Title: Honey Girl
Author: Morgan Rogers
Publisher: Park Row
Publication Date: February 23, 2021
Genre: Women’s Fiction, LGBTQ
When becoming an adult means learning to love yourself first.
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 parent’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 constant 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.
Why This Book
Honey Girl has, in my opinion, been erroneously marketed as an LGBTQ romance. While the romance is woven through, the main focus is much more on Grace herself as she tries to figure out her place as a female person of color in a white male dominated field. But what really stole the show in this book are Grace’s and Yuki’s friends. Most of them are part of the LGBTQ community, so some of their relationships flirt between friendship and romance, but the friendship always felt like the stronger piece to me.
I adored all of their friends. They’re there for Grace and Yuki, respectively, through all the good and bad. They encourage each other and are always there with an ear and a shoulder. They’re all also a lot of fun with wonderful personalities that helped balance each other out while also making them complex all on their own.
Reviews
My review: “The focus on her friendships was also absolutely stunning. None of them were perfect, none of them had their lives figured out, but they were always, unquestioningly, there for each other. Not only did this turn out to be a gorgeous story about Grace’s journey, but it was also a lovely story of the strength of friendship”
Beyond a Bookshelf gave this 5 stars, saying “It’s about the love your friends provide you with, the love you can get from a found family, the love you receive from your significant other, and most importantly: the love you show to yourself”
Cozy Critiques rated this a 4, saying “It’s about the friends, family, and loved ones that stick by you and who you stick by as you all try to figure your shit out”
Word Wonders recommends this, saying “Morgan Rogers didn’t shy away from portraying very intense friendships where each person would die for the other, where everyone loves fiercely and where loving someone doesn’t mean coddling them but exposing their truths to them, which only makes them love you harder (even if they might hate you for a moment or two)”
The Quiet Pond said “Grace’s experience shows that each person she invites into her found family carries a different piece of her, and each person in her family of origin is a tangled string she can’t quite detach or unwind. People are messy and complicated, and sitting with that mess is sometimes really hard, but the people who sat with her made it worthwhile”
Life of a Female Bibliophile gave this a 4, saying ” One of my favorite parts about this book is Grace’s friends with their lively personalities and how we see them step up as a strong support system for her. The small intimate conversations with her friends, family, and Yuki (her wife) provided so many candid and tender moments thoroughout the novel”
Purchase Links
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | Harlequin | Powell’s | Bookshop | Target | Audible | Hoopla | Walmart | !ndigo | Blackwell’s (UK)
Pin this Book
Check out all the other books featured this month on The Curated Bookshelf.
This blog is my home base, but you can also find me on:
Pinterest | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
The Lily Cafe 