I know everyone is bumming over the fact that school supplies and Halloween candy are already showing up in stores, but the good news is, summer reading is still going strong. And the last two weeks have been the biggest release weeks on my summer reading list. Here are 5 new romances and contemporary fic to check out before summer slips away. I actually had the opp to read a few of them early, so those have brief reviews and the other 2 are on my TBR.
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The Hookup Plan may be the final book in Farrah Rochon’s Boyfriend Project series, but last is NOT least.
London has been an overachiever her whole life, always trying to get her father’s attention and approval with her accomplishments. And the moment Drew Sullivan rolled into Barbara Jordan High, she finally had some academic competition, which instantly made him her enemy. Fifteen years later, they meet up again at their class reunion, and the old animosity is still there, despite London now being a successful pediatric surgeon.
Workaholic, pre-hypertensive London needs to blow off some steam (and find some work/life balance) and Drew is just the guy to do it with. What’s meant to be a one-time thing turns into month-long hookup and these two can’t help but peel back the layers on the last 15 years along with their clothes.
This rivals-to-lovers, friends-with-benefits story is EVERYTHING.
The friendship among Samiah, Taylor, and London is stronger than ever and you’ll be wishing you had a standing invite to their girls’ nights and emergency breakfasts. The professional and personal plotlines for both London and Drew are rich, nuanced, and for some of us very relatable. Who knew hospital politics and sexism could be so interesting without the Grey’s Anatomy drama?
What I have loved about this series and is front and center again is that it’s about Black women being successful, finding love, and living their best lives. The road there isn’t always smooth, everyone has baggage, but it’s what makes this series, and the Hookup Plan in particular, such a satisfying read. The epilogue is exactly the final scene I needed (but it’s so hard to say goodbye!!). But maybe one day Farrah Rochon will gift us a one-shot for Craig. 😀
Heatwise, it’s on par with the previous two books. Though it’s friends-with-benefits, there’s not a lot of on-page detail for the early hookups, and one major on-page scene around 70%.
CW: narcissist parent; alcoholic, abusive parent; early death from cancer (at 53).
5 stars
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Check out my reviews of the first two books in the series: The Boyfriend Project and The Dating Playbook
Something about Julia Whalen’s work just really clicks with me. She knocked me out with a Brit MMC in My Oxford Year, and in Thank You for Listening she serves up an Irishman. Think of it as Book Lovers meets Second First Impressions. You get inside baseball on the publishing world, in this case, audiobook narration, and some of your favorite tropes. It kicks off with a one night stand in Vegas and turns into an epistolary-ish romance over email/text when she’s paired with another narrator. (I CANNOT WAIT to hear this voice in the audiobook). The rest I don’t want to spoil. You just have to see how the story unfolds.
Actor Sewanee Chester turns to audiobooks after an accident left her with an eye patch. She starts out in romance and moves on to other genres, but finds herself pulled back into romance, when author June French requests her specifically for her final project. And the fact that it’ll make her the kind of money she needs to pay for her grandmother’s assisted living situation makes it a done deal.
I loved the tropes, I loved that it was a smidge more racy than My Oxford Year (though Whalen’s style of romance mostly leaves it to you to fill in the details), and I loved the interstitial quotes. I loved Sewanee’s close relationship with her grandma, and the other residents at her facility.
A great summer read.
4 stars
CW: casual mentions of finding “your tribe”; early stage memory loss/dementia (grandmother)
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Hot off the second book in Emiko Jean’s YA Tokyo Ever After duology comes her first adult novel: Mika in Real Life.
Fiction has lots of complicated mother/daughter relationships between first-gen Americans and their immigrant parents, but as a Japanese American it’s weirdly refreshing to see a shin-Nisei character who’s a hot mess and disappointment to her parents. Mika didn’t just bust the model minority myth, she ran it over with a Mack truck.
In college, Mika was sexually assaulted by an art school classmate and her half Japanese baby is adopted by a white family in Ohio. Sixteen years later, her birth daughter tracks her down and wants to get to know her. Mika has had annual updates over the years as part of the conditions of adoption, but an in-person relationship is a whole other thing. Especially when at 35, she was fired from her last job, her roommate is a semi-hoarder and her relationship with her parents is tenuous at best. But she wants to make a good impression on Penny and invents the life she wishes she had. It’s one visit, what could go wrong?
Mika in Real Life is a book with real emotional depth. As Mika comes to grips with everything, her revelations shed light on complicated mother/daughter relationships and the downsides of parents treating their children like a do-over for everything they never got to do or be. But what makes it a worthwhile read is that Penny’s visit is only half the story. Mika finds a way to get back on track, so while it’s sometimes brutally honest, it’s also hopeful.
CW: rape/sexual assault, panic attacks, hoarding, grief/death of a parent (spouse)
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Childhood besties Riya Desai and Dhillon Vora shared everything until a massive housefire completely changed their lives, taking Dhillon’s dad and Riya’s older brother from them. It completely altered the course of their lives and they’ve barely spoken since. Now the only female firefighter in the house, she’s constantly having to prove she’s up to the job. When fate brings them together again, Dhillon’s become a veterinarian, and Riya brings in a rescue pup. After years apart, he’s shocked and angry she’s become a firefighter. The question is, what will it take for these two to accept the other’s path to healing? And can they find their way back to friendship, or more?
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Once you get into a stable relationship, everyone’s next question is usually, so when are you two getting married? As the blurb tells us, in Boyfriend Material, “‘Luc O’Donnell and and Oliver Blackwood met, pretended to fall in love, fell in love for real, dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and family and friends…and somehow figured out a way to make it all work. Now it seems like everyone around them is getting married, and Luc’s feeling the social pressure to propose That’s what you do when you love someone this desperately, right? But it’ll take more than four weddings, a funeral, and a hotly contested rainbow balloon arch to get this semi-disgraced son of former rockstars and his tightly buttoned-up boyfriend from “I don’t know what I’m doing” to I do.’
BTW – did you see Luc and Oliver will be back in the fourth book in the London Calling series? FATHER MATERIAL is due out in October 2024.
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