This is a book about an uptight socialite and a porn star, and their unlikely romance through forced proximity, hence the title of this book.

This book is steamy and sweet and funny and political - sex workers’ rights? Feminism? Battling big corporations? Centering female pleasure? Yes to all of these! I loved the dynamic between Josh and Clara, and I really enjoyed the layers in their personalities. I identified very strongly with Clara’s fears about driving.

I would have liked a little more diversity within the characters, but everything else in this book is top notch.

Coincidentally, this book just celebrated its first birthday! HBD, The Roommate!

First Comes Like is the third book in Alisha Rai’s Modern Love series, and it follows Jia, a social media beauty influencer, and her relationship with Dev Dixit, an Indian TV star who has recently moved to the US.

There’s a scene in the movie 9 to 5 (an 80s CLASSIC and one of my personal favorites) where Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda have to figure out what to do with a dead body they have mistakenly stolen from a hospital. The vibe in that scene - the three women trying to figure out how to handle a major crisis while also avoiding getting caught, each of their personalities and relationships with each other honed to a sharp point while also being totally hilarious - is exactly the vibe of this entire book. Hilarious. Madcap. Totally over the top. Ultimately about the relationships between women.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino is an incisive, intelligent, occasionally hilarious analysis of what it means to be a woman in our time. How do you show the world who you are and does it matter what the world thinks? What kind of society are we living in and what matters to this society? What are the expectations of femininity and how has late stage capitalism packaged and sold ideas of equality back to us in ways that keep women corralled and controlled?

Reading The Final Revival of Opal and Nev is like reading a fictional episode of VH1’s Behind the Music and a Rolling Stone feature rolled up and told from the modern perspective of a Black woman navigating her own identity and history, with incisive racial and political commentary not present in most mainstream rock reviews and retrospectives.

It’s so realistic that it is easy to forget that Opal and Nev and Virgil and Bob Hize and the Bond Brothers and all the others never actually existed. This book is also so wonderfully dramatic that imagining the characters as actors comes naturally. The dialogue leaps from the page, each character larger than life and simultaneously relatable. (I kept reading Virgil LeFleur’s lines in Billy Porter’s voice in my head, for instance.)

This book reminded me quite a bit of Evelyn Hugo in the way the frame story is about a journalist writing a book about a reclusive famous person and seeking the truth of what happened to her father through that process. What I think this book does better than Evelyn Hugo is broach the topic of race and identity in America with nuance and vigor. The story is simultaneously in the 1970s and also very contemporary. The perspectives of the main characters are multifaceted and nuanced, and Opal is so much aware and active in her position as a provocateur and activist than Evelyn is.

Recommended for fans of rock music, American history, Behind the Music, the movie Almost Famous, journalistic narratives and realistic fiction.

CW: racism, sexism, racist slurs, mentions of sexual violence, assault, death, drug use and addiction, job loss, cancer, infidelity, police brutality

This book is so sweet and vulnerable, and the characters are imperfect and more lovable for it. It is rare for me to cry while reading a RoNo, but cry I did at many of the scenes in this book when Dev or Charlie was feeling especially seen and cared for.

I also felt very loved by this author. That’s maybe a weird thing to say, but I felt like Alison took such good care of me as a reader. She showed me a world where we can think beyond the way things are right now, and stand up for our mental health, and stand by our friends, and expect better of the world…and get it. She showed me how people can be broken and whole, imperfectly perfect, and that it’s not that far fetched to imagine it.

In many ways, The Charm Offensive reminded me of Red, White, and Royal Blue in the best ways possible. One of the characters is dealing with an awakening in his sexuality, the relationship is incredibly high stakes and must be hidden at all costs except for the fact that everyone important already secretly knows, and the banter! The banter in this is so wonderful and realistic. And the side characters are wonderful - multidimensional with a dose of found family and lots of diverse representation. Just…(sigh)…this book is everything.

CW: detailed depictions of depression and depressive episodes, on-page panic attack, physical violence, estranged parents, ableism (challenged on page), homophobia (challenged on page), sexism (challenged on page)