Book: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Read From: 17th October - 24th October 2021
Rating: 4/5 stars
Summary: With her new astronomy PhD, Grace Porter goes on a girls' trip to Vegas to celebrate. She is not the kind of person to get 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 father’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.
This book has been described by so many people as a 'rom-com' and whilst the romance does play a part in this book, this description couldn't be further from the reality. This novel is more about Grace's own self-discovery, her battle with mental health (lots of TW's so be sure to check before reading!) and dealing with pressure and burnout.
As someone who will be graduating from higher education in a matter of months (scary), this book was excellent. It shows the inevitable dread that comes with finishing education - of not knowing where to go and what to do. This book was reassuring; it can often seem like everyone has their lives worked out but as someone who most certainly doesn't, it was great to see this represented.
I want to talk about the romance but I'm also fully aware it wasn't the main focus of the story and also the love story between Yuki and Grace was what made this book a 4 star rather than a 5 star for me. Ironically, I hate insta-love but this book didn't feel too insta-lovey and this wasn't the aspect I disliked. I just couldn't get on board with Yuki as a love interest, I thought that her and her friends could be really pretentious and the CONSTANT repetition of 'lonely creature' very quickly started to annoy me rather than endear me. I suppose the romance sub-plot was kind of relevant (the book ends up being very character driven) but in the grand scheme of things I would have much preferred to see Grace and ONLY Grace's journey.
For the most part, I really enjoyed the writing style. There were some really beautiful passages where I found myself wanting to tab everything, but there were also some things that really irritated me - alongside the 'lonely creature' repetition, we are almost constantly reminded that Grace has golden hair (as if the title of this book isn't literally HONEY Girl), and the 'I am a Porter, Porter's don't give up etc' mantra started to get too repetitive and it began to lose its desired effect for me. I understand why it was included, but I think a lot more could have been done with much less repetition.
I feel like I've drawn on so many not-so-great aspects within this review which was definitely not my intention at all! I absolutely loved this book and I was pleasantly surprised that it was far more than a fluffy rom-com. I liked how it approached and dealt with sensitive topics and I loved Grace's character and her journey so much. This is a book I will highly recommend, particularly to people in their 20s. Just make sure that you check the trigger warnings before going in.