Title: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Publisher: Park Row Books
Genre: Contemporary, Lesbian, Romance, Women’s Fiction
Length: 241 pages
Book Rating: B+
Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley
Summary:
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.
Review:
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers is a multi-layered novel with a fantastic cast of diverse characters.
Grace Porter should be on the top of the world. After years of hard work, she finally has her doctorate in astronomy. The next phase of her plan should be easy but as a Black woman working in a white man’s career field, Grace is struggling to secure a job. And then there’s the fact that on a girls’ trip to Vegas, Grace wakes up to find she is married a perfect stranger. Her new wife, Yuki Yamamoto, skipped out the morning after their impulsive wedding, but she left her contact info. As Grace tries to figure out her future, she decides to take a break and get to know her new wife. But can she compromise her life goals in order for her and Yuki to live happily ever after?
After her parents’ divorce, Grace and her military father leave her mother’s Florida orange grove to settle down in Portland. Her dad is strict with exacting standards and high expectations for his only daughter. In between working the orchard, Grace’s mom travels the world trying to find herself. Although Grace does not want to let either parent down, she does insist on choosing her career path. In order to please her parents, she studies hard and excels in college. Now twenty-eight years old, Grace is a new graduate with an unexpected wife and trying to figure out how to make her career goals mesh with her new marriage.
Yuki has a cool radio show where she incorporates storytelling with her exploration of interesting urban myths. She is mostly comfortable with where she in life and she is delighted Grace wants to give their marriage a chance. Yuki is not as driven as her wife and she prioritizes relationships over climbing the career ladder. When their different approaches to life clash, will Grace and Yuki find a compromise that works for them?
Both Yuki and Grace have strong support systems. Since Grace is the one who does not have a job, she travels to New York to get to know Yuki. She misses her friends but she is a good fit with Yuki’s friends. Despite being surrounded by people who care for her, Grace struggles to escape the loneliness and anxiety she feels while trying to cope with the stress of finding the perfect job. Grace cannot outrun her problems but will she slow down long enough to take the necessary steps to deal with her issues?
Honey Girl is a captivating novel with a realistic storyline and relatable characters. Despite her outward success, Grace is a hot mess once it is time to move on to the next stage in her life. Yuki is a delightful young woman with quirky interests and a steadying presence. The secondary cast of characters is quite colorful and extremely loyal to one another. Morgan Rogers brings this charming debut to an uplifting conclusion that readers will love.
