LIVE IT OUT, sapphic second-chance romance told with honesty and beauty

LIVE IT OUT
JENN ALEXANDER
Bywater Books
$9.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Spencer Adams was never expected to be anything more than a high school dropout. She’d been a troubled teen, spending more time at the skate park than in school, at least until her music teacher introduced her to the guitar and music class became her lifeline. Ten years later, she is the guitarist in a band that has become a breakout success, and she wants to use that success to help other teens who have had the same rough start as her. She takes on a volunteer project with local youth as a way of honoring her past, not knowing that it will force her to revisit the one part of her past that she’d hoped to forget.

Faith Siebert has always had high expectations to live up to, and she has tried her best to fulfill those expectations, to be a good daughter, a good student, and a good friend. When she fell for Spencer in high school, she knew her family and friends would never approve. Scared of their reactions, Faith ended things with Spencer, following the path her parents wanted for her, even at the immense personal cost. Of course, it had only been a high school romance, destined for brevity anyway. At least, that’s what she told herself. But when Spencer shows up in her life once again, partnered with Faith on a youth music project, her world is rocked and she is forced to re-examine everything she knows about relationships and herself.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Not much for rock-star romances, me, but I am a vulturous carrion-seeker for the corpses of heartbreaks past on second-chance narratives. Give me a high-school/college breakup undone decades later and I am on it like a Jane Austen bonnet. Add in the fact that the parties are a same-sex couple denied a natural ending by homophobia (internal or external, makes me no never-mind) and stand back while I run to get it. Didn't hurt your foot, did I?

I got what I was expecting in this read. I loved Spencer's complete willingness to use her skills to help kids in the same bad situation she came from to cope, on many levels, with their sense of powerlessness and absence of agency. True, they won't become rock stars but they will learn how to play a musical intrument...a thing that by itself increases one's satisfaction with one's life.

Faith, the One That Got Away for Spencer, believes it will and is surprised when it's Spencer who shows up to do the teaching. Her career as a social worker is so in-character for the girl she was all the way back in high school, it felt on the nose. I like social workers, and deeply admire their sense of purpose. I'm all in for a redemption arc here, as well, because Spencer's going back to her roots as a shelter-raised kid to extend her hand in helpful practicality.

Do I need to say that these women find their way into a relationship? It's a category romance. Of course they do.

In forming that long-delayed, much-desired romantic reconnection, each of them has to come to terms with her own part in their long estrangement, what it cost them both, and how best to use the rubble of the past to build a good solid foundation. Here is where I felt both the happiest, because the women are truly honest with themselves and each other; and here is also where I felt the length of the book worked against it the most clearly. There wasn;t room to go into the families, or the people they were leaving behind. That was less of an issue, though, than the way the women were ready for that hard, hard, hard task of being vulnerable and honest within their strengthening bond. I can't say it's unlikely...the author's a therapist by trade, she knows better than I do...but I can say that even fifty more pages with some conversations outside their bond would've helped me invest in the resolution.

That said, I give the book as it is a recommendation, tinged with a litte note of caution for the ewww-ick homophobes because there is some steam in here. (I just turned the pages faster.) The story builds its couple's bond well, believably if very quickly, and tells hard emotional truths with honest, sensitive truthfulness.
I'm really glad that Jenn Alexander has more work for me to get acquainted with.

I MAKE ENVY ON YOUR DISCO, solid debut of a strong storytelling voice

I MAKE ENVY ON YOUR DISCO
ERIC SCHNALL
Zero Street Fiction/University of Nebraska Press
$21.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s the new millennium and the anxiety of midlife is creeping up on Sam Singer, a thirty-seven-year-old art advisor. Fed up with his partner and his life in New York, Sam flies to Berlin to attend a gallery opening. There he finds a once-divided city facing an identity crisis of its own. In Berlin the past is everywhere: the graffiti-stained streets, the candlelit cafés and techno clubs, the astonishing mash-up of architecture, monuments, and memorials.

A trip that begins in isolation evolves into one of deep connection and possibility. In an intensely concentrated series of days, Sam finds himself awash in the city, stretched in limbo between his own past and future—in nightclubs with Jeremy, a lonely wannabe DJ; navigating a flirtation with Kaspar, an East Berlin artist he meets at a café; and engaged in a budding relationship with Magda, the enigmatic and icy manager of Sam’s hotel, whom Sam finds himself drawn to, and determined to thaw. I Make Envy on Your Disco is at once a tribute to Berlin, a novel of longing and connection, and a coming-of-middle-age story about confronting the person you were and becoming the person you want to be.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sam's got a problem. He doesn't like his life much, right now at least, in no small part because his husband's got an itchy zipper, his career's reached the same-ol' same-ol' stage, and he's nudging forty...gay man's death. What better idea could a man in these dire straits have than to run away from home?

"Home" in New York City; he runs to Berlin on the rather flimsy pretext of an art opening...has this yutz heard of climate change and carbon footprints?!...in search of a path to the future. This reminded me of a very common trope in fiction, middlescence I call it in tribute to my old friend Juanice. She took the old-fashioned view that her husband was going to stray because he was reliving his adolescent horniness stage one last time, this time knowing what he was doing. Sam's a classic example of that middlescent man.

So was Less in the eponymous novel. I really disliked that novel.

The idea that one should run away from problems that absolutely won't fix themselves is an evergreen for novelists because it makes the narrative structure obvious and the stakes unambiguous. Your fish is out of water, your side characters write themselves. And the metaphorical journey/quest will never run out of steam. Okay, then there's the debut novel bit: Wise novelists spring from the acorns of the successful tropes past topiaried to order for their garden of prose.

This iteration of all the above uses the material to do what we hope for when we buy a relationship novel. It convinces the reader to invest in the characters, it affords us room to look at the ways and means Sam uses to escape as markers of solution, resolution, completion. Interestingly to me, this novel eschews the easy answers and instead makes us live in a real-life space of ambiguity.

Things end. Sometimes cleanly, without edges that could be kintsugi'd together. Mostly not, though. Mostly the Sam Singers and Lesses of the world do not get clean, fresh starts because that is exceedingly rare in life. There's a lot of charm in the kind of ending that spawns new beginnings. This book's stuffed full of those...though in my experience the new beginnings learned from travel are, of themselves, ephemeral. Their main value in my life has been to prove to me that new beginnings are possible. The intensity of Sam's connections to Jeremy the straight poet and Magda the stuck concierge bid fair to be short-lived; Kaspar the love interest, though, might be different. Might be.

The irony of seeking one's way forward in Berlin, that city resolutely planted in its pasts, isn't commented on in some arch or knowing way. That facet of the story's quietly acknowledged by Sam's attendance at the art opening that has as its topic what Germans now call "Östalgie", or nostalgia for the dear, dead days of two Berlins, two Germanys. The switch to capitalism was not smooth, and is not smoother now it seems. Culturally anyway that all collides hardest in the place that was defined by The Wall. My one and only trip to Berlin was pre-Wall fall, so I actually kind of get it. Nostalgia for how things were definitely communicates itself to those who were NOT there. Humans are weird and define "coolness" in very exlusionary ways. Sam, whose career is in the arts, gets this in his bones, since it's part and parcel of that world to exclude all but the wealthiest and most sophisticated. Those are overlapping but not identical groups; they are each quite exclusive, in every sense of the word, though not of each other.

So that's why I don't give the book five stars. I enjoyed the read. I like the characters. I really like the ambiguous ending. I don't care for the run-away-from-home trope. I ended up, mostly, not resonating with the way Sam drifted through Berlin "Östalgie" with what felt to me like very little curiosity. When an adult travels, but doesn't question the place and its history, I don't see why the author set the travel destination where they did. Author Schnall gave me a decent day's reading. That's great.

I would've liked to have been given an awakening of curiosity about Berlin, akin to the effect of The Sheltering Sky or even Death in Venice. Not, I hasten to assure you, a fault of craft on Schnall's part. More a lacuna between my expectation of a novel about a traveler to a place and what I got about the place.

I hope you'll try this debut novel out.

OUT AT THE PLATE: The Dot Wilkinson Story, deep dive into a QUILTBAG legendary life

OUT AT THE PLATE: The Dot Wilkinson Story
LYNN AMES
Chicago Review Press
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: “Dot Wilkinson is the greatest female catcher ever to play softball . A bold, pioneering athlete, she refused to let others define her and instead defined herself. Her story is an inspiration to people everywhere.” — Billie Jean King, Sports Icon and Champion for Equality

It’s not simply that Dot Wilkinson was one of the most decorated women’s softball players, bowlers, and athletes of all time and one of the original players from the three-time-world-champion PBSW Phoenix Ramblers softball team (1933–1965). Nor was it the length of her time here on Earth—over a century—although any of these things by itself would be impressive.

The magic of Dot’s story is in the details. It’s the tale of a childhood spent in poverty, an indomitable, unbreakable spirit, a determination to be the very best to play whatever sport she undertook, the independence to live her personal life on her own terms, and her tremendous success at all of it.

Over more than a decade of countless conversations and interviews, Dot shared all of it with her dear friend, author Lynn Ames. Dot held nothing back. Out at the Plate , told through the lens of Dot and Lynn’s friendship, is the story of a forgotten era in women’s history and sports, and one extraordinary woman’s place at the center of it all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I had a lesbian "grandma" of sorts, older than Dot Wilkinson, but with the same kind of unwillingness to submit to woman=weakness stereotyping. She saw what she wanted and went out of all ladylike bounds to get it. This included the love of her life, a widow with a son, and the family they made.

Dot Wilkinson is my kinda woman. (Or man, if I'm honest.) Reading about her life, its ups-downs-failures and unimaginably exciting successes, made me smile uncontrollably. QUILTBAG folk are fed a steady diet of disaster and crime with us as the victims, expecting that this will keep us quiet and invisible. This is the classic Linebarger tactic, used for generations now on "minorities" of all sorts. It is now modulated by stories of assimilation, of increased access to "The American Dream" of mortgaged house, kids who need college funds, etc etc. The Dot Wilkinsons who decide to do what the hell they want to do when they want to do it do not, oddly enough, get a lot of overcultural attention.

I can't think why this should be.

Dot Wilkinson deserves every bit of attention you have at your command because she actually was what we're told we love the most, should strive to be, here in the USA. She was strong by every metric, she was a maverick. She was routinely successful in her careers (plural). She lived with the love of her life for almost a half-century. Her example of grace and graciousness under pressure is one to emulate. She never turned it into any kind of doormat behavior. She was likable and well-liked at a time when her rejection of "normative womanhood" could easily have made her a pariah. Lynn Ames manages to convey all this without becoming cloying, though her fangirling over Dot is not at all veiled...or misplaced.

The one thing that leads to, on the "missing three-quarters-star" front, is the tendency to overexplain and repeat. By using many primary sources, Author Ames falls into the "it's really cool how much stuff there is" ditch and doesn't climb out. The sources very often concur, and maybe picking one quote then saying "this is one of the half-dozen angles on this story" could've been less wearing on the reader's nerve. My interest in softball, Dot's biggest claim to Fame and spotlights, is significantly less than hers....

Family issues weren't minimized. It was heartbreaking to learn of Dot's first love's early passing from the then-untreatable scourge of metastatic breast cancer. It was more heartbreaking still to read of Dot's mother's callous...let me be fair, surprisingly insensitive...response to Dot's deep grief at her loss. The fact is a sapphic love wouldn't register with most people as "real" in that day and time, so grief of that depth and duration would seem odd. Still, it's your child! Wouldn't that attune you to the reality of the feeling and thus summon up empathy not dismissiveness?

Apparently not. And honestly that bit upset me as much as the loss did. I was, as you can tell from that, fully invested in Dot Wilkinson's life, and was very, very happy I had this chance to learn about this older sister in queerness. I hope you will give it a chance to grab you, too.

#PrideMonth launches!

#PrideMonth launches! Yes, in the US Pride Month is a June celebration, but lag times must be built into all holiday seasons. I'll be reviewing mostly stuff from, by, about those people somewhere on the QUILTBAG rainbow of identities.

My intention is to get as close as my corpus callosum will support to a full-on review posted five times a week. Burgoines and Pearl-Rules aren't subject to my numerical targeting at any time...though that could happen depending on my capacities. Goodness knows I have the most amazing pile of raw review material, and a number of current-year requests for DRCs are pending. I have, as usual, a few reviews in the queue ready to go, so I like my chances of success.

Click here to see an entire blog's worth of #PrideMonth reviews.

I wish you all a wonderful June, and a grand old party of a #PrideMonth, filled with lazy days of reading in your favorite places.

PERFUME & PAIN, raucous raunchy ribald reading...go get one NOW!

PERFUME & PAIN
ANNA DORN
Simon & Schuster
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.

Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student who smells like metallic orchids and is researching 1950s lesbian pulp, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli.

Penelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid’s life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy.

When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid’s worst vice to rear its head—the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes—and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events.

Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet- and celebrity-obsessed world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Have you read Highsmith's Carol (aka The Price of Salt)? This has that particular kind of Questa o Quella? Rigoletto-but-sapphic-romance aura. And, follow-up concept, are you aware that Highsmith was a cruel, nasty piece of work? This has that same mean-creative story aura.

Having now hooked a few, driven a few off, and confused most, let's talk about lesbians. I'm the gay brother of a spiky, difficult lesbian. (She said so before I did! But, to be scrupulously fair, our entire family is/was spiky and difficult.) Astrid's 'tude is nowhere near as unkind as the reviews led me to believe it would be, by my own family's standards. What she is, that seems to surprise and unnerve the people around her in the story, is what I think interesting people usually are: Opinionated. I note without pleasure that opinionated women get miles of stick from persons of all genders and orientations. Just ask Hillary Clinton if you doubt me. It shows also in the readers' reviews I've seen around and about. Lots of people, even the ones who liked the story fine, commented on how abrasive Astrid was. Well, yeah. She's smarter than a solid 95% of the people around her. She's in a highly stressed passage in her life. She's abrasive because she's rubbed raw by her life.

Her happy place is perfume. Think about what that means. She collects something that is designed to hide and to enhance a person's most intimate quality, their smell. She doesn't even collect the stuff itself! She collects the containers...the carefully designed vessels that seduce the eyes but in and of themselves provide nothing but a space to be filled! The capitalist/consumer seductions carefully designed to increase your (largely female, as these are perfume bottles) cultural anxiety about your fundamental attractor or repeller of intimacy, smell!

This Anna Dorn, she knows her onions. Show me, please, another author whose depth of character development includes these intense sociopolitical shades whose prose isn't clunking, juddering, jelly-like didacticism. Author Dorn's got little enough competition in the witty-banter segment. She's sui generis in the segment of the Venn diagram where that overlaps anti-capitalist/feminist discourse.

Happily so. I'm glad Simon & Schuster offered me this DRC because, old gay man that I am, I hadn't heard of Author Dorn before. Now it's me for Vagablonde.

I see a few raised eyebrows contemplating an expected fifth star, after that gush. I wanted to put a fifth star on, I promise! I couldn't because Astrid being wishy-washy about Ivy-vs-Penelope was overplayed. I think will-they-won't-they is an easy trope to allow to outstay its actual usefulness. My perception is that this is what happened here. I'm also a wee bit wary of things like cancel culture/getting canceled being enshrined in stories that say bigger, more trenchant things about inclusion and cultural norms. It feels more like an add-on to use Astrid's canceling for her unguarded comments than an actual feature of the entire conversation the rest of the story is having about the greater issues abovementioned.

So okay, I didn't find myself sitting slackjawed, wondering how this author faceted this sparkling thousand-carat diamond. (That experience is what I call six-stars-of-five storytelling.) But make no mistake, this wordsmith will be on my readar as I wait for her to do just that.

It seems very likely to happen.

May 2024's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Ocean Yoon has never felt like much of a Korean, even if she is descended from a long line of haenyeo, Jeju Island's beloved female divers. She's also persona non grata at the Alliance, Korea's solar system-dominating space agency, since a mission went awry and she earned a reputation for being a little too quick with her gun.

When her best friend, Teo, second son of the Anand Tech empire, is framed for murdering his family, Ocean and her misfit crewmates are pushed to the forefront of a high-stakes ideological conflict. But dodging bullets and winning space chases may be the easiest part of what comes next.

A thrilling adventure across the solar that delivers hyperkinetic action sequences and irresistible will-they-won't-they romance alongside its nuanced exploration of colonialism and capitalism, Ocean's Godori ultimately asks: What do we owe our past? How do we navigate our present while honoring the complicated facets of our identity? What can our future hold?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, what can I say. I love Firefly, I love Becky Chambers, I thoroughly liked the Ketty Jay. This story hits all those tales' beats, and does it from a new angle that centers Korean culture. The author, who lives in Seattle, is definitely working inside that frame. The strong anticolonial message is interesting, as the entire idea of human expansion is by definition colonialist....

Is the story anything groundbreaking? No. Do I want to read the next one, assuming there is one? Yes. The fun of being within this group of cooperative misfits led by a Korean lesbian far exceeds the investment in absorbing the different cultural background unfamiliar to most Western readers.

It is, to me, very much an enhancing feature of the read. Get out of your cultural rut within your genre preference.

Zando | Hillman Grad offers you a hardcover for $28.00. An ebook is $14.99, and that is a fine return on your investment.

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The Murderous Misses of Concord: A Concord Mystery by Elizabeth Dunne

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In Concord, Louisa May Alcott farms pigs after success with Little Women, but as New England’s freezing winter approaches, death isn’t far away. Concord’s Misses, armed with wit and elegance, money, and secrets, are present when Miss Emily Collier dies at her forty-seconnd birthday party. Louisa is embroiled in the intrigue. They will lie to her, set traps and blackmail to avoid justice. And Louisa is now an outsider in what was once her home.

To test her mettle, local Justice of the Peace Captain Briers, a man compromised by lust for one of the Misses, enlists her to bring order to the twisted loyalties, land feuds and secrets fuelling a seditious desire for revenge not seen in Middlesex County since the witch trials.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I have a mystery-loving sister who dislikes the use of historical figures as amateur sleuths. "That's not accurate, doesn't help suspend disbelief" is her reasoning. I think she's correct about this, but don't share her conclusion because it (to me) does add to my appreciation of the book's historical background. Alcott, in this use, does increase my ability to immerse my imagination into the Concord of the era.

The story is fine...nothing new...but cozy mysteries, particularly historical cozy mysteries, don't need to be. I like the genre, I like this execution of the basic plot, it's a good and entertaining read.

There's a Kindle edition for $5.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link) though it's not available on Kindle Unlimited.

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The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle by Steve Hugh Westenra

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Tyler Kyle doesn’t believe in monsters.

A washed-up thirty-year-old actor and reluctant cryptid investigator, Tyler is used to playing the Scully to his best friend Josh’s Mulder on their stupidly popular YouTube channel. But when Tyler receives previously unseen footage of the B movie bombshell mother who abandoned him eighteen years ago—footage linked to an isolated island in the Canadian wilderness—the mystery is one conspiracy he’s determined to investigate. The fact that following the scent gives Tyler an excuse to run away from the “straight” Josh, whom he drunkenly made out with, is just the cherry on the shit sundae.

But Echo Island isn’t what it seems. Its eerily scenic veneer hides a twisted secret buried in its roots as a gay conversion camp, and as Tyler retraces his mother’s footsteps, he discovers a supernatural connection between the residents and the island—one they seem to think Tyler and his mother share.

Even worse, the footage of Tyler’s mom came from someone on the island–a stalker whose obsessive fascination with both Tyler and Josh is about to make Tyler wish he hadn’t gone this one alone. Puppeteered by his stalker, searching for his mother, and debating whether it’s possible to queerbait yourself, Tyler comes to realize that it doesn’t matter so much whether you believe in monsters, if they believe in you.

THE ERSTWHILE TYLER KYLE is an adult horror comedy for fans of GHOST FILES, BUZZFEED UNSOLVED, and TWIN PEAKS.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Self-published novels tend to share some general categories of flaws: depending on your personality, some (like solecismic grammar) are forgivable, or indeed invisisble; others (wittering on about stuff you've covered and explained and discussed, showing off your research) are just joy-sucking offenses against the Muses. You'll never guess which camp I fall into.

I don't mean to put down this story by saying its comps are exactly and precisely correct, because they are. If it were not for its bloat, this story would be a great addition to Hulu's adaptation slate. It's got a pleasantly funny vibe buried in the wordiness. Very amusing, queer-inclusive, sidewise glance at "reality" media's unrealest stretch of landscape (cryptids) made...real? or just maybe real...?

Consult the content warning list, and decide if you wnat to use the buy links, for this $2.99 ebook.

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An Ocean Without A Shore a novel by Scott Spencer

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says:A wildly entertaining and occasionally heartbreaking story of frustrated longing, and the lengths we will go for those we love—even if they don’t love us in return

An Ocean Without a Shore, from the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of Endless Love and Man in the Woods, is a beautifully rendered exploration of that most timeless of human dilemmas: the one in which your love is left unreturned.

Since their college days, Kip Woods has been infatuated with Thaddeus Kaufman, who, years later, is a married father of two children and desperately trying to revive a failing career. Kip’s devotion to Thaddeus has been life-defining and destiny-altering, but it has been one that Thaddeus has either failed to notice or refused to acknowledge. But over the course of this heated and mesmerizing novel, set against a background of privilege and affluence in Manhattan and the Hudson Valley, Kip will be forced to reckon with the prison of his own making and decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for a love that may never be shared.

Picking up where his most recent novel, River Under the Road, left off, but writing squarely in the vein of Endless Love, his classic novel of passion and obsession, Scott Spencer gives us an intimate, immersive, and unsettling portrait of the devastation we will wreak in the name of love, and the bitterness of a friendship ravaged by fathomless yearning.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read this not realizing it was a sequel. That could be part of my lack of enthusiasm. The strongest reason I didn't fall all over myself to praise this novel, though, is right here:

I have learned one of the lessons of loneliness, one of its shocking side effects: when you are in a state of longing, desire goes on and on, like an ocean without a shore.
–and–
Here's something else about us torchbearers. We are possessive of the one we love and we are determined to maintain our hold on the idea of them. Our idea of them is really all we have. When you think about someone more or less constantly, you begin to believe—though you would never say so, not even to yourself—that they belong to you.

Beautiful sentences, aren't they? But what a world they paint. That's my issue...I don't want to spend much time in Kip's world because it grates on my nerve to be asked to invest in unrequited longing. It feels to me like the relationship he maintains with savvy, manipulative Thaddeus is a shield he uses against any real intimacy. That isn't my own personal jam of a read.

I expect fans of Andrew Sean Greer and Peter Cameron will disagree with me. Prioritize lovely language and fully limned characters over a story you're rooting for an exact outcome to end? This is your lucky review, here it is! I myownself just wanted it to end and wasn't invested enough to mind about how. To my saddened annoyance.

Ecco Press offers a trade paper edition for $15.99 or an ebook for $9.99. Either seems like a good buy for those intrigued.

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Invisible No More: A Historical Novel by Scott Pitoniak and Rick Burton

Rating: 3 generous stars of five

The Publisher Says: Wilmeth Sidat-Singh is the greatest athlete you've never heard of--and so much more. A rocket-armed passer on the football field, an ankle-breaking playmaker on the basketball court, he was also a scholar, civil rights pioneer, patriot, and one other thing—forgotten.

In this historical novel based on Sidat-Singh's life, sportswriter Breanna Shelton stumbles upon the riveting story of the former Syracuse University star who was forced to hide his identity in order to take the field, leading to climactic moments when race and sports collided. As a young Black woman making her way in a profession not ready to fully accept her, Shelton immerses herself in the research, determined to resurrect an inspirational man who time left behind. Along the way, she finds courage and perseverance to transform herself and her career.

Post-civil rights era society still grapples with dispiriting obstacles that Sidat-Singh faced more than a half century earlier, when he was "passing" to play; serving as a Tuskegee Airman in World War II; and interacting with luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Grantland Rice, Sam Lacy, and Joe Louis.

This fictionalized account, as timely now as ever, honors an American hero whose life was cut short while serving a country that didn't recognize him as a full-fledged citizen because of the color of his skin. After you read it, Sidat-Singh will be invisible no more.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, it's #PrideMonth-adjacent because Wilmeth Sadat-Singh was in the "race" closet that the US of the 1930s enforced. He was Black, not of the less-reviled South Asian ancestry his stepfather's surname allowed him to present to a horrifyingly prejudiced society...a dilemma of passing that queer people face to this day.

The man, and his bitter story, deserve our respect and attention. The recrudescence of the uglier expressions of racism make this tale urgent. This execution of it, to my disappointment, doesn't do the material justice because it feels to me like the research notes were just lightly stitched together. The authors use a framing device of modern discovery of historical materials...a lot like what Elizabeth Kostova did in her bestsellers (that I didn't like much either). Thus, of necessity, the entire momentum resides in the past. The problem I have with that is that it never allows me a place to hook into the action...it's all in records of things done and dusted, and people who are largely just names to my 21st-century eyes.

(non-affiliate Amazon link) It's self-published, so the $9.99 might be more than you want to spend on a Kindlebook. Get a sample, then decide.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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Codename Nemo: The Hunt for a Nazi U-Boat and The Elusive Enigma Machine by Charles Lachman PEARL RULED @ 47%

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The white-knuckled war saga of the US Navy task force who achieved the impossible on June 4, 1944, capturing Nazi submarine U-505, its crew, technology, encryption codes, and an Enigma cipher machine—the first seizure of an enemy ship in battle since the War of 1812 and one that undoubtedly shortened the duration of the war.

On June 4, 1944—two days before D-Day—the course of World War II was forever changed. That day, a US Navy task force achieved the impossible—capturing a German U-Boat, its crew, all its technology, Nazi encryption codes, and an Enigma cipher machine. Led by a nine-man boarding party and the maverick Captain Daniel Gallery, US antisubmarine Task Group 22.3’s capture of U-505 in what was called Operation Nemo was the first seizure of an enemy ship in battle since the War of 1812, one of the greatest achievements of the US Navy, and a victory that shortened the duration of the war.

Charles Lachman’s white-knuckled war saga and thrilling cat-and-mouse game is told through the eyes of the men on both sides of Operation Nemo—German U-Boaters and American heroes like Lieutenant Albert David (“Mustang”), who led the boarding party that took control of U-505 and became the only sailor to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the Battle of the Atlantic; and Chief Motor Machinist Zenon Lukosius (“Zeke”), a Lithuanian immigrant’s son from Chicago who dropped out of high school to enlist in the Navy and whose quick thinking saved the day when he plugged a hole of gushing water that was threatening to sink U-505.

Three thousand American sailors participated in this extraordinary adventure; nine ordinary American men channeling extraordinary skill and bravery finished the job; and then—like everyone involved—breathed not a word of it until after the war was over. Nothing leaked out. In Berlin, the German Kriegsmarine assumed that U-505 had been blown to bits by depth charges, with all hands lost at sea. They were unaware that the U-Boat and its secrets, to be used in cracking Nazi coded messages, were in now American hands. They were also unaware that the 59 German sailors captured on the high seas were imprisoned in a POW camp in Ruston, Louisiana, until their release in 1946 when they were permitted to return home to family and friends who thought they had perished.

Following Operation Nemo step-by-step, author Charles Lachman has crafted a deeply researched, fast-paced World War II narrative for the ages.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Step-by-step indeed. Ploddingly paced, full of the sort of detail and acronym-heavy information that professional historians batten on, and that do less for me than sci-fi infodumping does in the reading pleasure metrics. I had to bail just before the halfway point. It really shouldn't surprise me that I couldn't get deeply immersed in the read because submarine stories have to be very fast-paced for me not to fixate on the claustrophobia of their raison d'etre. Underwater! NO FRESH AIR! Lots of bodies all squished up with no personal space! *shudder*

As I mentioned, that needs a fast narrative pace with plenty of action for me to overcome. I didn't get that here. If you're an Erik Larson fan, that is not this writer's style. He's closer to Russell S. Bonds or Stephen Harrigan: Details accumulate, characters emerge in relief or simply can't be recreated from the source material, but nowhere is your pulse going to pound.

Diversion Books offers hardcovers for $29.99 from 4 June 2024.

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The Behavioral Code: The Hidden Ways the Law Makes Us Better...or Worse by Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine PEARL RULED @ 42%

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A 2022 PROSE Award finalist in Legal Studies and Criminology
A Behavioral Scientist's Notable Book of 2021

Freakonomics for the law—how applying behavioral science to the law can fundamentally change and explain misbehavior

Why do most Americans wear seatbelts but continue to speed even though speeding fines are higher? Why could park rangers reduce theft by removing "no stealing" signs? Why was a man who stole 3 golf clubs sentenced to 25 years in prison?

Some laws radically change behavior whereas others are consistently ignored and routinely broken. And yet we keep relying on harsh punishment against crime despite its continued failure.

Professors Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine draw on decades of research to uncover the behavioral code: the root causes and hidden forces that drive human behavior and our responses to society's laws. In doing so, they present the first accessible analysis of behavioral jurisprudence, which will fundamentally alter how we understand the connection between law and human behavior.

The Behavioral Code offers a necessary and different approach to battling crime and injustice that is based in understanding the science of human misconduct—rather than relying on our instinctual drive to punish as a way to shape behavior. The book reveals the behavioral code's hidden role through illustrative examples like:

The illusion of the US's beloved tax refund

German walls that "pee back" at public urinators

The $1,000 monthly "good behavior" reward that reduced gun violence

Uber's backdoor "Greyball" app that helped the company evade Seattle's taxi regulators

A $2.3 billion legal settlement against Pfizer that revealed how whistleblower protections fail to reduce corporate malfeasance

A toxic organizational culture playing a core role in Volkswagen's emissions cheating scandal

How Peter Thiel helped Hulk Hogan sue Gawker into oblivion

Revelatory and counterintuitive, The Behavioral Code catalyzes the conversation about how the law can effectively improve human conduct and respond to some of our most pressing issues today, from police misconduct to corporate malfeasance.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Why read for pleasure when you can eat your spinach, suffer, and learn? Why indeed...I had to quit reading at 42% because I am utterly outraged and about to pop a vein in my skull.

In the legal and moral landscape where a crooked, lying rapist manipulating the system in advance by appointing political hacks to the courts high and low, and thus possibly evading...AGAIN...consequences for his vile actions, I just could not continue. The prose is redable, the arguments stand up to my poking around for other opinions, but I'm just not in the headspace to read this badly-needed work of popular social science.

Beacon Press hardcovers are $27.95, and I'll urge the purchase on you.

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Hearts Ablaze: Parables for the Queer Soul by Dr. Rolf Nolasco Jr. PEARL RULED @ 31%

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Meditations addressing the spiritual needs of queer Christians. A new look at ten selected parables of Jesus, that expands the scope of interpretation of each story to highlight God's extravagant welcome of all people. The perspective in the reflections is deeply personal and written to be used by both individuals and groups. Queer affirming churches, seminaries, and retreat centers will benefit from this resource as they continue to champion the flourishing of their queer siblings in Christ.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am a Bad Person. I not only don't believe in Jesus as savior, I don't believe in Jesus as human being who was once alive. I don't believe in one—or any—gawd the father-mother-sister-brother. I don't accept the "moral" authority of this dreadful, hate-filled cult of judgmental dupes that calls itself christian.

I have numerous dear friends, and some family members, who do. I am positive that, one day, my shining example of right thinking and proper living will convert them from their benighted superstitions. The comfort of their souls will come from rational scientific answers to their questions, and where there are no answers yet, they will abide in faith that the scientific method will provide an answer or a Reason there can't be one.

That's the kind of world, flipped 180°, that this book inhabits. I ain't the intended audience, but I am always looking for ways to understand what I can't accept. What comfort and acceptance this flavor of christianity offers is unnecessary to me, but could easily save another person's life. I feel strongly that I need to know resources like this exist to proffer if and when they're needed.

There's a Kindle edition for $9.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link), but best of luck finding the publisher's website, or any so-called christian source of books that carries it. Color me surprised. Not.

CECILIA, sapphic obsessive love and bodily fixation in gorgeous prose

CECILIA
K-MING CHANG
Coffee House Press
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A surreal novella about the intensity and eroticism of girlhood friendships, the ecstasy of desire and disgust, and matriarchal mythmaking.

Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor’s office, reencounters Cecilia, a woman who has obsessed her since their school days. As the two of them board the same bus—each dubiously claiming not to be following the other—their chance meeting spurs a series of intensely vivid and corporeal memories. In the defamiliarization that follows, the narrator begins to experience queerness itself as an alienation from normative time.

Smart, subversive, and gripping, Cecilia is a winding, misty road trip through bodily transformation, inextricable histories of desire and violence, diaspora, and obsessive love.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This short read is much more affecting than most its length are. That is a funcrion of K-Ming Chang's bravura performance with English as a weapon:

When I reached up to touch my face, I felt no protrusions, no new bones inflecting my surface, and yet, when Cecilia and I looked at each other, we saw them: beaks mountaining out of our mouths, rooted to the shadows of our jawbones. Beaks shining like the perfect darkness preserved inside a belly.

You are on notice: Pay attention to the words chosen, pay attention to the images described, or this very slightly surreal...in its literal meaning, the meaning of the parts it's made of, "overreal, above real, on top of real"...narrative of two girls discovering love, passion, intense vibrant hypercolored Experience, will simply squash you, split the space where you are and move through it.

An intense experience will be had; your choice of framing for the act of being engaged with this story will determine its positive or negative perception for you. I am resolutely positive about the experience because anyone who can, and will, and does explore the sensation of Obsession to burnout is my idol.

That will trigger very strong and not always positive memories for some readers. Be aware of this fact particularly if you have been, or are being, stalked.

Readers who prefer direct action will not resonate to the Proustian aide-memoire of this novella. The story, as in plot, is spare to the point of threadbare: Old friends with a past connection of unrequited lust, requited love, and sensual obsession, meet at one's place of work, chat, then get on a bus to go home...not together. Just that isn't gonna drag the hoi polloi into this tent, there to be entertained. The story is of the rung-bell resonance of girls loving each other before womanhood imbues loving, intense intimacy with a bodily expression's inevitability. The immensely divisive choice of piss as a focus of fascination, desire, disgust, and connection is definitely going to upset some people. It is, I think, an example of how little female desire is examined in our literary landscape that this choice has occasioned such a response across the spectrum of readers. Women, even sapphically inclined ones, are still called on to present a particular strain of pure, clean, unsullied neutered bodiless Love and not filthy, sweaty, bodily based Lust...that's reserved for intimacy, things done and thought in private. Shame, in other words. In porn, these acts are Done To women as a form of punishment or humiliation. K-Ming Chang's Seven is not humiliated or punished. She's so obsessed that this is an urgently desired act of further possession and imtimacy. There's more than a whiff of body horror to the way bodily processes and even body parts are casually discussed, possessed, and even deployed throughout the read.

The author's choice of making her girls of Chinese descent, living in the US diaspora, is...to my surprise...not foregrounded. I expected it to be more of a focus because so much is made of the author's own ethnicity. It was something I didn't really notice until I'd read the story and was thinking about responses to the author's realier works (eg, Bestiary, Bone House, Gods of Want), where ethnicity is apparently made more of within those stories. Haven't read 'em, can't speak with an informed eye, but this story doesn't make a meal of it as I suspected it might.

I definitely don't think this read is for everyone, but the right reader will be unfazed by childbirth evocations and livers of others as property to be treasured. The right reader will immerse their awareness in the meaty world of loving someone so much that consuming them is desirable, not in the Hannibal Lecter sense I hasten to say. The right reader will give their readerly ears to the very idiosyncratic music of K-Ming Chang's creation.

It's me. I'm the right reader.

OYE, intense debut sapphic novel of adolescence in an immigrant family under HUGE life-stresses

OYE
MELISSA MOGOLLON
The Hogarth Press
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A coming-of-age comedy. A telenovela-worthy drama. A moving family saga. All in a phone call you won’t want to hang up on…

A young woman reckons with her rowdy, unpredictable family and the revelation of their long-buried history in this wildly inventive debut.

“Yes, hi, Mari. It’s me. I’m over my tantrum and finally calling you back. But you have to promise that you won’t say anything to Mom or Abue about this, okay? They’ll set the house on fire if they find out…”

Luciana is the baby of her large Colombian American family. And despite usually being relegated to the sidelines, she now finds herself the voice of reason in the middle of their unexpected crisis. Her older sister, Mari, is away at college and reduced to a mere listening ear on the other end of their many phone calls, so when South Florida residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, it’s up to Luciana to deal with her eccentric grandmother, Abue, who’s refusing to leave. But the storm isn’t the only danger. Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, is given a crushing medical diagnosis. While she’d prefer to ignore it and focus on upholding her reputation and her looks instead, the news sets Abue on her own personal journey, with Luciana reluctantly along for the ride.

When Abue moves into Luciana’s bedroom, their complicated bond only intensifies. Luciana would rather be skating or sneaking out to meet girls, but Abue’s wild demands and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction from Luciana’s misguided mother, absent sister, and uncertain future. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the devastating secrets that Abue begins to share, Luciana suddenly finds herself center stage, facing down adulthood—and rising to the occasion.

As Luciana chronicles the events of her upended senior year over the phone, Oye feels like the most entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel by an author as original as she is insightful.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A funny, modern updating of the epistolary novel, with all its strengths and weaknesses intact. The biggest strength for me was Luciana's voice: Raw, unregulated, intensely immersed in a very difficult moment. I have heard criticism from readers about the "foul language" Luciana uses, to all of whom I say, "go read a religious tract if all you want is sweet, uplifting pablum." Luciana's in a car fleeing a bloody hurricane! She's trying to reach her sister! She's left her Abue (Grandma for the monoglots) behind...at the old lady's insistence!

If anyone has a reason to use Language, it's this girl; plus she's talking to her sister! Not an Authority figure. Which brings me to, who says you, the reader, get to be an authority entitled to pass judgment, anyway?

And here I am, passing judgment....

Well, hypocrisy thy name is me, I guess. I disagree with those pursey-lipped objections because I don't agree with them, anywhere, period. To me, this is a feature not a bug: Immediacy and authenticity enhancing the usual epistolary read's sense of becoming privy to another person's intimate communications to someone not you. That style is emotionally more intense, more immediate, than third-person or *shudder* the Satanic Second person narration. That becomes ever more relevant as the hurricane threat is survived and the aftermath begins.

What the story does is deeply unfamiliar and absolutely terrifying to me. It chronicles the emotional reality of a child's bearing the burdens of adulthood, of responsibility for interpreting...on every level that word has in English...the world for the nominal adults around her. I can think of nothing more frightening to read about than that imposition on someone who is also coming to terms with her sapphic love needs. The latter would be enough to stress a kid out, and it certainly has, but add on top the cultural and language interpretation demands...!

This is, to me at least, the very most unnerving of isolations. Luciana is left, by the sister she's leaving these voicemails for, to be in charge of some deeply stressful navigations of her world that I feel sad she has to be burdened with, things that by all rights a teenager should not have to be in charge of. That's conveyed very well by the updated use of the epistolary format.

There are the usual limitations, of course. The fact that this is not a conversation, a la that ur-telephone novel Nicholson Baker's Vox, means that the story is solely the one Luciana sees and feels. We get her character, but are asked to fill in the spaces where the other characters...reduced to names here...need to be. That is inherent in the format, so it does nothing wrong, just leaves more work for the reader. I found that a bit off-putting as time went by; why is Luciana pouring her heart out to Mari anyway, I kept wondering, when there's nothing coming back...and the realization of Luciana's actual, heart-rending isolation came crashing in again.

As an evocation of the absolute intensity of adolescent emotions, passions, and fears, it works. As a novel, it can feel overly dramatic and one-note. That is a risk that the epistolary format carries within itself. I liked the read, but was too overstimulated to love it, as I could never be anywhere but in medias res.

IN TONGUES, among other things, a coming(!)-of-age story perfect for the Fire Island beach

IN TONGUES
THOMAS GRATTAN
MCD Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discovery.

It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon―handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction―takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him―and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.

A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.

Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I kept making dirty wordplay on this title as my review's first line. Trouble with that is nothing I can come (!) up (!) with is steamier or hornier than the book itself is.

This is NOT straight-people safe. This is not, in all honesty, a book to read at work, or on public transport, unless you're wearing very, very loosely pleated trousers. Or baiting your hook.

It's also not one-handed reading, I hasten to add. The story is very much the point of the sexual situations, not the other way around. Think of it as Ripley made for PornHub not Netflix, nor perish forbid that neutered but pretty-to-look-at theatrical film. That perhaps overplays the calculation and manipulation that Gordon commits to in achieving his goal of finding himself (between two powerful people's bodies), and discovering his true inner self(ish bastard). But make no mistake that Gordon is very much a Young Man from the Provinces who very clearly knows what he left behind he deliberately rejected. Now he needs to understand how to work his natural gifts while he's got youth and a complete absence of the will to say "no" on his side.

The reason I resonated so deep(!)ly to the story is Author Grattan's way of making it: Episodic, dreamlike, in the flow. That knocked off the meaner interpretations I leapt to about Gordon's thoughtlessness, his lack of a core concern for how his behavior might affect others. It is not yet in him (!) to be calculating. It is, in other words, a case of his being canny versus being savvy. Gordon instinctively responds to the way others see him and shows them that side. A savvy operator would, instead move to seduce those who have what he wants. Those people are often false-feeling and mistrusted, Gordon is too real in his desire to be desired to give off a warning signal, a fake vibe.

Absence of an organizing principle often gets mistaken for aimlessness. Author Grattan takes on a daunting task of presenting the story of Gordon, void of course, and needing thus to use authorial sleight of hand to keep his reader from feeling lost and unconnected the way Gordon is. That is a supremely difficult thing to do. For the most part I think his choice of sexual contexts serves admirably to ground and connect us to Gordon. There's so much pleasure in reading the elegant prose of the story, and so much about the emotional nature of those around Gordon to keep a lit-fic reader going. Particularly telling is Gordon's relations with the old guys in the story. He might not lust after them as they do him, but he desires...something, some meaningful intangible benefit to go with the tangible exchanges between them; does he get it? He doesn't know, because he doesn't know what he's looking for, The older men get what they want though likely not what they need, which is again intangible: connection. A future. Raising more than a flagging half-staff, shall we say.

This is consonant with my own life.

My half-star docked off dissatisfaction was Gordon's religious father begging for his son's withdrawn love. That's not so baldly expressed, of course, as I've done but it honestly does not ring true at all. Religious fathers with gay sons imght want to convert them to straightness but making themselves emotionally vulnerable? Nope. I don't, honestly, see that happening between most any father and son. And that joined a certain vague sense I could never coalesce around an actual idea, that Gordon was not really interested in himself enough to attract the caliber of men he does. That's as close as I can come to articulating a kind-of Forrest Gumpishness about him that did not jibe with narrative.

Lovely writing made the ending work. Lesser talent would've fumbled that one, and it was a close-run thing even so. A book I recommend to gay-male readers of literary prose.

All others, at your own risk.

NEARLYWED, starting #PrideMonth early and with a resounding laugh

NEARLYWED
NICOLAS DiDOMIZIO
Sourcebooks Casablanca
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An engaged couple's compatibility is put to the test during their ill-fated early honeymoon in this smart, dazzling, and provocative summer comedy perfect for fans of People We Meet on Vacation.

5 Signs You and Your Fiancé Might Be Secretly Incompatible…and #3 Will Shock You!

Ray Bruno and Kip Hayes are horrible on paper. Ray is a chaotic millennial ex-clickbait-writer who's been oversharing his every thought online since he was a teenager, and Kip is a pragmatic Gen X doctor who values privacy above all else.

But somehow it all manages to work…until Ray convinces Kip to join him for an early honeymoon at a famous lux resort in Ray's coastal New England hometown, eschewing the tradition of bachelor parties and hoping to recharge before their end-of-August wedding. When a surprising encounter with another couple at the resort leads to a series of escalating mishaps and miscommunications, Ray and Kip are forced to look at their many differences in a stark new light, turning the trip into less of a vacation and more of a test: will they be able to work through their issues in time for the big day? Or is this marriage over before it begins?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Frothy fun. Seriously, there's a lot to love about frothy fun all on its own. I'm not going to criticize anyone for looking to read a plain ol' entertainment.

This book's got the frothy on top, and then a deep well of relationship fiction keeping it up. (So to speak.) The set-up...a prenuptial getaway together...is classic, and introduces the idea that there's something to get away from, which while it's shown as an external...life is always stressful...is really something intrinsic to the couple's couplehood.

That being, in this story, communication skills. Ray is someone who "shares" his entire life online and has used this as a substitute for communicating his deeper emotional reality. After all, he gets the positive reinforcement he needs so badly from his curated, online self's doings, so it's all good. His mom, a deeply indulgent parent who genuinely wants to support her ebullient son, encourages his extroversion without much examination. Then why does he choose older, deep-waters Kip as a partner, the savvy reader notes. Why indeed....

Kip, a buttoned-up young (forties) doctor with a certain kind of background, feels duty-bound to be the man his ancestral expectations lead him to be. The weight of Expectations is, I assume we all know by now, is untenably heavy to carry by yourself. But those expectations make Kip unwilling to ask Ray for badly needed help...it would be All Over The Internet, and what Kip does with Ray should be PRIVATE. (Read: Shame! Shame! Shame!) Kip is, though, loyal to his love, and his love is Ray. How far can Ray push his uncommunicative love before he suddenly, finally sees Ray's essential emptiness?

The stage is set.

What happens between these oddly assorted men at the glitzy resort (a setting that in one stroke assures the reader that shiny, pretty surfaces will be shattered yet the basic architecture will survive) is a very effective communication manual. I do not intend a knock or insult with this! The effectiveness of a story always depends on its logic. The logic of working through communication issues is universally compelling. No one I've ever known has not felt the need to communicate more effectively. These men, one ruled by fear of rejection, the other by shame, discover in their love the support each needs to confront their unique fear.

Because it's the same issue. At heart, "do you love me enough to be with me when I'm just myself?" is the one question every spouse must answer. The good news is, unlike a self-help book or a workbook, reading a novel where each of these two very relatable men answer this question with a resounding "yes, you silly oaf, I always HAVE!" is fun, not a chore. There's a moment in the story where an aperçu is delivered that I think should be part of anyone who's so much as considering the commitment's mental furniture: "The reality of a marriage is all the days that come after." The biggest success of this story is that I believed Ray in all his scattered glory really wanted Kip in all his weighty seriousness to know each of them was loved, accepted, and forgiven in advance for all the mistakes to come.

What fun to find in Nicolas DiDomizio a new gay-fiction writer whose work I want to go back and read, and follow from here on.

THE MINISTRY OF TIME, a review I feel guilty for writing

THE MINISTRY OF TIME
KALIANE BRADLEY
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I know how petty and spoiled I'm going to sound in this review, but I can't, in good conscience, ignore this extremely promising debut novel. I'm a complete sucker for time-travel novels and stories, and all the weirdness that accompanies the (incorrect, in my opinion) History-changing antics of time travelers. (I think there are many worlds in the multiverse.) The notion here presented of making use of the lives of those who died too soon for Other Ends is one with a lot of appeal to me.

And yet this is a five-star idea in a four-star book. I love the idea! I like the execution because it's not fussy, doesn't cram in irrelevancies but *does* offer squads and fleets of enriching details, both about the past and the story-present, just a bit down our own road. So what's wrong?

She makes the spy story an excuse to tell this fundamentally romantic story, not this idea to propel a spy story. The way it's resolved is good just not great, and that's down to the wrong-endedness of the grasp. Nameless Narratrix is, it's absurdly evident from the get-go, going to fall in love with her new "expat" (coy bureaucratese for "kidnapped time-traveling hostage") and they are going to Do the Deed. I'm on record as not liking heterosex in my life, no matter where it comes from, so this was never going to work for me. But after thinking a lot about this book and its wonderful humor, its inventive take on the purposes of time travel, and its very well-limned characters, I realized I'd be just as tetchy if Nameless had been a man bedding a man the way god intended.

The problem for me is that I think the romantic plot is just too similar to the squads and fleets of inferior iterations of Outlander that litter the romance-reader's landscape. Why do more of the same? Well, in this case, because 1) it sells, and b) it's vastly...enormously...better-done than anything else in its competition.

But here's whiny little me, moaning "just leave it out!" as Nameless and her "expat" have headboard-smashing sex. Y'all are voting with your wallets, the book's a hit and rightly so! But it isn't the book I wanted.

Hence four, not five, stars. And my shamefaced admission that this is NOT the review that this book merited.

THE GUNCLE ABROAD, sequel...with a knowing wink...to a surprise hit

THE GUNCLE ABROAD
STEVEN ROWLEY
G.P. Putnam's Sons
$29.00 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the nationally bestselling author of The Guncle comes the much-anticipated sequel, in which Patrick O’Hara is called back to his guncle duties…at a big, family wedding in Lake Como, Italy.

Patrick O’Hara is finally in a league of his own…professionally. Inspired by his stint as Grant and Maisie’s caretaker after their mother’s passing, Patrick has "un-stalled" his acting career with sit-com, Guncle Knows Best. Still, some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single and lonely after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has family, right?

When his brother Greg announces his big, second wedding in Lake Como, Italy, Patrick feels pulled toward Grant and Maisie and flies to Europe to attend the lavish event, only to butt heads with a newfound Launt (Lesbian Aunt), curb his sister Clara from flirting with guests, and desperately restore himself to the favored relative status in the eyes of the kids, as they struggle to adjust to a new normal. But is it Patrick’s job to save the day? Or is simply celebrating love enough to quell the family chaos?

Gracing the page with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley delivers the long-awaited sequel to a beloved story, all about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Teenagers. Yikes! Maisie's dad is getting remarried to a Very Glamourous Italian, which is NOT a way to a bookish teen girl's heart. Grant is eleven, doesn't really have a lot of interest in the wedding parts, but will—he thinks—definitely prefer his life without an Italian marchesa for a stepmom, since Maisie's churned those waters. The gruesome twosome turn to their truly belovèd Guncle Patrick, their Dad's big brother, for help stopping what they see as impending disaster.

Guncle ("gay uncle" if you need a refresher) has, in agreeing to "help" them, got a plan. The issue with plans is that teenagers, with their fully adult-strength emotions and complete absence of perspective, most often see through plans and get...stroppy...when they feel manipulated.

Clever Guncle...take the kids on a European tour, since he's already finishing up a film role in London, and talk to them...remember "Guncle Rules"? now they're "Love Languages"...while working through their fears about their Dad moving on from their Mom's early death. It will, not coincidentally, help him move on from his recent breakup with Emory, whom I feel sure we've all forgotten from The Guncle. At any rate, it's a welcome distraction from the entertainment business for a successful...again...sitcom...again...star, and a man about to turn the Big Five-Oh. Yep, the guy who found being loudly reminded by his loving niece that he was forty-three tantamount to a hate crime is a half-century old.

Does his wiliness now exceed his willingness to be there for his family? Close-run thing if you ask me.

Well, Rowley's still got his humor vein open. I loved this bit:

“Sequels are either too bloated, too stuffed with B-team actors or characters or Ewoks—things that weren’t good enough for the original. A cash grab to profit off something that was probably a fluke in the first place.”

Cassie glanced at the surrounding patrons, perhaps wishing she could dine with one of them.

“The only time it maybe works—and I mean the only time—is when there wasn’t an ending that was entirely happy, when not everything was tied up in a neat little bow. Otherwise you have to undo someone’s happy ending to create more drama for your characters, and no one likes a happy ending undone. And what stories these days don’t have happy endings?”

Thus Patrick to his long-suffering agent...and Author Rowley tipping his hat to the audience. It's not the first time I've been here, so pay me the respect of telling me you're aware of that fact. I appreciated it, and was simultaneously amused by it. It joins the host of amusing moments that this whirlwind tour of Europe that must be completed in time for the destination wedding on Lake Como...shades of Patrick Dennis and Around the World with Auntie Mame, another sequel that has to undo a happy ending...and you get a fun, funny summertime escape in book form. That is a wonderful lot.

Of course, this is not the first time we've met these characters, so there's a lost sparkle that can't be recreated no matter what one does. In its place is a luster, the warm burnished glow from a fine silver samovar, one that always spills its tea warmed to perfection into your perfectly prepared cup. Sweet...the return and humanization of oldest sister Clara in her latest reinvention of self...bitter, Patrick's jealousy of the marchesa's lesbian sister who woos her way into Maisie and Grant's affections...fun, the comical nightmare rehearsal dinner like something from The Philadelphia Story, only...um...earthier, and honestly de trop. Tropes. Well polished, gleaming tropes that most story-loving readers want to read because they are familiar and dear and relatable. What story about a wedding that deserves one's attention at all doesn't feature some concatenation of mishaps?

The utter charm of how the world rights itself in romantic fiction is a source of delight.

Come be delighted. (But dear GOD, the w-verbing has got to stop!)