Started: February 17th
Finished: February 24th
TSM Rating: 4/5
Quarter-life crisis. Complete debilitating fear that every decision you’ve ever made was wrong. Trying to prove yourself in a world that doesn’t want to try and understand you. Also, finding a love so big and scary you need to run away from it.
Grace Porter is at a crossroads in her life. She’s finally finished school, getting her PhD. Now she has to get a job in her chosen field — astronomy —and everything goes terribly wrong. When she crashes and burns her first interview, everything that she’s suppressed over the last decade finally catches up to her. So much so that she’s does something so rash as to get married to a woman she just met, Yuki, on her graduation trip to Las Vegas.
The way Morgan Rogers writes about Grace — Porter as she called by everyone in her life — and Yuki’s connection is so lyrical and enchanting. It’s the best part of the book.
As Grace begins to confront her future, she also begins to open her eyes and see all the things she’s missed in her singular focus on the plan that she had laid out for herself, but also by her strict military man father, who everyone, including Grace, refers to as Colonel.
I couldn’t help but feel frustrated for Grace throughout the whole book, though. Her parents failed her in so many ways. There’s one character in the book — Miss Debbie — who works for Grace’s father and who feels like she can speak to Grace in any way she wants to. I think that’s the part that made me the angriest. It’s not clear if Colonel knows how Miss Debbie treats Grace and condones it or if he’s ignorant to it and Grace doesn’t tell him because she is so afraid of disappointing him.
On some level, everyone in the book is on their own mental health journey. The story is about the thing we do to please everyone else and confronting what that can do to us. It’s about friendship and the family that you chose. It’s about learning to be there for those who love you and being there for yourself. It’s about putting yourself first, but also supporting the people who choose to support you.
The Saucy Mama 