My High Summer of Reading was quite the playlist of love

 

Happy September, folks and I hope you all enjoyed a good Labor Day weekend. Mine was spent finishing up one  last book for Seasons of Reading‘a High Summer Readathon (hosted by Michelle Miller) it was time well worth it, indeed.

Before I talk about that book, let’s start at the beginning with Last Night Was Fun by Holly Michelle (who has written YA novels under the name Holly James). The title refers to a strange text message received by Emmy , whose sole purpose in life is to get a major league promotion at work, which happens to be a statistical analyst for a baseball team. She has no social life beyond helping her younger sister plan her big destination wedding so this text is a real puzzler.

As it turns out, the guy sending this message thought he was talking to the woman that he had just been on a date with and despite what he assumed, that feeling about their evening wasn’t shared. The fake phone number he got happens to Emmy’s and once that mystery is cleared up, the two of them form a text-only relationship that slowly yet surely becomes more than just idle chatter.

All too soon, Emmy is in need of a plus-one for her sister’s wedding and takes a chance by asking her new texting partner to go with her. However, that partner is revealed as Gabe, her coworker and rival for the big promotion! Can the two of them put their professional issues aside to pursue a more personal connection together?

While this does sound very romcom, Holly Michelle brings a solid dose of character development and sly wit to this story, making her supporting players just as engaging as the leads are there. The genre tropes are well woven into the plot but they don’t run roughshod over the initial story at all.

Plus, it was nice to see Emmy and Gabe have one big thing in common and that is their mutual love of baseball which makes their statistical work more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s the fine touches like that which makes this book a home run read:

Next up was Danica Nava’s debut novel, The Truth According to Ember, which also had a workplace theme. Ember has been trying to get the accounting job of her dreams but thirty seven rejections have a way of making her feel  permanently stuck at the bottom of the career ladder.

After tweaking her resume, she does an interview at a tech company, which starts off as a great opportunity for steady and stable work. Before she knows it, Ember winds up as a temporary executive assistant to the big boss, a position that she’s determined to do well in despite being overwhelmed by the sudden shift in gears.

It does help to have a new work friend, Danuwoa, the kind hearted IT guy who is happy to lend a hand when needed. However, Ember is worried about the no dating coworkers rule at work causing both of them to lose their jobs. Regardless of that, they do develop feelings for each other but many of Ember’s falsehoods begin to stand in the way of their potential romantic future together. Can she tell the truth without too many painful consequences?

Nava blends romcom energy with realistic elements to make her first romance novel stand out in the best sense of the term. Her characters are well rounded and fully nuanced, not to mention that the class and race struggles that her leading lady deals with enhance the complexities that she finds herself in.

It’s a riveting page turner that reminds me greatly of the classic workplace romcom Working Girl, with it’s moments of wit, social satire and vested interest in seeing Ember achieve her dreams, professional as well as personal:

And now for the book I spent my Labor Day with; instead of pursuing Passion Project, I wanted to keep on going with workplace centered romance and went with The Build-a-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver.

Eli is stuck in a rut at his job with the online magazine Vent, tired of being just an assistant and not getting to write the meaningful stories that Vent used to be known for. Plus, he has to work with Keith, a former boyfriend who seems to be advancing much more in his job than Eli is.

At the suggestion of his roommate, Eli goes on a blind date with Peter, who doesn’t have a lot of friends in town. The date is quite the train wreck as Peter shows up over a hour late, constantly answers his phone for work calls and spills more than one food or drink on Eli.

However, Eli may be disappointed but finds it hard to get mad at Peter, who truly has no dating experience as an adult coming from a remote part of the South with no real interaction with his peers in the community.

This leads Eli into getting an assignment from his boss to write about his bad first date as the snarky title social experiment. Eli prefers to write a more positive article about Peter’s emotional experiences and while hoping to convince his boss to publish the latter, Eli also works on the former and gets Peter to take dating lessons from him.

As time goes by, Eli and Peter learn a lot from each other, finding out  that they have  much more in common than they realized. While neither of them intend to get too connected emotionally by mutual agreement, that bond eventually happens and when push comes to shove, Eli has to take real risks with his life and work. Will Peter have to suffer for Eli’s mistakes or is that a lesson they need to learn apart from each other?

Much like the first book I read for this readathon, Deaver is well known for their YA novels and that experience with character growth is brilliantly displayed here with heartfelt emotions, good humor and well earned moments of personal truth. Despite his mistakes, Eli is a lead that you continue to root for and Peter with his gentle soul is such a sweetheart to behold.

I do love a slow burn setup and this one delivers, with a wonderful cast of supporting characters and enough charm for a dozen romcom movies there. One of the novel’s themes is dealing with being unable to connect with your adult peers romantically when you didn’t have any opportunities in your younger years(especially as part of an oppressed social group in a remote section of the country) and it’s such a touchstone element among others in this book that makes it one of the best things that I’ve read this year:

Well, that was certainly a great way to end the summer and much thanks to Michelle Miller for giving us a good reason to enjoy this sweaty season with a stack of books under the nearest AC unit!

Hope everyone else who joined had a great reading time as well and will be ready for like Freddy(Krueger, that is) for the FrightFall readathon this October. As for me, my pile of spooky season reads are growing in a scary fashion indeed , almost with demonic flair, you could say….: