Introduction

“It’s okay to admit that something can be best just because it makes you happy, and not because you had to tear yourself apart to get there.”

With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She’s a straight A, work-through-the-summer certified high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know…until she does exactly that.

This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her father’s expectations, a struggling job market and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.

In New York, she’s able to ignore all the annoying questions about her future plans and falls hard for her creative and beautiful wife, Yuki Yamamoto. But when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she’s been running from all along—the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.

My Thoughts

I’m back with a review of my first summer read: Honey Girl. It took me longer than I expected to get through this one because it’s been a busy week. Here’s to pride month! I love a good sapphic read and this one definitely delivered.

I hate reading hyper-romanticized version of queer couples in literature and, thankfully, Morgan Rogers did not give me that. Grace and Yuki were raw, gritty, and dealt with a lot of things in their relationship.

Where should I begin? From the minute I read the synopsis, I knew this book would be for me. Grace Porter and I might just be the same person – down to our sun signs and everything. I have not identified with a character this much since Addie LaRue, and that’s very important for me to say. In fact, I see even more of myself in Grace than I did in Addie……and something about that scares me a little bit.

While I expected this book to resonate with me, I didn’t expect it to leave me feeling so hollow. This book is a great book, a fantastic book, but I didn’t expect to be dragged through the mud so critically. While I try to be as spoiler free as possible, I will say this: a major theme of the book is looking at yourself critically and coming to terms with your place in the world (and what “your place in the world” means to YOU, not to anyone else). As a recent graduate, this book was like looking in a mirror. I shared Grace’s quest for perfection and I got to experience my potential future through her. I know that I often say that I’m happy to have read a book at a specific time but believe me when I say that I NEEDED this book now. I don’t think the next few months of my life would be anywhere as promising if I had not read this book and got the reality check that I needed.

All of the characters were very interesting and written well even if they only had a few lines of dialogue throughout the book. Everyone just FELT real. Something about Rogers’ writing in this book reminds me of a quote from Toni Morrison where Morrison spoke about writing for a specific village. I think when you’re speaking from experiences that are significant in certain communities, the overall meaning will be universal, but it will be immediately understood by those who understand that community. Down to the dialogue, this book felt like a conversation between me and my friends.

It’s also important to say that I enjoyed this book mostly because the main character was someone I could see myself in – skin color and all – who was just going through life like a regular person. Everyone’s realities are different, but it’s really refreshing to read a book with a Black MC who is just going through the run-of-the-mill coming of age stuff rather than having to deal with some traumatic event that almost always has to do with police brutality.

This book really made me feel comfortable with expressing some of the stuff I’ve been struggling with these past few weeks.

Rating

I’m backs with another 5 star read! Goodreads might disagree but I know I’ll have to return to this book eventually to fully soak in the nuggets of wisdom that were being dropped If you’re debating reading this book, take my word: you need to buy this and read it ASAP.