Anu Recommends #28

A new release and two old ones: the Rachel Lynn Solomon edit

Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!

How’s everyone doing? Any summer reads to recommend, any adventures, or victories, to share?

Today’s issue is dedicated to Rachel Lynn Solomon’s Business or Pleasure, an adult rom-com which also released on July 4, 2023 like The Dane of my Existence (if you haven’t yet caught up on last Sunday’s review of it and interview with the author, Jessica Martin, here’s your reminder to do so!)—and I’ve taken the opportunity to recommend two more books by Rachel, my favourites, a young adult, and a new adult, that showcase her impressive range.

Today Tonight Tomorrow

Publisher’s blurb:

Today, she hates him.

It’s the last day of senior year. Rowan Roth and Neil McNair have been bitter rivals for all of high school, clashing on test scores, student council elections, and even gym class pull-up contests. While Rowan, who secretly wants to write romance novels, is anxious about the future, she’d love to beat her infuriating nemesis one last time.

Tonight, she puts up with him.

When Neil is named valedictorian, Rowan has only one chance at victory: Howl, a senior class game that takes them all over Seattle, a farewell tour of the city she loves. But after learning a group of seniors is out to get them, she and Neil reluctantly decide to team up until they’re the last players left—and then they’ll destroy each other.

As Rowan spends more time with Neil, she realizes he’s much more than the awkward linguistics nerd she’s sparred with for the past four years. And, perhaps, this boy she claims to despise might actually be the boy of her dreams.

Tomorrow … maybe she’s already fallen for him.

These days, after having been a regular reader of young adult books for many years, and as my age gets further away from my teenage years, I need something more when I read YA. This book had that in spades—whether the beautiful love-letter to the city of Seattle, the three-dimensional characters (yes, even when they’re being frustratingly teenage), or the (soon to be familiar to me) trademark Rachel way of thoughtful, nuanced exploration of (in this case) being young, in that transitional time between high school and college, and feeling unsure of everything. Whether any of it’s going to work out, how to juggle parental expectations and approval without losing your sense of self; while juggling all the emotions, including burgeoning feelings about someone you thought was your rival.

Over the course of one day, one night, and the next day (a trope that can be really hard to pull off), Rachel masterfully leads us, and Rowan and Neil, on a very compelling journey that balances the past, the present, and the what will be.

(This book, like all of the author’s works, has the characters’ shared Jewish heritage front and center, and I enjoyed all the discussions around it, while also learning a lot.)

See You Yesterday

I'm someone whose interests span genres and so it’s less about content and theme and more about the feeling the author's works leave me with, the immediate, enveloping sense of familiarity and kinship even when they're trying something new; after all even if the stories tread grounds we're intimately acquainted with, these authors find a way to renew and refine our bonds, to enrich the connection that draws us repeatedly, sometimes compulsively drives us back to them.

Some (many) of them leave us with a sense of well-being, of comfort, even if the topics they tackle are anything but. Rachel is one of them. I've been a fan since our paths first crossed when I was working for the Boston Teen Author Festival and she was an invited author—and with each new book, she cements her place among my favourites.

Publisher’s blurb:

Barrett Bloom is hoping college will be a fresh start after a messy high school experience. But when school begins on September 21st, everything goes wrong. She’s humiliated by the know-it-all in her physics class, she botches her interview for the college paper, and at a party that night, she accidentally sets a frat on fire. She panics and flees, and when she realizes her roommate locked her out of their dorm, she falls asleep in the common room.

The next morning, Barrett’s perplexed to find herself back in her dorm room bed, no longer smelling of ashes and crushed dreams. It’s September 21st. Again. And after a confrontation with Miles, the guy from Physics 101, she learns she’s not alone—he’s been trapped for months.

When her attempts to fix her timeline fail, she agrees to work with Miles to find a way out. Soon they’re exploring the mysterious underbelly of the university and going on wild, romantic adventures. As they start falling for each other, they face the universe’s biggest unanswered question yet: what happens to their relationship if they finally make it to tomorrow?

Now, apart from Groundhog Day, I haven't really consumed any time-loop-based books or TV shows or movies, so I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it in See You Yesterday but I shouldn't have worried. It's a super-slow burn, both in terms of developing a reader connection and the main characters gaining a connect of their own. But it's all worth it in the way it builds and eventually comes together, allowing much time for character development, development of individual and plot arcs.

It's funny, hits all the right emotional beats, offers up serious questions and ponderings about life, growth, and transition, and realistically captures the mindset of two teens starting to navigate everything college can offer but also what it can force us to reckon with.

Seattle doesn't play as big a role in this book as her previous ones, but the author's ability to craft authentic characters (flawed, quirky without it overshadowing personality, just so human and genuine) remains on par with some of the best I've read in the genre.

Business or Pleasure (… or how about both?)

Publisher’s blurb:

A ghostwriter and a struggling actor help each other on the page and in the bedroom in this steamy romantic comedy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ex Talk.

Chandler Cohen has never felt more like the ghost in "ghostwriter" until she attends a signing for a book she wrote—and the author doesn’t even recognize her. The evening turns more promising when she meets a charming man at the bar and immediately connects with him. But when all their sexual tension culminates in a spectacularly awkward hookup, she decides this is one night better off forgotten.

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Her next project is ghostwriting a memoir for Finn Walsh, a C-list actor best known for playing a lovable nerd on a cult classic werewolf show who now makes a living appearing at fan conventions across the country. Chandler knows him better from their one-night stand of hilarious mishaps.

Chandler’s determined to keep their partnership as professional as possible, but when she admits to Finn their night together wasn’t as mind-blowing as he thought it was, he’s distraught. He intrigues her enough that they strike a deal: when they’re not working on his book, Chandler will school Finn in the art of satisfaction. As they grow closer both in and out of the bedroom, they must figure out which is more important, business or pleasure—or if there's a way for them to have both.

I’ve been reading Rachel’s books since her early YA work, and it has been nothing short of joyful to witness her author journey so far.

Business or Pleasure is hands down my favourite adult rom-com by her. She tackles tropes and storylines that would have been easily cliche in another writer’s hands, and crafts a compelling, nuanced, fun, feels-filled narrative with characters that feel wonderfully human (and they actually communicate through it all, gasp).

For example, this is a very open-door romance, as the blurb might have more than hinted at, but it skips over the problematic elements of the one-night-stand and insta-lust tropes with the beautifully crafted slow emotional burn of Chandler and Finn really starting to connect and getting to know each other as the narrative progresses. The final third does feel a little rushed in comparison to the rest of it, but that doesn’t take too much away from the enjoyment. And, as always, Rachel manages to treat sensitive subject matter with thoughtful care, tenderness, and nuance.

Highly recommend!

I would also recommend you check out this post where, among other things, Rachel talks about how reading romance was empowering and life-changing for her.

Rachel Lynn Solomon

Rachel Lynn Solomon on Instagram: “When I was in high school, I begged my parents to write a note excusing me from sex ed. The idea of sitting next to 30 classmates while all of us struggled to put a condom on a banana was a special brand of horrifying, and I just couldn’t fathom it. So my parents wrote the note. And I didn’t go. I’m not sure where the shame originated. I was a shy, introverted teenager, so that might have been part of it, but I think the media I consumed was probably a bigger part. Women didn’t experience or act on desire in any of the books I read or movies/shows I watched. They laughed and pushed men away. They held back. I was so uncomfortable in my body, in the desires I wasn’t sure I was supposed to feel. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know how it worked — I didn’t *want* to know. That seemed much safer. And yet in two and a half months, I’m releasing a book where sex is quite literally a plot point, with a heroine who understands herself and her desires more than I ever did growing up. Because here is where my education finally took place: in romance novels. Reading romance has been both empowering and life-changing, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that. And it’s my greatest wish that this book does that for others. I can laugh at it now, the fact that I removed myself from sex ed and now I write steamy romance full-time. I’m not sure if my younger self would be appalled or proud — but I’m going to go with proud. Preorders of this spicy purple book of mine truly mean the world to me. I’ll be sharing much more about BUSINESS OR PLEASURE in the coming months, and I felt I had to start with this post — because this is the book I wish I’d had, with a heroine I wish I could have been. I hope it finds you at exactly the right time. 💙”

April 17, 2023

Along with this:

Another post to go through is this by Storyteller favourite, India Holton for Lit Hub:

‘Why Romance Needs its Tropes: A Defense.’

To read more works by Rachel Lynn Solomon or know more about her, please check out her website, as well as her old interview for the Storyteller back in March 2021.

And if you’d like to read an excerpt from Business or Pleasure, you can do so here.

Summer break and new schedule

After a lot of going back and forth, I’ve decided to take a short summer break from the Storyteller, and switch to a bi-weekly schedule during (I’ve advance scheduled three issues for July 16, July 30, and August 13, so watch out for them in your inboxes at the usual time of 9 am IST on those Sundays). The newsletter will be back to regular programming starting August 27.

As much as I love writing to you all every week, it’s a lot of work and energy to juggle this, my paid jobs, and my personal writing—and a break to refill my creative and mental wells is much needed!

Hope you enjoy the issues I’ve scheduled during my absence, and I look forward to being back and sharing what I’ve got planned for the rest of the year!

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As always, please feel free 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, well, this newsletter will 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.