Love After Loss | 1.20.23
Good grief, let's talk about grief!
When I began my romance hyper-fixation last year, I admit I was surprised how many love stories center death and grief as a primary driver of plot and character growth. I guess it felt thematically at odd for a genre all about happy-ever-afters. However, as I continued reading… it became clear how much more cathartic a HEA felt after overcoming something as all-consuming as grief.
The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez. The second in this trilogy (we talked about book 3, Life's Too Short, a few weeks back) was actually the first I read. Near the end of book 1 (which I would read much later), painter Sloane Monroe’s fiance crashed his motorcycle just weeks before their wedding. The Happy Ever After Playlist picks up two years later, where a still grieving Sloan rescues an escaped dog as she goes to visit her fiance’s grave. Eventually, the dog’s origins are revealed: his owner is out of the country and left him with an apparently untrustworthy friend. The first third of this book follows the long distance flirtation between Sloan and the dog’s owner, Jason. When he finally gets back into town, we learn something else: Jason’s not just any musician. He’s a musician on the cusp of mega-stardom after doing the soundtrack for a major motion picture with his own traumatic romantic baggage, and the fame he’s begun accruing is only making things messier. What follows is two deeply troubled people at a turning point in their lives, who have to figure out if their shared love of Tucker the dog and each other is enough to weather the storm of toxic fame, the business of art rather than the craft of it, manipulative outside forces, and the potent guilt of moving forward after grief.
Like all of Abby Jimenez’s books, this book will rip your heart out, spit on it, then remake it in a new, stronger way just when you’ve given up on everything. But as you should all know by now, I love pain, and no one hurts me better than Ms. Jimenez.
Each chapter of this book has a different song as its title/in the intro, which a helpful reader compiled into a Spotify playlist here! Not all chapters are the same length so it’s not a perfect reading/listening sync, but I enjoyed following the musical emotional journey.
Rating: 5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Beach Read by Emily Henry. When January inherits her father’s lakeside vacation home in Michigan after he unexpectedly passes away, it comes with a lot more baggage than simply grief, because the lakehouse was where he spent time with his mistress, who she learned of and met for the first time at his funeral. Since then, January’s lost her picture-perfect boyfriend and absolutely all of her interest in writing a new romance novel manuscript, which is a problem for a life-long romantic who makes her living as a romance novelist.
With only a few months before her new draft is due and a house full of memories of a man she apparently didn’t know at all, January finds herself relying heavily on Gus, her new neighbor and, incidentally, her old college nemesis. He’s a pretentious, holier-than-thou literary fiction writer and represents the cynicism and nihilism that she used to find exhausting, but now embraces. Turns out, he’s stuck with his new manuscript as well, so in solidarity with the other’s writer’s block (and the assumption that the others’ genre of choice is easy as pie), they swap genres for the summer, and whoever gets their book published first will be crowned the winner, while the other has to write a glowing pull quote in defeat.
I forced my now-husband to read this book recently, and after reading two pages he looked up at me and was like “ok I understand why you like this book.” It’s like Emily Henry reached into my heart and slapped me in the face with my own coming of age hangups about love and relationships. Suffice it to say: this book is worthy of the hype.
Rating: 5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune. This second chance split chronology love story follows Percy and Sam, childhood friends due to Percy’s dad buying the lakehouse next to Sam’s family and them spending much of six summers together, eventually falling in love, before a dramatic event causes a schism that lasts a decade. But now, full adult Percy is back in town for a single weekend for Sam’s mother’s funeral. Are the two of them brave enough to take a hard look at who they were, who they’ve become, and who they might be if they reckon with the choices that have haunted them both for years?
This book is great paired with Beach Read (vacation home in a small town!) in addition to their connection as books about grief/the death of a parent.
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending books with women business owners (NOT girlbosses, although… they are girlbosses and I love them for it)!
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!