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walkitoutOh, look a book review! I haven’t done one of these for a little bit.
My dear friend K. and I talk books all the time and we LOVE talking books, but our overlap of favorite books is limited. But when we love the same book, we LOVE the same book. I recently introduced her to the Charlie Madigan series and she returned the favor last night by pointing me at Mia Sosa’s book. And I’m reasonably certain I’ll be reading more.
Storytelling is alternating first person (so each chapter has a name as a subhead in the chapter, telling you which perspective). Unlike some readers, I don’t have a knee jerk response to first person; Sosa handles it super well. And the discipline of alternating chapters works well here also. Nor does she do the backtrack and retell bits so you see if from both sides thing which is hard to resist doing but rarely actually worth it (altho wow, when people love that, they’ll buy it in job lots).
SPOILERS ALWAYS SPOILERS WHY DO YOU EVEN READ THIS BLOG SERIOUSLY GO AWAY ALREADY OR TORI WILL MAKE YOU DO HOT YOGA
Carter Stone (acting name) / Williamson (IRL) has lost a ton of weight to do a “serious” role when he is normally a TV rom com guy. On a recovery trip to Aruba, he meets Tori, a Puerto Rican (ancestry) personal trainer who learned that her Philadelphia City Councilman boyfriend “doesn’t have anyone special in his life” by listening to him be interviewed on the radio. He was trying to maneuver her into being a politician’s wife; she wasn’t going for it. They sit next to each other on the plane, but she says he has a boyfriend. They meet again at the bar at the resort they are both staying at. Antics ensue, with Williamson not wanting to get too close without divulging his real identity but enjoying being a Norm. She’s generally gun shy at the moment wanting to avoid a rebound, but totally into him. She runs when she finds out who he “really” is. He pursues in a way that could be problematic but is handled mostly sensitively by the author. (Particularly funny when we find out _why_ her bosses decide to be so understanding of her having a Thing with a client. At least they decide not to be hypocrites, altho they are not exactly up front about it, but hey, what do you expect, this is a trilogy, amirite?)
Tori has a complex relationship with her family. Her father has had a couple strokes, but loves fried food which is not good for him. Mom and sis vs. Tori on the food front, with Mom and sis running the family restaurant and Tori (obviously) on the Eat Healthy side. They actually come up with a nice resolution on this, which is maybe a bit optimistic, but not totally implausible.
Carter is pretty emotionally healthy, but delightfully oblivious to a lot of nuance going on around him. Believably so. It’s actually kind of cool.
All sorts of entertaining boundary violations, but it turns out I don’t _mind_ boundary violations when an author handles them _as_ boundary violations and they generate conflict / pushback / negotiation. And as long as I’m not supposed to _like_ the character doing the boundary violation for doing it. I’ll happily read more by this author.
My dear friend K. and I talk books all the time and we LOVE talking books, but our overlap of favorite books is limited. But when we love the same book, we LOVE the same book. I recently introduced her to the Charlie Madigan series and she returned the favor last night by pointing me at Mia Sosa’s book. And I’m reasonably certain I’ll be reading more.
Storytelling is alternating first person (so each chapter has a name as a subhead in the chapter, telling you which perspective). Unlike some readers, I don’t have a knee jerk response to first person; Sosa handles it super well. And the discipline of alternating chapters works well here also. Nor does she do the backtrack and retell bits so you see if from both sides thing which is hard to resist doing but rarely actually worth it (altho wow, when people love that, they’ll buy it in job lots).
SPOILERS ALWAYS SPOILERS WHY DO YOU EVEN READ THIS BLOG SERIOUSLY GO AWAY ALREADY OR TORI WILL MAKE YOU DO HOT YOGA
Carter Stone (acting name) / Williamson (IRL) has lost a ton of weight to do a “serious” role when he is normally a TV rom com guy. On a recovery trip to Aruba, he meets Tori, a Puerto Rican (ancestry) personal trainer who learned that her Philadelphia City Councilman boyfriend “doesn’t have anyone special in his life” by listening to him be interviewed on the radio. He was trying to maneuver her into being a politician’s wife; she wasn’t going for it. They sit next to each other on the plane, but she says he has a boyfriend. They meet again at the bar at the resort they are both staying at. Antics ensue, with Williamson not wanting to get too close without divulging his real identity but enjoying being a Norm. She’s generally gun shy at the moment wanting to avoid a rebound, but totally into him. She runs when she finds out who he “really” is. He pursues in a way that could be problematic but is handled mostly sensitively by the author. (Particularly funny when we find out _why_ her bosses decide to be so understanding of her having a Thing with a client. At least they decide not to be hypocrites, altho they are not exactly up front about it, but hey, what do you expect, this is a trilogy, amirite?)
Tori has a complex relationship with her family. Her father has had a couple strokes, but loves fried food which is not good for him. Mom and sis vs. Tori on the food front, with Mom and sis running the family restaurant and Tori (obviously) on the Eat Healthy side. They actually come up with a nice resolution on this, which is maybe a bit optimistic, but not totally implausible.
Carter is pretty emotionally healthy, but delightfully oblivious to a lot of nuance going on around him. Believably so. It’s actually kind of cool.
All sorts of entertaining boundary violations, but it turns out I don’t _mind_ boundary violations when an author handles them _as_ boundary violations and they generate conflict / pushback / negotiation. And as long as I’m not supposed to _like_ the character doing the boundary violation for doing it. I’ll happily read more by this author.