I hadn't watched a minute of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City when I read/listened to this book. I watched about ten after I finished it, and all in all, the book is better. Heather Gay is a Mormon from a long line of Mormons, who hits the Mormon jackpot when she marries a similarly Mormonic Mormon, who is also from a wealthy family (funded in large part by Howard Hughes's estate because he was buddies with a Gay ancestor). 

It's a fun listen about a woman who grows up in a strong (and magical) belief system as she begins to realize that she doesn't fully support the values with which she was raised, not to mention her vow of obedience upon marriage, cuz men are All That in Mormonism, and women should just shut up about it. Luckily Heather has a lotta gumption!

This is a super enjoyable read about a reality dating show with a barely legal cast. It takes place in a fictional country (where the drinking age is 18). The show is about a catch--the brother of a girl who is maybe about to marry into the royal family of the country--getting a second chance with six ex-girlfriends, and they with him. 

Jordy, though, is a total douche, and it takes the girls longer than it should to realize it. They have some other revelations along the way, too. 

The author is good at making pop culture references without being trapped in the current time. "Hot girl shit" is legible whether you know it was a thing a couple-few years ago or not. Plus, points for vocabulary! I didn't know (or remember that I knew, let's be real) the word "bellend," a word that is used toward the end of the book to describe Jordy, and which is UK slang for the head of apenis, and not in a good way. 

The resolution takes a couple hairs too long, but I still recommend it. 

The protagonist, Prudence, is a grown up child prodigy and married, middle-aged, empty nester manic pixie dream girl. The lesser protagonist, Alexei Petrov, is an overprotected, underdeveloped person, and a highly skilled pianist. 

Prudence is a sandwich-generation 48 year old, but seems untroubled by perimenopause? Or maybe she is, and that's why she's so vulnerable to insecurity and feeling bad about herself. She was raised by a monstrous grandmother and has a loser husband (annulled) in her past, but her present is pretty good, and she's kind of a dick about it. However, she is really good at piano, to a magical extent. So, kind of annoying, but also relatable:

Despite how critical I sound, I liked the book quite a bit! Definitely an enjoyable read. 

Authors, if you want to write about libraries and librarians, you really should get one of us to read your manuscript. When you fuck up a bunch of easy shit, you just piss us off, and librarians can be a pedantic, cranky bunch, who read a lot. But then, I also felt like the author represented her protagonist as an authentic New Yorker, which I call BS on (Black Brooklynite who is a proud NYU alum? Most New Yorkers fucking hate NYU. NYers might go there, but if it was me, I'd have written "proud Hunter" or one of the other CUNYs. And while we're tallying the authorial mistakes, I don't think any of the library staff went to library school? I guess because it's a kind of rural setting maybe that's normal, but idk. I also call bs on a town of 1,000 having such a large library staff, including a 26-year-old carpetbagger with a Director title (of community engagement). A town that size would be lucky to have a FT library director, I think.)

Anyway, the cozy mystery is...fine, I guess, other than all the distracting questionable details. 

I read these books out of order, having started with Class and followed up with Maid. In Class, Land talks about a professor calling her writing relentless, and I can see why. Maid shows how inescapable poverty is. Land is always one car accident or daughter's illness away from homelessness. In fact, when the book starts, she is transitioning out of a homeless shelter, and her middle class safety net, her mother is being a total dick to her. The mom and stepdad go out to lunch with Stephanie and expect her to pay. When she says she can't, that all she can cover is her own hamburger, they take her last $10 for it. 

I hire a housecleaner sometimes, and after listening to Land talk about the work, I'm going to seriously reconsider the work I ask them to do and consider giving exorbitant tips.  

Soila is so stifled by her single, entrepreneur mother in Kenya that she convinces her mother to let her go to college in America. She goes to Barnard, but the author herself went to Columbia, and it kind of shows. She graduates around the turn of the century and goes to work for a boutique investment bank. (That part works for Barnard and Columbia.) The novel is about Soila's relationships--with her mother, her Black American roommate, boyfriends (one Kenyan, one Black American), and, of course, herself. 

Other than the boyfriends, and Soila's father, who died when she was five, this is a story about women. In addition to her mother, her family compound houses her four aunts and her grandmother. Her college and beyond roommate Leticia and her newfound half sister Aisha are also powerful forces in her life. 

I didn't highlight anything as I read, so I don't know what to tell you about the book, other than it was an easy read, even for someone who's mostly reading genre and YA lately due to concentration issues. 

I've realized I don't care for the romance trope where the would-be lovers love each other and feel like they have to hide it. That said, it isn't too painful in this book. The characters are lovable--Brad more than Celine because the perfect YA boyfriend can still be perfect with OCD. 

Whoops--I listened to this before I listened to Maid, and it's basically a continuation. That's fine--doesn't impact the storytelling, at least as far as I can guess, just dumb on my part. Land recounts her senior year of college (in her mid-30s) and all the financial and relationship fuckery that made it the hardest, hungriest year of her life, but hopefully didn't impact her daughter Emilia as intensely. Land is a good narrator--straightforward with just hints of emotion in her voice at the my trying parts of her memoir. I'm eager for the next book, and I want to find out what happened to that dickhead in the creative writing department who said that kids don't belong in graduate school. Like that's her call to make!

I read two Sookies back to back, so I don't entirely remember what the deal was with each. It kind of doesn't matter. They're both good comfort reads.

One thing I believe TrueBlood failed to do in its Eric-has-amnesia arc is show him loving Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

I read two Sookies back to back, so I don't entirely remember what the deal was with each. It kind of doesn't matter. They're both good comfort reads. 

I think in this one, we meet a hot, rich werewolf named Alcide (pronounced Al-sea) and Alcee (pronounced Al-say), who's maybe a kind of lazy cop? I'm starting to realize that Sookie isn't much of a girl's girl, or maybe that's just the case with women rivals who want to kill her.