Review: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

It was easy to miss someone you don’t really remember. Maybe not the filled-in parts of them: their name, if they kicked in their sleep, if they really kissed you before they disappeared out of the hotel room. But, it was easy to miss the outline of them: their laughter and their sea-salt skin and the traces of magic they left.

Release Date: February 23rd, 2021

Genre(s): Adult Fiction, Contemporary, LGBT

Publisher: Park Row Books

Pages: 241

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Synopsis

Honey Girl follows Grace, who goes on a girl’s trip to Vegas after getting her Ph.D. in astronomy. She’s a hard worker and a high achiever, yet she doesn’t feel very fulfilled after completing her degree. She’s also the last person to think she would get drunk and marry a woman she just met until she does just that. And after struggling with her father’s expectations and feelings of burnout, Grace flees to New York with her wife, only to face what she’s been running from all along.

Review

I have to admit, contemporary romance is not a genre that I pick up very often. But when I read the synopsis of Honey Girl, it sounded like a contemporary novel I would enjoy – and I was not disappointed!

To start, I loved the exploration behind uncertainty and Grace finding herself in her twenties. Most people don’t have everything figured out, especially early on, so I liked that Honey Girl discusses this and what the pressures behind that are. I also liked the exploration of Grace’s burnout and how all of the efforts she’s put into her career over the years impacted her mentally. All of this combined with the struggles she faces finding work and facing rejections as a woman of color in STEM is something that I think a lot of readers can relate to. I feel like a lot of books I’ve read that discuss these subjects don’t look at it with as serious of an angle as Honey Girl did, so I definitely appreciate how it was executed here.

As someone who doesn’t read romances often, I really liked the romance in Honey Girl. If you prefer romances to be almost secondary to the main storyline, I think you’d like this book. In particular, I liked reading about how Grace and Yuki get to know each other after their marriage, and the difficulties that came with that. This book also explores the importance of non-romantic relationships and the many types of love, which I am always happy to see:

This is the thing: for as lonely and solitary as Grace feels, she is not alone. She has Raj and Meera. She has Agnes. To the very marrow of her, down to the studs, she has Ximena. Raj and Meera are her family, not blood, but flesh and spirit and heart. Agnes is her best friend. Ximena is who she will grab on to when the world ends, and they will watch it burn to ash before they follow.

The one thing I would have liked from Honey Girl was a longer ending. There was a lot that happened in the last quarter of the book, and I wish it would have been dragged out much longer. There’s a lot that happens in the last 15% in particular, and it just felt like there was too much that was resolved in just a matter of hours.

Regardless, I really enjoyed Honey Girl and would love to pick up some contemporary novels just like it. I love the exploration of the issues that the book tacked and was happily rooting for Grace all the way through. Again, I think this is a great fit for those that don’t read contemporary romances too often but want to give them a try.

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