A Tale of Two Releases
Mastectomies and bad boys named Chase: a pair of tough little books that came out this week.
Last week I received an email from a publisher offering me an e-ARC. There was nothing unusual about this, except the book in question wasn’t slated to come out this fall or winter — it was scheduled for release just six days later, on July 2. It’s unusual to offer an ARC with so little lead time, and I assume the publisher was hoping to make up for mixed success (based on number and rating of Goodreads reviews) of the initial publicity round.
The book was Just Playing House, by Farah Heron, and I likely would have accepted it based on its intriguing blurb and apparent need for reviewers, but seeing her name on it sealed my interest. Heron reminds me of a South Asian-Canadian Emily Henry: she got her start in YA before shifting to rom com and her books blend tropey romance with introspective, intelligent narrators who have plenty of non-romantic stuff going on.
Henry’s books are, of course, wildly more popular than Heron’s (and almost everyone else’s). But that doesn’t mean they are wildly better! Just Playing House was quite lovely. If I were to compare it to an EH novel, I’d choose Beach Reads, which is my favorite. There was some serious subject matter involving the female main character’s predisposition to breast cancer and her preventative mastectomy, but I didn’t find it depressing. The book had a lot of things I often don’t like — dual POVs; second-chance-romance and movie-star-boyfriend tropes — but it did them so well that I really enjoyed them. I kind of wish it could be a movie, except the actors I imagined playing the leads (Sarayu Blue, from a short-lived sitcom called I Feel Bad, and Sendhil Ramamurthy, a scientist/villain in The Flash and Devi’s father in Never Have I Ever) are too old for the parts.
(I’m not going to speculate on what that means about my own age, but I do wish there were more romances with over-40 leads, except that whenever I read one I hate it, because childrearing and perimenopause are not sexy. But Farah Heron wrote a romance about mastectomy recovery, so maybe she can conquer midlife too.)
To DNF or Not to DNF
Sometimes a book grabs me in its first pages and doesn’t let go. But, let’s be honest, sometimes it doesn’t, and I start to wonder 10 or 30 or 100 pages in why I am reading it. Given my heavingly vast TBR, not to mention all the other things I could be doing with my time, should I continue?
The answer depends on what I’m expecting from a book, which is closely related to why I’m reading it.
Maybe it’s a book club selection, or was recommended by a friend. In that case, I’ll push through any initial doubts and only stop reading if I’m still uninspired as I approach the midpoint.
Maybe it’s a review copy. I try to review books in as positive a light as I can, and while I try to take my review commitments seriously, I also don’t want to spend hours finishing a book I won’t be able to review honestly and enthusiastically. I try to drop this sort of book quickly and hope it finds its readership elsewhere.
Maybe it’s a book I heard of… somewhere. In a summer reading roundup, or a blurb by a favorite author, or as a suggested title on Goodreads. Unfortunately, I don’t have a system for recording the source of my interest when I add books to my library holds list and other queues, so when I actually acquire it, weeks or months later, I often have no context for why I’m reading it. Is it a fluffy period romance that another fluffy period romance author promoted, or the hot literary speculative fiction of the summer? (Or both! Another Paper Magician, please!)
Here is where we come to this week’s second release. Cash Delgado is Living the Dream, by Tehlor Kay Mejia, is also a women’s fiction / rom com hybrid and I wouldn’t be surprised if it has a similar readership to Just Playing House. I accepted the ARC weeks (months?) ago, didn’t quite get around to reading it until the end of June, and then got stuck 30 pages in.
In the section I was reading, Cash is on a date with Chase, who is the Wrong Guy. But… so what? She’s single and he isn’t a bad guy. The date is pleasant enough. Cash seems to be enjoying herself, but she’s not falling in love, and there’s nothing sinister about the evening. It’s a mediocre date like any other.
So… why, I wondered, was I reading about it for so many pages? The protagonist didn’t have much investment in the evening, so why should I?
I almost stopped reading the book. Maybe this says something about our oversaturated era, or maybe it’s just that my attachment to a new book is fragile in the early chapters. I put Cash down for a couple days and read something else, and then I came back to it. And I’m glad I did, because about two pages later, everything shifted. The Wrong Guy revealed that he was, actually, a Bad Guy, or at least an antagonist. The story developed a new level of stakes and everything about its existing conflict sharpened. The events of the evening endangered Cash’s plans and clarified her desires. Suddenly, Cash cared about the date; suddenly, I wanted to find out what happened next. It just took a little longer than I expected.
That — the possibility that in the very next paragraph any story could turn amazing — is why it’s so hard to abandon books.