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RomanceFictionContemporary Romance

The View Was Exhausting

Review by Carole V. Bell

A captivating, thought-provoking, glamorous deep dive into the politics of celebrity culture, race and relationships, The View Was Exhausting doesn’t so much straddle the line between general fiction and romance as obliterate it.

At the center of the storm are two beautiful young people. British actor Whitman “Win” Tagore is a rising star “with deadpan delivery and a skill for stealing a scene even when she [is] the character with the least lines.” Talented, focused and sharp, Win earned her first major award nomination at an early age, yet this acknowledgment of her skill “triggered a new wave of suspicion about her ambition, her ruthlessness.” Win has learned to be cutthroat in managing her image since she doesn’t get the second chances or benefit of the doubt that her white counterparts do.

Youthful, not-quite-bad boy Leo Malinowski, in contrast, has enjoyed every benefit of the doubt. He’s the peripatetic playboy son of a supermodel and a multimillionaire hotel mogul whom the public loves to watch. But his life isn’t perfect. He’s got daddy issues, and while he harbors dreams of doing something substantive with his love of art, he never takes the leap: “Being reminded that there were people eager to see Leo succeed only seemed to make him more wary of starting.”

Initially, Win and Leo are a match made in publicity heaven. Win’s recently been through a bad breakup, and being with Leo transforms her into an object of envy rather than scorn. And being with Win helps Leo generate media attention for his father’s hotels.

The first week they spend together reveals combustible chemistry on camera, as well as a strong attraction and mutual understanding when the cameras are off. This temporary fake-dating scenario becomes a seven-year-long public relations scam that reactivates whenever one of them needs a career boost, though the lines between strategy and obsession are continually blurred.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta go behind the scenes of their jet-setting new romance.

Through Win and Leo’s complicated, inconvenient arrangement, married co-authors Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta explore the juxtaposition of privilege and marginalization that surrounds celebrities who sit outside of the dominant culture. The novel raises implicit questions about the pressure to maintain a palatable public persona, and why a talented, beautiful star would need to engage in a fake relationship. Clements and Datta get the racial, gender and political undercurrents just right, delivering a powerful and clear-eyed analysis of the toxic media culture that makes it hard for a woman of color to stay on the good side of public judgment. For a British woman of Indian heritage like Win, the margin of error is so narrow as to be nonexistent; having a desirable white partner like Leo makes her more palatable to white audiences. The race-inflected dynamics of Leo and Win’s relationship are also all too real. Leo’s misunderstanding of how Win’s identity shapes her experience is poignant and painful.

The one thing Clements and Datta don’t quite deliver is the romantic payoff. Though the authors effectively deploy many romance tropes, the beats of the novel’s ending may be unsettling or unsatisfying to some romance readers. Between the artifice, the time between encounters and Win’s protective shield, their romance holds more anger than intimacy, more turmoil than tenderness, and ultimately more pining than joy. Their happy ending is more of a brief glimpse than a full, rapturous swoon. Still, readers who want to sink into a Hollywood exposé will find much to admire in this high-wire celebrity romance.

A captivating, thought-provoking, glamorous deep dive into the politics of celebrity culture, race and relationships, The View Was Exhausting doesn’t so much straddle the line between general fiction and romance as obliterate it.

RomanceFictionContemporary Romance

Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta

Interview by Carole V. Bell

The epic on-again, off-again love story of actor Whitman “Win” Tagore and wealthy playboy Leo Milanowski is beloved by tabloids and Twitter users alike. Too bad none of it is real. Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, the Berlin-based married couple who wrote The View Was Exhausting, took BookPage behind the scenes of their jet-setting new romance.

Can you tell us about the premise of The View Was Exhausting? Where did the idea for this novel originate?
It began in the summer of 2016, when pop culture gossip seemed to be particularly packed with celebrity romances. A big question and suspicion in the media was whether or not these relationships were real or whether they were there to drum up attention. But rather than speculating on what was real and what wasn’t, we wanted to say, “OK, it isn’t real. What’s that like?” We wanted to delve into the emotion and intimacy of that kind of fake relationship, as well as how it would feel to orchestrate your own summer romance.

Fake dating has always been one of our favorite romance tropes, and in this context it seemed like a great opportunity to combine it with another favorite trope: best friends falling in love! Along with that, we were interested in the way a massive celebrity story might share smaller and more intimate truths about people and relationships. 

The book takes place in a rarefied world of jet-setting playboys and A-list Hollywood stars, but through Whitman’s experiences, it also explores what it’s like being a woman of color in that male-dominated world. How did you approach this story? Is it grounded in fantasy, research, personal experience or a combination of all three?
Realistically, all of our gleeful consumption of pop culture in the decades before writing this counted as research. In terms of actual research into celebrity culture, we weren’t so concerned with technical authenticity and logistics. We just don’t care that much about how a yacht party actually works or how to conduct a photoshoot in a rented castle, and we’re not very worried about misrepresenting that side of things. Famous people will just have to live with our misguided ideas! 

Instead, we were invested in two things: real emotions and vibes. We wondered how it would feel to be in that situation, under the limelight, obsessively monitored. We also wanted a deeply lush novel that you could dive right into. The celebrity backdrop gave us the aesthetic experience we wanted, and we had a very active and frequently updated mood board in our heads that fueled a lot of that creative thought. It felt more important that the novel feels hugely visual and claustrophobic at once, rather than getting bogged down in daily schedules and legal details.

If any luxury hotels want to take us on a belated research trip to St-Tropez to correct our ignorance, we will dutifully accept.

In terms of how we prepared to explore the sense of being a woman of color in a male-dominated world, we read very widely. There are lots of women of color working in the film industry now who speak very honestly and intelligently about their varied experiences, which we’re grateful for. We drew on interviews with and pieces from and about Constance Wu, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Parminder Nagra and Viola Davis, among others—including men, like Utkarsh Ambudkar. And of course, we also drew on our own experiences of the world as a mixed-race couple. We worked on the assumption that women of color deal with similar obstacles, whether they’re famous or not. The same issues of being perceived and being exploited felt close to home.

"Do you owe your viewers authenticity or just really good content? How much do people want to see the truth, and how much do they just want to be entertained?"

Scandal, ruin and image management are fascinating topics, both in the world of celebrity media and within the genre of romance. In some ways the concepts seem quaint, and yet scrupulous reputation management is still mandatory for public figures. What made you take this on? Were you inspired more by real-world scandals or fiction about celebrities?
We were inspired by real-world scandals, particularly because of how relatable they felt. Scandal is obviously inherent to the celebrity domain, but reputation management feels like something that everyone in our generation and younger is concerned with now. Whether there’s 10 people or 10,000 reading your Twitter, you worry about how you’re coming across. In that sense it felt like a universal theme that we were interested in tackling.

We’re also really interested in the potential that image and reputation management offers, as something if not exactly positive, then not exactly negative either. There’s something fascinating and appealing about the idea of refashioning yourself, kick-starting a new identity. When we started writing The View Was Exhausting five years ago, the conversation around social media was very judgmental and misogynistic—it was the era of mocking Valley girls taking selfies—and we were interested in the idea of returning intelligence and ambition to the equation. Having a character who still ultimately sees social media as a trap but also as a tool—and attempts to find a balance between the two.

Another point of interest for us was the monetization of reputation, the way that image is so commercialized now and how it’s a legitimate form of celebrity to just be really good at crafting your self-image and making yourself aesthetically appealing. For us it became a moral question: Do you owe your viewers authenticity or just really good content? How much do people want to see the truth, and how much do they just want to be entertained?

A really useful influence when we were writing Win was Jia Tolentino’s essay “The Cult of the Difficult Woman” in her book, Trick Mirror. She talks about how appearing “badly” can sometimes be just as useful to a public figure as appearing well, something we drew on when working out how Win would react to public shifts in opinion. 

"We wanted their relationship to feel like sneaking into the back of a party with your best friend, laughing as you pass a bottle of wine back and forth."

One of the many striking things about the novel is how specific and relatable Win is despite the glamour. We see her layers and how she acquired her gloss. Since the age of 20, Win has effectively tried to split herself into two, putting her complicated, angsty and unruly self behind her and putting forth the strategically immaculate image of Whitman Tagore, a professional actor who never loses control and never puts a foot wrong. How did you develop Win/Whitman?
We started, crucially, from her relationship with Leo. In terms of characterization, both Win and Leo began wrapped around each other—then they spiraled out from there. That meant that as writers, the first person we met was Win, because—for the most part!—that’s who she is with Leo. It felt like we had to start with the kernel of Win and then use that kernel to create a public and professional persona that was also true and also her, but just in a much more deliberate and constrictive way. 

The history of Win’s ascent to fame and her relationship with celebrity was something that we came up with well after we’d sketched out Win’s character and figured out the relationship dynamics between her and Leo as well as other significant figures in her life. In some ways it was like filling in blanks, in others it was like adding layer upon layer onto her character, in the same way that Win herself lives her life as several different layers of Whitman Tagore. 

Fake dating creates forced proximity that allows chemistry to take flight, but the flip side is that both Win and Leo are so adept at performing that their haircuts are strategized and tumbles in the sand are staged for maximum impact. With the question hanging over their relationship of what’s real between Win and Leo and what’s being put on for others, what ultimately makes them work as a couple?
We think it’s that they are best friends. There’s some instinctive thing that they understand about each other, some moment of recognition in that initial spark of their first meeting. They both stick out to each other as someone incredibly different from everyone else that they already know; it’s this weird happy amazement, like, oh my God, who is that!!!! 

The moments of fun and glee between them were also really important. We wanted their relationship to feel like sneaking into the back of a party with your best friend, laughing as you pass a bottle of wine back and forth. There’s just a sense of sheer amazement about the other one for both of them: finding someone who knows you so well and is so fascinated by you all the same, like there’s always something new to learn, some new trick to pull, some new game to play. 

This is the first novel for both of you, but you’ve each published short stories and nonfiction before. Can you tell us a bit about your other writing and how this book evolved from the work you’ve done previously?
We’re quite slow writers, so we’ve been working on this novel for about five years, and the other writing developed alongside it rather than beforehand. We both really enjoy switching between genres and delving into different ideas. Because a novel is such a huge, time-consuming project and yet at the same time is dealing with a relatively limited subject, writing short stories and nonfiction was a way for us to explore other avenues or genres or concepts or characters who didn’t exactly fit in The View Was Exhausting—like horror, queer romance or dystopian worlds—without losing focus on the novel. 

We both read widely, and neither of us are particularly disciplined writers. We always work best when we’re working on something we’re interested in at the moment. That means our writing can veer in different directions depending upon the flavor of the month. In fact, it was telling for us that we’d stumbled into a novel that was actually going to go somewhere when we never lost interest in The View Was Exhausting! Some threads that you’ll find in our short stories, nonfiction and the novel are: sunsets as existential terror, elaborate meals, kissing, an obsession with Middlemarch and Hemingway, fog wreathing around your ankles.

What is the writing process like for you, both as individuals and in terms of writing together? Do you divide the tasks in a particular way? How do you ensure continuity of voice when writing with a partner?
In terms of writing the novel, we start out by planning together. We might not always know exactly what’s going to happen all the way through to the end, but we each know just as far as the other does. There are no surprises. Then we take turns writing, sometimes stopping mid-scene and sometimes taking it all the way through to the end of a chapter. 

After a long time spent co-writing, we’ve developed quite a shared voice, but beyond that, if Onjuli writes a scene, Mikaella will edit it heavily, and vice versa. We’re both big believers in multiple drafts, so by the time The View Was Exhausting went to our editor, we had both written and rewritten each scene four or five times each, to the point that each person’s writing really intertwines with and permeates the other’s. It’s difficult even for us to remember who wrote a particular sentence.

We try not to divide tasks, but there are definitely scenes or themes that each of us is individually drawn to. One of us might be thinking a lot about a particular idea and ask if they can have a crack at it first. Or on the other end of the scale, there might be a scene we know is going to be difficult, and one of us draws the short straw and has to give it the first shot. But at least then we can give up ownership immediately after finishing it and be like, OK, now you fix it! 

Writing individually is obviously a different kettle of fish . . . but there are similarities, namely that the other person is always waiting in the wings to edit when required, if not reading along as we go!

Were there particular challenges or surprises that came with writing a love story with your spouse?
Honestly, our writing lives have been intertwined for as long as we’ve known each other (nearly a decade now). We’ve always written back and forth. When we first met, we had to be long distance for a while (Mikaella is Australian, Onjuli is British), so writing in shared universes and picking up the thread of the other one’s story where it left off was a way for us to be connected and have a mutual hobby even when our lives were separated by 10,000 miles and an 11-hour time difference.

Of course, sometimes we disagree about which direction the story should go. But those debates tend to make a plot stronger, because we have to convince the other person before we can start writing it, and we can point out plot holes to one another early on. Most of the challenge comes in the copy editing stage, when one of us firmly believes a comma shouldn’t be there and the other one is prepared to die for that comma.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The View Was Exhausting.

Is it difficult to separate your personal and professional lives while collaborating in this way, especially during a pandemic?
We had finished writing The View Was Exhausting before the pandemic hit, although we were still working on a last round of edits. And we’re working on a new novel now, so we have been writing together during the pandemic. It’s a mixed bag. In some ways it’s given us more time, and because we can’t travel, we have been very focused. But a global crisis is pretty distracting, and like everyone, we’ve been impacted. Outside the realm of writing, things like family and work have been really hard, but generally we feel very lucky to have day jobs and a home setup that allowed us to switch easily to work-from-home life.

Like anyone, we try to leave work when we close our laptops at the end of the day, but at least when we “bring work home” it tends to be pretty fun! Our main writing tactic is to follow whatever we’re interested in, and if we’re interested, we’re going to talk about it in our personal time, too. Some of our best ideas have come up chatting over dinner, and we have character notes in our phone that we wrote at midnight in a bar. Most writers probably can’t make an exact division between the personal and the professional; it’s the nature of the job, and at least we have somebody else just as happy to talk about our characters’ latest crisis with us!

Are there any authors or books in particular who inspired or influenced The View Was Exhausting, either within or outside of the romance genre?
Jane Austen is our guiding romantic star. There’s actually a line in the novel that echoes Mr. Darcy’s declaration, so keep an eye out if you’re also a fan! As we mentioned, Jia Tolentino was an interesting critical voice, and Nora Ephron was a more modern rom-com influence.

But to be honest, most of the fictional influence for The View Was Exhausting came from outside of the realm of books. We were deeply influenced by the early 2000s heyday of romantic comedies, especially My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Katherine Heigl’s oeuvre. We were also following in the footsteps of some of the many brilliant British Indian films: Bend It Like Beckham, East Is East, Anita and Me. There’s a really rich tradition of British Indian media, especially in comedy and romance, that Onjuli grew up watching—and that, along with many family in-jokes, definitely made its mark on the novel.

What are you reading right now or have you read recently that you’d recommend?
One of Mikaella’s favorite pandemic hobbies has been running a book recommendation newsletter: four new favorites every month, organized by theme, and it’s been encouraging both of us to read more widely and find some great gems. 

If nothing else, the pandemic has been great for reading! We’ve been ticking off classics—War and Peace is really good, who knew?—and enjoying books by Frances Cha, Torrey Peters, Jamie Marina Lau, Eliza Clark and Claire Vaye Watkins, among others. We’ve also been really into the poetry and essays of Nina Mingya Powles. 

 

Author photo by Mario Heller.

Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta go behind the scenes of their jet-setting new romance, The View Was Exhausting.

RomanceHistorical Romance

The Princess Stakes

Review by Elizabeth Mazer

The Princess Stakes contains several great love stories, and the book opens as one of them ends. We only get glimpses of a romance for the ages between a regal Indian maharaja and the English noblewoman who left everything behind to have a life by his side. We know they lived happily for a little while, but the happiness didn’t last. By the time we encounter the Maharaja of Joor, his beloved wife is dead, his authority has been drained away by the British and his precious daughter, Princess Sarani, has been forced into an engagement with the odious Lord Talbot. When the maharaja is betrayed and assassinated, Sarani must flee for her life.

And here’s where the book's grandest—and stormiest—love story starts, as Sarani’s desperate search for passage to her English family’s protection lands her on Rhystan Huntley’s ship. Rhystan, the Duke of Embry, despises Sarani for her duty-driven rejection of their love years earlier. Will sparks fly as the pair reunites? They will. Will the journey to England be fraught with tension, bickering and unrelenting desire? It will. And will Sarani's arrival in England create a tremendous splash when Rhystan—in a temporary deal that is intended to benefit them both—makes it known that they are engaged? Oh, it most definitely will.

There’s drama aplenty to be found in this romance, from disguised princesses to swashbuckling sailors to a highly publicized betting spree over which debutante will snag the handsome, eminently eligible Duke of Embry. Tempers run high, passions run hot and a mixture of greed, jealousy, prejudice and lust leads to more than one violent altercation from which Sarani and Rhystan must escape. The ton's small-mindedness and caustic disdain might make you wish that our hero and heroine would resort to violence themselves a little more often. (Trust me, some of those society folks have it coming.) But Sarani and Rhystan’s devotion to each other and to those dearest to them shines bright and fierce in contrast to the cowardly pettiness of those who try to undermine them. That love unites them against their foes and gives them the courage to push past their own fears and insecurities and embrace their happiness together.

Author Amalie Howard doesn’t shy away from showing the struggles a biracial character like Sarani would face, both in England and in India. Caught between two worlds, she’s viewed as not belonging enough to either to win true acceptance, but she finally finds the home she’s been searching for in Rhystan’s arms. Ultimately The Princess Stakes celebrates the power of love to win out again and again over hate: love for the person you trust to have your back; love for the family you are proud to claim; and love for yourself, exactly as you are.

This dramatic romance between an Indian princess and an English lord is a celebration of love’s victory over hate.

RomanceHistorical Romance

An Extraordinary Lord

Review by Carole V. Bell

True enemies-to-lovers romances are both less plentiful than many readers would like and extremely hard to execute. Too much hostility and things can get ugly; too little tension and the whole thing fizzles. Demand for this popular trope tends to outstrip supply. But where others falter, An Extraordinary Lord handily succeeds, in large part because of its original premise. Its leads are natural enemies with real skin in the game and the stakes are sky-high.

Loosely inspired by the Spa Fields Riots, an intriguing bit of British political history in which activists advocating for electoral reform and economic relief instigated riots in an attempt to topple the government, Anna Harrington’s third Lords of the Armory romance is not a typical historical. Like a Regency-era forerunner to Batman, Lord Merritt Rivers is haunted by a tragic loss and obsessed with law and order. He works as a barrister by day and roams the streets of London at night, dressed in a costume of all black, determined to prevent crime before it happens and keep the innocent safe. This alter ego doesn’t have a name, but he tries one or two on for size (The Night Guardian, the City Watchman, etc.). Veronica “Roni” Chase, on the other hand, is a thief-taker. Morally gray with the permits to prove it, Veronica makes her living catching thieves and turning them in for profit. When the two meet one night on the streets, Veronica could easily end up back in jail. As far as Merritt is concerned, thief-takers like Veronica are part of the problem:

“Merritt had no patience for them, knowing they were profiting off the riots as much as the men they captured. But this one . . . Sweet Lucifer. He’d never seen one like her before. Hell, he’d never seen a female thief-taker at all.”

A series of suspiciously organized riots is putting London on the edge of turmoil and potentially undermining the regent. Merritt is helping the Home Office pinpoint the manipulative masterminds and mischief-makers behind the scenes, and he thinks Veronica might be one of them. His initial investigation into the mysterious beauty absolves her of that crime, but also reveals that she served time for a crime she didn’t commit and has been hiding under a different name after breaking out of prison. Intrigued and with his eyes on a bigger prize, Merritt offers a deal rather than turn Veronica in. She’ll help him investigate the riots and he’ll secure a full pardon for her in return—a perfect setup for enemies to become lovers.

An Extraordinary Lord includes ample tropes, all well deployed—Merritt and Veronica are enemies and opposites forced into close proximity for a limited time—but it’s to Harrington’s credit that her hero and heroine feel like unique creations with multiple dimensions and original facets. Veronica wields a knife with terrifying aplomb, but she also knows her way around a ballroom. She has the sensibilities and social awareness of a radical, but also lets herself revel in the beauty of a glittering party. Merritt is a gentleman with aristocratic connections, but he works hard for a living and actually has to think about the money he spends. And he wasn’t born into a title. Together, they navigate an interesting blend of rarified spaces and dangerous streets, with great banter and excellent physical chemistry wherever they go. But it’s the premise, its rich grounding in history and the palpable suspense that really set An Extraordinary Lord apart.

This enemies-to-lovers romance succeeds where others falter thanks to its original premise and fantastic characters.

RomanceContemporary Romance

Very Sincerely Yours

Review by Dolly R. Sickles

Kerry Winfrey’s Very Sincerely Yours is a sweet and lighthearted rom-com that will appeal to readers who prefer stories that focus more on character than conflict.

Teddy Phillips spent the last six years believing that being in the background was just as important as being in the spotlight. At least that’s what her boyfriend, Richard, was happy to let her believe. She built him up, letting his needs take precedence in their relationship, and he let her. Because he was a doctor and therefore important, and she just worked at a vintage toy shop, which was unimportant, he was also happy to let her shoulder the weight of making their life easier. Orderly. Maintained. Boring.

It isn’t until Richard asks Teddy to move out that she realizes she’s lost herself along the way. She’s put more focus on making the people in her life happy and content rather than focusing on what she wants to do and to be. Bolstered by good friends, a bucket list and a resolution to “find her thing,” Teddy reaches out to Everett St. James, the host of “Everett’s Place,” a local children show that’s gone from one of Teddy’s guilty pleasures to a treasured comfort watch. That’s due in large part to Everett, who is soothing, kind and focused on building up his young viewers’ self-esteem.

Everett is a technicolor man who lives in the spotlight that Teddy has shunned. He’s doing exactly what he wants and is happy to offer advice to the children who write to his show. So when an adult woman writes in to get advice, he answers. Teddy and Everett begin a truly satisfying epistolary relationship through email, which is one of the most enjoyable elements of the book. Their personalities and humor shine through their notes to each other. Everett, in life and in epistolary prose, is a wonderful creation. Next to his rich, full characterization, Teddy can feel a bit lackluster and unsure, but it’s hard not to relate to her all the same. Who hasn’t felt less important, less settled, less driven . . . just less, at some point?

Very Sincerely Yours is a reminder of how important it is for you to focus on you—on the things that make you happy, that make you feel good, and on all your goals and hopes and dreams.

Kerry Winfrey’s Very Sincerely Yours is a sweet and lighthearted rom-com that will appeal to readers who prefer stories that focus more on character than conflict.

RomanceNonfictionFictionYA FictionYASpeculative FictionBiography

The Hold List: Genre refreshers

Feature by the editors of BookPage

No matter how hot it is outside, that first jump into the pool is always a shock. These five books are like that early summer plunge, each having transformed a well-loved genre into something totally surprising, gasp-worthy and deeply refreshing.

Severance

I have no idea why zombie movies and novels were such a thing in the 2010s, but it felt like everyone had an opinion about fast versus slow zombies, and nearly any stranger could tell you when and why they stopped watching “The Walking Dead.” Ling Ma’s spectacular 2018 debut novel, Severance, took the familiar zombie thriller and fused it with the fledgling millennial office novel to create something wholly original, using an apocalyptic framework to explore our daily routines and nostalgic obsessions. The story of a young woman who survives the plague and now finds herself homesick in civilization’s afterlife, Severance is a mashup, a sendup, a takedown. And the book continues to feel fresh in new ways nearly three years later: It’s about a global virus, but it’s also about continuing to work at your semifulfilling job while the unfathomable draws ever closer.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

Anna K

I remember gasping aloud and then laughing with delight at the opening paragraph of Jenny Lee’s relentlessly effervescent re-imagining of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (which, confession, I have never read). It begins with a magnificent revision of Tolstoy’s famous epigraph, contains an unrepeatable expletive, name-drops Hermès, Apple, Madison Avenue and SoulCycle, and then ends with a parenthetical explanation that its subject’s “new gluten-free diet” prevents her from attending a “double sesh” workout. The whole thing serves to signal: Reader, you’re not in 19th-century St. Petersburg anymore. You’re in contemporary Manhattan amid a group of uber-wealthy Korean American teens whose social and romantic entanglements Lee chronicles with wit and style aplenty, not to mention a blunt frankness that would make even Gossip Girl blush. I can’t imagine anything more delicious than setting up poolside or stretching out on a park blanket under a tree and letting Lee’s sparkling prose and Anna and Vronsky’s life-changing love take me away. XOXO, indeed.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

Mona in the Promised Land

Coming-of-age novels are far from rare, but acclaimed writer Gish Jen crafted one that rises above its genre in her beloved 1997 novel, Mona in the Promised Land. In the late 1960s, Chinese American teenager Mona Chang is growing up in the suburbs of Scarshill, New York, and struggling to find peace in her identity and to settle into her place in the world. Throughout Mona’s engaging exploration of Chinese, American and Jewish traditions, she finds love in a tepee, employment in a pancake restaurant and adherence to a new religion. It’s astoundingly refreshing to see a book effortlessly balance complex topics like race and identity with lighthearted moments and adolescent rites of passage. Through it all, Mona’s sharp wit and penchant for drama are her constant companions, making this lively book as entertaining as it is pensive. Jen takes a dynamic look at how important identity is for all of us while keeping the laughs coming. I loved every page of it.

—Caroline, Editorial Intern 

Red, White & Royal Blue

Even if you’re not a romance reader, you’ve probably heard of Casey McQuiston’s debut novel. (If you’ve been living under a rock, our interview with the author will catch you up.) But this love story between Alex Claremont-Diaz, first son of the United States, and Prince Henry of the U.K. deserves recognition for more than its stunning crossover success. When the novel achieved bestseller status, McQuiston proved that leaving LGBTQ representation in romance to the online-only and/or independent publishing realm meant leaving dollars on the table. She also gave the oft-gloomy, oft-toxic subcategory of New Adult (which features college-age protagonists), a much needed zap of positive, giddy energy. There are plenty of serious issues at stake—only a trusted few know that Henry is gay, and Alex must explore his bisexuality under a media microscope made even more intense by his Latinx heritage—but there are also karaoke extravaganzas, one of the rowdiest New Year’s Eve parties in fiction and a fan-favorite scene involving Thanksgiving turkeys.

—Savanna, Associate Editor

Nobody Will Tell You This But Me

I love family memoirs—the messier, the better. If the author has been disowned, neglected or mistreated, I’m there with bells on and bookmarks in hand. However, even someone whose literary appetite for drama is as bottomless as mine can appreciate the refreshing sweetness of Bess Kalb’s memoir about her late grandmother, Bobby. Nobody Will Tell You This But Me digs into generations of difficult family history—fleeing the pogroms in Belarus, immigrating to New York City, building a business and a home one scheme at a time—but the twist is that Kalb writes from a place of deep love and appreciation for her grandmother, in defiance of those trauma-informed books that tease apart years of hurt. As an added bonus, comedy and TV writer Kalb narrates this story in Bobby’s frank, anxious, singularly funny voice, like an adoring impression. This bold, fresh approach is a welcome deviation from the first-person introspection common to the genre. Kalb’s buoyant memoir floats splendidly alone on a sea of fraught familial tales.

—Christy, Associate Editor

These five books are like an early summer plunge, each having transformed a well-loved genre into something totally surprising, gasp-worthy and deeply refreshing.

RomanceAudioContemporary Romance

Act Your Age, Eve Brown

Review by Anna Zeitlin

The delightful third installment in romance author Talia Hibbert’s Brown Sisters trilogy, Act Your Age, Eve Brown begins with Eve Brown failing at her latest attempt at a career and getting cut off from her trust fund. She leaves London and heads to the countryside, where she comes across a cute bed-and-breakfast that happens to be hiring a chef, a job she could probably pull off. Eve botches the interview and runs over B&B owner Jacob with her car, but she winds up working for him while his broken arm heals. He’s stubborn and stuck in his ways, and she’s fun and carefree, so of course they can’t resist each other.

Prolific voice-over actor Ione Butler effortlessly switches between Eve’s cool London accent and Jacob’s grumpy country tones. She delivers both comedy and romance, going straight for the heart but never losing the humor.

 

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

Narrator Ione Butler goes straight for the heart—but never loses the humor—in her rendition of Talia Hibbert's latest rom-com.
RomanceContemporary Romance

The Road Trip

Review by Carole V. Bell

In Beth O’Leary’s The Road Trip, the path to hell (and happy ever after) is paved with exes and their besties.

Fittingly, their journey begins with a literal bang. Two cars collide on their way from southern England to Scotland for the wedding of a mutual friend. The bigger car is totaled, and the two vehicles' combined five people squeeze into a tiny Mini Cooper for a discomfiting 400-mile journey with plenty of baggage in tow. The resulting carpool includes Addie and Dylan, estranged former live-in lovers who met and fell hard at an idyllic villa in France; their respective best friends, Deb (Addie’s sister) and Marcus (Dylan’s appallingly awful best friend); plus the bride's mysterious wild-card co-worker.

O’Leary is a brilliant social observer and a fearless, diabolical plotter. She arranges nuances of character, class, personality and situation for maximum chaos, placing the estranged exes in forced proximity for two painful days with Marcus, the guy who pushed them apart. Dylan is an Oxford grad and a poet from a posh, aristocratic family with flagging generational wealth; Addie is a working-class girl from Chichester who now works as a schoolteacher; and Marcus, the serpent in their garden, is a reckless, dissolute lost boy.

When they met, Dylan was a guest in the French villa where Addie was working as a caretaker for the summer. Unfortunately, Addie also became the primary caretaker of her ensuing relationship with Dylan. The majority of the book alternates between the titular road trip from hell and flashbacks that highlight the origins of their dysfunction: Marcus' frequent interference, Dylan’s passivity and Addie’s mounting frustration and insecurity.

This book's cover is deceptive, as The Road Trip is neither a romp nor a rom com. It’s an intense romance with a wildly wicked sense of humor—Sarah MacLean’s epic The Day of the Duchess meets Dangerous Liaisons in contemporary casual weekend dress. O’Leary unpacks the love story from multiple perspectives—the relationship then and now, from both main characters’ points of view—as she explores how it grew, how it faltered and what it feels like to come together after two years apart. Providing an intimate view of all the emotional turmoil that entails, this brutal but addictive second-chance romance is the relational equivalent of a 365-degree tour of a five-car pileup.

Throughout the book, Marcus’ displays of dominance demean Dylan and Addie both, and Dylan barely pushes back. It may be hard for some readers to keep faith with a character who is so passive for so long. Still, O’Leary’s humor, insight and occasionally bonkers plot twists command attention all the way through, and the ending is miraculously, gloriously redeeming. The Road Trip is a romantic rollercoaster that you won’t be able to turn away from till it’s done.

In Beth O’Leary’s The Road Trip, the path to hell (and happy ever after) is paved with exes and their besties.

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.

RomanceContemporary Romance

One Last Stop

Review by Amanda Diehl

After her blockbuster debut novel, Red, White & Royal Blue, author Casey McQuiston returns with another queer romantic comedy—with a time slip twist. One Last Stop is a delightful speculative tale that follows August Landry, a somewhat cynical mystery lover who finds the ultimate puzzle in Jane, a punk-rock lesbian she keeps encountering on the subway.

August was raised by her single mom, who was obsessed with the disappearance of her brother, August’s uncle. Their loving but co-dependent relationship is complicated, to say the least. August sees New York City as the perfect place to strike out on her own, a bastion for loners and cynics like herself. But the city has other plans, and August immediately finds her people in the form of three supportive and vibrant roommates. The only thing that’s missing is romance, which she doesn’t expect to find anytime soon.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Casey McQuiston on what comes next after coming out.

Then she spills coffee on herself on the Q train, and like a knight in shining armor, Jane approaches with a red scarf to hide the offending stain. August knows that moments shared with strangers on public transit are fleeting, but she can’t stop thinking about Jane and whether she’ll ever run into her again.

Well, she does—again and again—because Jane is stuck. A queer activist from the 1970s, Jane has been displaced in time and is now trapped in the same car of the same subway line, with limited memory of who she was or how she wound up there. All she has are the contents of her backpack. It’s a surreal and scary situation, but at least there’s August, the tenacious and cute woman she keeps meeting. Attraction inevitably grows between them, but how can you fall in love with someone who isn’t from your time and is literally stuck on the subway? It’s a problem August is desperate to solve.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of traveling to NYC during the warmer months, you’ll recognize the particularly fervent summertime energy that One Last Stop exudes. The air is thick with humidity and endless possibilities. McQuiston infuses charm into every detail, from the creaks and hisses of a subway train pulling into a station to the shine and grandeur of the New York skyline.

This is a book of hope and love and self-discovery. August is just this side of prickly, and she possesses a cautious sense of reservation. Deep down, she’s scared of being disappointed by those she lets into her heart. She’s a perfect foil for Jane, who is unapologetic and confident.Every scene between them will make the smile on your face grow wider. The speculative twist of a time slip adds angst to August and Jane’s seemingly meant-to-be pairing, giving One Last Stop higher stakes and making it feel more propulsive than other city-set contemporary love stories.

Bursting with heart, snappy banter and a deep respect for queer history and community, One Last Stop isn’t just another surefire hit for McQuiston. It also might be the best read of the summer.

After her blockbuster debut novel, Red, White & Royal Blue, author Casey McQuiston returns with another queer romantic comedy—with a time slip twist.

RomanceContemporary Romance

Before I Saw You

Review by Amanda Diehl

Emily Houghton’s Before I Saw You is a tender, emotional debut about pain, recovery and the support people find in unexpected places. This tear-jerking slow-burn romance follows two patients in a long-term care ward as they recover from serious injuries.

Alice and Alfie share a room at St. Francis’ Hospital. Alice is an overworked introvert healing from significant burns after a fire in her building. Alfie is an incurable extrovert who survived a deadly car accident but needed to have his leg amputated. They’re very much opposites. Alfie is quite the chatterbox, determined to bring a smile to everyone’s face, and Alice barely speaks and keeps the curtains closed around her bed. After relying solely on herself from a too early age, the thought of depending on someone else for anything causes Alice to shrink further into herself.

At first, their relationship is built on Alfie talking and Alice just listening. While his incessant chattering annoys Alice at the beginning, she quickly grows accustomed to hearing his voice and eventually finds it a source of comfort. Alfie and Alice both suffered other traumas before their respective injuries, and a long-term hospital stay could be the catalyst for finally addressing those events. After all, there is little else to do when you’re mostly confined to a hospital room.

An action-oriented romance this is not. But it's a perfect read for someone who prefers getting to know the main characters and watching their relationship grow via those tiny, seemingly inconsequential moments. Alice and Alfie’s journey from strangers to friends to more is torturous in the best way possible. Their relationship unfolds slowly, teasingly. The first time they touch hands is momentous and feels incredibly raw because of how much tension and anticipation Houghton has built up to that point.

There are dark moments as Alfie and Alice come to terms with their own baggage, and as the reader discovers more about the circumstances that led them to the hospital. Before I Saw You should come packaged with tissues because crying is inevitable. However, Houghton sneaks in bits of levity from the larger cast of characters, from Alfie’s doting parents to the empathetic staff. It’s a great, balanced approach that also extends to the affable Alfie. Though his kindness and charming personality are genuine, he wields them as a shield to distract himself from thinking too deeply about how his life will change once he leaves St. Francis.

Don't be turned off by the promise of an ugly sob or two. Houghton makes the tough times worth it, such as when Alice speaks her first words to Alfie or when she finally shifts aside her curtain and reaches out her hand. One of the beauties of romance is how it shows the bright spots amid tough times, and Before I Saw You is a testament to why readers find this genre to be hopeful above all else.

Emily Houghton’s Before I Saw You is a tender, emotional debut about pain, recovery and the support people find in unexpected places.

RomanceContemporary Romance

Seven Days in June

Review by Jessica Wakeman

“Grown women knew better than to attach themselves to time bombs. Teenage girls couldn’t wait to be ruined.” So writes Tia Williams, author of the smart and steamy Seven Days in June. The “grown woman” is Eva Mercy, a 32-year-old romance novelist and single mom in Brooklyn. The “time bomb” is Shane Hall, a literary novelist and former paramour who unexpectedly reappears in Eva’s life at a book festival. The Black literary world doesn’t know that Eva and Shane were teenage lovers—or that they’ve been communicating to each other through their books for years. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Summer reading 2021: 9 books to soak in this season

Seven Days in June is a slow burn as Shane and Eva attempt to heal old wounds, their love affair made all the more delicate by Eva’s history of abandonment. Chosen family is a strong central theme in the novel, and characters like Eva’s spunky daughter, Audre, and book editor, CeCe, bring warmth to the pages. But this isn’t a light romance by any means, especially during flashbacks. Shane entered foster care as a child and is now in Alcoholics Anonymous. Eva has a history of self-harm, and an early scene depicts an attempted sexual assault. 

In addition to addressing mental health concerns, Seven Days in June portrays the daily difficulties of having an invisible disability. Eva has experienced migraines since she was young, and she still struggles to manage them without revealing her pain to the world. But Williams never uses Eva’s illness to inspire pity or to cast her as somehow weak. It’s refreshing to see a character whose disability is fully developed and integrated into the narrative from start to finish. 

Through this gripping love story, Williams reckons with family histories and shows the power in rewriting our origin stories. She lays bare what happens when we are “fearless enough to hold each other close no matter how catastrophic the world” becomes. Readers will feel as attached to these characters as Eva and Shane are to each other. 

In this poignant romance, readers will feel as attached to Tia Williams’ characters as Eva and Shane are to each other.
RomanceHistorical Romance

An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler

Review by Elizabeth Mazer

The story starts with a tragedy. A ship sailing from Jamaica sinks just before it reaches England’s shore, leaving only two survivors. The first is a badly injured woman. The other is a baby girl, who is quickly deposited into the arms of Daniel Thackery, Earl of Ashbrook. He had come to the port to meet Phoebe Dunn, his bride-to-be. A baby wasn’t in his plans—but as the baby is a blackamoor (the Regency-era term for people with dark skin) like him, the sailors assume the child must be his. If he doesn’t claim the girl, who he can only assume was Phoebe’s daughter, she’ll be sent to an orphanage, or worse. Daniel is not one to leave an innocent without protection, so he adopts the baby and names her Hope.

Meanwhile, the other survivor, identified as Jemima St. Maur, can’t remember anything about her life before the shipwreck. Her only certainty, which comes from a place deeper than memory, is that her baby was taken from her. She’s filled with fear and despair, which only worsen when she’s committed to Bedlam—but, of course, she’s not in Bedlam for long. When Vanessa Riley’s An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler picks back up two years later, Jemima has become the toast of society. She has her pick of suitors, even if the only one who catches her eye is the barrister who secured her release and restored her to the ton—none other than Daniel himself.

It sounds like a setup straight out of a Hollywood movie, as Daniel rescues Hope, then Jemima, with the tantalizing possibility that the three of them are meant to be a family. While there’s a lot of humor and playfulness (Jemima’s letters to Daniel are highly entertaining), Riley doesn’t pull her emotional punches. An Earl opens on a powerful note, with Daniel waiting in line at the dock, seeing each person ahead of him grapple with the sight of the name of a loved one on the casualty list. When the narrative shifts to Jemima, alone and afraid in the hospital, the stakes only grow more intense.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Vanessa Riley explores the many layers of a Black aristocrat's experience in the Regency.

As the romance between Jemima and Daniel progresses, the heaviest weight comes from their vulnerabilities. Though Daniel is wealthy, educated, clever, kind and truly gentlemanly, he lives with the constant knowledge that as a Black man, any toe out of line could result in all his status and privilege being stripped away. Riley dispels the myth of the all-white Regency—people of color rose to the titled elite in this and in many other historical periods—while also refusing to diminish or gloss over an iota of the bigotry and judgment a blackamoor earl would face.

Jemima’s horrible experiences in Bedlam hang over her, shadowing not just how others perceive her but how she perceives herself and the security of her position. She was committed by an associate of her family, less because of her amnesia and more because it was convenient for her to be out of the way. With a clear and all-too-personal understanding of how easy it is for a woman to be committed to an asylum, she carries a fearful certainty that what happened before could happen again.

It’s no wonder that trust is a major theme of this romance. It’s not an easy thing for Daniel or Jemima to offer, not with so many people lined up to judge them. Their hesitance to trust each other can get a bit frustrating at times, but Riley makes it clear that they have good reason for their reservations. Love wins out over fear in the sweet ending—and the truth of what happened the day the ship sank, even when it’s not quite what anyone expected, sets them both free.

The story starts with a tragedy. A ship sailing from Jamaica sinks just before it reaches England’s shore, leaving only two survivors.

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