each other, but that kind of love doesn’t produce offspring. Thus Amos’ religiosity and Isaiah and Samuel’s love are inherently at odds, and as religion takes hold of the plantation, it makes outcasts of two young men whom the community had long embraced.

Jones grounds his story in history while making it remarkably relevant to life today. The Prophets traces the origins of a host of social ills, such as the use of religion as a tool for social control. Likewise, observations about the intersection of race and gender within this brutal system will sound familiar to contemporary readers. For example, Puah, a teenage girl who must fight every day to protect her body and soul, feels frustrated by the favor that Be Auntie, an influential older woman, extends to the boys and men in their group. Puah concludes, “Men and toubab shared far more than either would ever admit.” The men she refers to are her fellow enslaved people, and “toubab” is a Central and West African word for white people. These are observations about Black men and white patriarchy that Black women still struggle with in the 21st century.

Similarly, Puah grieves for the way that Auntie and other women cast her as being “grown” before her time. That’s another modern-day problem: Black children are judged as adults, and young Black women are sexualized and blamed for their own abuse.

These disparate elements of history, myth making, social observation, criticism and storytelling don’t always fit together as well as the author may have intended. However, what is most notable about The Prophets is that, like James Baldwin or Toni Morrison, Jones gets to the root of some of our culture’s thorniest problems through specific, accurate storytelling, drawn with insight and great skill. Though this is his first book, Jones is already a master stylist, writing gorgeous, lyrical and readable prose about some of the ugliest things that human beings feel and do to one another. Sometimes the prose reads like scripture. At other times, it’s poetry.

This is a beautifully wrought, exceptionally accomplished queer love story about two men finding extraordinary connection in the most hostile and difficult of circumstances. This debut will be savored and remembered.

Robert Jones Jr.’s remarkable first novel, The Prophets, accomplishes the exceptional literary feat of being at once an intimate, poetic love story and a sweeping, detailed and excruciating portrait of life on a Mississippi plantation.

FictionDystopian Fiction

Crosshairs

Review by Carole V. Bell

Catherine Hernandez’s sharp-eyed, queer dystopian fantasy is no gentle wake-up call. It is a blaring fire alarm and a call to arms against authoritarianism, white supremacy and transphobia. This surreal political nightmare unfolds in a near future in which an environmental disaster has ravaged the economy and amplified social tensions, clearing the way for a revanchist government to restore old-fashioned white patriarchal rule. It’s also the story of burgeoning awareness, resistance and uprising.

When Crosshairs begins, fascism is in full bloom in Toronto. With the police and military working arm in arm, the Others—people who are brown, Black, disabled or queer—are being rounded up and their property confiscated. Some are killed. The rest are forced into workhouses at gunpoint. The shift from subtle discrimination to outright oppression is swift, leaving many bewildered, as they can’t quite grasp what’s happening in their ostensibly liberal parliamentary democracy.

Readers experience the story primarily through Kay’s perspective. Kay stands smack-dab at the intersection of most of the identities targeted by this regime, and his initial objectives are simply, understandably, to stay alive and reunite with the love of his life, Evan. When the violence strikes too close to home, Kay and Evan temporarily separate so that Evan can secure his mother, with plans to meet in a safe place. As he waits in worry, Kay tells much of the story to his beloved in a “whisper letter,” writing, “My bed consists of two layers of cardboard boxes cut to fit in the corner of space behind the furnace, and a pile of Liv’s old winter coats, which I use as blankets and a pillow. The idea is, if I need to leave again and in a hurry, what remains behind won’t resemble a hideout for me: a Queer Femme Jamaican Filipino man. Anne Frank, minus the diary.”

As Kay indicates, the offenses carried about by the government have both literary and historical precedent. The events in Crosshairs feature both clear references and subtler parallels to the Holocaust. There are also echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Hernandez’s fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood. As in that feminist dystopian narrative, one of the first actions taken by the government against the Others is to restrict their finances without warning. The brutal shift to authoritarian rule is also blamed on terrorist action, just as in the earlier book.

At times, Hernandez’s prose style is gorgeously poetic. At other points, as when critiquing the authoritarian regime or the privilege of allies, the writing is openly didactic toward secondary characters who are little more than symbols and vehicles for argument. In these scenes, dialogue unfurls like political discourse rather than as urgent conversation about events happening around them. The subject absolutely merits impassioned appeal, but this aspect of the execution undermines its aim somewhat. Rhetorical appeals in fiction rely on two key things for effect: the reader’s absorption into the narrative and their identification with the protagonist. These phenomena encourage readers to let go of their defenses, effectively shutting down counterarguments, even when the story’s message conflicts with the reader’s prior beliefs. Kay is a brilliantly nuanced, fully formed character, both tender and brave, so identifying with him is easy. Where Crosshairs sometimes falls short, however, is in letting the reader fully engage and feel absorbed into the story. It’s hard not to see the forceful political appeal at work.

Catherine Hernandez’s sharp-eyed, queer dystopian fantasy is no gentle wake-up call. It is a blaring fire alarm and a call to arms against authoritarianism, white supremacy and transphobia.

RomanceContemporary Romance

Spoiler Alert

Review by Carole V. Bell

Indie publishing favorite Olivia Dade’s Avon debut, Spoiler Alert, is a funny and poignant triumph that defies expectation.

On the surface, April Whittier and Marcus Caster-Rupp are opposites. Industry insiders and fans alike appreciate the good looks of Marcus, an actor on hit TV series “Gods of the Gates” (think “Game of Thrones” meets the Aeneid), but deride his talent, intellect and exuberant, puppylike demeanor. But Marcus is no himbo (a slang term for a lovable and gorgeous but not very bright man) or “well-groomed golden retriever,” even if he effectively plays one in public appearances—for personal reasons and publicity’s sake.

April’s image, in contrast, is that of a consummate professional, an accomplished scientist whose figure defies narrow beauty conventions. She’s confident and comfortable in her skin but finds it harder to claim her playful and sexual side in public, let alone acknowledge her online identity, which is separate enough from her real life to have its own vocabulary. Her IRL friends, she fears, wouldn’t understand the hours she spends crafting cosplay outfits, shipping and writing fan fiction about her OTP, and obsessing over alternate narratives for her favorite show. Like Marcus, April worries about being taken seriously, but unlike Marcus, she’s reached her limit with hiding parts of herself.

That’s what ultimately leads to their meeting in real life. Fueled by her impatience with the status quo, April posts a photo of herself on Twitter in full “Gods of the Gates” cosplay. After the tweet goes viral, Marcus gallantly rises to her defense when fat-shaming trolls start attacking her size. Marcus’s swift response:

“I know beauty when I see it, probably because I see it in the mirror every day. @Lavineas5Ever is gorgeous, and Lavinia couldn’t ask for a better tribute.”

To Dade’s credit, this scenario plays out with originality and minimizes harm to sensitive readers. Marcus’ save is superfluous because April is no wilting flower. She knows how to block and tackle and “wrestle her mentions into submission,” then move on with her day. Plus, the text doesn’t get bogged down in listing out the insults on the page.

Marcus asks April out on a date and though they don’t know it at the time, the introduction is redundant. On the internet, where identity and appearances can be cloaked and Marcus and April feel more fully themselves, they’ve actually been friends for two years.

Within the confines of the “Lavineas” server (a portmanteau of Lavinia, April’s favorite “Gods of the Gate” character, and Aeneas, the role Marcus plays), they met on an even playing field. April (username: Unapologetic Lavinia Stan) and Marcus (aka BAWN/Book!AeneasWouldNever) both love the foundations of the show but hate a lot of what the producers have done with it (again, much like “Game of Thrones”). So they write terrific fan fiction and give each other support and feedback. Their fan fiction, direct messages and server posts add depth to their relationship and a new dimension to the celebrity/normal person trope.

That Spoiler Alert so effectively forces the reader to see the significance of the common ground between the scientist and the star is a testament to Dade’s skill as a storyteller. This romance also masterfully conveys both the fun and misery of fandom and social media, as only a text authored by someone who knows these worlds intimately can. It’s clear that Dade isn’t faking those geeky credentials.

On top of all that, Dade also gives weight to the challenges that many people must deal with closer to home. Marcus and April have weathered childhoods spent with parents who didn’t approve of important aspects of who they are. The book is smart enough to show that this gives them something in common, but can also pull them apart as they struggle with trust and conflict. By depicting these characters with their parents and then with each other in the wake of those parental interactions, Spoiler Alert illustrates the damage that families can inflict on children they judge to be flawed. The family scenes are powerful and unflinching; they might even make some readers cry, but they never overwhelm Marcus and April’s love story.

Despite the high level of difficulty involved in taking on these topics in combination, Spoiler Alert surpasses every mark. Even when the waters April and Marcus are navigating become choppy, it never feels like you’re drowning. So it’s fitting when, towards the novel’s end, the fictive author of the Gods of the Gates book series sends Marcus an email with the following message: “life isn’t all misery, and finding a path through hard, hard lives to joy is tough, clever, meaningful work.” This could well be a vision statement for this novel and, if so, mission accomplished. Dade has gifted readers with a thoughtful, swoonworthy and emotionally satisfying contemporary romance that has the added benefit of a realistic, multilayered and relatable portrayal of the digital world. If you’re into fan culture and practices, it will be an even greater pleasure. Loyal Olivia Dade fans and new readers alike will love it.

Indie publishing favorite Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert is a funny and poignant romance that defies expectation.

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