For the Queer Ballers: Selections from the “How You Get the Girl” Playlist

A screenshot of Anita's Spotify playlist for "Julie & Elle"

Crafting Julie and Elle’s playlist was a funny, slightly disjointed pursuit from the jump. Adding new songs—as with the act of drafting the book itself—often made me laugh. While my writing soundtracks are typically composed of the more mellow kind of genres Spotify has classified for me as comforting yearning hopeless romantic (guilty as charged), Julie and Elle’s story is heavily influenced by the high percentage of their lives spent on basketball courts. Hence, with this one, I wanted to inject a little Jock Jams energy into all that comforting yearning. I…do not know if I was successful, but these are some of the tracks that still bring me back to writing How You Get the Girl.

  1. Spirit, Judah & the Lion: From a pure musical perspective, I love the composition of this song: the quiet intro and the surprising drumbeats before the melody truly begins. From a writing How You Get the Girl perspective, it makes me laugh for the exact reasons described above. Siri, play me a sports song but make it kinda sad indie rock for writers.

    2. Basketball, Bow Wow, Jermaine Dupri, Fabolous & Fundisha: A self-explanatory requirement.

      3. Follow Your Arrow, Kacey Musgraves: In addition to Julie wearing an infamous Kacey Musgraves t-shirt in the opening scene of this book…a lot of Julie’s storyline in particular is about trying to find direction and identity when you have always felt a bit label-less and adrift. So Kacey’s do whatever the hell you want messaging in this song always felt apt. If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out by Yusuf / Cat Stevens is also on this playlist for the same reasons. 

      4. Master Pretender, First Aid Kit: It takes a bit of the book to actually get there, but Elle and Julie end up practice-dating in How You Get the Girl (perhaps a subgenre of the fake dating trope—I feel there are important differences but still, similar vibes). As First Aid Kit sings here, going from master pretenders to master defenders is sort of…the whole book.

      5. Praise You, Fatboy Slim: If you ask Elle? Julie desperately needs someone to praise her, like Elle should.

      6. Trophies, James Gardin: I believe I found this song when I was specifically googling best basketball jams or something equally embarrassing, but I clicked when I saw the title because Elle’s old trophies are a bit of a plot point in the book. The lyrics don’t match Elle’s story, per se, but the song still hit perfectly for me.

      7. Lean On, Major Lazer: There’s a one-on-one b-ball scene in the middle of the book that was so much fun to write, and for some reason, I always envision this song as what’s pumping from the gym speakers when it begins. It always makes me want to move.

      8. Dreams, The Cranberries: “Wait. Are you crying already?” Elle sniffed, hugging her mug to her chest. “They’re playing The Cranberries, and I’m a lesbian. It’s required for me to cry.”

      9. Only Girl (In the World), Rihanna: This is Julie’s cat Snoozles’s favorite song. Which becomes a Thing, in the book. I don’t know; listen, my last book was really sad and I wanted to laugh more with this one.

      10. How You Get the Girl, Taylor Swift: Yes, this is how I got the title. But I feel the need to note that I think Message in a Bottle is the actual Taylor song that fits Julie and Elle best (and is also on the playlist).

      11. Come Down, Noah Kahan: Upon examining the lyrics, I know now that this is a song about staying with someone after they got too high, comforting them as they come down. But if you replace got too high with got too depressed, the chorus of this one matches one of my favorite scenes in How You Get the Girl perfectly.

      12. Closing Time, Semisonic: I randomly heard this song as I was finishing work on this book, which wraps up a series that has meant so much to me over the last few years, and yeah, I did cry in the car while listening to Semisonic in 2023. It’s closing time for me and these characters, now, but I’m so glad I got to hang out with them at the bar at all.

        Favorites & Themes: Reading Life, 2023.

        It is possible that by writing this in February 2024 I am already towing the perilous line of Wrongness that comes with a new year, where looking back at the past feels like a faux pas at best and kind of weirdly depressing at worst: everyone has already posted their previous year wrap-ups over the last two to three month; the ball has dropped. Time to move on!

        But 2023 was a great reading year for me (as surviving another year where I was able to keep reading almost always is), and I’d actually been really excited to post my own wrap-up throughout December, until the end of December actually came and I choked. I think I feel a particular paranoia about posting my “best of” or “favorite” anything bookwise on my social media now, now that I know how much it can inadvertently hurt to be left out of those lists, especially when they’re compiled by another writer or reviewer you like or admire.

        And so here I return to my humble blog, which I suppose still exists for moments just like these: when I don’t want to post on social media, or send something in a newsletter, but write something semi-public for myself…somewhere.

        So without further ado, here are some things I’ve been reflecting on about my favorite 2023 reads.

        • Falling in Love with New York: Some of my most favorite reads of the year, that stayed in my memory longest after finishing the last page, were ones that made me fall in love with New York just as hard as I fell in love with the characters. Or, perhaps more accurately, ones where the characters being young and in love in New York was such an essential part of the story. I have a bit in How You Get the Girl about being nostalgic for New York even without having ever actually lived there, and these books filled that ache so perfectly for me, one of my favorite aches to feel (as someone who has almost moved to New York several times but never actually done it). Specifically, two debuts: Clare Gilmore’s Love Interest and Becca Freeman’s The Christmas Orphans Club captured being young in Manhattan so very acutely, while Cara Bastone’s Ready or Not (a 2024 release) placed me directly inside of Brooklyn. (There is a description of the stoop of her apartment in particular that almost made me scream it was so accurate.)
        • Actually reading some of my Book of the Month books?? I know, this still sounds fake to me, but after beginning to subscribe in 2022, all of those huge pretty hardcovers had just…….sat around on my floor and in my bookshelves for a year, but in 2023 I actually picked some of those suckers up, feeling prouder than I have ever felt every time. Granted, I still have a crap-ton of them I haven’t read, but the ones I did read this year were all winners and were also, importantly, some of the more diverse reads I finished this year. In other words: I should read more of my BOTM books. (And more books outside my comfortable wheelhouse in general.)

          Some of the ones I enjoyed most were Sarah Addison Allen’s Other Birds, Liana de la Rosa’s Ana Maria and the Fox, Zoulfa Katouh’s harrowing and beautiful As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow, and Isabel Cañas’s incomparable Vampires of El Norte. I also got to read one pick early and write the BOTM recommendation for it: Stars in Your Eyes by Kacen Callender, another special experience for me this year.
        • Comforts from Old Faves. As the year went on, I started sorting my reading in my head into two buckets: new-to-me-authors, and old faves. The large majority of my reading this year was from new-to-me-authors, but some of the ones I squeezed in from old faves REALLY hit. In particular, absolutely inhaling KJ Charles’s Society of Gentlemen series early in the year was just *finds something soft to aggressively squeeze* OOMPH. Mind altering. FUCK.

          I also made my way through Joanna Shupe’s latest series, The Fifth Avenue Rebels, over the spring and summer, and each one was just an absolute delight. And then there were the entries from true old faves, perhaps the three authors who most got me into romance, whose work I feel a strong personal connection with: Alexis Hall, Tessa Dare, and Cat Sebastian. I probably don’t need to say much about We Could Be So Good (other than on a sentence-level writing perspective it made me want to weep). For Hall, while I had like 21093 books to choose from, the one that really got me this year was Something Fabulous, which I had heard (from others and Hall himself) was quite silly, and it definitely fit that descriptor when I was in need of some silliness (in a way that could possibly drive anyone not into Hall’s specific type of silliness batty, but I loved every moment), but what made me happiest was how deeply sweet and loving it also was, perhaps one of the most classically Hall things I’ve read from him in a while. (I also read Husband Material this year, and while I did enjoy returning to Luc and Oliver, I had slightly more quibbles with it, although not the main quibble a lot of folks had.)

          Anyway! I also picked up A Week to Be Wicked from Dare, as I still have not yet read all of the Spindle Cove books and it’s my (very slow) mission to wrong that right, and what a winner it was. Perhaps my favorite road trip histrom ever. (Although I also read another comfort from an old fave, Sarah MacLean’s Heartbreaker, this year, and that could very well take the second place spot in that category!)
        • YA that blew me away: I truly did not read a lot of YA and MG this year, but a lot of what I was able to fit in really knocked my socks off. Is “knocked my socks off” a phrase people use anymore? I had a sudden flashback to 1996 when it just came out of my keyboard.

          Anyway, most monumentally, I’m referencing Jonny Garza Villa’s Ander and Santi Were Here, which, if pressured to name my number one book of the year, this one probably remains it. What Villa is able to accomplish here—a book so queer and so funny and so real and warm and heartbreaking and hopeful all at once? A book about young love but also family and community, that investigates both immigration and art and…so many things? Honestly, it’s just a real masterpiece to me. I love Santi so much it hurts.

          I was also knocked flat by the talent of Ellen O’Clover in her debut, Seven Percent of Ro Devereux. That level of angsty romance? Combined with that level of clever plot? And beautiful writing? Like okay!! Damn! I also really loved the writing (and the whole painfully honest vibes) of Aaron Aceves’s This Is Why They Hate Us. Also overlapping with the comforts-from-old-faves category, I fully loved Rachel Lynn Solomon’s See You Yesterday so much (which, like Ander & Santi, is pretty solidly New Adult). And I had the absolute pleasure of reading Kaitlyn Hill’s upcoming 2024 release, Wild About You, which was hands down my favorite of hers yet. Like all of Hill’s writing, so so funny but also so heart-warmingly charming and smart.

          Other really strong honorable mentions: Edward Underhill’s Always the Almost and Mason Deaver’s The Feeling of Falling in Love—both wonderfully, complicatedly trans; both captured my heart in the painfully honest ways that teens can be their own worst enemies (but still somehow find messy love along the way).

          AND last but not least I really loved the nostalgic-yet-new experience of getting to return to the Rick Riordanverse with Nico and Will in The Sun and the Star. And in the same vein of fantasy-adventure-slightly-scary-for-Anita genres, I loved diving back into Vanessa Len’s brilliant, dark world in Never a Hero. Huh, okay, apparently I had a lot more to say about YA and MG this year than I thought.
        • SPORTS!: I was blessed to have more opportunities to feel my favorite feeling—being wrecked by KD Casey‘s writing, most notably this year via Diamond Ring. I was also so pleased to find a new writer whose writing hits me in a similar way to Casey’s in Ari Baran, although I really can’t tell you if I loved Game Misconduct or Delay of Game more.

          I also got to read Alicia Thompson‘s upcoming The Art of Catching Feelings, resulting in me having Feelings anytime I now hear Fastball’s “The Way,” and got to re-read KT Hoffman’s The Prospects for a blurb, which I have too many feelings about to include here. But essentially, every book in this category: a blessing.
        • Blurbed: I was about to make a last section of more new-to-me standouts, but it occurred to me that a lot of the ones I haven’t mentioned yet are ones I got to blurb, so I’ll just include the rest of my blurb list here to commemorate both the books and the work that I did to find the right words for them (even if they’re not ALL from new-to-me folks…wowzers, how convoluted can I make this for myself! Good thing only like ten people will ever read this!):

          Alicia Thompson’s With Love, from Cold World (technically read in 2022 but I think I blurbed in 2023 and either way I loved it all year so it gets included here!), Rachel Runya Katz’s Thank You for Sharing, Dominic Lim’s All the Right Notes (which also gave me the fun little milestone of having my blurb on the cover of a book!), M.A. Wardell’s Mistletoe & Mishigas, Ashley Herring Blake’s Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date, Helena Greer’s For Never and Always, Christen Randall’s The No Girlfriend Rule (YA, 2024), Sarah T. Dubbs’s Birding with Benefits (2024), Mae Bennett’s Barely Even Friends (2024), Shelly Jay Shore’s Rules for Ghosting (2024), Amy Spalding’s At Her Service (2024), and Melissa Wiesner’s The Second Chance Year. 
        • #23for23: Attending Steamy Lit Con in the middle of 2023 gave me a good kick in the pants to realize that I had really dropped off in paying attention to the diversity of my reading, and I remain so grateful both for the experience of attending the con and for this lesson in particular. To be brutally honest here, while I really tried to make sure I was reading diversely in the second half of the year post-Steamy Lit, by 2023’s end, I still fell a couple books short of the VERY reasonable goal of reading 23 books by people of color about people of color. Largely because I had been so complacent about reading with purpose in the beginning half of the year, which made my reading life skew very white. Experience has taught me that when I’m left to my own devices, because of my privilege and the overwhelming white supremacy of the publishing industry, what I fall on for comfort reading will be white leaning unless I force myself to do better. #23for23 was just one poignant reminder of that.

          I’m hoping to read more diversely as a whole in 2024, not just in terms of reading outside my personal experiences but also in reading more outside my most comfortable genres.

        I know there are so many standouts I’ve somehow missed that are already running through my mind (Jacqueline Firkins’s The Predictable Heartbreaks of Imogen Finch, Steven Rowley’s The Celebrants, Erin Langston’s Forever Your Rogue, Angelina Lopez’s After Hours on Milagro Street, Regina Black’s The Art of Scandal, Ava Wilder’s Will They or Won’t They...) BUT for my own well-being, it’s time I cut myself off now.

        Truly, though: 2023 was a bit of a tumultuous year writing wise, which makes the fact that it was such a meaningful reading year all the sweeter. Thank you, writers, for what you do. ❤

        On Stick Season by Noah Kahan.

        I don’t listen to albums anymore.

        It’s one of the truths of my adulthood that I am most personally ashamed about; it feels like such an utter betrayal of my younger self. And not even my teenage self, but my twenties self, too! Falling in love with an album is very akin to falling in love with a book, to me: it requires a significant amount of time spent between just you and the art, without other distractions; it is personal, a journey, a moment of your life captured through someone else’s heartfelt work. So much of what I am, at my most personal and essential levels, is captured, at least in my head, through the albums and the books I have loved.

        Except then you reach thirty, and you inch ever closer toward forty, and suddenly your back hurts more than it doesn’t, and sometimes you stand up and say “fuck, my knee,” and you lose the focus to listen to an entire album all the way through. At least, this is what adulthood has meant for me; I understand other people my age are still able to absorb full albums of actual newly produced music and I am both happy for and jealous of them.

        I still listen to music, of course, almost a voracious amount; I have long commutes, and my focus for podcasts went out the window years ago (same for audiobooks), so I spend hours every week listening to music in the car, contributing to global warming and thinking very meandering thoughts. Except the music I listen to these days is almost exclusively from playlists I’ve made for books I’m writing, which, if I’m in the thick of writing, will be all I really listen to, or if I’m allowing my brain a break from made up characters and situations, I’ll listen to my “Faves [The Current Year]” playlists that I curate annually, composed of random single tracks that have caught my ear from the radio, or from a coffee shop, or popular culture, or someone else’s writing playlist. I’ve been in Book 3 Playlist land a lot these days, so I haven’t been listening to many new things, but one track I heard on the radio recently landed in the “yeah, this deserves to go on the faves playlist” side of my heart, and I was altogether startled when I went to do so and realized I needed to start a “Faves 2023” playlist for it. Where currently, it’s still the only track, but by August or so things should really be pumping.

        Or sometimes, I get depressed and make a playlist of all of the happiest, most sentimental songs I can think of from my youth, and title it “trying,” and it helps a little bit, for a while.

        The point is, I either listen exclusively to nostalgia, or a very random assortment of singles, and it will never earn me any kind of street cred but it’s how my brain works now.

        Until! Stick Season by Noah Kahan.

        God, it’s felt important, falling in love with a whole ass album again. Like a little return to my old self, waving and saying, “hey, you! remember how we used to feel things so deeply, all the fucking time?”

        It is not at all surprising, of course, that I fell in love with this album; “sad white man with long hair + folksy guitar” is pretty much the blueprint to Anita. I am not reinventing the wheel here. Still, falling in love with this album feels almost as important to me, creatively, as the 100k+ words of Book 3 I wrote over the same past few months.

        Stick Season is essentially my kryptonite: it tells a story, centered around a place. I live for storytelling via songs, and when it’s centered around geography? Even better. My assessment of the story of Stick Season—and this is just my interpretation; if Noah Kahan shows up here he has every right to be like, “fuck you, you don’t know me, that wasn’t what I was singing about at all,” but just for the context of this post—something painful has inspired Kahan to return to his small hometown in Vermont, that he has a lot of conflicted emotions about, in a “I love this place deeply but also it depresses the fuck out of me” kind of way. There’s also a bunch of stuff about addiction in here; it’s very possible the addiction is the something painful that’s all wrapped up in Vermont, or simply a response to whatever else has happened. It is an overall angry and often terribly sad album, with these little pops of brightness and optimism here and there to even it out: quintessentially bittersweet.

        After falling in love with Stick Season I went back and listened to Kahan’s previous albums, because it’s that kind of obsession, and I was struck at how much Stick Season stands apart. I didn’t dislike the other albums, and completely admit that I haven’t given them enough time to truly sink in, since I just keep wanting to go back to Stick Season. There was one track from an earlier album, “False Confidence,” that had been one of the singletons that made it onto my “Faves 2019” playlist (a particularly bangin’ faves playlist, and “False Confidence” was one of my favorites on it), a connection I hadn’t made previously, and that was a fun little “oh shit, I’ve liked this guy for years!” moment. But overall, his earlier work lacks both the cohesiveness and the bitter melancholy of Stick Season.

        Which makes me feel like…fuck, I’m sorry for whatever happened to Noah Kahan that inspired him to make this angry and sad masterpiece, but also, I’m grateful? Which is how I feel about all my favorite art, really. Sorry about the pain; thanks for all the solace your pain gave me! For real, though, you made something really beautiful; hope you have better days soon.

        Which brings me to a list of my favorite tracks that I’d love to highlight here, because…just because I’ve been thinking about them all a lot and need to say it all somewhere.

        Northern Attitude: A really strong first track that sets the mood of the whole album. Which I love. We love a good thesis statement!

        If I get too close
        And I’m not how you hoped
        Forgive my northern attitude
        I was raised out in the cold
        If the sun don’t rise ’til the summertime
        Forgive my northern attitude
        I was raised on little light

        I should also say that I’m extremely susceptible, as someone raised in a small town in the Northeast, to feel a particular parasocial kind of closeness to this album. But really, I think anyone who was raised in a place where it gets fucking cold and dark in the winter can relate to a lot of the feels here. (Or even if you weren’t! Blaming your sadness on your environment is a forever vibe.)

        Stick Season: I actually don’t have a ton to say about the titular track, which remains as jangly and weirdly infectious the five hundredth time you’ve heard it, except to say that I feel it only gives a hint to the feeling of the whole album, and also that I remain strangely grateful for the moment, in the rambly honesty of the lyrics-packed song, when he mentions COVID-19. I know a lot of artists have this kind of code of like, let’s just pretend in our art right now that this weird world-altering thing hasn’t happened/is happening because it’s still too hard and strange to even process, which I get, but hearing “Doc told me to travel, but there’s COVID on the planes” months ago when I first heard this song gave me this like, stomach-swooping sense of relief that remains every time I hear it. Because like, fuck. There is COVID on the planes! Thank you for saying it, Noah!

        All My Love: This is one of those moments of bright optimism I mentioned earlier, the brightest of them all, really, even with the hints of melancholy still present. I mean, the chorus literally mentions antidepressants, so. (Which was confirmed in a delightful Twitter thread I was part of months ago where a bunch of queer writers were like “is he saying pills or pails” and then Noah himself jumped in and was like “pills, I was talking about antidepressants” and we were like oh! thanks Noah! and it was this moment of Twitter pureness I still think about sometimes.) The lyrics suggest it’s simply a song about a one-night stand, but either way, when he sings: It’s all okay; there ain’t a drop of bad blood; you’ve got all my love—it like, soothes every single bad thing that has ever happened to me or anyone in the history of the world.

        New Perspective: This has turned out to probably be my most-listened to track on the whole album, which tickles me because like…I don’t know why. There are objectively better bangers, more evocative tracks; but this one has just wormed its way into my head and I want to listen to it all the fucking time. It tells the story of returning to a place that has changed, and to the people who have perhaps changed with it (the title comes from a lyric about wishing he could take someone’s new perspective and shut it in a closet and “drag you back down”). But singing ooh, this town’s for the record now; the intersection’s got a Target, and they’re calling it downtown brings me more satisfaction and joy than I can truly explain. I dunno! I just fucking love it!

        I put this one on my Book 3 playlist (along with “All My Love,” because like, I write romance; including “All My Love” is a requirement at this moment) even though it really has nothing to do with Book 3 at all, but I’ve listened to it so much this winter it just had to go there.

        Everywhere, Everything: Another moment of lightness and optimism here—perhaps the most romantic song on the album?—while also having perhaps the most dramatic chorus of any of them. Just one of those great walls of sound kind of choruses that make me want to throw my hands in the air and film a sepia-toned montage of the world.

        Everywhere, everything
        I wanna love you ’til we’re food for the worms to eat
        ‘Til our fingers decompose
        Keep my hand in yours

        Which makes me laugh because like, talking about decomposing fingers is so! very! not my vibe! lolol AND YET. Singing this chorus is so damn satisfying! The first verse of this one is also so relatable (and gentle): Would we survive in a horror movie? I doubt it, we’re too slow-moving; we trust everyone we meet.

        Orange Juice: Okay. It is possible I’ve written this entire thing just so I can talk about “Orange Juice.” If I was a smart enough person to be an academic, I would want to write a dissertation on this song. This track, to me at least, digs into addiction & sobriety more clearly than any other track on the album, even though drinking and getting high are mentioning explicitly in many others. The title comes from (again, my interpretation) a loved one offering up a sober person, or someone trying to get sober, orange juice instead of alcohol at a party. A gesture that could be seen as sweet, perhaps, at least on the surface, and the song starts that way: sweet, gentle, kind. Except then the vibe changes, and dramatically, to pure anger.

        And I honestly have no idea what’s happening in this angry part; there’s mentions of car crashes and bones in the ground and passing out from drinking in someone’s yard. It’s dark shit. We’re not supposed to know; it’s Noah’s song. But the chorus that’s repeated is someone telling someone else that they’ve changed, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s the teller or the recipient who’s angrier about it, but it’s sung with such deep heartache: And you said my heart has changed and my soul has changed, and my heart, and my heart…

        The transition to this darker portion of the song (which is the majority of the song) is told through this vulnerable verse that works so well:

        Feels like I’ve been ready for you to come home for so long
        That I didn’t think to ask you where you’d gone
        So why’d you go?

        And even though, again, I have no idea what this song’s really about, that verse always makes me feel guilty about not visiting my hometown enough, for moving so far away in the first place. Phew! A real stab in the heart. I truly am sorry, Mom and Dad.

        But then the angry part transitions back, at the very end, to a repetition of the first gentle verse; a tried and true trick. And the transition this time is not as (purposefully) carefully done as the initial transition. Kahan finishes the final line of that angry portion—You didn’t put those bones in the ground—on an almost heavy sigh. Like he’s just fucking exhausted. He doesn’t want to have this fight anymore.

        And then there’s only the barest pause before the soft, pretty guitar comes back in with the same verse that started it, but it just feels so much fucking sadder now, even if you don’t know why, and I don’t know how Kahan’s able to fit so many different emotions in this song but I am just. Really deeply impressed with it, and feel like it encapsulates the various emotions that come with loving someone who’s struggling so well that I can’t listen to the end of it without crying.

        Honey, come over
        The party’s gone slower
        And no one will tempt you
        We know you got sober
        There’s orange juice in the kitchen
        Bought it for the children
        It’s yours if you want it
        We’re just glad you could visit

        Growing Sideways: (tw: suicidal ideation) Phew, okay, well, now that we’ve got “Orange Juice” out of the way, let’s jump right into this happy tune, which is one of my favoritest, most bleakest songs about depression I’ve ever fucking heard. It starts with a fun little story about a horrible therapy experience, and then goes into this line, which is my favorite on the album:

        And I divvied up my anger into thirty separate parts
        Keep the bad shit in my liver
        And the rest around my heart

        I mean. Fuck. FUCK. That is so fucking good. It bowls me over every single time.

        The whole song seems to teeter back and forth between actual suicidal thoughts and the detached kind of numbness that sometimes comes with antidepressants (and/or substance abuse). I am absolutely in love with the chorus, which just summarizes depression so horribly well:

        But I ignore things, and I move sideways
        Until I forget what I felt in the first place

        But then there are lines like and if all my life was wasted, I don’t mind; I’ll watch it go; it’s better to die numb than to feel it all. And I’m just like Noah. NOAH. PLEASE I DON’T KNOW YOU BUT PLEASE TAKE YOUR MEDICATION AND HUG YOUR DOGS. Because fuck. Fuck.

        And in the end, that is the side the song ends up leaving on—the “might as well take my medication and keep on waking up I guess” side, in the most poignant but noncommittal way of the depressed:

        Oh, if my engine works perfect on empty
        I guess I’ll drive
        I guess I’ll drive.

        Fuck.

        Homesick: Probably the most quintessential song on the album for us Stick Season Folks, this is one of those absolute bangers that’s included later on in the album, a move I always respect. I feel like it’s Noah Kahan (and any other artist who arranges an album in a similar way) saying, “I know you want to get to the ‘mean in New England’ song, but listen, you have to get through all these other fucking songs first because I worked hard on that shit too.” OR, alternately, Noah Kahan saying, “Sorry, I know I just had a bunch of sad fucking shit in a row, here’s one you can shout out the car window,” which, as someone whose main edit note on my last book was “let’s try to make this a little less sad so people actually want to read it,” I totally get.

        Anyway, this song is great. It’s just great! You really have to listen to it to understand WHY it’s so incredibly gratifying to shout—

        I would leave if only I could find a reason
        I’m mean because I grew up in New England

        —but MAN, it just is! He also does this thing when singing “I’m mean” where he makes “I’m” into like five syllables which is also a move I respect. And while I’m on the themes of my writing and New England, this feels like an appropriate time to blame the fact that I have to say to my editor every single time I turn in a draft, “and I’m sorry, again, about the cursing; I promise I’ll work on it in edits,” on the five years that I lived in Boston. I was so pure and innocent before then! But it fucking changed me.

        This song also REALLY gets at the heart of growing up in a small town, PARTICULARLY this line, which I feel with my entire soul:

        Well, I’m tired of dirt roads named after high school friends’ grandfathers

        Because like, that’s it! Everything is named after someone you or your mom or your grandfather knew! And it’s so nice and why did I always know I could never stay and also I’m homesick.

        This line actually always brings me back to this time in high school when I had a psychology class with this old teacher who had taught at my high school for decades and decades, including a full decade too long, and he was probably not all right in the head and the entire experience of that class was unhinged. We took a bunch of weird field trips, including one to his family’s largely defunct farm, and I can’t remember why, likely because there wasn’t an actual reason. I remember some classmates and I standing in a derelict shed where there was a dead squirrel on a shelf and just feeling like, wow. This is dark. But everyone in the class knew this teacher was not right in the head, that nothing we did the entire semester involved any amount of educational value—it really brought us together—and on the way to his family’s largely defunct farm, he stood at the front of the bus, pointing out landmarks along the way like we hadn’t passed the same small town landmarks our entire lives, before he got into some story about wild times he’d gotten into with my grandfather back in the day at some of those landmarks, and I can’t remember what those wild times even entailed, just that I sank further and further into my plastic seat and wanted to die.

        Anyhoo, back to Noah Kahan. Amazingly, I’m almost done.

        The View Between Villages: Maybe tied with how badly I wanted to talk about “Orange Juice” was how badly I’ve been wanting to talk about this closing track. It’s one of those sparse, eerie closing tracks that’s solidly on the side of “we’re not resolving anything here.” I love these kinds of closing tracks, and this one’s really a master class. It starts quiet. It tells a simple story. The most essential story (I know I’ve used the word essential too much in this post; I will feel badly about it later) of returning to a small hometown:

        Alone, in your car, driving down a lonely, familiar road at night.

        And for a moment, the nostalgia washes over you, deep and fragile and true.

        Feel the rush of my blood
        I’m seventeen again
        I am not scared of death
        I’ve got dreams again
        It’s just me and the curve of the valley
        And there is meaning on earth
        I am happy

        And then. Then whatever has happened to Noah Kahan, whatever loss he’s experienced, whatever trauma he’s lived through that has spawned this entire album, comes back, and a bass line starts. And the almost-last verse of the album absolutely pulses through, urgent and echo-y and present and sometimes I listen to the whole album just to get to this, to the goosebumps it raises on my skin.

        Passed Alger Brook Road
        I’m over the bridge
        A minute from home but I feel so far from it
        The death of my dog, the stretch of my skin
        It’s all washing over me
        I’m angry again
        The things that I lost here
        The people I knew
        They got me surrounded for a mile or two

        (And half a breath as the bass and percussion and extra strings drop away and—)

        The car’s in reverse
        I’m gripping the wheel
        I’m back between villages
        And everything’s still

        And then everything is still. Just a few long, quiet stretches of sound while he sits on that bridge. And the album ends.

        It is haunting.

        It is perfect.

        (Traditional) Publishing & Our Brains: We Are Not Equipped for This Shit

        Recently for dayjob, I went to another training from Kevin Ashworth, founder of the Northwest Anxiety Institute. I’ve seen Kevin speak before, and I am a bit obsessed with him. He’s funny and smart and one of those presenters where everything he says has your brain and heart screaming yes and oh god it’s not just me and can you talk for like five hours more because my blood pressure really likes this.

        Anyway, Kevin often starts off his talks with explaining the difference between stress and anxiety. This is always a pretty simple explanation, but for some reason always feels revolutionary in my head, and on this day in particular it really struck me in regards to publishing, especially now that I’ve lived through my traditional debut.

        Stress is when we’re presented with a problem that really sucks, but it’s a problem with a solution, something we can problem-solve. It’s short term, until that stressful thing is over. The example Kevin normally gives is getting a flat tire. It sucks and causes a lot of stress, but you can call AAA. You can call a friend for help. You can call a Lyft to get home. Eventually, you can get the tire fixed and move on with your day.

        Most jobs, in general, are stressful. But there are metrics by which you know you’ve done a good job. You secured that deal. You got a good review from your bosses. You finished that report. You got a bonus for your efficiency.

        (Kevin also gave the example of, if you are working three jobs and feel awful all the time and then go to therapy and say, help me feel less anxious, you are actually probably suffering from stress, and there is a solution, which is, maybe stop working three jobs, and wow did I feel called out!! [I understand that often that solution is not one people can actually accomplish, that they are working three jobs because they have to, but still, ouch.])

        In publishing, there are a lot of things that cause stress, too. Like, writing a book. Writing a book is fucking stressful. Writing a book, or working on edits, on a deadline is fucking stressful. But we can do it (most of the time). We can ask our daily supports for time away from parenting and partner-ing to get the work done. We can drink lots of coffee and force ourselves to put the words on the screen. We can ask friends and beta readers and CPs to help solve problems in our drafts.

        Anxiety is a problem that does not have a solution. They are problems that we do not have any control over whatsoever. Anxiety is spending every day worrying about whether you might get a flat tire, even though you have no control over whether there are nails in the road you’re going to drive over today. We literally do not have control over those nails, there is nothing we can do about it, but we are anxious about it anyway.

        Well. Let me tell you! How many things in (traditional) publishing writers have absolutely no control over!

        We have no control over agents. Over whether there are agents who even exist who will “connect” with your very specific work. Same goes for editors. We have no control over publishing not paying either of these entities enough, or hiring enough of them, or preventing them from suffering burnout. We have no control over advances, if we get advances at all, or royalties, or how those are actually distributed. (We often don’t even know how many books we’ve actually sold.) We have no control over marketing budgets. We have no control over awards, or lists, or TikTok virality. We have thrown our shit out there, and we have no control over what happens next.

        (Sure, you can write the best book you can possibly write, but everyone knows publishing isn’t a meritocracy. We have all read books that blow our socks off that have received very little “buzz,” we have all read books that have sold millions of copies that make us go “eh?” Writing the best book you can is the one thing we have control over, but really, in publishing, that doesn’t always mean much.)

        It’s not that there aren’t metrics, really; it’s that there are too many of them. Even when you have hit a lot of them, there are always more out there, needling our confidence. There is no performance review where your boss says, good job! You have done your job real good. You win publishing.

        We can market ourselves, of course, as much as we can, through social media and events and our websites, but even that doesn’t usually move the needle much in overall sales. But it’s this sector that I think really drives the anxiety.

        Maybe there are writers out there who are super confident in their work. They’ve written their heart out, know that it’s the best they can do. They’ve worked their way through the tiers of publishing and now it’s out there in the world. They go back to things they can control: writing the next book. Working in their garden. Making dinner for themselves. Binging their favorite TV shows. God bless these people.

        But for most of us, we only return to a vacuum of constant reminders about things we can’t control, but that somehow, because of the engine of social media, we feel like we should. You published a book! Yay, have 24 hours of feeling kind of proud of yourself.

        And then start worrying about sales numbers, about your reviews on Goodreads, about your reviews on Amazon. About whether your book will sell enough for multiple printings. Will you sell translation rights? Will you sell TV/movie rights? Will you make lists? Will people make fanart? If none of those things happen, does that mean your book sucks? Is there a monthly subscription for Ben & Jerry’s? Why did you want to do this anyway? What if people loved your first book and now you have to write a second book and what if the first book was just a fluke and everyone fucking hates your second book? What if your partner starts resenting you for all the time you ask off from life to go write? What if your beta readers are just being nice to you because they’re nice people? What if someone found a tweet you tweeted in 2014 when like you were super dumb and young and then you get cancelled? Why have you been on Twitter so long anyway? What if all of your posts are really annoying and everyone secretly hates you? What if you’re talking about your book too much or not enough? How much more money than you, exactly, do you think that Nazi romance author got? Like, thousands and thousands of dollars, right? Will you ever make enough to write full-time? Will writing full-time make you lose your mind, because writing is so weird and personal and it’s hard to do it all the time, and people will judge you for wanting to write full-time because like, that’s not a real job anyway, and people will say things that hurt your feelings even though you know you’re working really hard? Why do you care about any of these things? Why do you feel so weird all the time? Why are you always comparing yourself to others when you know that you’re doing the very best you can?

        Because…the publishing machine TRAINS us to compare to others. There is literally no escaping it.

        Even though we have no control over any of it.

        Even though our brains were not equipped for any of this.

        One of the things that Kevin also talks about, in his talks, is that traditional coping mechanisms for stress often do not translate to anxiety. Things like self-care: taking a nice hot bath, eating well, going for walks, all help ease stress. Those are nice things to do for ourselves when we have turned in those edits on deadline.

        But they do not actually solve anxiety, as long as all those things that trigger anxiety still exist. One of the things that does help anxiety is competence: having exposure to the things we are anxious about and conquering them. Each time you deal with a flat tire competently, your anxiety about future flat tires, should, eventually, decrease. So I imagine, one day, when I have published 45 books, maybe I will be less anxious about it.

        Until then, though, I will keep doing what my heart loves, to the utter frustration of my poor brain.

        Top 20 Reads, First Half of 2021

        My reading life has felt very off this year, which I’ve learned really throws my mental health. But maybe the actual reality is that everything has felt off this year. 

        I break these reading roundups into half because doing one big year-long roundup at the end of the year stresses me out—my memory is not that impressive! Last year, I listed my top 25 reads for each half of the year. This year, looking through my reading history of the last six months, I was able to scrounge up 20—which is actually more than I thought I might find. Looking back on all these wonderful reads actually felt quite therapeutic—maybe my brain hasn’t been so off after all.

        So here are those random 20 that kept my brain tethered through 2021 thus far. As always, in no particular order:

        How to Fail at Flirting - Kindle edition by Williams, Denise. Contemporary Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

        1. How to Fail at Flirting, Denise Williams
          Contemporary romance; Berkley (2020)

        This was just a really pure delight. I loved the absolute dorkiness of both Naya & Jake; just thinking about them still makes me smile. It was so easy to fall in love with them from the start. And even though this book deals with heavier themes too, Williams handles it so well (and I’ve seen her direct readers to her content warnings so many times), that I still feel light when I think about this book. Warm, charming, and powerful. Can’t wait for Williams’s follow-up!

        One Hot December (Men at Work, 3): Reisz, Tiffany: 9780373799244: Amazon.com: Books

        1.  One Hot December, Tiffany Reisz
          Contemporary romance; Harlequin (2016)

        One Hot December is the last in a holiday trio (the first books in the series are set around Halloween and then Thanksgiving) that I gobbled up this winter, even if I was a bit behind with this Christmas one that I didn’t actually read until January, oops. While they were all super enjoyable, this was my favorite of the bunch, probably because the heroine was a prickly lady welder, lol. There are two things though that I really loved about this whole series: one, it takes place on Mt. Hood, Oregon (where apparently Reisz lives!!), one of my very favorite places in the world. (Do I think of Reisz and this series every time I go there now? Yes.) Two, you can just tell how much fun Reisz had while writing all of them, which honestly felt…a little revolutionary? Feeling how much fun she must’ve had writing them was so fun to engage with as a reader, and was inspiring as a writer. Like, oh yeah. Sometimes, this can just be fun.

        Amazon.com: The Guest List: A Novel (9780062868930): Foley, Lucy: Books

        3. The Guest List, Lucy Foley
        Mystery; William Morrow (2020)

        You can thank the book club I started participating in this year for this one, a book totally out of my wheelhouse but that I totally enjoyed nonetheless (it’s good to get out of your wheelhouse sometimes!). A really tight writing style that I loved, and a great whodunit murder mystery wherein you didn’t only not know who the killer was, but also who the hell was actually murdered. As a bonus, it was really fun yelling about all the horrible people in this book with my book club friends over Zoom. (So many horrible people!!)

        Perfect Matcha: Bold Brew Book 3 by Erin McLellan, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

        4. Perfect Matcha, Erin McLellan
        Contemporary erotic romance; Self-published (2021)

        This was book #3 in the Bold Brew series, a multi-author 10 book series based around a kinky gay coffeeshop in a college town in Pennsylvania. I also read Books 1, 2, 4, and 5, and will probably read the other 5 left in the series at some point when I need something fun and distracting because, well, I am trash. Books 1 and 2 (Cup of Joe by Annabeth Albert and Puppuccino by Allison Temple) were also really enjoyable, but it wasn’t a surprise that Perfect Matcha was my favorite, since in my mind, Erin McLellan can do no wrong. Cam and Theo and their role-playing and pining and toy exploration were adorable.

        I will say that this series advertises Bold Brew as an “inclusive” coffeeshop, even though every book in here was m/m—so like, just call it a gay coffeeshop/series. I would have loved this series even more if it actually was inclusive—if there were some f/f stories thrown into the mix, or more trans stories, too. Having a solid m/m series is easier for marketing, but also, like…screw Amazon keywords and search algorithms sometimes, ya know? We can be better.

        The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate, #2) by Rosie Danan

        5. The Intimacy Experiment, Rosie Danan
        Contemporary romance; Berkley (2021)

        This was the gentlest, softest book about the most badass people. Most romance readers know the pitch by now—a porn star and a hot rabbi—but this really is an emotional tour de force about faith, vulnerability, and love. I will note for transparency that I know and love Rosie very much, but this one felt really special to me and wrapped itself all the way around my heart.

        Shipped: Hockman, Angie: 9781982151591: Amazon.com: Books

        6. Shipped, Angie Hockman
        Contemporary romance; Gallery (2021)

        This debut romance mostly set in the Galapagos was simply so much fun. The pitch for this one is also well documented—The Unhoneymooners meets The Hating Game—but this enemies to lovers really worked for me because Henley and Graeme’s relationship never actually felt toxic to me (my problem sometimes with enemies to lovers)—readers know pretty much from the jump that Graeme is, in fact, a golden retriever that you want to cuddle and squeeze to death, and that the only actual toxicity between them is their workplace. And getting to watch Henley deal with that is super, super satisfying. Smart and charming and heartfelt.

        There Will Be Phlogiston (Prosperity Book 3) - Kindle edition by Hall, Alexis. Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

        7. There Will Be Phlogiston, Alexis Hall
        Queer fantasy romance; 2018 (self-published)

        This completed my foray into Hall’s Prosperityverse, and I honestly wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it, since it was said to be the story of Lady Rosamond Wolfram, who was…not painted in the best of lights in previous installments of this universe. But then again, like with a lot of Hall’s work, this whole series was ABOUT exploring extremely flawed people—and the occasional pure beams of light who love them anyway, like Byron Kae in previous installments, and like Anstruther Jones in this one. So really it all made total sense in the end. What I will always remember most about this book was that even if Rosamond, Anstruther Jones, and Lord Mercury all lived in a dark, fucked up world…the ending for all of them was so fucking satisfying I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. This also might have been the first menage romance I’ve ever read? I…was a fan. lol.

        Damaged Goods: A Small Town Romance (Ravenswood) - Kindle edition by Hibbert, Talia. Contemporary Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

        8. Damaged Goods, Talia Hibbert
        Contemporary romance; 2018 (self-published)

        Damaged Goods is an extra story in Hibbert’s Ravenswood series, slotting I believe between Books 1 and 2, and it is technically a novella, but I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that because this book made me feel more things than like, a majority of the full-length novels I’ve read. It’s a second chance romance between very pregnant Laura and her childhood love Samir Bianchi, and I love Samir Bianchi so much that I can only call him by his full name, and goddamn, Hibbert is so good! She’s so good at writing about heavy topics (both Laura and Samir have lived through significant trauma) but with characters that bring each other so much lightness and goodness, full of so much natural chemistry and humor, that it just feels wonderful to read. Also this novella is FREE? LIKE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT RIGHT NOW FOR FREE?? We do not deserve her.

        Big Boy - Kindle edition by Knox, Ruthie. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

        9. Big Boy, Ruthie Knox
        Contemporary romance; 2017 (self-published)

        Since I’m on the topic of novellas, I’ll jump into this one, which…phew. PHEW. I’m not sure if novella is even the most accurate term—short fiction, maybe?—because this one is a mere 77 pages, and how, HOW Ruthie Knox was able to knock me flat in 77 pages, I will never comprehend. Again, I feel like I remember both of these characters so much more vividly than half of the full-length novels I’ve read. This was another download I clicked because of Twitter, and like always, the readers I trust on Twitter GET ME, because this was the kind of super emotional gut punch I live for. Big Boy is, in fact, not a reference to the hero of this story, but to a train—a train that lives in a museum, where two almost-strangers occasionally meet to role play and make love. And oof, this book IS sexy, but more than that, it is just…an emotional gut punch. I know I already said that, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it.

        A Lady's Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett: 9780593200629 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

        10. A Lady’s Formula for Love, Elizabeth Everett
        Historical romance (Victorian England); 2021 (Berkley)

        Whenever I read well-done historical romance, I basically putter around the apartment muttering, “Okay, but how can they be so smart?” Like, how can historical romance writers understand history, and plot, and romance, and writing, all so freaking well? And then sometimes they go and add science to the mix, too, like this fantastic debut, and I really start to lose it. Anyway—this romance between a lady scientist and her bodyguard ticked so many of my boxes—a damn-what-society-thinks super-smartypants heroine, a starchy, buttoned up hero with wounds who falls to pieces over said smartypants heroine, a great cast of supporting characters, and a twists-and-turns mystery. I can’t wait for more.

        (I will note here that I have read critiques of Everett’s inclusion of a trans character in here and the choices she makes in regards to him. I respect those critiques, and people’s choice to maybe not read this book because of that [and to disagree with what I’m about to say]. My own viewpoint is that writing trans characters into historical fiction is extremely tricky—there are simply so many ways to describe being trans now that did not exist in the Victorian Era—for which I personally give authors grace. And that overall, the choice to include a trans character at all in historical fiction—and one that is so openly loved, accepted, and supported by the main characters, as is the case here—is one that is still powerful and important to me, and I was really grateful to see it in a book published by Berkley.)

        Float Plan by Trish Doller

        11. Float Plan, Trish Doller
        Women’s fiction; 2021 (St. Martin’s)

        This book will undoubtedly be in the running for my Top 5 favorite books of all of 2021. (Being that we’re still only at the halfway mark, I’m leaving room for others to possibly really wow me.) I’d call it women’s fiction with a strong romantic plot line, since there is fantastic romance in here, but the heart of the story is really Anna’s grief. (This is one of those ones where I feel like the cover and marketing misrepresent what this book actually is…which is not Doller’s fault.) Struggling to get over her fiancé’s death by suicide, Anna impulsively sets off for the Caribbean in his sailboat one day, the one they had planned to sail around the world in together. After an initial scary foray off the coast of Florida, she realizes she can’t go it completely alone, and hires Keane Sullivan to help her reach Trinidad, where she and her fiancé were meant to be married. Doller’s writing is just so tight, and this was such a sparkling, fascinating tour through the world of sailing and the Caribbean that left me in awe, and aching to explore the world and respect my life. Keane is dealing with demons of his own, and the way Keane and Anne respect and honor each other’s grief is just…healing and beautiful. This one stayed with me for days.

        The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting - Kindle edition by Charles, KJ. Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

        12. The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting, KJ Charles
        Queer historical romance; 2021 (self-published)

        So here us KJ Charles fans were, waiting for the last installment of the Will Darling Adventures, and she was like hey, actually, have this book instead! And we were like, okay! (I mean it’s possible she had always planned to release this one before Subtle Blood and I just wasn’t paying attention; it’s hard to keep track of these prolific geniuses.) This standalone romp of two swindling siblings trying to escape their past and make their way in the world, and the grumpy baronet who gets in their way, was an absolute delight once I got immersed and like, understood what the hell was going on. (One signature of Charles’s work, if you’ve never read it, is that she really just throws you right into it, and it almost always takes me a good few chapters to feel like I actually know what the hell is happening. But then I love it!) Charles is so good at plot, and that “but how the hell is this actually going to work out” feeling, and then swooping in with the MOST satisfying endings. A wizard.

        The Ex Talk: Solomon, Rachel Lynn: 9780593200124: Amazon.com: Books

        13. The Ex Talk; Rachel Lynn Solomon
        Contemporary romance; 2021 (Berkley)

        In addition to being one of the kindest, most generous humans on the planet, Rachel Lynn Solomon is now pretty firmly entrenched as one of my favorite writers, too, and I loved The Ex Talk, her adult romance debut, just as much as I knew I would. Anyone who loves NPR and podcasts will feel SO SEEN by this book, and she is just so, so good at that seething rivals-to-lovers explosive chemistry. Gah. Her characters/writing also just have so many funny, relatable, lovable details crafted into them that make them last in your mind—I read this months ago and just the other day on the drive home, totally randomly, thought about Dominic’s master’s jar and felt so happy. And now I’m thinking about it again and feeling so happy again!!

        Amazon.com: Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers) (9798623912671): Liese, Chloe: Books

        14. Only When It’s Us, Chloe Liese
        Contemporary new adult romance; 2020 (self-published)

        Liese is an author I kept hearing about last year and only finally got off my duff to start reading this year, and now I cannot wait to keep shoveling in every other book she ever writes. This is a romance set in college, so I’d consider it that new adult category that publishing is determined to make not exist and that readers continually beg for. Willa is a stubborn, hotheaded soccer star, so of course I loved her immediately. Ryder also used to be a soccer star, but has abandoned the game—and speaking—after losing his hearing. There is a lot going on in this book (big warning that Willa’s mother is dying of cancer), but the chemistry between Willa and Ryder is so fantastic (and fun, and frustrating, and warm), and Liese’s writing that level of emotional that I love, and so much about this felt fresh and different from romances I’ve read before. Like a big hug, even if I have personal FEELINGS about the end of Willa’s soccer storyline, which has 100% to do with my own soccer feelings and not Liese’s writing, lol. (Go Thorns!)

        Hot Copy: A Novel - Kindle edition by Barrett, Ruby. Contemporary Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

        15. Hot Copy, Ruby Barrett
        Contemporary romance; 2021 (Carina)

        This is a super steamy office romance between a buttoned-up boss and her gooey soft cinnamon roll intern, but at the heart of the office dynamics and the steam is actually a mutual connection over dealing with grief. This book was also super fun for me because it was set in Boston, and I will always be sentimental over anything to do with Boston (where I used to live and where I started my own love story). It’ll make you turned on AND make you cry, my favorite combo!!

        Waiting for a Scot Like You: The Union of the Rakes - Kindle edition by Leigh, Eva. Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

        16. Waiting for a Scot Like You, Eva Leigh
        Historical romance (Regency England); 2021 (Avon)

        Give me “grumpy Scot” + “road trip for a merry widow to visit an orgy” and I am already a very happy person! This final installment in Leigh’s 80s inspired Union of the Rakes trilogy, like the whole trilogy itself, was just a really good time. I am here for grumpy/sunshine, along with “adventurous woman finally chasing adventure after being held back by men” every damn day. Every time I hear “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” on the radio now, I think of these books first.

        Erotic Stories of Punjabi Widows (2017) — Balli Kaur Jaswal

        17. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, Balli Kaur Jaswal
        Contemporary fiction; 2017 (William Morrow)

        Another book I probably wouldn’t have picked up without my book club (thanks book club!), there was so much to enjoy about this book—in particular, the fact that it is about exactly what the title says, lol. An exploration and tribute to the South Asian community of Southall in London that’s both critical and loving, I loved rooting for Nikki, but loved rooting for the Sikh widows and their erotic stories (which listen, some of them were really good) and dreams even more.

        As If on Cue | Book by Marisa Kanter | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster

        18. As If on Cue, Marisa Kanter
        Contemporary YA; 2021 (Simon & Schuster)

        I loved this SO much. This is the only YA on this list, which proves how behind at my day job I’ve been…but reading this made me realize how much I do miss reading YA. This is a great rivals-to-romance story (pitting the band geek against the drama nerd when their school’s arts budget is cut), but I particularly loved the well-drawn depiction of Natalie’s family (and Reid’s, too, although Natalie’s is at the heart of the book). The writing is so clear and clever and current—this is a YA book for teens (particularly, driven, nerdy teens). I have seen some criticism of Natalie’s actions in this book: she is very intense and makes some very no-good horrible decisions in here. But for me (in addition to adding to the drama of the story, from a narrative perspective—my jaw literally dropped when she did The Thing), Natalie rings even truer to me as a dynamic teen character because of her flaws. Teenagers are very intense and make very no-good horrible decisions sometimes. And all of her fears that prompted her bad decisions rang true to me. Also: let’s not even talk about Reid and his curls! Anyway, this one comes out in September, and I can’t wait to buy it for my high school library.

        Accidentally Engaged: Heron, Farah: 9781538734988: Amazon.com: Books

        19. Accidentally Engaged, Farah Heron
        Contemporary romance; 2021 (Forever)

        This was just a treat and a half. (I’ve also mentioned this elsewhere, but I am OBSESSED with the lettering on this cover.) Nadim was a DREAMBOAT of a hero—DREAM. BOAT. And (similar to As If On Cue actually) I loved all the detail/complexity paid to Reena’s family and their dynamics. The plot was also a fun twist on the fake engagement/dating trope, as it was like…a real/fake/real/fake engagement (probably not a technical description; read the book to understand what I mean). Heron also gives such wonderful, loving descriptions of food in her books. Bread is the real star of this one (my favorite scene of the book is hands down when Nadim keeps like a hundred sourdough babies whilst looking after Reena’s sourdough starter), but there is so much MORE than bread, too, that I was salivating for most of this read.

        An Unexpected Kind of Love by Hayden Stone

        20. An Unexpected Kind of Love, Hayden Stone
        Queer contemporary romance; 2021 (Entangled)

        Hayden is a friend of mine, so I’ve had the pleasure of reading this in a few stages of its journey to publication, and I’m so excited to see it go live. Out in August, this is a queer take on Notting Hill, featuring a grumpy British bookseller and a charming American actor, and do you even need to know more than that? Stone’s writing is at turns wry and poetic, and I just really love these two and their sweet, tender love story. I want to hang out in Soho at Barnes Books so bad.

        I’ll be back in December or January with my favorite reads of the second half of the year—when I’ll also be just weeks away from releasing my own book. (!!) I definitely won’t be freaking out at all.

        xo

        Anita