Summer Reading Notes

I have sorely neglected this blog, so instead of getting a post every two months, you're getting a giant four-month one. Lots of romance. Lots. As many of you know, I suffer from chronic pain, and the pain is getting worse. So lots of romance reading in an effort to soothe and sweep me away.

Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
Category: Historical Fiction
Comments: Jenner follows upon the success of her hugely popular Jane Austen Society with the 1950s London-based story, Bloomsbury Girls, about three shopgirls, a century-old bookshop, and much feuding between the male staff and the female staff to take ownership of the shop. The servant girl, Evie Stone, from Jane Austen Society is now all grown up with a degree from Cambridge and a fondness for giving visibility to forgotten women writers. She has found her home among the rare books of Bloomsbury Books & Maps. The story is about the lives of the three shop girls and the men they love. Jenner is a superb writer—keenly observant and alive to emotional nuance. [My Review]

News To Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist by Laurie Hertzel
Category: Nonfiction Memoir
Comments: This was my second read of this book, and it was just as fascinating as the first time around. Hertzel writes with an earnestness and deprecation, which makes her spare prose and great sense of storytelling so compelling to read. It is the story of her first job, which was at the main newspaper in Duluth, MN. I was fascinated by all the details of the goings-on in a big, busy newsroom. I enjoy memoirs where people talk in detail about their jobs. This book is a treasure.

Ewaso Village: Poems and Stories from Laikipia County, Kenya by Chip Duncan
Category: Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry
Comments: One of the best books of the summer for me. Something very different from what I usually review. Photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Chip Duncan’s sensitive book focuses on the Kenyan Maasai community of Ewaso village, capturing them through photographs, history, stories, and poems. Duncan first visited Ewaso village in 2012 and was welcomed into its society. Since then, he has returned annually, drawn by the community’s kindness, generosity of spirit, and easy acceptance of him. This book conveys his deep care and respect for the community and their culture. Recording both events and conversations, the book captures moments in the lives, families, traditions, and rituals of the Maasai people. [My Review]

Every Leaf a Hallelujah by Ben Okri, illustrated by Diana Ejaita
Category: Children's Fiction
Comments: This is a fantastic book by Booker Prize-winning and hugely influential Nigerian-British author, Ben Okri. This is his first book for children, and the talented artist's illustrations greatly enhance the reading experience. This book is meant for children who will inherit the climate crisis and for those of us who care about the environment. If you are a tree hugger, this book is for you. The story features an array of extraordinary Nigerian trees, each with its own personality and voice. The great baobab is the chief tree, and he takes us on a journey around the world to see what happens when we don't listen to nature. Forests are vanishing, climate is changing, and yet, no one is listening. Gorgeous book.

I Am Able to Shine by Korey Watari, illustrated by Mike Wu
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: Inspired by her experience growing up Japanese American, debut picture book author Korey Watari has teamed up with her husband, Pixar artist and creator of the Ellie series, Mike Wu, to create I Am Able to Shine, the joyful story of Keiko, a young Japanese American girl with a big heart and big dreams. Every night, young Keiko wishes to her paper crane, “I wish to change the world and shine.” And yet, everywhere she goes she feels invisible. The book is about how Keiko overcomes adversity to seize the future she wants. She does this by being true to herself and in so doing achieves her dreams. [My Review]

Goodnight Ganesha by Nadia Salomon, illustrated by Poonam Mistry
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: With rhymes patterned on Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, this is a picture book that celebrates the beloved nightly rituals of two children visiting their grandparents’ home in India. The artwork in this book is outstanding. Delicate filigree work reminiscent of the art and architecture of ancient India fills every page with color. Despite the pieces being predominantly hand-drawn, you would need to take a magnifying glass to see all the minute details. A book worth savoring. [My Review]

Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War Between the Windsors by Tom Bower
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: Gossipy book. I was so curious what it was all about and why it made such a huge splash in the UK. And I don't know what to believe anymore. It is very detailed, and he has clearly done a ton of research and talked to a ton of people. But it is also very biased and one-sided.

Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is one of my best romances of the year. A brilliant and wildly creative young woman with sharp corners and sharper tongue discovers the softer side of life through the love of a kind young man in this dazzling debut romance. It is set at a small university in England and features two Nigerian-British protagonists. On the surface, it is a typical enemies-to-lovers college romance, but it is Babalola's distincctive voice and writing style that elevates it to memorable. [My Review]

Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: The author draws on her experience narrating audiobooks in this poignant and charming novel about two famous audiobook performers who fall in love during their dual narration of a romance novel. Much of the novel is epistolary, through anonymous emails and text messages. I love such books where protagonists fall in love with each other's personality even before they set eyes on each other. [My Review]

To Catch a Raven by Beverly Jenkins
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: In the last book of her highly popular Women Who Dare series, Jenkins tells a complex, nuanced story of a courageous, enterprising woman from New Orleans who lives by her wits and a wealthy, philanthropic tailor from Boston. I have really liked all the books in this series. [My Review]

Wedding Bells at Villa Limoncello by Daisy James
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a warmhearted, small-town, slow burn story, which is a love letter to Italy that starts off the U.S. debut of Daisy James’ Tuscan Dreams series. This is a continuity series, where the protagnoists' happy-for-now story continues in the next two books. They meet when he runs her Vespa off the road with his Spider.

Rules of Engagement by Stacey Abrams writing as Selena Montgomery
Category: Contemporary Romantic Suspense
Comments: This is a reissue of the second-chance romantic suspense novel about two brilliant minds recruited from graduate school by a shadowy extragovernmental intelligence agency to lead a peripatetic lifestyle around the globe. It is a tightly-paced thriller with a tender romance set in the fictitious Mediterranean island of Jafir, whose culture is the confluence of the Middle East and Africa. Abrams a fabulous writer and really knows how to write romantic suspense. Definitely worth a look.

Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is Guillory's best book so far. The story is set among the verdant vineyards of Napa Valley, where she immerses you in the nitty-gritty of the wine business. The heroine is the rare black co-owner of a vineyard, and the hero is a tech whiz whose burned out on the intense pressure and racism of Silicon Valley. They meet over a one-night-stand, and lo and behold, the next day, he walks in as her new employee. Eek! [My Review]

On Rotation by Shirlene Obuobi
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I totally geeked out over all the medical school details in this story by a Ghanaian-American cardiologist. The heroine is Ghanaian-American and the hero is Caucasian. In addition, he is not a lawyer, doctor, or engineer, but gasp! an artist. He’s also got “wasteman” practically tattooed across his forehead. A no-no to the heroine's family. But in reality, he is really a sweetheart. Excellent characterization of two dissimilar people who grow and learn to appreciate how the other one clicks. Obuobi is a writer to watch. This was her debut book.

In a New York Minute by Kate Spencer
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: What a fun paean to New York City! Spencer loves the city, and it shows. The story opens with the heroine getting fired from her interior design startup and worried about how she was now going to subsist in the hideously expensive city. The hero is this uptight wealthy heir to a business with his bespoke suits. The hero is kind and wonderful. She is sassy and artsy. Chalk and cheese. They meet on the subway, when the back of her dress gets caught in the doors and rips straight down her back. He jumps in to the rescue with his suit jacket. Their whole interaction is caught on a stealth video that becomes a hashtag viral sensation. Someone finds their identity, and they are thrown together again and again. A quick, light read.

The Lost Letter by Mimi Matthews
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Having greatly enjoyed Matthews' recent books, I decided to check out her earliest romance, and it is a delightful Victorian in the traditional style. It's a second-chance, Beauty & the Beast, governess & peer of the realm romance elevated by Matthews wonderful prose, superb research, and immersive period feel. In their youth, they met in London's ballrooms, he, an officer in the army and she, a young miss. They were in love but hadn't quite acknowledged it to the other. Suddenly, he is called away to India. While they both write to each other, neither gets the other's letters, and they feel that they have been betrayed and abandoned by the other. In the meantime, her worthless gamester father dies, leaving her in penury, so she has to make a living as a governess in a merchant's home in London's insalubrious environs. He returns badly injured and is hiberating on his estate, when his desperate sister finds her and blackmails and cajoles her into paying a visit. Like I said, not an unusual story, but Matthews really knows how to map the emotional terrain of her characters. Definitely worth a read.

Field Rules by Carla Luna
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I totally took a chance on this author, never having read her or heard about her and despite seeing the low ratings on her other three books. But she's an archeologist and this story is set on a dig in Cyprus, so I thought at least there would be much geekery to be had. And it sure does. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters. It deserves a much higher rating than only 20 five stars on AMZ. She's an archelogy PhD student who buries her head in academia after one disastrous dig in her undergrad with her fellow student, who was her lover and whom she promptly ghosts. However, now at this stage in her academic career, she needs to earn some street creds, so she decides to take a chance on a dig, only to discover that her ex is the expert on the dig. He abandoned grad school and became a "shovel bum," someone who lives a roving life traveling from dig to dig bringing in his field experience in exchange for money. Great backstory for him and great characterization for him. She needed a little bit more. Good overall story.

Her Fake Date Until Midnight by Eve Pendle
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [I received an eARC from the author.] I have read and enjoyed a couple of Pendle's historical romances, so took a chance on this contemporary, and it was lots of fun. She has an entertaining British contemporary voice. He is a citified billionaire. She's a small town, almost broke veteranian working in her ex's father's clinic. Her ex is getting married, and her boss wants her to go. How can she without a plus one? The hero is a harried workaholic billionaire who has been charged by his sister to take a mental health break by rusticating at a manor house in the country. Lo and behold, a pregnant dog ends up unconscious on his doorstep, and he has no clue what to do. First things first, he takes the dog to the local vet, and asks (demands) that she take charge of the dog. They make a trade: he attends the wedding as her plus one and she will help him find the owner. Many hijinks ensue. Pendle keeps a light hand on the emotions and a tight rein on the plot, allowing the characters to shine without getting bogged down by over-the-top emotional excess that plague many billionaire romances. Definitely an author to check out.

Once Upon a Bride by Jenny Holiday
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: Having enjoyed other of Holidays books, I chose this one. But it was less successful than some others of this type: he's the successful, wealthy, repressed, man of the world; she's the down-on-her-luck, creative, free spirit. Beneath that stern exterior, he's a sweetheart. Beneath her bubbly exterior, she is hiding childhood emotional scars. He is her employer because he hired her to do the interior decoration at his firm. They do everything but avoid any intimacy till the very hour the job is done. Holiday has a light, banter-filled hand, but somehow, neither the characterization nor the plot really take off. It is a competent story from a good writer, but that's it.

Below Zero by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: My first Ali Hazelwood story, and I totally get why her debut book Love Hypothesis has 4.6 stars from 45k+ readers on Amazon. She is a superb writer and tells an entertaining, fast-paced story of nerdy NASA engineers and scientists geeking out over code and Mars rovers and engaging in great derring-do in the brutal wilds of Svalbard, Norway. The heroine is prickly and thinks very poorly of herself. She believes men are only interested in hookups with her and would be turned off if they got to know her. He thinks she is fabulous and falls in love with her at their first meeting. He is a total cinnamon roll, kind and sweet and earnest. I loved all the tech in the book—you get the feeling that Hazelwood has really researched it all in great, authentic detail. And who does not have stars (ha!) in their eyes over NASA?

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Another story set in the rarefied atmosphere of NIH and NASA. I totally geeked out about all the details of a neuroengineering research project that adds performance enhancement technology through neurostimulation to astronauts’ helmets. Light espionage, some derring-do, and an unexpected villain are just some of the delights. [My Review]

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Hazelwood's books are about people in STEM, academia, and research, which I absolutely love, and she has the chops to pull it off. In addition to romance, she is the writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science. Pulling off a strong power imbalance relationship between her protagonists as a debut book takes courage, and Hazelwood has it in spades. The heroine is a graduate student in the same department as the hero who is a professor. He is not her advisor nor is he on her PhD thesis committee, but it is still a power imbalance situation. With clever and yet seamless plot and character maneuvering, Hazelwood employs a cracking pace, witty banter, and fully accessible complex people to make it easy for the reader to take the leap and believe that this is a healthy, solid relationship. Highly recommended.

Under One Roof by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: When I first read the premise, I rolled my eyes. Such a trite contemporary romance plot, but I decided to give it a try, because it's a Hazelwood. And I'm glad I did. This is a tender STEMinist novella. They've both been left a house in DC by someone they both love: her mentor and his aunt. But she didn't warn them about it beforehand. So now they are yoked together and are as different as can be in temperament and job. She's an environmental engineer at the EPA and he is a big oil lawyer. And...boy, do the sparks fly. Lovely character work as before, and despite it having to move along quickly since it is a novella, the relationship story does not feel shortchanged.

Stuck with You by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: This is the weakest of all of Hazelwood's books. Because I read them all in one go, I started noticing author "tells," and how this story rehashes much of the characterization of her other books even down to how the hero and heroine look and behave and speak. If you space her books out, one a year, you may very likely not notice this. Which is to say that in a year or two, I'll be drawn to her new book once again.

The Make-Up Test by Jenny L. Howe
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: Competence porn is real! Both the characters are great students, and the academic discussion scenes are wonderful. The hero and heroine meet at Brown, where she's a sophomore and he's a senior. The fat rep for her is superb as is the characterization of the hero who is far from the romance novel hero norm. What Howe brings to the table is that the only thing that matters is that they each find the other very attractive. They spend a good few months together, but then he betrays her and dumps her. Surpise, surpise! When she lands in graduate school, guess who is also a first year in the same department and vying to be the advisee of the same famed professor? He ruined her life in undergrad; is he now going to do the same to her grad school and future academic aspirations? Good examination of the people they were in undergrad versus the people they have grown up to be now. Good growth opportunity for both people, which is what I look for, but as is more and more en vogue in contemporary roms these days, the hero has more work to do.

Before I Do by Sophie Cousens
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: This book is quite unusual in that every chapter is in a different time, before and after, the main event, which is the disastrous wedding of the hero and the heroine. I loved the way Cousens executes this multi-timeline approach. The story is mainly from the heroine's POV and is set in England. She is someone who flitted about different majors (courses) at university and finally dropped out. She does odd jobs here and there to scrape together a living. While she feels stuck several years behind her friends who have steady jobs, house mortgages, marriages, etc.—;i.e., the usual trappings of life of people in their twenties and thirties—;she is not very motivated to try to change her life. She is suffering from trauma and that leads her to live a risky, careless life. The hero is sweet, kind, responsible, loving, and upstanding. Just the best, and he loves her unconditionally. I did not like the heroine's attitude to life and how she simply takes from everyone around her, including her fiancé. He does all the work, and yet he is shown to be grateful to her just for her presence in his life. The author tries to give the heroine a character update towards the end of the book, but it was too little, too late for me.

The One That Got Away by Zee Monodee
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This was a DNF, which was a huge pity. It's by Love Africa Press, and I try to read their books as and when I can. I was so excited by the premise: A second-chance multicultural romance set in Mauritius and based on Mauritius cultural and societal norms. It started out very promising but quickly went awry because of the poor writing. While it is in dual POVs, the heroine's is primary, and I found her very inconsistent. The author tells us over and over again how talented she is and what an important job she has, but instead of a successful, mature woman in her thirties, we get a thirty-plus-going-on-twenty with all the immature reactions and actions inherent therein. I persisted for a while because I still retained hopes of the story coming together after a rough start, but had to eventually nope out.

The Decoy Girlfriend by Lillie Vale
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: This was a DNF as well. I had heard the buzz about Vale's first book, so I was eager to try this one out, and it was disappointing in multiple ways. The author wanted to write in first person present, but you have to construct the story differently as opposed to writing it in first person past. Vale couldn't pull it off, so there were constant tense changes, which got tiresome. The heroine is very shallow and gives very little as opposed to all that everyone around her, especially the hero, gives her. The hero is a true cinnamon roll, despite being extremely hot and a famous actor. Her only claim to fame is a bestseller she wrote in her late teens. She is not making any progress with her second book and is unemployed because, well, she is writing (or at least pretending to be), but everyone around her is bending over backwards to pretend that she is a "real wrier." There is plenty of preaching from her to the hero of how a writer thinks, all of which makes him admire her. The premise is that she is the doppelgänger of a famous Hollywood golden girl, and she gets lots of perks, including free jewelry, from pretending to be her...till she gets caught. Then her doppelgänger has her really pretend to be her, which involves being closely involved with her showmance boyfriend, who doesn't feel a thing for the star but falls instantly in lust and love with our writer.

[Some of these books are eARCs from NetGalley and the others are either borrowed from the public library or I've bought them.]