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lilibetbombshell 's review for:
Love & Other Disasters
by Anita Kelly
This book, right here, is why I insist on requesting and reading as many LGBTQIA+ romances as I can when I come across them on NetGalley. It’s because of this warm, bubbling, sparkly feeling I have in my stomach after reading something beautiful and golden and true. This book was like champagne butterflies fluttering in my tummy, drunk and fluttering and golden and sweet.
I don’t often (literally) laugh out loud at books. I smile, sure. I may snort. I smirk… a lot. But I’m a big smirker in general. But this book caused me to genuinely let out unexpected giggles and chuckles and a few guffaws a few times, and that was a feeling I’m always going to be thankful to this book for, because I don’t get to laugh very often anymore.
I also shed a few tears: for London and Dahlia (our main characters), for how much I identified with Dahlia, and for all the LGBTQIA+ folx in the world who feel out of place and/or out of step with the world, with themselves, and especially with their loved ones. And I wished again, as I often do, for a world in which everyone could just be who they are and love who they love without anyone caring.
The plot of this book may be a pretty basic recipe, at first glance, but Kelly does so much with it! Food is one of the most versatile metaphors to work with when it comes to love, to home, to who you are, to where you come from, to where you’ve been, to domesticity, to where you want to go someday, and to who you might want to be someday. Kelly takes great advantage of both the food metaphors to be had and also the reality television competition format to weave the romance between Dahlia and London together like a neatly-made basket. The book is a page-turner, too: there are no parts that sag, move too slowly, move too fast, or seem extraneous. There aren’t too many characters, and all the characters are realized to the appropriate amount.
The humor, angst, romance, and steam are all nicely balanced for a romance of this genre and for the target audience.
Books are meant to make you feel. The intention of all art is to make you feel something. This book made me feel a great many things. I went into my genderfluid daughter’s room and flopped down on the bed and said, “I’m all up in my feels!”
She gave me a hug and kissed me on the head. Because she knows how her Mama gets over books sometimes. And then I told her the premise, and she told me that if she were a reader she would’ve gotten all up in her feels too.
I don’t often (literally) laugh out loud at books. I smile, sure. I may snort. I smirk… a lot. But I’m a big smirker in general. But this book caused me to genuinely let out unexpected giggles and chuckles and a few guffaws a few times, and that was a feeling I’m always going to be thankful to this book for, because I don’t get to laugh very often anymore.
I also shed a few tears: for London and Dahlia (our main characters), for how much I identified with Dahlia, and for all the LGBTQIA+ folx in the world who feel out of place and/or out of step with the world, with themselves, and especially with their loved ones. And I wished again, as I often do, for a world in which everyone could just be who they are and love who they love without anyone caring.
The plot of this book may be a pretty basic recipe, at first glance, but Kelly does so much with it! Food is one of the most versatile metaphors to work with when it comes to love, to home, to who you are, to where you come from, to where you’ve been, to domesticity, to where you want to go someday, and to who you might want to be someday. Kelly takes great advantage of both the food metaphors to be had and also the reality television competition format to weave the romance between Dahlia and London together like a neatly-made basket. The book is a page-turner, too: there are no parts that sag, move too slowly, move too fast, or seem extraneous. There aren’t too many characters, and all the characters are realized to the appropriate amount.
The humor, angst, romance, and steam are all nicely balanced for a romance of this genre and for the target audience.
Books are meant to make you feel. The intention of all art is to make you feel something. This book made me feel a great many things. I went into my genderfluid daughter’s room and flopped down on the bed and said, “I’m all up in my feels!”
She gave me a hug and kissed me on the head. Because she knows how her Mama gets over books sometimes. And then I told her the premise, and she told me that if she were a reader she would’ve gotten all up in her feels too.