September Reading List

This month was a very mixed bag, but I hope you enjoy my selection and the reviews. As always, none of these reviews are completely spoiler free, so read at your own risk!

Written in the Stars 

Elle and Darcy are both looking for love and struggling to find it. Elle constantly swipes and Darcy is set up on near weekly blind dates by her well-meaning brother, Brendon. When the two meet on one such date...it’s a disaster. Neither of them want to see each other again. But when Brendon begins pressuring Darcy to go speed dating, she makes a decision that takes both women off-course: she lies and says they hit it off. Now Darcy and Elle have to maneuver this fake relationship without getting caught — or hurt. 

To be honest, I wasn’t sure about this one. I hadn't heard good things about this book from my fellow bookish sapphics, but I decided to keep an open mind — and I am so glad I did. I really enjoyed the relationship between the two leads. It played up the differences between the very serious Darcy and the playful, free-spirited Elle in a way I really enjoyed. The third act breakup felt very motivated by character and made sense with how reluctant Darcy was to admit her feelings given her past relationship trauma and issues with her mother, despite being infuriating.  

The ending is what really sold me, however. I feel like it’s very common in romance for the open, loving character to be hurt by their closed off partner only for the open partner to end up doing some sort of grand gesture to win back the person that hurt them as a gesture of never abandoning them when things get tough. It both treats the closed off partner as a prize to be won and sets up a dynamic of constant chasing. Bellefleur didn’t play into that which I really appreciated, and the “grand gesture” Darcy employed was so sweet and symbolic I almost cried! 

Why it’s not getting 5 stars is because I felt the constant watching by Brendon to be really weird and off-putting. Putting on a romantic/sexual show for your brother is so...eugh! Gross. Didn’t care for it. I also found that the perspective felt confused at times. Even when switching perspectives, it still felt like the inner thoughts of the other character came through, which made the narrative a bit harder to follow. Given that, I think 4.5 stars is where it belongs. 

Five Survive 

Red and her friends are road tripping to a campsite for spring break when they get lost with no cell service and no way to get the RV started again. It becomes very apparent that there is someone out there in the dark who trapped them and wants to see one of them dead. It’s up to the group to figure out who and how to get out alive. 

Immediately I didn’t care for the author’s voice. The sentence structure felt truncated, and the way character actions were described either felt too detailed for small interactions or not clear enough in who was doing what. Later in the book, at times of tension I felt that certain actions were overexplained or repeated ad nauseum to manufacture more tension, which was annoying for me (similar to the dragged out writing in Survive the Night). I also felt like Simon was a superfluous character, he doesn’t do much in the events of the story that couldn’t easily be fulfilled by someone else. When recounting the story to someone else I literally only mentioned that he brought the RV. 

However, despite the perceived faults of writing, I did enjoy this book. While most of the twists and “surprises” were predictable to me, the journey to them was fun and engrossing. I found the relationship Red had with her mother to be quite endearing when snippets of it were given. I also felt like Charlie’s descent into crazed, violent madness was well done. Every little thing that pushed him further felt realistic, especially because he was positioned as a selfish, self-and-mother-obsessed jerk from his first appearance. He refused to ever admit he was wrong, pushed responsibilities he didn’t want onto everyone else, and was strict and overbearing with instruction. It felt right. For the elements I enjoyed it gets 4 stars. 

One Last Stop 

August moved to New York City to keep her head down and firmly out of the clouds, but fate has a different plan when she bumps into Jane on the train. It seems like Jane is always there when she’s going to work and two strike up an unlikely budding friendship and romance — only to find that Jane has been displaced in time from the 70s and is bound to the train. Now August must find out how and why Jane is stuck, and if there’s a way to save her. 

Honestly, this one is ranked so low because it bored me. August felt like a less than compelling main character, and her subplot about finding out what happened to her uncle felt like an afterthought. August finding out what happened to her uncle and Jane sparking her new interest in solving mysteries for people was...cute, I guess? But it felt hollow for me.

What also irked me were the side characters, not because some of them felt wholly irrelevant to the plot (because yes, all the characters only attached to the drag fundraiser felt unimportant) but because they way they’re written makes it feel like they’re only so colorful to give August some spice, make her look more “cool”, and give her some semblance of personality because she has none. They truly felt like tokens to prop up this random, boring white woman who had to be the main character, because...reasons? Which is a shame because even shoehorned into supportive roles in a white woman’s story, they’re still way more compelling. Jane, Myla and Niko are these sparkling characters with charm and personality than August can ever hope to have in even two lifetimes — but they feel forcibly flattened so McQuiston can make everything they do revolve around August (who is as exciting as watching paint dry) and Billy’s Diner (which felt like a half-baked subplot meant to proselytize to the reader about disappearing third spaces and gentrification). It’s ridiculous. And because Jane is so much more interesting than August, their romance feels off kilter. 

Speaking of Billy’s, McQuiston just put too much into this story that didn’t feel cohesive. Fighting for Billy’s to stay open, the supernatural aspect, Jane’s mystery life, Jane and August’s romance, August’s uncle’s disappearance. The book could have half these elements in it and be ten times more streamlined and interesting, but because McQuiston does so much it’s muddy and no one plot point is given enough attention for me to care. Also, as a native New Yorker, a lot of this book felt like a weird mix of disparaging native New Yorkers and romanticizing the city in ways that often felt uncomfortable and/or inaccurate. If someone told me McQuiston never set foot in NYC, I’d believe them. That’s a lesson in worldbuilding, dear writers! Please do adequate research! 

All that being said, The highest this one’s getting is 1.5 stars. I really didn’t enjoy it, and I’m not likely to revisit it. 

The Secret of You and Me 

Nora and Sophie were best friends in high school, with a big secret: they were actually girlfriends. When their parents find out they’re sent on wildly different paths in opposite directions. Sophie ends up as a loving wife and mother, still living in their hometown, and Nora is a high-powered government employee in a polyamorous relationship. But the two are brought back face to face when Nora’s father dies and she has to go back home for the funeral and to sort through his belongings. Will old flames rekindle or are they destined to be torn apart again? 

This month ended on a real low note. I wanted to focus on some bi sapphic romances for bisexuality awareness week in September, but the novels I managed to pick out.... First off, I want to say I appreciate the complexity of the set up to this story. Sophie being married to Nora’s high school sweetheart, Charlie, after the two of them were sneaking around behind Charlie’s back in high school makes for a unique love triangle that primes all three to pine after each other (Charlie for both Sophie and Nora, Sophie for Nora, and Nora for Sophie and Charlie). If Lenhardt had done more with that concept I think I would have enjoyed this a whole lot more. Instead, Charlie is this smarmy, homophobic jerk who sleeps around and puts his career before Sophie’s wants and needs but still believes himself to be a good husband, making him purely a bizarre obstacle to Nora and Sophie’s romance. Alima is also forced into this mold of the bitter, mean-spirited girlfriend who wants to control Nora because Lenhardt doesn’t allow her space to be anything else. As soon as she enters the narrative, she leaves. 

But what’s crazy, is even with Alima being borderline insufferable in how she speaks about Nora and to Sophie, I still think her and Nora would have been the better couple — because Nora and Sophie have next to no chemistry. At least Alima seemed to care for Nora and want to build a life with her. Almost every single scene Sophie and Nora have together they argue and one of them says “please, let’s start over”. What is worth saving about a relationship you had briefly 18 years ago with someone you can barely say two words to without starting a fight?  

Not to mention that Alima was right about Sophie, that she really would not have left her husband for Nora, because Sophie still planned to give him at least another year and a half of her life for the sake of niceties and respectability. Given how Charlie is written, I doubt they would have ever been divorced if Nora had went back home just a bit earlier, because Charlie would go on guilting Sophie about her making him into a beard and he’d always have “just one more” career milestone to reach and Sophie would kowtow to it every time. While I understand the idea of “owing Charlie” since making someone your beard without their knowledge or consent is generally a terrible thing to do, Charlie was a terrible husband who failed to live up to his duties to her the entirety of their marriage, so I would call that pretty even. Therefore, I found it quite distasteful that Lenhardt ever tried to spin the narrative of what Sophie owes to Charlie. 

Another thing I found distasteful was having Sophie’s alcoholism predicated on Nora. I have never had an addiction, so maybe this is how it works, but it feels wrong that not being specifically with Nora is what causes her to drink and wanting to “taste Nora’s lips” is the reason she broke sobriety. Lenhardt starts to try to broaden that to not embracing being a lesbian, but I think that argument is hollow given Sophie’s reason for drinking again after almost a year sober. Putting Sophie’s sobriety solely on her relationship with Nora working or not working is a recipe for disaster and kind of feels like a fantasy reason for drinking. If Nora and Sophie get married and stay together is she suddenly cured of alcoholism? Because the narrative sort of alludes to that.  

The last big issue I had was the proselytizing. I don’t know what it is about writing the stories of marginalized people for some writers, but it seems like there’s always a side quest or character used to preach to the reader about discrimination. We didn’t need a more direct talking to about discrimination when the entire book is basically just one long hate crime against Sophie and Nora. Everywhere you turn someone’s calling lesbians disgusting or basically subhuman, not to mention their parents threatening them with conversion therapy and disowning them/ forcing them into the military or Christian colleges as penance. The picture was painted without a basically forth-wall breaking conversation with a baby gay. 

Since I can see what could have been, this one’s a 2.5, but I really wasn’t rooting for the main couple like I should have been. And the compromises both of them feel they have to make doesn’t make the ending feel happy at all.