SOPHIE SULLIVAN'S PAGE: YOU MAKE IT FEEL LIKE CHRISTMAS, latest rom-com contemporary; & A GUIDE TO BEING JUST FRIENDS, Jansen Brothers #3

YOU MAKE IT FEEL LIKE CHRISTMAS
SOPHIE SULLIVAN
St. Martin's Griffin (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: All bets are off when a single-minded photographer and a professional hockey player are forced to spend a week together on his sister’s Christmas tree farm, perfect for fans of Jenny Holiday and Maggie Knox.

Maisie Smart has a don’t-look-back policy–not on the choice she made to be a photographer (despite her family’s wishes) and not on the one-night stand she had six months ago. Sleeping with someone she barely knew was out of character; sleeping with a professional hockey player who bolted the morning after is a whole new level of embarrassing. Getting invited to spend the week at Tickle Tree Farm with her family this Christmas is a sure way to fill her with holiday spirit. Until the universe throws a Grinch in her festive plans in the form of the one man she hoped to avoid.

Nick King is a mess. After a significant injury lands him on the bench for every game for the rest of the month, he has more time to dwell on the one night stand he can’t get out of his head. With time on his hands, his anxiety hovering, and the holidays around the corner, he figures visiting his sister and nephew at their Christmas tree farm will be a good way to lie low and sort himself out. He’s in for a surprise when it turns out Maisie is staying at his sister’s and his attraction for her hasn’t lessened one bit in the last six months. Apparently, neither has her anger at him for bailing. But Christmas is the time for second chances, and the forced proximity may help Nick and Maisie unwrap feelings neither of them can walk away from twice.

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

My Review: Apart from renaming "Maisie" to be "Mason" and switching her pronouns...or "how I always read romantic fiction in the past"...nothing needed changing for me to thoroughly enjoy this holiday-themed romance. Its lower-steam (pun intended; you'll have to read the book to see why it is one) level meant I did fairly little skippidy-doo-dah to avoid the squick factor. The forced proximity worked better for me than it usually does because they were both there with their families for a holiday, therefore everyone was very much inclined to find the fun and humor in everything to offset family stress.

Of course they end up in love, it's a category romance. The set-up gives them both real, honest issues to overcome. It's a hallmark (!) of the best contemporary romances to keep the stakes grounded in at the very least plausible conflicts between the couple. Sophie Sullivan is a top-quality practitioner of her craft. Below is another review of one of her works, with a link to an earlier one I read and enjoyed in that series. Suffice to say, I admire craft professionalism wherever I find it.

Nick, in particular, is drawn as a man whose competitive edge is rooted in his need to measure up to his own standards. It's more palatable as a motivation to win than the ordinary need to dominate others. His strong bond to his sister, and his desire to be there in his nephew's life, show that Author Sullivan made Nick's anxiety over his injury and its possible consequences consistent with really positive-feeling issues that still need addressing to move forward in all parts of his life. Needing to contextualize his anxiety and to find good, healthy coping mechanism for it, offer him the additional benefit of being able, and willing, to invite the intriguing and interesting new love into his life on a sound footing.

One of my Goodreads friends really described my response to this read best: "If you’ve ever wanted your holiday rom-com to suddenly morph into therapy with tree ornaments, you’re in for a treat." No one in the entire story does not need some help sorting through their self-defeating behaviors, and responses to others' behaviors, so the playing field is level throughout. It felt very much like being in a positive group therapy session where everyone's honestly trying their damnedest to do the right thing.

Why I'm only at a hair under four stars has to do with the way the mother/daughter conflict utterly dominates the second half of the story. I'm aware that this is a major source of unhappiness for lots and lots of women in the world, I'd've liked a bit less rancor delivered with the effort to reconnect to the genuine loving root of their relationship.

So I was not utterly ensorceled by the story. I was impressed and pleased at how much Nick's efforts to recover a positive mental frame for his ongoing anxiety were foregrounded. I only wanted a bit less of the focus to be on the angrier emotional valance; it's the holidays, let's have *some* fantasy elements!

A top quality read, no matter what.

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A GUIDE TO BEING JUST FRIENDS (Jansen Brothers #3)
SOPHIE SULLIVAN
St. Martin's Griffin (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A playful and emotional romantic comedy from the author of Ten Rules for Faking It

Hailey Sharp has a one-track mind. Get By the Cup salad shop off the ground. Do literally everything possible to make it a success. Repeat. With a head full of entrepreneurial ideas and a bad ex in her rearview, her one and only focus is living life the way she wants to. No distractions.

Wes Jansen never did understand the fuss about relationships. With a string of lackluster first dates and the pain from his parents’ angry divorce following him around, he’d much rather find someone who he likes, but won’t love. Companionship, not passion, is the name of the game.

When Hailey and Wes find each other in a disastrous meet cute that wasn’t even intended for them, they embarrassingly go their separate ways. But when Wes finds Hailey to apologize for his behavior, they strike a friendship. Because that’s all this can be. Hailey doesn’t want any distractions. Wes doesn’t want to fall in love.

What could possibly go wrong?

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

My Review: After HOW TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR's review from 2022, I got a widget for this book. Accepting it took a minute because, well, straight people's relationship/bedroom issues do not command much attention or sympathy from me.

But Author Sullivan, I reminded myself, doesn't do headboard-knockin' sex or teary-eyed, wearying angst! And so I was sold, again. I'm glad to say that Wes and Hailey were companionable and deciding interesting problems together.

Yes, that's right, I said "together." Wes listens when Hailey talks to him; Hailey, for her part, is glad to have a friend who really *does* listen. There's a couple in a category romance that support each other's goals because they take the time to learn what those goals are. I honestly thought Wes's desire to date a woman for good and ever was ridiculous, but that didn't really last. I knew he was kidding himself, I think anyone over 30 would, and Hailey's relentless focus on her weird salad-in-a-cup thing was always going to burn out.

This read was what I wanted as I read it. I did not need more stress, but I did need some story-beats to hold my attention. This story ended the Jansen Brothers series, which were decent and involving stories; I know now there's more stories comin' (see above) with Author Sullivan's balanced plotting...neither party is perfect; neither party is a basket case...and gift for acerbic observations.

I'd say it's a worthwhile series to read, though the order you read them in is unimportant. I'll take another widget, if St. Martin's/Griffin is offering. Your need for just-enough of all the usual plot dressings in a category romance will determine your desire to procure one for yourself.

VANTAGE POINT, good times don't get better than watching rich people dally and fall

VANTAGE POINT
SARA SLIGAR
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Succession meets Megan Abbott in this seductive Gothic suspense novel about the dramatic downfall of one of America’s most affluent families.

The old-money Wieland family has it all—wealth, status, power. They’re also famously cursed. Clara and her brother Teddy grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents’ tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later they’ve mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara’s best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point. Then Teddy decides to run for the Senate—an unnerving prospect made much worse when intimate videos of Clara are leaked online. The most frightening part is that she doesn't remember filming any of them. Are the videos real? Or are they deepfakes? Is someone trying to take down the Wielands once and for all?

Everyone thinks Clara is losing her grip on reality, but she knows the videos are only the beginning. Years ago the curse destroyed her parents. Now it’s coming for her. Brimming with palpable tension, Vantage Point reveals a twisted web of family secrets and political ambition that raises questions about the blurred lines between public and private personas and the nature of truth in the digital age.

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

My Review: Do I hope this is what happens to the richest .01% of families? Yes. Would I sit by and watch with huge schadenfreude while amplifying the most embarrassing, hurtful moments on social media despite the pain it might cause the family in question? Oh my goddesses YES! Extra speedy sharing if they issue statements deploring the hurtful invasion of privacy, and I'll find a way to automate the 24-hour-a-day posting process if they're tech scum!

This book and me? Destined to be besties.

Sounds like a five-star rave is incoming, doesn't it?

Nope. When the shock-twist ending is the same ending you've been telegraphing all along, you don't get five stars. It could be some meta thing, playing on my expectations for a twist in a thriller by not giving me one; I don't tend to read thrillers for that sort of playfulness (which is usually disappointing and annoying anyway). Why it bothered me was that the author was flagging the ending in what felt like every chapter, most unsubtly; then that's what happened; so why'd I read all this intermediate red-herring-ing?

Because this gothic, soapy, OTT strange-fest was fun. I liked reading it. It wasn't groundbreaking, or paradigm-shifting; no one promised me it would be. I was told I'd have a good time eagerly watching the twisted ending of a hypercapitalist family.

Check.

Would I have liked it more, if...fill in personal crotchet here? Sure, I can play that game all day and most of the night with almost anything. But this book delivers what it promises, and you'll have a good time getting there.

THE PORTABLE VEBLEN, family drama played for laughs & MY NAME IS WILL, Shakespeare as countercultural rebel...twice & THE READER, Guilt! GUILT!

THE PORTABLE VEBLEN
ELIZABETH McKENZIE
The Penguin Press
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that’s as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its pages, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now. A young couple on the brink of marriage—the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist—find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other’s dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tête-à-tête with a very charismatic squirrel.

Veblen (named after the iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term “conspicuous consumption”) is one of the most refreshing heroines in recent fiction. Not quite liberated from the burdens of her hypochondriac, narcissistic mother and her institutionalized father, Veblen is an amateur translator and “freelance self”; in other words, she’s adrift. Meanwhile, Paul—the product of good hippies who were bad parents—finds his ambition soaring. His medical research has led to the development of a device to help minimize battlefield brain trauma—an invention that gets him swept up in a high-stakes deal with the Department of Defense, a Bizarro World that McKenzie satirizes with granular specificity.

As Paul is swept up by the promise of fame and fortune, Veblen heroically keeps the peace between all the damaged parties involved in their upcoming wedding, until she finds herself falling for someone—or something—else. Throughout, Elizabeth McKenzie asks: Where do our families end and we begin? How do we stay true to our ideals? And what is that squirrel really thinking? Replete with deadpan photos and sly appendices, The Portable Veblen is at once an honest inquiry into what we look for in love and an electrifying reading experience.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: A debut novel that, for its subject, takes on greed, Othering, and intergenerational family toxicity. While Author McKenzie published stories before this book appeared in 2016, the appearance of the novel was warbled delightedly about by Jeff VanderMeer, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Karen Joy Fowler. Reviews from the New York, and Los Angeles, and Seattle Timeses, the Boston Globe, Library Journal and Kirkus and NPR...several programs!...was longlisted for a National Book Award...you get the idea, it was down as The Next Big Deal.

But I forgot it existed. I read it in the dark year, and I came up dry on things to say about it.

In having a clear-out, I found the ARC again. It's such a strange title that I remembered it straight away. How many people in 2022 recall who Thorstein Veblen was? Not a lot more, or fewer honestly, than did in 2016. It's an odd and slightly off-putting thing to first-name your main character. It does efficiently Other her from the get-go. I wasn't sure that I liked that. I remember thinking that it was a darn good thing that she was the sort of person who could, in all seriousness, ask “Do you think wishful thinking is a psychiatric condition?”

So why did I resurrect this long-ago gift from a publisher who clearly never thought to hear from me about it again? Because, in flipping through it, I was caught by some unusually persuasive turns of phrase:

She had once concluded everyone on earth was a servant to the previous generation—born from the body’s factory for entertainment and use. A life could be spent like an apology—to prove you had been worth it.
–and–
Veblen espoused the Veblenian opinion that wanting a big house full of cheaply produced versions of so-called luxury items was the greatest soul-sucking trap of modern civilization, and that these copycat mansions away from the heart and soul of a city had ensnared their overmortgaged owners—yes, trapped and relocated them like pests.
–and–
The sharing of simple meals and discussing the day's events, of waking up together with plans for the future, things that feel practically bacchanalian when you're used to being on your own.

This is a writer speaking her truth. I love finding these moments. I think I left the book by the wayside because I couldn't, in the dark year, process the anticapitalist message as anything but the confirmation bias of my brain. In the decades of being steadily more and more radicalized by capitalism's failures of me, my chosen people, and the world my descendants will live in, I've resharpened that mental blade many times. This time I felt Author McKenzie's edge slash closer to me than before.

Author McKenzie reserves her loudest klaxon, her angriest blast of Gabriel's horn, for we-the-consumers. The sneaky message under Veblen's dithering disconnectedness is there. It's not unique, nor even original, but it's heartfelt and it's eloquent...and she's correct:

“I pledge allegiance, to the marketplace,
of the United States of America. TM.
And to the conglomerates, for which we shill,
one nation under Exxon-Mobile/Halliburton/Boeing/Walmart,
nonrefundable,
with litter and junk mail for all!”

Awomen.

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MY NAME IS WILL: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare
JESS WINFIELD
Twelve (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$1.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A tale of two Shakespeares . . .

Struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. Kind of . . .

Cut off by his father for laziness, and desperate for dough, Willie agrees to deliver a single giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs.

Meanwhile, would-be playwright (and oppressed Catholic) William Shakespeare is eighteen years old and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard’s life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome . . . This, at a time when adherents of the “Old Faith” are being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors.

Seemingly separated in time and place, the lives of Willie and William begin to intersect in curious ways, from harrowing encounters with the law (and a few ex-girlfriends) to dubious experiments with mind-altering substances. Their misadventures could be dismissed as youthful folly. But wise or foolish, the bold choices they make will shape not only the “Shakespeare” each is destined to become . . . but the very course of history itself.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tediously moralistic look at how Society tames us by taking hostages.

Heteronormative...shocking, I know...look at Will Shakespeare as horndog, transformed by Time (and parenthood) into...ya know what, if you like this kind of stuff you already know you like it. I don't much. Catholicism is a major vector for evil in this world, there's no denying that to anyone not an apologist; but Catholics ran the risk of horrible deaths in order to enact their fantasy of Religion. On the modern side, academia comes in for a lot of unkind "ribbing" that's meant to make one see that everyone is, at heart, a spoiled brat. These things are crumped together like they're somehow morally equivalent. They are not.

But worst of all, from my personal point of view, is the fact that I had to agree with the author about something:

Shakespeare, in some sense, helped create the modern man, didn't he, his influence is that pervasive. He held the mirror up to nature, but he also created that mirror: so the image he created is the very one we hold ourselves up to.

Stop with the deification already, recognize that there was a man called Shakespeare who wrote a bunch of cool stuff and take the rose-colored glasses off, he did whatever he did in his personal life and we can not speak about it because we don't know. Guessing is misleading, because you're going to think he did what you'd've done. Maybe...maybe not.

I didn't like it; I don't particularly recommend it; but it was not a waste of eyeblinks for that one excellent insight.

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THE READER
BERNHARD SCHLINK (tr. Carol Brown Janeway)
Vintage Books
$16.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Another read I fastened on as I got my Little Free Library bag ready to go. When I won this from, I think, a website now long gone's giveaway, I was under no obligation to review it. I didn't want to...my ephebeophile mother's long, long, long shadow over my life, her dead hands on my emotional neck still tightening spasmodically should I dare for a moment to forget to be unhappy, gave me a terrible and utter avoidance complex for this story.

Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.
–and–
Exploration! Exploring the past! We students in the camps seminar considered ourselves radical explorers. We tore open the windows and let in the air, the wind that finally whirled away the dust that society had permitted to settle over the horrors of the past. We made sure people could see. And we placed no reliance on legal scholarship. It was evident to us that there had to be convictions. It was just as evident as conviction of this or that camp guard or police enforcer was only the prelude. The generation that had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from its midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame.

There it is, the unvarnished solipsism of Surviving. The truth is we're all young Berg, we're all fucked-up Hanna. We can't make clean breaks with the past because the past is our inner self, our scaffolding. Young Berg learns this before Hanna puts him under the pressure and painful obligation of loving a broken thing.

The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear.

And the tectonic pressures are too much for him to bear. They always are, he's not weak or defective. He's just...selfish:

I didn't like the way I looked, the way I dressed and moved, what I achieved and what I felt I was worth. But there was so much energy in me, such belief that one day I'd be handsome and clever and superior and admired, such anticipation when I met new people and new situations. Is that what makes me sad? The eagerness and belief that filled me then and exacted a pledge from life that life could never fulfill? Sometimes I see the same eagerness and belief in the faces of children and teenagers and the sight brings back the same sadness I feel in remembering myself.

One expects this in a boy. But young Berg will only ever be a boy. Hanna did that to him...Hanna enabled that in him.

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?
–and–
At first I wanted to write our story in order to be free of it. But the memories wouldn’t come back for that. Then I realized our story was slipping away from me and I wanted to recapture it by writing, but that didn’t coax up the memories either. For the last few years I’ve left our story alone. I’ve made peace with it. And it came back, detail by detail and in such a fully rounded fashion, with its own direction and its own sense of completion, that it no longer makes me sad. What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.

And there, at the end of the book, was my source of discontent made plain to me: This entire louche passage in Berg's life...has not meaning whatever. Neither did the similar passage in my own life. They just...were...and they don't mean much to anyone but me.

So why'd I read this again?

LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME, a poignant story of the cost of being where you fit not belong

LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME
MIKE CHEN
MIRA Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Every family has issues. Most can’t blame them on extraterrestrials.

Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob.

When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He's different—older, stranger, and talking of an intergalactic war—but the tensions between the siblings haven't changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast. Because the FBI is after Jakob, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too.

The perfect combination of action, imagination and heart, Light Years From Home is a touching drama about a challenge as difficult as saving the galaxy: making peace with your family…and yourself.

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

My Review: Every damn word of this is so heartfelt, so honest and so completely resonant with my Kassie-like self that I feel like a rotter for not giving it that fourth star. But yet again, sexuality (Evie's probably Lesbian or Bisexual) is window-dressed onto an otherwise complete character. Please stop doing that.

When Arnold, the family patriarch (and doesn't he just know it!) disappears with Jakob, the underperforming (according to Arnold) son, the whole family flies into a state of emergency! Then Arnold comes back from that camping trip, without Jakob, but with a Purpose: Find him and bring him home.

No matter what, no matter who gets hurt or slighted.

So the family is broken again, not re-broken but the existing broken structure is smashed on a new rock. That rock is a vanished son...who returns one day! But what baggage he drags...and what a life he's led...and what his sisters had to put up with...and what they're coping with now.... And, as I am sure you've tipped to by now, this isn't a seamless, straight-through narrative. There are flashbacks!

Every single soul in this narrative has reasons for what they have done that do not depend on what the others did or didn't do. However, as in all toxic families, they blame each other publicly and themselves privately. Jakob made it easy for his twin sister to avoid the tough parts of growing up by leaving her the job of fulfilling the family's expectations. That'll make anyone angry! His little sister, growing up in the vacancy left by a father whose obsession with his lost son is all-consuming, opts out of sane, mainstream society...and this puts yet more pressure on her older sister. Then, wouldn't you just know, Dad dies! And Mom gets dementia!

I think it was around here that I went inside my emotional hidey-hole for a while. It's a lot. I related to Kassie. I was angry with Jakob for...vanishing...without a word. (I mean, come on! He can come back now, but he couldn't send some sort of interplanetary post card? "Having a wonderful war, be glad you aren't here" or something?) But that doesn't put the blame on him, Kassie, the way you want it to...you chose your path, and everyone has choices. Yes, some are harder to make than others, but they're still within the realm of possibility. A thing you, in your faithlessness, have every reason to know....

So this is sci fi? Well...yyyeeesss, but in a curious way no. It's what happens in the space opera between the acts. The messy human bits of the story that get elided over when you're telling the Ultimate Battle of Good Versus Evil!!! and the Hero is tasked with getting {thing} from his home, and whee! he comes back with {thing} and a story about his father being dead. Well, this is what actually happened then!

What makes the story compulsively readable for me is that quality, that interstitial nature. I am always interested in what occurs between the acts. I was not as interested in the seemingly grafted-on piece about the FBI thinking Jakob had run off to become a terrorist...Jakob?! lazy schlub that he was?!...but I can see how it felt timely for young Mister Shao to be branded as something he clearly could never bring himself to be. In a very odd way, though, I guess he did become a violent actor. Just not on Earth. Which, funnily enough, makes it okay...? Or does it?

Kassie's point-of-view narration is cringe-inducingly spot-on for the judgmental left-behind Responsible One's angle. It wasn't fun for me, but it was so real that at times I had to go look and make sure I was still an old, white man and hadn't transmogrified into Kassie Shao. So well done, Author Chen...sort of.

I don't think for a minute that the sci-fi elements will pass muster among the die-hard fans of the genre. They really aren't made for those readers. So if you're a hard SF reader, don't come here with those expectations. This is the moving, affecting, real story of one family's emotional dysfunction over the course of fifteen long, hard, lonely years of alienation and isolation, and the reason for it is science-fictional in nature.

I honestly wondered why I was so caught up in this family cess pit when the Universe is in danger out there! The first part makes you believe that Jakob's quest is URGENT and REAL and then...his sisters kludge onto him, Evie in a credulous, uncritical way and Kassie with her trademark judgment and blame (and she's a therapist?! Yikes), and suddenly it's possible that this is reality and Jakob's just not in it with us.

It gave my reading a focus, a real sense of the stakes, for the story to be presented in this way, though I would've predicted it to have been otherwise. Author Chen's work, which I've been reading for years now, has always made itself a home on my devices because he visibly grows with each published work. I haven't always liked his growing pains, but I appreciate that he is clear about what it is he needs to do and always tries to do it better every time. That he succeeds is a testament to his talent.

HOW TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, a sweet HEA straight rom-com

HOW TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR (Jansen Brothers #2)
SOPHIE SULLIVAN
St. Martin's Press
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Enemies-to-lovers meets HGTV in this frothy, effervescent romantic comedy from Sophie Sullivan, author of Ten Rules for Faking It.

Interior Design School? Check. Cute house to fix up? Check.

Sexy, grumpy neighbor who is going to get in the way of your plans? Check. Unfortunately.

Grace Travis has it all figured out. In between finishing school and working a million odd jobs, she’ll get her degree and her dream job. Most importantly, she’ll have a place to belong, something her harsh mother could never make. When an opportunity to fix up—and live in—a little house on the beach comes along, Grace is all in. Until her biggest roadblock moves in next door.

Noah Jansen knows how to make a deal. As a real estate developer, he knows when he's found something special. Something he could even call home. Provided he can expand by taking over the house next door—the house with the combative and beautiful woman living in it.

With the rules for being neighborly going out the window, Grace and Noah are in an all-out feud. But sometimes, your nemesis can show you that home is always where the heart is.

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

My Review: When Irresistible Force Met Immovable Object is a romantic-fiction staple. The reason it works, time upon time after time, is that the plot never stops feeling...probable, plausible, possible. "Surely *I* will succeed where others have failed," we think with the point-of-view character. The gendered expressions of this...a man who needs to Fix It, a woman who needs to Change It...are both present here.

Why does it work? Because we're told it will, does it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Um...how's that workin' in real life, then....

So reading this iteration of the old story is pointless, then? Nope. Not a bit of it, as you'll find out when you settle in for a dank winter's afternoon of page-borne cheerfulness. Two people with frankly selfish agendas meet with no obvious path to compromise, only of necessity the victory of Party A over Party B. For most of human history that set-up plays out that way. Given the nature of Grace's upbringing I expected it to be that way this time too, with her gladly giving up her utterly unknown grandparents' little bungalow for the handsome prince's home. Why, there's a way we can subvert expectations, thinks Author Sullivan...so instead of making Grace a gracious loser who wins the bigger prize, the neighbors mend their fences (figurative and literal) in more lasting ways. Therein the way the subversion works best.

What plays well with me, maybe predictably, is Grace's (ugh) gracious (sorry) inclusion of elders in her life. Her deeply toxic mother wasn't a mom, and her thus-inevitable lifelong search for found family is relatable to me. What makes it even sweeter, in the sugary sense, is that she volunteers for caretaker duties with older men who need her for practical reasons...Morty's the proverbial old fool whose unwillingness to grow up even as he grows old will be the death of him much to his gal-pal (NOT "girlfriend" ugh!) Tilly's disgust...but whom she in her turn needs for the long-missing and urgently needed sense of Belonging that older people anchor younger ones with. It is something I've played out from both sides at different times in my life, and it's always worked out well. So far.

So that's the plus side...the downside is real too. The two characters alternate viewpoints, which I approve of as a device in these "he-said-she-said" narratives. The execution...

"You're a very curious and capable woman."

She beamed at him. "Thank you."

He just laughed. Maybe the women he usually hung out with liked different compliments.
–and–
Biting his cheek to keep from smiling, he nodded, then asked, "You think I'm handsome?"

She turned away before her eyeroll was complete. "I'm about to Julia Roberts your credit cards so make sure you're prepared."

No points for guessing which is from whose point of view. Grace gets the best lines...it is really her book, so fair enough...but if you go to the trouble of setting up the dichotomy, even out the benefits for it to work as well as it can. I was more convinced that these insta-luuuv sufferers were being presented to me this way so I would really understand why the lust each quite justifiably fell into went deeper. This was undermined by the aforementioned inequality of quality, if you'll forgive the excursion into recursion.

There is quite a cast of characters to keep track of...Rosie, Chris are the BFFs but Chris is also a sibling; Kyle's a contractor whose life as a dad we're treated to glimpses of but Josh is another whose appearances are frequent enough that I was left wondering why he wasn't a bigger part of the story...though I myownself don't see that as a problem, it does contribute to what I honestly feel is a big one: It's too long. I'm interested in Grace's interior design process, I'm appreciative of that layer of verisimilitude offered me, and I still want less of it. The exchanges with Morty and Tilly are amusing, but honestly? Less is more, emulate Le Corbusier when you're inching up on 400pp. And, I realize this is probably just me, but good goddesses please no more painting-as-foreplay! I got headaches from it.

In the end, as one knows it will, the story's HEA comes as no surprise but does come wrapped in a semi-lethal dose of feel-goodish sweetness. It's a lovely moment, the one that ends the book, and would film well...something I don't doubt was in the author's mind...and it gives us the thing that romantic fiction readers need: closure without foreclosure. The parties are together, big shock; but they're not on shaky ground, there's no magical elimination of the obstacles in their world. That always means to me that the author's got respect for her readers. Using deus ex machina is always a cheap trick and it's one that Sophie Sullivan did not succumb to the obvious pointers to use. Kudos for that, and could you please use your PowerPoint skills to wean other authors off it?