Anu Recommends #36
An early holiday Wake-Up Call, paid subscriptions, seasonal Neil Gaiman, and Percy Jackson nostalgia
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
It’s a longer-than-usual issue today, so settle in 🤓.
I’m very excited to review the latest release by an author who was not only single-handedly responsible for pulling me to rom-com books (and for, as a result, me trying harder to find stories there that suited my tastes—and finding them), but who was also the very first author I ever interviewed for this newsletter back in March 2020, which meant the world to me.
You can read our chat below:
But before that, I wanted to share the promised updates about how this newsletter will run commencing next week.
Paid Subscribers and Referrals
With Substack payments still in beta mode for India, the platform allows for subscriptions only in rupees for now. There was/is a Stripe provision to allow accepting in dollars, but turns out it’s too complicated at this stage in the process.
However, since I have so many lovely overseas subscribers and don’t wish to gatekeep anyone because of an unwieldy system not in our hands—if you do want to become a paid subscriber and have access to the paid subscriber-only posts, community, and everything else, you can pay via Paypal (anushree.nande@gmail.com) or pay via my Ko-fi the relevant amount in your currency of choice, and I’ll manually adjust the settings for you. If you choose this, just let me know with a message or email once you’ve paid, so we can sort out the rest.
You can have a look at the monthly and annual payment options here ($4/£3/€4 per month or $37/£29/€34 annually for overseas—for INR it’s Rs. 300 per month or Rs. 3000 annually which comes to Rs. 250 per month). There is a 7-day free trial available, but I recommend waiting to turn that on, as I won’t start sending out subscriber-only posts until I have everything sufficiently set up with the above (I have a feeling the first subscriber-only post might be in November, but don’t worry if you upgrade to paid earlier, your subscription won’t be active until that first issue).
For now, starting next week, free subscribers can expect a public post on the first and last Sunday of the month (one each of Anu Recommends and Creative Chats, more here). As a paid subscriber, you’ll get a post every Sunday, access to the subscriber-only chat and community, bonus writing and interview material, as well as many potential future perks I’m planning if all goes well (including live author chats and maybe even a monthly/bimonthly book club).
If you have any questions at all, you know where to find me; there is definitely a learning curve to this that no amount of prior planning or prep can help avoid, so thank you for coming along and being a part of it with me!
Oh, and in case you haven’t read the referrals email yet, or just want to refresh your memory, here’s where you go. I’m copy-pasting the important details below:
How to participate
1. Share The Storyteller. When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you'll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.
2. Earn benefits. When more friends use your referral link to subscribe, you’ll receive special benefits.
Get 1 month paid subscription for 3 referrals
Get 3 month paid subscription for 8 referrals
Get 3 free e-books of my work (55 Words, Summer Melody, and Pomegranate Summer) for 15 referrals
To learn more, check out Substack’s FAQs.
Welcome, autumn/fall (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere)
Now that the admin is out of the way, we can move back to the important stuff, aka stories.
This year’s autumnal equinox was yesterday (when day and night are approximately equal in length all over the world), and today marks the official first day of autumn/fall. My mood-reading self is particularly seasonal during this time of year, and over the following months—it was especially so during the four years I spent in Boston with its gorgeous fall colours.
One book I gravitate to, without fail, as the leaves transition is Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman.
This short-story collection is a favourite since it houses many of my oft-revisited stories, including ‘The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains,’ ‘Troll Bridge,’ ‘October in the Chair,’ and ‘The Sleeper and the Spindle,’ the last of which is also a beautifully illustrated graphic novel. The quote below from ‘October in the Chair’ is one of the reasons why I associate the collection with this season (though the general vibe of the other stories also adds to it)—
“His beard was all colors, a grove of trees in autumn, deep brown and fire-orange and wine-red, an untrimmed tangle across the lower half of his face. His cheeks were apple-red. He looked like a friend; like someone you had known all your life.”
Are you, too, a seasonal reader, and if so, what stories do you reach for at this time of year?
New Percy Jackson trailer
This is not a drill, folks.
Adolescent Anu, who fell in love with the books, is crying right now. This trailer gives me hope that the coming-soon series, helmed by the author himself, is the adaptation we’ve deserved after all these years of loving the worlds and characters created by Rick Riordan (I refuse to acknowledge the two movies that came out a decade ago, especially the second one, because no).
I think a reread, at least of the original five-book series, might be in order before the series arrives on our television screens on December 20. These were kid comfort books for a variety of reasons, and even as an adult, they’ve aged so well, and remain essential.
Do you have any stories that feel this way?
The Wake-Up Call by Beth O’Leary: a review
The Flatshare, Beth’s debut, was responsible for truly pulling me towards romcoms, and as I mentioned earlier, responsible for me trying harder to find stories there that suited my tastes—and finding them. If you were around for Anu Recommends #9 back in February, you already know why I love the book. For newer readers, here’s why:
The original review—
The reread—
Since then (and the first-ever Storyteller interview which was a chat with Beth that I shared at the start of this issue), I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of reading all of Beth’s new releases in advance. Her latest, The Wake-Up Call comes out on September 26, 2023, and, personally, joins The Flatshare as one of two top favourites by her. It’s also a holiday-themed book, hence the start of today’s sub-title.
Publisher’s blurb:
Two hotel receptionists—and arch-rivals—find a collection of old wedding rings and compete to return them to their owners, discovering their own love story along the way.
It's the busiest season of the year, and Forest Manor Hotel is quite literally falling apart. So when Izzy and Lucas are given the same shift on the hotel's front desk, they have no choice but to put their differences aside and see it through.
The hotel won't stay afloat beyond Christmas without some sort of miracle. But when Izzy returns a guest's lost wedding ring, the reward convinces management that this might be the way to fix everything. With four rings still sitting in the lost & found, the race is on for Izzy and Lucas to save their beloved hotel—and their jobs.
As their bitter rivalry turns into something much more complicated, Izzy and Lucas begin to wonder if there's more at stake here than the hotel's future. Can the two of them make it through the season with their hearts intact?
Beth says that she writes “uplifting love stories - the sort of books you reach for when you need a hug,” something that is very much true of The Wake-Up Call (and remains true for The Flatshare), but what this description belies is how much her books, the two in question included, also deal with the very real, the very heavy, the very painful parts of life. Without them, the joy, the hope, and the heart would feel unearned; all froth and no substance. And it’s to Beth’s credit that she grapples with and juggles both seamlessly, crafting characters that feel human and three-dimensional, worlds that you want to immediately transport to, and well-fleshed-out supporting casts that feel like found family.
In The Wake-Up Call, as with all her books, we get alternating viewpoints from the main characters—here Izzy and Lucas who seemingly can’t stand each other, but must work together, and against each other, to save the hotel that has come to mean so much to them for different reasons. Both leads have well-defined narrative voices and perspectives, and we get to know them through their own and the opposite POVs. The storyline of the old wedding rings and the resultant bet doesn’t come in until much later in the book, and the plot can seem a bit meandering at times simply because there are multiple narrative threads it is juggling, but I didn’t mind one bit since I cared for this cast of characters and I love Beth’s crisp-but-warm writing style (though, I’d have liked an ending a little less rushed).
Beth is in fine form here as she navigates showing us the undeniable sparks and the crackling banter (and sometimes childish behaviour) between the lead pair, as well as quieter, more contemplative glimpses that are compelling for their vulnerability and honesty—two characters who keep much hidden, but find themselves pulled towards the other; inexorably, many times unwillingly because they want to protect their hearts. I will warn you that a miscommunication is at the heart of their “rivalry”, but as someone who normally hates the trope, I found it surprisingly well-handled here. It wasn’t just dragged on for the sake of plot, but made sense within the context of these characters and their histories.
Izzy and Lucas, although they made me want to yell at both of them at times for their stubbornness, join The Flatshare’s Tiffany and Leon in my pantheon of favourite book couples, and I look forward to listening to the audiobook version of this at some point.
If you like fizzy, flirty, but cosy romcoms set around the end-of-year holiday season with a well-developed cast of characters, I’d definitely recommend The Wake-Up Call!
(Thank you to the US publisher, Berkley, and Beth’s publicist, Tina for my advance review copy.)
As always, please feel free to send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue 😊 Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.
Take care and see you next week!
Anu
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You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @booksinboston.