'Early Morning Riser' by Katherine Heiny

 

From the BLURB: 

Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere – at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While she may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she didn't have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, still has Duncan mow her lawn. And his coworker Jimmy comes and goes from Duncan's apartment at the most inopportune times. Jane wonders how the relationship is supposed to work with all these people in it. But any notion Jane has of love and marriage changes with one tragic accident. Now her life is permanently intertwined with Duncan's, Aggie's, and Jimmy's, and she knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But is it possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of her eyes? 

A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Early Morning Riser is Katherine Heiny's most astonishingly wonderful work to date.

'Early Morning Riser' is the new contemporary fiction novel from US author Katherine Heiny, and my first book of hers that I've read.

I believe the title of this book spins around the old saying; "Waking up early allows me to fill my cup before anyone else starts to drain it," or some variation thereof. It follows 24-year-old Jane who has just moved to Boyne City, Michigan to teach second grade when she gets locked out of her house one day and meets local locksmith, carpenter, and all-round handyman (in more ways than one) - Duncan. The two tumble into bed and a relationship pretty quickly - but Jane comes to realise that 40-something year-old Duncan has quite the history in the approx 2000 population Boyne City and surrounds. He's been around, and it seems to Jane that she's constantly meeting or bumping into his ex-girlfriends and bedmates. Including his beautiful milkmaid of an ex-wife, Aggie.

Duncan is also closely tied to his co-worker; the developmentally challenged young man Jimmy - whom the town of Boyne City collectively looks out for, along with his Mama. And through a series of tragic events, it looks like Jane's life will begin inexplicably orbiting this town and Duncan's many relationships too ... forming a life she didn't precisely envision for herself, but is no less the one she maybe always wanted.

I really loved this book. I didn't know what I was really in for with a fairly vague blurb, and an invitingly bright front-cover seeming to follow the illustrated aesthetic of many contemporary romance and 'women's fiction' titles ... but Katherine Heiny's other book ('Standard Deviation') came recommended to me, and so I was keen to try her latest release. I will say that 'Early Morning Riser' kept surprising me, and I loved it for that especially.

If you need to hitch a theme or recurring thought to this story it comes in a small moment when Duncan's ex-wife Aggie comes round to Jane's house for a brief stay, and sees a chipped tureen sitting on the counter that she confidently proclaims is hers;

Jane stood at the door on the morning Aggie moved in, striving for an expression of warm and loving welcome, but the first thing Aggie did was gesture at the bowl of dried flowers on the kitchen table and say, "I believe that's my soup tureen." 

"No, it's mine," Jane said. "I bought it at the thrift store." 

"I'm sure you did." Aggie put her hands on her hips. "But it used to be mine. Duncan and I got it as a wedding present from the Mitfords. I recognize the chip on the handle. How much did you pay for it?" 

"Ninety-nine cents," said Jane. (It had actually been twelve dollars.)

Herein lies the crux of the story. Jane is a humble elementary school teacher with a penchant for secondhand everything, up-cycling and thrifting. Heiny hilariously plays with this, that Jane is not an Instagram-influencer level of vintage-shopper; her outfits are often odd and ill-fitting, when her mother comes to visit she'll make snide comments about their weird amalgamation. But Jane is happiest in a thrift store and enjoys her ingenuity ... much as she appreciates Duncan's clear sexual experience gained from many former lovers. Until the secondhand, passed-down nature of both is explicitly pointed out to her. Then as much as Jane tries, she can't help musing on Duncan's very nature and whether or not he'll forever be wandering.

That's a real over-simplification for what Heiny does here, ultimately. Especially because 'Early Morning Riser' is not following the typical trajectory of a contemporary romance. I kept expecting them, probably because Jane does too. She's that kind of relatable character and we're so beautifully given her interior by Heiny; that we expect her to be the classic movie-star hero of her own life ... there are many moments when I think we're built up to expect a big confrontation or AH-HA! moment, a loving declaration or accusatory revelation.

But they don't come. Because this isn't a fairytale or movie. This is ... life. So the big revelations are quieter; they come in raised-eyebrows, what's left unsaid, inference rather than dramatisation. It really is the little things. A quiet life built together. Shared struggles and messy, complicated families.

This comes back around towards the end, when Jane comes to a gentle understanding that maybe she's not the harbinger of her own bad-luck. That maybe the path she took was inevitable and self-determined because she chose her family, built them for herself - didn't have it all thrust upon her - and actually what she always thought of as 'bad luck' and her lot in life, is closer to the one she wanted all along.

In the thrift store of life, Jane chose the pieces that spoke to her - chips and all.

I really, really loved this story of quiet lives and building families. I will totally admit that because I came to it with my more commercial-fiction and romance genre background, I did find myself *wanting* and *yearning* for the big, definitive romantic declarations and revelations - and that I probably still had that desire by book's end, which didn't make for a fully-rounded reading experience for me. But much like Jane, I really ended up liking where the story took me.

5/5

'Life's Too Short' The Friend Zone #3 by Abby Jimenez

 

From the BLURB: 

When Vanessa Price quit her job to pursue her dream of traveling the globe, she wasn't expecting to gain millions of YouTube followers who shared her joy of seizing every moment. For her, living each day to its fullest isn't just a motto. Her mother and sister never saw the age of 30, and Vanessa doesn't want to take anything for granted. 

But after her half sister suddenly leaves Vanessa in custody of her baby daughter, life goes from "daily adventure" to "next-level bad" (now with bonus baby vomit in hair). The last person Vanessa expects to show up offering help is the hot lawyer next door, Adrian Copeland. After all, she barely knows him. No one warned her that he was the Secret Baby Tamer or that she'd be spending a whole lot of time with him and his geriatric Chihuahua. 

Now she's feeling things she's vowed not to feel. Because the only thing worse than falling for Adrian is finding a little hope for a future she may never see.

'Life's Too Short' is the third book in Abby Jimenez's 'The Friend Zone' series - which I think is now over, completing as a trilogy.

This book centres around Vanessa Price - a renowned travel-vlog YouTuber who has just been handed the responsibility of taking care of her baby niece, because her 19-year-old sister - baby Grace's mother - is a drug-dependent addict and currently spiralling. So Vanessa is grounded, for the foreseeable future. This is how she meets her building's owner and her neighbour, Adrian Copeland who is also a successful criminal lawyer. They meet when Adrian knocks on her door one night to see if he can help her calm down a wailing baby Grace and the two strike up a friendship.

And that's all it can be - a friendship, because Vanessa makes it very clear that she can't get involved with anyone. That's because Vanessa has a history of ALS in her family - once known as Lou Gehrig's disease ALS is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and it took Vanessa's aunt, mother and older sister all before they hit 30, which 29-year-old Vanessa is rapidly approaching and has early signs of same symptoms. She doesn't want to get romantically involved with anyone, and she is wholly focused on taking care of her train-wreck family, and Grace especially, before her time runs out. Adrian is a temptation she wasn't counting on, and as the two grow ever closer she begins to wonder how much marrow she can suck out of life with the time she has left ...

So - look - I know that above description is going to give lots of romance-readers pause, but let me assure you; this is still a technical romance and all the HEA that entails. Because this is Jimenez's modus operandi; to set up female characters who are dealing with impossible odds (often physical and medical) that presents a swerve away from traditional romance tropes (namely; the marriage plot and 'barefoot and pregnant'), only to have it all work out in the end and for tradition to be restored. She did this in first book 'The Friend Zone' and a protagonist with endometriosis who cannot have kids, falling for a guy who comes from a big family and all he wants is children.

And this is my frustration, ultimately. Yes I still want a HEA - I don't particularly want to read romance novels with depressing, no-hope endings (that's not romance) but what frustrates me is that Jimenez does such a good job for 80% of a novel, of setting up alternate-romances full of compromises and tenderness, where the male protagonists in particular have to adapt their idea of partner and family because the women they love are not the "perfect" archetype. Like ... I could totally get behind a HEA that includes a woman dealing with the very real hardships that come with infertility because of endometriosis, and her and a partner having to adapt their ideas of family. But no. Jimenez is more likely to just fix everything with a miracle, against-the-odds pregnancy that totally negates all the hard work she put into getting these characters together and working to form a relationship.

She does the same here, in 'Life's Too Short'. I learnt so much about ALS and the realities of living with a genetic roulette like Vanessa is. This is the perfect set-up for a big concept of 'Happy For Now' between Vanessa and Adrian, but no ... not to give anything away, but there is a large degree to which everything is magicked away by the end. Or not - it's probably a lot more open-ended than 'The Friend Zone' and I guess it depends on if you're an optimist or pessimist determines how much of a HEA time-limit they get.

But, this is a frustration for me. Jimenez's books could be so progressive and adaptive in the romance genre, presenting a different way for female protagonists to be happy, and inverting traditional nuclear-family tropes largely by having male protagonists compromise and adapt for the women they love and the life they want to build with them. But she doesn't. Not really. It's always a cop-out at the end. Even more so in 'Life's Too Short' because Adrian and Vanessa's time coupled on the page is so short and fleeting, it really feels like the last half of the book fumbled their coupling and didn't quite pay-off for the slow-burn build up.

Overall, this series has been ~fine~. But it could have been great, and therein lies the rub for me. Jimenez always seems to pull her punches.

I think if you want a romance author who commits to subverting romance tropes and presenting different ways for characters in romance novels to ~be~, then maybe try Talia Hibbert?

3/5

'Detransition, Baby' by Torrey Peters

From the BLURB:

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn’t hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. 

Ames isn’t happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames’s boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she’s pregnant with his baby—and that she’s not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he’s been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together? 

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can’t reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.

‘Detransition, Baby’ by US author Torrey Peters came out in January of this year and has become perhaps the most buzzed-about book of the moment – and not necessarily for the best of reasons. 

This book came on my radar – rather deliciously, in hindsight – when it was one of 16 titles longlisted for The UK Women's Prize for Fiction, and received backlash from trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). Peters – a trans woman, writing about trans identity – dealt with the backlash with absolute aplomb in interviews and essays (as for iNews), and I simply had to know what this book was, that had won the admiration of so many readers and booksellers I trust, and the scorn of bigoted communities I despise.

Turns out – ‘Detransition, Baby’ is one of the most original, chaotic, luscious, and confronting reading journeys I’ve ever had the joy to experience. It’s a book that when I was reading it and had to put it aside, I’d keep thinking what I’d just read in that chapter and I’d count down the hours until I could crack it open again. It’s a book that when I finished reading, I was bereft. It’s the rare experience to know while you’re in the middle of something for the first time, that you’ll crave this moment of newness and wish you could go back to experience it anew all over again. 

‘Detransition, Baby’ is the story of three very different characters orbiting one another. There’s Reese – a trans woman living in New York whose long-term, five-year lesbian relationship with another trans woman ended years ago, when her partner decided to detransition and become a cis male. Reese is now aimless and slightly self-destructive, partnering up with married cis men who treat her rough and keep her secret.

Then there’s Ames – who when Reese knew him her name was Amy, and she was a trans woman and Reese’s long-term partner. A violent encounter had Ames detransitioning and cutting off all ties with their previous trans community, Reese included. Ames has been living in a somewhat liminal existence, but a slight grounding came when he started a clandestine affair with his married cis boss, Katrina – who does not know that Ames was once Amy.

Katrina is even more shocked when she gets pregnant and Ames is the father, since she assumed that he was infertile for his allusions to being unlikely to progenate. But conceive they have, and now the three of them – Ames, Katrina, and Reese – have a baby on the way. Because Ames has declared that he likely can’t go through with parenthood (and not that even more abstract concept, fatherhood) without the presence of Reese, the last person he was meant to start a family with. 

That’s the basic gist of the story – and forgive me if this sounds caustic for the pronouns, but I’m meaning to only refer to general concept when I say; ‘Three Men and a Baby’ 1987 film vibes. Which was itself meant to pull laughs from the supposedly ~ToPsY tUrVy~ flip of gender-roles to have three bachelors care for a baby, what madness! Peters and ‘Detransition, Baby’ is taking a similar premise but going, obviously, deeper and playing with gender-roles again and archetypes throughout society as she plays with what it means to be a family. Even in theory. And actually; ‘Surprise, baby!’ plots abound in literature, from the Virgin Mary of the Bible to Les Misérables and Jean Valjean becoming a single-father to Cosette. It is a truly ingenious plot-‘trope’ that Torrey Peters has designed to launch this far-reaching millennial story. 

And ‘Detransition, Baby’ is very much a millennial story … I eye-roll slightly (and still) when people say that Sally Rooney is “the first great millennial novelist,” because ‘Normal People’ was ~fine~ but honestly, Torrey Peter’s book pulled far more introspection out of me, and moved me in a way that Rooney just could never. In Torrey Peter’s novel I found a deep and cathartic confrontation of womanhood. Reese is undoubtedly the MVP of the novel, even though I came to love all three main players, it’s Reese who has the most poignant and sometimes toxic thoughts on femininity, and what it means to be a woman. It's Reese who is snarky-elegance, encased in fragile ego and a yearning so bone-deep it's beautiful.

When we meet her, Reese is fully-aware that she is entering into unhealthy relationships with cis men who are using her. At the start she’s the ‘other woman’ to a Manhattan Cowboy who has already contracted (barely detectable) HIV from a previous trans partner, and is again cheating on his wife who is currently trying to conceive via IVF, he’s now cheating on her with Reese. In Reese’s story of sexual encounters with this man and others like him, ‘Detransition, Baby’ often becomes fairly erotic and highly charged, as Reese enters into slight BDSM bedroom relations with these men. At one point she likens this to a desire to be meek and hurt; the ultimate feminine is to be vulnerable, aggression is the male response. Now – just because it’s written doesn’t mean it’s true, or that Torrey Peters actually believes this herself. But her character Reese does, deep down. Reese – like a true millennial – is in many ways caught between her boomer upbringing (the cusp of a bygone era of almost-Betty Draper’s and the American housewife she still secretly views as the pinnacle of womanhood) and a new generation of ‘baby transes’ for whom she is a sort of mother-figure and matriarch, but who have a very separate world outlook to her which she often, hilariously, comments on; 

This is what happens when the only trans voices out there are the loudest, shrillest trans girls constantly publishing dogmatic Trans 101 hot takes to rebuke the larger cis public. You get people thinking that in order to avoid offending trans people, you must locate and follow a secret guidebook filled with the arcane rites, instead of just thinking about them decently, as you would anything else.

It’s through Reese that I think we get some of the most perfect captures of pop-culture and nostalgia that Torrey Peters articulates beautifully. Like this one musing from Reese, which is entirely factual and something I didn’t even know I’d remembered and realised the difference until Peters put it right in front of me, perfectly;  

In Reese’s memories of childhood, night had a different blue-black tone than in her adult life. And, in fact, she later learned when she returned to visit Madison after a long hiatus, this change in the color of night was not an illusion of time and remembrance but a historical fact. Like most American cities, Madison, Wisconsin, had replaced the blue-white lighting of incandescent and mercury-vapor streetlamps with the orange of sodium-vapor. This not only required less energy to run but, because a trick of the human eye perceives orange light to be brighter and thus more revealing than the same lumens of white-blue light, cities installed sodium-vapor in the “super-predator”-panicked nineties as a method to deter street crime. 

The history of Ames/Amy and Reese is also a delectable and depressing story-thread in the book … possibly mistaken for soap-opera, but is actually Peters accurately and brilliantly inviting readers into the realities of queer communities and tangled relations. Ames is as much an enigma to himself as Reese and readers, but brings their story of childhood, young adulthood, transitioning and then detransitioning so honesty to the page that it reads painful, for being so bared. 

The past is past to everyone but ghosts.

If I had any issues with the novel, it was something that author Roxane Gay had a near-perfect explanation of on their Goodreads review; “Some of the storytelling was too... indulgent is maybe the word I'm looking for, like, when you're in the groove as a writer, loving what you're writing, digging down into it, and you don't know where to stop. But that's okay!”

It’s true; some of the monologues and character dialogues are a little too neat and sharp, I’d call it rehearsed if it wasn’t novel-form. But at the same time, much of these thoughts being made to a fine-point are so important that I was willing to let it pass when character maybe went on a little too long or too-articulately;  

Every year, the list of murdered trans women, most of color, grows longer. Among those cases, the number of victims who were misgendered in their own obituaries is greater than the number of victims whose murderer has been identified. 

Finally; I just want to acknowledge that I know this book won’t be for everyone. Maybe it’s too erotically-charged, sex-scenes are more graphic than some people want in their literary reads. Maybe people won’t want to engage with the ideas Reese is musing on about what it means to be a woman; ingrained in her from a myriad lived-experiences and distorted pop-culture that she’s absorbed and can’t dispel so easily when it’s ingrained in society and ideals of femininity. Maybe it’s just the audaciously lush and brilliantly true-chaotic depictions of queer communities and families that won’t sit well with people – for their own issues. 

Fine. 

Okay. 

I think those people are missing out – but at the same time I’ve been genuinely moved to see so many more take this book and just ~run~ with it. Which was my experience too. One of sheer joy and adoration for Torrey Peters and what she’s done here; this genuinely enjoyable and fabulous reading experience that had me gasping and crying and missing these characters as soon as I finished (but I am so glad it’s getting the TV adaptation treatment, it must be said. If only so I can experience them anew, again.) 

And I also want to say; ‘Detransition, Baby’ clarified for me that I need to read and engage with the ideas being put out by trans authors. This was also distilled for me in a recent (brilliant) write-up of cis male author Craig Silvey’s ‘Honeybee’ book, which features a trans protagonist. Sydney Review of Books had the ‘own voices’ piece ‘Review: Oliver Reeson on Craig Silvey. Not Who, But How’ … which is an important read regardless (highlighting how woeful Australian arts commentary is nowadays) but also reinstating for me why I had no interest in reading ‘Honeybee,’ or pretending I ever enjoy Silvey’s words or worlds. 

There. I said it. 

‘Detransition, Baby’ unlocked a lot in me. Not just a cathartically deep-down enjoyable read, but also an and edge-of-your-seat chaotic reading in which I was desperate to turn the pages and so joyful at being in this author’s world, nested in their words and characters. It is hands-down one of my favourite-ever experiences that I won’t soon forget, and I can’t wait to read what Torrey Peters does next. She’s an essential read to me now. 

5/5

'A Thousand Crimson Blooms' by Eileen Chong

 

'A Thousand Crimson Blooms' is the latest poetry collection from Australian writer Eileen Chong, published by University of Queensland Press.

This collection is a layering of time and longing. It exists in a liminal space between memory and the present, one triggering the other and then reverberating back to the here and now - before reaching again and deeper into history and poignant memory.

Chong writes with an absolutely sublime touch; precise words and sentences that I can only imagine were painstakingly curated, read feather-light on the page; Denouement of days:

And then sometimes that sparsity screams with a much deeper meaning. Almost skittering a sentence, swerving as though the pain is too deep to linger; I was angry. She was ashamed.

There's so many threads and themes throughout this slim collection, it's amazing what Chong has managed to pack in - and again with that interplay of light touch and staccato hurt. The one that I found spoke to me profoundly was the turning points of mother/daughter relationships, motherhood and infant loss, miscarriage. These are heavy topics and Chong really opens herself up on the page in truly cathartic ways, full of grace.

My mother cannot
craft in art what she never saw in life.

I thought this collection was superb. I always feel better for welcoming poetry into my reading, and sitting with Eileen Chong and this book was a very special experience.

'Kate in Waiting' by Becky Albertalli

 

From the BLURB: 

Contrary to popular belief, best friends Kate and Anderson are not codependent. Carpooling to and from theatre rehearsals? Environmentally sound and efficient. Consulting each other on every single life decision? Basic good judgment. Pining for the same guys from afar? Shared crushes are more fun anyway. 

But when Kate and Andy's latest long-distance crush shows up at their school, everything goes off-script. Matt is talented and sweet, and Kate likes him. She really likes him. The only problem? So does Anderson. 

Turns out, communal crushes aren't so fun when real feelings are involved. This one might even bring the curtains down on Kate and Anderson's friendship.

‘Kate in Waiting’ is the new stand-alone novel from American YA author, Becky Albertalli. 

This is actually Becky’s first stand-alone novel not connected to the ‘Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda’ or ‘Simonverse,’ and not a co-written YA novel like she’s most recently done with Adam Silvera and Aisha Saeed. Truth be told, I really had to cast my mind back to the last Becky books I read because, eh, I was pretty lukewarm on ‘The Upside of Unrequited’ (truly, I can barely even remember the storyline now) and the last time I dipped my toes into the Simonverse was ‘Leah on the Offbeat’ that for whatever reason, failed to spark joy for me. 

I am happy to report that I’ve had a very different reading-experience with ‘Kate in Waiting’ which I found to be a joyous and cathartic, theatre-kid *squee* and hug of a YA novel.

It tells the story of best friends Kate and Anderson who’ve just come back from theatre-camp (summer-camp, I assume) where they each developed a major crush on a lovely Georgia local boy, Matt who was a vocal coach and a year older than them. This is actually pretty standard for besties Kate and Anderson to crush on the same boy – Kate internally even muses that a crush isn’t fun if she and ‘Andy’ aren’t into the same one. Their other best friends Brandie and Raina think this codependent-crush situation is unhealthy, and they may even be proven right when *the* Matt Olsson of their summertime crush is the new kid in town, whose mother also happens to be long-lost best friends with Kate’s Mum … 

Throw into the mix an upcoming school musical of Once Upon a Mattress that every theatre-kid is vying for a part in, and you have a jam-packed year for protagonist Kate. She and Anderson agree to set parameters to their crushing, since it’s now being played out in real-time in a way they’ve never experienced before when Matt joins their friendship group. Kate’s also adjusting to the idea of life next year without her big-brother Ryan around, who’ll be off to college. And she’s got lapsed childhood friend and ‘F-Boy’ (jock, semi-slutty dudebro) Noah Kaplan inexplicably in drama class with Anderson and Matt, and trying out for the school musical who is convincing Kate to help him get stage-ready. 

I was about 10 or 15 pages into ‘Kate in Waiting’ when Becky was setting the stage and for a brief moment I thought; “Oh, no.” There were just so many moving-parts and people, and semi-touched on backstory (like; that as a junior, Kate was ridiculed by ‘F-Boys’ and ‘F-Girls’ for performing a song from the movie musical Ella Enchanted and the online bullying left her scarred, particularly around performing and auditioning). For a brief moment I thought; “too much.” But then something just … clicked. I stopped noticing the effort Becky was putting in, and just got swept up in the intricacies and in-jokes of this little band of theatre kids whose personal lives are maybe on the cusp of becoming as interesting as the drama-world they often play-act in. 

It’s very hard, to write that degree of minutiae and layering and make it look seamless. So that you do stop noticing the effort, and appreciate the effortlessness is takes. Classic example is the secondary character of Raina, who is a Trans girl. There’s no long, protracted and inherently tragic back-story to Raina; Kate touches on a period of transition when they were younger and Raina first came out, and certain ‘F-Girls’ tried deadnaming her … to which Raina replied by wearing an Elsa from Frozen t-shirt and channelling the Ice Queen to give herself strength. Raina in present-day has a cis-male boyfriend who is adorable and loving, and … that’s it. Simple. Deceptively so. 

Becky does it again by occasionally alluding to a favourite Kate and Anderson movie, the animated Tangled – and the fact that Noah Kaplan, ‘F-Boy’, ex-childhood friend, and across-the-way-neighbour at Kate’s Dad’s house, bears a striking resemblance to Flynn Rider of the movie. This is subtle, but it comes back again in sweetly powerful ways. As do allusions to another favourite; ‘Pride and Prejudice’ which takes on a very clever mimicking of Kate and Noah’s evolving friendship, playing with high-school archetypes. 

Anderson and Kate are the stars of the show though, and even the ‘inciting incident’ of Matt moving to town isn’t so much the spotlight, as it’s a way for Kate and Anderson to figure out how they’re going to grow together (or apart?) as they get older, emotions get serious, and relationships get more complex. I could totally see ‘Kate in Waiting’ being told entirely from Anderson’s POV (and actually; I would *totally* love a ‘Midnight Sun’ version of this novel, told entirely from Andy’s perspective) but I guess there’s still a sting there from the backlash Becky received for writing queer-male romances as a cis-woman (and her having to ‘out’ herself, or deciding to – as a way to explain how she came to her stories, as a way to work herself out. I totally get it.) so I likewise get why she maybe didn’t want to make Anderson the protagonist … and there is something built into this story of Kate having to learn to step aside and be truly happy when someone else has the spotlight and gets the final curtain-call that is profound and takes this to a deeper place too. 

Overall; this novel was heart-warming, and it’d get a thunderous round of applause and standing ovation from me, maybe with an extra WHOOP and whistle for the extra adorable story of Kate and Noah that had my heart aflutter. 

5/5

'Wild Sign' Alpha and Omega #6 by Patricia Briggs

 

From the BLURB: 

In the wilds of the Northern California mountains, all the inhabitants of a small town have gone missing. It's as if the people picked up and left everything they owned behind. Fearing something supernatural might be going on, the FBI taps a source they've consulted in the past: the werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham. But Charles and Anna soon find a deserted town is the least of the mysteries they face.

Death sings in the forest, and when it calls, Charles and Anna must answer. Something has awakened in the heart of the California mountains, something old and dangerous - and it has met werewolves before.

The last 'Alpha & Omega' (Charles & Anna) book we got was 'Burn Bright' in 2018, and I think reading this sixth instalment in their spin-off series I really felt that lag ... but I seem to be one of the only ones; everyone else is raving about 'Wild Sign' and particularly ~that ending~ (which I shall get to).

'Wild Sign' on the surface, is offering a tantalising bit of insight and history to one of Patricia Briggs' most controversial characters - mate to the Marrok, Leah. We learn how Bran and Leah came to be mated, under the strangest of circumstances and hardest of times for both of them - and we also learn that some malevolent evil *thing* has likely just awoken, and is calling to Leah again. Bran sends Charles, Anna and berserker werewolf Tag to go and investigate as this awakening has seemingly coincided with a mysterious disappearance of a colony of humans, with heavy Roanoke vibes - from land that Leah once lived on, and not owns but has now returned to in many many years...

This is the central whodunnit to 'Wild Sign' that Charles & Anna need to investigate, with "henchman" Tag tagging along. One of the side-effects of this strange magic ~something~ is a play around with memory and time, so the investigation sees Anna occasionally thrown back into the past when she was an abused werewolf Omega at the hand of her old and sick pack. This offers an interesting contrast and character-development; to see the old Anna alongside the new - who has been mated and nurtured by Charles for these many years.

But I still read Charles & Anna as overly careful with one another. On the one hand I appreciate this - Briggs is an author who treats trauma with the weight it deserves, and just as in 'Mercy Thompson' there are abuses and events from protagonist's pasts that they carry with them, always. They're never forgotten, only reformed in each new situation and with the passage of time. But alongside this were a couple of moments when Anna kept something - relatively minor, admittedly - from Charles, when she didn't confide and tell him. Similarly there was one or two instances when Charles knows that Anna is wary of him and his choices, or else he knows she's trying to protect him (by locking down the mate-bond) and this has the opposite effect to what she intends, but he doesn't tell her for fear of hurting her feelings ... And I just found that slightly ~odd~ that even now, after all this time and how far they've come, that Anna and Charles can still be so cautious around one another and lack that communication.

Maybe that's just me. Anna - like I said - is a survivor, and Charles has gone for many centuries on his own as an active outcast from most of werewolf society, who had to fear him in order to stay in line. These are effectively two 'broken' people now navigating the world together (and - sure - there's no tension if there's no room for growth, I get it!). But I think it's also the lag in book-releases for this series that makes me feel that way? I always tap back in (in this case, after a 2-year break between books!) expecting us to be further along in this epic love story relationship, and then little stuff like this reminds me; "Ohhhhh, okay. No. We're still in relationship infancy here."

In terms of other characters, I was also kinda disappointed here? Tag is great and funny, but I feel like we only got surface-level stuff with him. I was also really bummed that werewolf Asil didn't feature much at all in this book, and after he was sort of in the middle of the whodunnit in 'Burn Bright' and betrayed by a fellow pack member. I *love* Asil, he's one of my faves and a character I'd genuinely love to read a spin-off series for (like; knowing how much of Asil's character is built around the tragedy of losing his mate long ago, ~imagine~ if a new mate-bond called to him!?! ... though I admit, this could also be my pining for a story similar to 'Blood Challenge' book by Eileen Wilks, and the Benedict/Arjenie relationship.)

Bran and Leah really seemed primed to be at the centre of the 'Wild Sign' story too, but once again Briggs veers away from going too deep with these two - seemingly determined to keep Bran mysterious and ruined - and so they barely feature. I can't say I'm such a Leah fan (who is?) or overly invested in finding out her backstory, but I was kinda bummed when 'Wild Sign' failed to overly deliver on fleshing out her character in the here and *now* overly, and the tantalising bit at the end felt very tacked on. I know Briggs has said that Bran is too hard a character to spend much time with - he's too old and all-knowing, temperamental and it wouldn't work to dig deeper there for his mystery overall, but ... give us *something!*

And now finally - that ending that I've seen a bunch of people get excited over. Ummmmm. Again - is this ~just me~ who pulled the "meh" face throughout it all? <spoiler: highlight to read> Look; Samuel is still one of the biggest disappointments in this series, to me. From where he started - in this tragic and intriguing love triangle with Adam and Mercy - to the complete cop-out of Briggs saying "oh yeah, he had an old fae flame who was his actual true-love and now she's back in his life! Yay!" Samuel is the epitome of after-thought. So it almost makes 100% sense that he appears in the freakin' epilogue here and with another convenient "Oh yeah, Ariana and I had a kid and we can't keep it for ~reasons~ so now I'll be Uncle Samuel and you can raise this kid for me, Charles & Anna. Peace-out!" Like ... WHAT?!? Confession: I also 1000% forgot his mate's name was Ariana and what she was all about. That's how little impact Samuel has had on this series since Briggs effectively wrote him out. And also how little I care for any fae storyline or character. So: MEH. <end spoiler>

Am I excited for the next instalment in this series (that'll probably come in 2-3 years?) Sure! Absolutely! Do I still love these characters and want to keep hanging out with them? Yes! But do I need a *little* more give-and-take in the development overall? Heck yeah.

2.5-3/5
(I'm yo-yoing on this one, I know)

'New Animal' by Ella Baxter

 

From the BLURB: 

A stunning, heartbreakingly funny debut novel from a brilliant new literary voice. Sex, death, grief, running away…only one of these makes Amelia feel like a new animal.

It's not easy getting close to people. Amelia's meeting a lot of men but once she gets the sex she wants from them, that's it for her; she can't connect further. A terrible thing happened to Daniel last year and it's stuck inside Amelia ever since, making her stuck too.

Maybe being a cosmetician at her family's mortuary business isn't the best job for a young woman. It's not helping her social life. She loves her job, but she's not great at much else. Especially emotion.

And then something happens to her mum and suddenly Amelia's got too many feelings and the only thing that makes any sense to her is running away.

It takes the intervention of her two fathers and some hilariously wrong encounters with other broken people in a struggling Tasmanian BDSM club to help her accept the truth she has been hiding from. And in a final, cataclysmic scene, we learn along with Amelia that you need to feel another person's weight before you can feel your own.

Deadpan, wise and heartbreakingly funny, New Animal is a stunning debut.

*** 

Okay. Full-disclosure; I would *not* have read this book were it not for the recommendation of Jaclyn Crupi at the Hill of Content Bookshop absolutely ~raving~ about it. I trust Jaclyn, she hasn't led me astray yet.

And yet - and yet; I looked at this cover and that blurb ("... a struggling Tasmanian BDSM club" HMMMMMMMMMM) and thought; What am I getting myself into?! Surely this is just an Australian Sally Rooney (complete with baffling BDSM segue) attempt, a somewhat hodge-podge New Literary.

Well, well, well.

I was wrong. I judged a book by its cover (and an admittedly terrible blurb) and were it not for word-of-mouth, I'd have missed out on one of the most refreshing and eclectic reads I've come across in years. A book that absolutely terrified me for the author's sheer authenticity and audacity of voice.

'New Animal' is about grief and loneliness, self-absorption and absolution. We find ourselves with Amelia, a brittle but brilliant protagonist on the worst day of her life; when the sudden loss of her mother seems to send her catapulting even further into the wilderness of her loneliness, and compulsions for fleeting connections. Around her is a Tasmania like I've never read before, a character unto its own strange self - amidst a cast of characters who are so wildly wonderful, I absolutely loved holding them close for the span of a sparse 240-pages.

What is this like?! Who does Ella Baxter remind me of? Sally Rooney comparisons will abound and that's okay if it brings people in. But I actually think the fact of a family mortuary business heralds a wonderful connection to the writing of Alan Ball and 'Six Feet Under'. It's not even the purely cosmetic connection of death-business; it's more for the beauty and absurdity that Ball and Baxter seem brilliantly able to unearth in life itself. Grotesque grief, carnal normal and pitch-perfect deadpan delivery.

I'll also say that Baxter's book would be for anyone who loves Caitlin Doughty and her non-fiction books, but especially her YouTube channel "Ask a Mortician".

I absolutely, wholeheartedly loved this book. I gorged myself on it and then wanted to go off and read absolutely everything Ella Baxter has ever put into the universe ... And the fact that it's just *this* - this one triumphant and intimidating debut novel - elicits both excitement and frustration. This is someone who writes in a fever, without fear or favour. And I'm just in awe.

Read it read it read it.
Forget the blurb and the cover.
It's a wild ride but it's worth it.

5/5