Honey Girl

by Morgan Rogers

Overall: Grace Power wakes up after a crazy night in Vegas trying to piece together what just happened. She’s wearing a “Bride” t-shirt she’s never seen before, and has a gold ring on her finger, a photograph of herself at a church with a woman whose name she doesn’t know, and a cryptic note.  But Grace isn’t the type to get married to a stranger – she’s a buttoned-up PhD in astronomy, a Black woman who’s worked hard every moment of every day, the daughter of a man whose military discipline is so strong that even she calls him Colonel.  How could this have happened?  As Grace goes on a journey to find her mysterious wife, she begins to dive deeply into her own psyche for the first time, uncovering past traumas and unlearning a lifetime of questionable coping strategies on her way to finding her own truth.

Likes: I loved the characters.  Grace reminded me a lot of myself, very type A, academic, with a small group of close friends.  The relationship between Grace and Yuki (yes, that’s her wife’s name, and I decided it’s not a spoiler because it’s on the back cover) unfolds naturally, with just the kinds of bumps you’d expect of two people getting to know one another.  I loved the found families.  The relationship between Grace and Baba Vihaan, the owner of the tea shop where she works and the father of two of her best friends, especially stood out.  Found family sometimes focuses only on people of the same generation, so it was lovely to have Grace find a parental figure who’s emotionally available to her in a way her own parents are not.  And the humor in the book kept cracking me up.  Yuki and Grace’s banter over text is often hilarious, while showing how we often use humor to manage our feelings of vulnerability.

Dislikes: really none.  Which is shocking statement for me to write about a book that focuses so heavily on a romantic relationship!  I don’t often read romance because I don’t usually enjoy it, but I *loved* this book! Recommended for anyone into sapphic romance, found families, or books where a character falls apart and then has to try to put herself back together again.

FYI: racism, discussions of mental health, divorce, difficult parent-child relationships, references to a parent’s death.