 Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Emma Lord’s The Rival, which will be published on January 21.
Emma Lord has such a talent for writing YA romances with compelling premises that don’t fall victim to oversimplification. (It’s why she’s one of my auto-read authors.) With her newest novel The Rival, she tells a sort of enemies-to-lovers romance that confronts the challenges of being a college freshman and the best way to stand up for a cause we believe in. Sadie earned her high school’s single, coveted spot at Maple Ride University, winning out over her family friend—and secret, long-time rival—Seb, who’s attending a different, prestigious school. Sadie is determined to make her mark at Maple Ride and to earn the one staff position for a freshman at the college’s zine Newsbag, all as a way of setting up her comedy career. There’s a twist, of course. Seb, who was waitlisted, has shown up on campus. And he also wants to join the Newsbag staff. Sadie had looked forward to escaping the constant challenges of her rivalry with Seb but also of establishing a new, true college identity, the one she had never been able to live out when she was with our family. With them? Well, they’re A. LOT. And Sadie always finds herself in the role of mediator, smoothing things over, evening out everyone’s emotions. Now? She may want to be a lot, too. That’s the initial setup. Add in a budget controversy in which the college is pulling money away from extracurriculars like Newsbag to fund their sports teams, and there’s the perfect recipe for a compelling, complicated, wonderful YA novel. The romance is at the center of the book here, but it’s not the only focus. There are wonderful conversations about Sadie and Seb’s challenges as they leave their families—they’re excited to be on their own, homesick for their families, ready to carve out new identities, but not quite prepared to leave who they were behind. There are great considerations of friendship, of how to be an advocate and an ally without dismissing the concerns of those who may be affected by change. There’s a fantastic subplot about romantic relationships—Sadie is completely inexperienced and, now that she’s in college, is having a hard time moving past the feeling that she is the ONLY one who is in her same position. That may sound like too much, but Emma Lord makes it work. The Rival navigates these various threads easily, with humor and empathy and swoony romance. It epitomizes everything I love about Lord’s writing.
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 Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Colby Wilkens’s If I Stopped Haunting You.
If I Stopped Haunting You is an enemies-to-lovers romance that incorporates a consideration of publishing trends for indigenous horror with a super-spooky Scottish haunted house story and an open-door romance story with LGBTQ+ representation. Yes, it may be a lot. But it’s a lot of fun. Penelope Skinner is one novel into her writing career when she makes a potentially career-ending move: during a conference panel about indigenous horror books, she launches her own hefty novel at the head of Neil Storm, an infinitely more successful author who Penelope considers to be a sellout because of the way he uses Native stereotypes in his most recent book. The scandal chases Penelope into hiding until her friend Laszlo invites her to a writers’ retreat in an isolated Scottish castle. She’s eager to get a grasp again on her writing career . . . and then she discovers that Laszlo has also invited his friend—and her nemesis—Neil and her ex-girlfriend Daniela. Not awkward at all. They make it to the castle, complete with a horrifically creepy introduction from the caretaker, before completely falling apart. And then a mix of (un)healthy competition, jealousy, and denied chemistry ensues, all while the four writers are trying to churn out new books and a ghost seeks out a new audience for her story. Wilkens’s mix of romance and the paranormal here mostly worked for me, and I appreciated the sincere consideration of what the publishing industry is looking for in the works it promotes by indigenous authors. I did feel, at times, that the parallels between the romance and the paranormal were a little jarring, but overall, I found If I Stopped Haunting You to be a compelling debut romance with some thought-provoking questions at its heart.  Sarah Ward’s The Crossover is a delightful, sports-centered romance focused on two very different college athletes whose different approaches to life and love bring them together.
Stella is a driven perfectionist whose last relationship has led her to vow to avoid romance and double down on her commitments. She’s an equestrian who wants her future to center on the sport, despite her mother’s skepticism that she can support herself at all. Owen’s approach to everything—love, sports, academics—is decidedly more casual. As a new transfer to Mountain Ridge University, Owen is joining the basketball team at a disadvantage. But he’s not worried (about anything). When they first meet, at the gym, Owen is immediately drawn to Stella, and Stella is . . . not interested. At least that’s what she tells herself. But as she gets to know Owen, she starts to see that there may be more depth than either of them had believed. In her second novel, after her great middle-grade read Victory Gallop, Ward’s first foray into romance is compelling and heart warming and so much fun. Stella and Owen both have strong backstories that fuel them, and each is fighting their way out of the limitations their parents have placed upon them. The Crossover is a delightful book that cements Ward as an auto-read author for me!  Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Emma Lord’s The Break-Up Pact. The book will be published tomorrow.
You can’t go wrong with a book by Emma Lord. Her five YA novels have made her an auto-read author, so when I saw she was expanding into adult romance, I was thrilled! Her new book The Break-Up Pact, which features , friends to lovers, second-chance romance (of a sort), AND fake dating does right by its tropes and confirmed my commitment to reading everything she writes. June and Levi were—along with June’s sister Annie—inseparable as kids and clear through high school. And then, as Levi and Annie, and then June, went to college, they drifted apart. June started dating Griffin, joining him on global adventures—and, by extension, on his quest for fame. She thought they were happy . . . until he returned from a solo trip with someone new, breaking up with June on a reality tv show and making her (the Crying Girl) a viral sensation. Levi has achieved fame of his own, and his fiancee left him for an action movie star, meaning that Levi, too, has become a viral object of pity. Levi returns to town, finding June running Tea Tides, the tea shop that she and Annie had always dreamed of opening. Now, in the wake of Annie’s death, June is struggling on all fronts, failing to make the business a success, losing the love that she thought she had, and finding herself unsure how to deal with the unresolved feelings she still has for Levi. June and Levi wallow in misery for a while, and then June’s best friend Sana has an idea: they can each emerge with a little more dignity, a chance for Tea Tides, and some envy-inspired romance for Levi if they just pretend to revenge date for a while. And so the Break-Up Pact is born. Lord has such a fantastic touch with characters that I fell in love with June and Levi and all of their family and friends right away. The Break-Up Pact is steamier than Lord’s YA books for sure, but it captures the same giddy sense of new relationships and possibilities while balancing the wistful longing for the days when June and Levi were best friends and Annie was still alive. I so appreciate the way the novel peels back the layers of each character’s recovery and of the rebuilding of their multifaceted relationships. It’s a lovely read, a moving portrait of compassion and friendship, grief and love, and it’s about characters figuring out who they are and how being with the right person can help them build stronger individual identities.  Thanks to partners NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Amanda Quain’s Dashed. The book will be published on July 16!
I have great, great affection for Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and I thoroughly enjoyed Amanda Quain’s Ghosted, a retelling of Northanger Abbey. That made Dashed, Quain’s retelling/modern continuation of Sense and Sensibility an easy pick for my TBR. Dashed focuses on Margaret Dashwood, the youngest sister in her family. In Austen’s book, she’s a sort of afterthought to Elinor and Marianne (the “sense” and “sensibility” of the title); here, she’s the center. During her childhood, she was more like Marianne—she was impulsive and extroverted and emotional. After Marianne’s yearning for a man she couldn’t have ended in tragedy for Marianne and Margaret, she vowed to be more like Elinor: controlled and independent and organized. That meant putting mental space between her and Marianne. Now, Margaret has graduated from high school and has planned to spend her summer on a cruise ship with Elinor and Elinor’s husband Edward, the chaplain on the ship. Her plans change rapidly when Marianne shows up, boards with the family, and drops the news that Brandon broke up with her. And she’s spending the summer with Elinor and Margaret. Immediately, Margaret panics, convinced that she’s going to fall back into a Marianne pattern . . . unless Margaret can find a new match for Marianne who will distract her and keep her on an even keel. (After all, she thinks, it’s only romantic attachments that anchor Marianne.) In the meantime, Marianne has her own plans for Margaret, who has never succumbed to love after seeing the turmoil it wrought with her sister. Marianne will go along with Margaret’s plans IF Margaret goes on some blind dates of her own. Fortunately, Margaret made a quick—friends-only, she says—connection with Gabe, who runs the soundboard for the ship’s entertainment. He’ll be the perfect, decoy blind date. She just has to convince herself that friendship is all she feels. Dashed is a fun update/retelling that makes full use of Austen’s beautifully developed characters in a modern setting. While I did feel that the polarity of Elinor and Marianne was a bit much—Margaret continually told herself she had to choose between these two models, and I felt she was just too smart to fall into the sort of dichotomy that steers much of the plot—and Margaret’s denial of her feelings for Gabe cycled a bit too long, I still thoroughly enjoyed the time devoted to the youngest member of the Dashwood family. I appreciated the ways that she explored the ways that Margaret would have experienced the love stories of Elinor and Edward, of Marianne and Brandon, and the ways that might have affected a young, impressionable sister. I did feel, however, that it took too long for the book to lean into the complexities that lie beneath the easy characterizations that Austen ultimately resists. There’s great humor in Margaret’s reality show-style attempts to find a match for Marianne, and I loved seeing Elinor and Edward years into a sweet, stable marriage. Gabe is also a fantastic romantic interest, and his years on the cruise ship lead him to be a wonderful tour guide for Margaret. The various stops make for a wonderful setting. Overall, I recommend Dashed to Austen fans and to YA romance readers, and I look forward to reading the next installment in Quain’s series of modern Austen retellings.  Thanks to partners NetGalley and Berkley for the digital ARC of Ali Brady’s Until Next Summer. The book will be published on July 9!
Ali Brady’s newest book, Until Next Summer, shows that this writing duo just keeps getting better. Their previous novels The Beach Trap and The Comeback Summer had already made them auto-read authors for me, and Until Next Summer just reinforced their place on that list. Jessie is the eternal camp kid—Camp Chickawah was her place of solace in a childhood torn between two divorced parents and their new families, and it’s still the center of her life and career as head camp director. That’s why she’s never understood why her former camp best friend, Hillary, didn’t step into a role as camp counselor back when they were teenagers. The moment she made that decision was when their friendship ended. Now, Hillary has an incredibly successful career in the city and an impressive and parent-approved—if passionless—relationship. But she’s never forgotten the joy and freedom that she found at Camp Chickawah and with Jessie. She doesn’t think, however, that she’ll ever make her way back there. Then, an opportunity arises. The children of Camp Chickawah’s former owners have decided to sell the camp to a developer who’s going to tear it down. For the last summer before it’s destroyed, Jessie sets up a series of “adult” camps, designed for all of the kids-turned-adults who need Camp Chickawah in their lives again. And Hillary is one of them, running the arts and crafts program. This fun premise sets up a fun, moving, fabulous novel that includes romance and friendship, characters finding themselves and each other, all the joy and nostalgia of summer camp, and even a sweet dog. Alternating between Jessie’s and Hillary’s point of view, the authors manage to share the desolation of a friendship lost and the hope that it can be rekindled. Yes, this is a steamy romance—and I loved watching both characters find their perfect matches—but I think the book’s centering of friendship is my favorite part.  Thanks to partners NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Eloisa James's Viscount in Love. The book will be published on July 23!
I jumped on the chance to read Viscount in Love, drawn in by my previous experiences reading Eloisa James’s fun, feminist spins on regency romance. Viscount in Love fits right in. Torie Sutton is a bit of an outcast from her society—she’s never fit in the way her sister, Leonora does. Leonora is devoted to meeting others’ expectations, to following the rules and making a good match. And she’s succeeded in all of the above, nailing down an engagement with Viscount Dominic Kelbourne. Leonora, by contrast, doesn’t care much about fitting in and has had to accept others’ low opinions of her, driven—at least in part—by her inability to read. (It becomes clear early on that she has a reading disability, though this is of course before those were diagnosed.) When Dominic Kelbourne’s sister and her husband are killed, he’s left with their twins who are rebels and outcasts in their own right. And Leonora is having none of it. So, left without a partner, Dominic moves on to finding a caretaker instead—and Torie is the perfect candidate. Torie, though she deeply loves the twins, wants to be more than a nanny, and her resistance and Dominic’s persistence make for a fantastically fun historical romance.  Thanks to partners NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Maggie North's Rules for Second Chances. The book will be published on June 25!
Maggie North’s Rules for Second Chances is a truly lovely second-chance romance, one that tackles its characters’ need to know who they are both in a relationship and as individuals. The novel is thoughtful and thought-provoking, funny and tender. What a wonderful debut. Liz Lewis knows that her husband, Tobin, is magic. He’s magic at West by North, the adventure company where he works as a head guide . . . and Liz does spreadsheets. He’s magic with his mother, who dotes on his every move . . . and tolerates Liz. He’s magic at every part they attend, where he is the star . . . and Liz feels like either a barnacle attached to him or a wallflower hoping to fade into the background. Unfortunately, their three-year marriage is not magic. Yes, the physical part of their relationship works as well as it ever did, but now the rest of their marriage is plagued by secrets and a long list of topics they avoid. Tobin is the ever-popular yes man, leaving Liz to always be the one saying “no” or staying—resentfully—silent. Liz can’t take it anymore, and so, on her 30th birthday, she walks away from their marriage, vowing to “GET MAGIC.” She wants to find happiness, and herself, to climb out of her spreadsheets, earn a promotion, and find someone who can balance her. But Tobin isn’t ready to let go. Just as Liz is dipping a toe into improv, after her boss tells her that’s the way to start earning her promotion, to gain confidence and sparkle, Tobin convinces her to try a relationship-counseling-via-improv book written by his best friend (who also happens to be Liz’s improv teacher). What ensues is Liz’s fight to find herself, to figure out who she is and who she can be in her marriage with Tobin and her career and her complicated relationship with her sister. Rules for Second Chances is a book that embraces the complexity of relationships and of identity. There are characters here to cheer for and to despise, situations that feel so real and so painful that the characters’ vulnerability shines off the page. I absolutely loved watching Liz’s journey, and I’m eager to see what Maggie North publishes next.  Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Katherine Center's The Rom-Commers. The book will be published on Tuesday!
Reading Katherine Center’s newest book has become a favorite summer tradition for me. Her books center on such believably real characters in such lovely, dreamy, and sincerely funny circumstances. The Rom-Commers checked all of those boxes for me. Emma Wheeler’s life is dominated by two things: (1) caring for her family, particularly her father, after a tragic accident that changed their lives forever, and (2) screenwriting. Well, screenwriting rom-coms. Emma has made choices that have affected her career and her freedom to make sure that her younger sister has every option she could dream of as she emerges from college and to keep her father safe, which means 24-7 care. So, when she’s unexpectedly given a chance to ghost write (and overhaul) a rom-com screenplay by her idol, Charlie Yates, she’s both exhilarated and reluctant: her sister has an internship opportunity that Emma doesn’t want her to pass up, and she can’t leave her dad. This situation, right from the beginning, is communicated with such vividness that I felt every facet of Emma’s agonizing choice: follow the dream that she’s pushed down for so long or keep to the narrow path that she’s carved out for herself. It takes a push from her family—and her high school ex-boyfriend, Logan, now a successful Hollywood agent—to get Emma on the plane to meet and work with Charlie Yates. And then she finds out that (despite what Logan told her!) Charlie doesn’t want a ghost writer and doesn’t even know that she’s coming. This premise spins out in satisfying ways. Of course, Emma ends up co-writing with Charlie, schooling him on the merits of the rom-coms that he so scorns and giving him a very honest take on the problems she sees with his draft. Their working relationship has ups and downs, misunderstandings and miscommunications both deliberate and not, and the ways that their romantic relationships develop in parallel to their screenplay are delightful. But it’s the characters that are the standout here, the ways that Emma and Charlie (and Emma’s dad and sister) force themselves to work toward happiness again and again, work toward believing in and living with love. I always appreciate reading Center’s acknowledgments, where she shares the inspirations for each story and the books and research that informed her novels. Her dedication to and advocacy for romance is a beautiful thing, and it’s borne out, again and again, in her books. The Rom-Commers is a beautiful tribute to rom-coms and to writing and to movies, and it’s a wonderful novel about the ways we have to believe in and put effort into pursuing love. It’s a book that will satisfy Center’s readers, old and new.  Thanks to partners NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Molly Morris's Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet. The book will be published tomorrow!
I knew from the first page that I was going to love Molly Morris’s Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet. It’s quirky and original and just totally captivating. Here’s the premise: Wilson Moss is a high school senior, and she’s completely alone. She’s been alone since both of her best friends abandoned her, just as they were moving into their junior years. Ryan cut her off completely (though they—awkwardly—still work together at Ryan’s mom’s restaurant). Wilson’s mom left Wil’s long-time stepfather, the adult who provided the most stability in her and her younger half-sister’s life. Her friend Annie? She not only transferred to the local private school but also ended their friendship. And then, she died. Wil’s not exactly sure what happened, though she has some ideas. So, she takes a chance on her town’s unique contest, a once-every-decade anomaly. Any resident of Lennon can throw their name in the hat for a chance to bring back someone dead . . . for 30 days. Shockingly, Wil wins the contest, which means she has 30 days to (temporarily) resurrect her friendship and to figure out just what makes her so unlovable. The whole situation is complicated. Ryan had begun making small forays into friendship again, but Wil’s choice makes Ryan beyond angry since the first fissures in their friendship began with Annie and Ryan. And Wil isn’t content with 30 days, so when she picks up on a loophole from Ruth Fish (the seemingly immortal being who’s in charge of the town, and the contest) Wilson vows to mend the trio’s friendship and—hopefully—make this a real chance at life again for Annie, and a real chance at friendship again for her. This book has so many layers. I love the magical realism, the strangeness of the contest and the matter-of-fact way that everyone in the town accepts it. The world building is just fantastic. I love the complexity of Wilson’s character, the way she’s so valiantly trying to gain some control over the areas of her life that she lost, searching for love and friendship and family. The secondary characters here are incredibly vivid, too, and I could feel the ways that they’re struggling for so many of the same things that Wilson is hoping for, each existing as fully realized people in the same way that Wil is. After finishing Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet, I found out that Morris has one previous YA novel—I’ll be picking it up soon. Do yourself a favor, and put this one on your TBR. |
AuthorI'm Jen Moyers, co-host of the Unabridged Podcast and an English teacher. Archives
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