What a Romance Book Should Be

I've had some exciting updates in the past two weeks! I have dreamed of being a writer since I was in elementary school, and this step back from full-time teaching has given me the time and space to pitch my work and focus on writing. I am officially a freelance writer for The Guam Guide, and you can find my first article here! I also had my submission accepted by Blog Brigade, and my piece will be published in a couple of months. I’m actively looking for more writing opportunities, so if you or someone you know is looking for a writer for a short or long term project, please let me know. 

I got to be a substitute teacher all of last week, and it was great to see my students again. I am grateful for the chance to reconnect with them and to still have the experience of teaching, just with more flexibility. I did PE all of last week and have a week of social studies and a week of biology/life science booked in the near future. I especially like that I have the freedom to explore other grade levels and subjects and have my fingers crossed I can get some time in the Lower School.

On today’s edition, you’re going to hear me rant about why a buzzy romance book majorly let me down and why the pharmaceutical industry disappoints me over and over again. But, on the bright side, I have a quick and easy, breezy summer read I enjoyed. So, it’s not all doom and gloom.  

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Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez: I had finally fallen into a happy flow with Jimenez’s books. When I first started reading her romance novels, I was frustrated by the blatant lack of communication scenes, cheating, and characters that were too frustrating to root for. Why did I keep coming back? I guess I’m a sucker for a happy ending and all the hype she’s received. I really enjoyed Just for the Summer, but Say You’ll Remember Me was too depressing for too long to adequately deserve the title of having a “happily ever after.” 

Here’s how it goes. Samantha and Xavier have a fundamentally life-changing first date, sparks fly, hearts flutter, BUT Samantha drops the bomb that their relationship will never work because she is literally moving RIGHT NOW to a different state because her family is desperate for an extra set of hands to help care for her mother who is suffering from dementia. Xavier, meanwhile, is drowning in debt from opening his own veterinary practice, is generally miserable without Samantha around, and continues to drown in debt in an attempt to have a long distance relationship. Meanwhile, things become increasingly more and more depressing and desperate in Samantha’s household, somehow cheating on your spouse if they have dementia is given a pass (WHAT???), and you leave each chapter feeling hopeless as things somehow continue to get worse and worse for Samantha and Xavier. No one has money, no one has happiness, and everything is bleak. You can’t sell me a cover with a pastel beach scene, a happy dog, and the couple kissing and then give me that. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like when romance novels include real-life issues. However, there is a difference between showing characters that support each other for better and for worse and just showing the “worse” for the majority of the story. I didn’t want to read a love story that barely had the characters interact because it was logistically and financially too difficult to coordinate. I love some yearning and pining, but I don’t want to read about people working crazy hours until they’re literally sick as they make a series of crippling financial decisions. The “solution” to all of their problems is so unrealistic, so last-minute, and so late in the game that I was feeling frustrated and sad and wishing I hadn’t wasted my money. This is probably the harshest review that I’ve put on this blog, but I can’t get past how upset I was reading what should have been a light beach read. 

At least the dog lives. At LEAST! The world is hard as it is. If I pick up a mystery novel, I know that the case will be solved at the end. If I pick up a horror novel, I know I’ll be scared. If I pick up a romance novel, I want to smile and feel butterflies and close the book with hope in my heart. Genres leave us with expectations, and this one let me down too much. 

No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson and Johnson by Gardiner Harris: This piece of carefully researched investigative journalism is a necessary addition to everyone’s reading list and especially relevant to anyone who was deeply outraged by the Sackler family’s wake of destruction in Empire of Pain. While Johnson and Johnson built its reputation off of trust, honesty, and “doing the right thing,” that marketing narrative hides years of lies and careless decisions. 

I was so disheartened by all the ways that major pharmaceutical companies have hurt their consumers and created careless and dangerous marketing tactics to push sales. It is more than frustrating that the FDA is supposed to protect the public, but the deaths and damaging side effects are piling up, and the consumer is at the mercy of the marketing team. 

Without ethics and integrity, our society cannot function. Johnson & Johnson was a brand name that inspired feelings of trust, but in example after example, chapter after chapter, they put lives at risk for the sake of the almighty dollar. From baby powder to hip implants to anti-psychotics to fentanyl, the evidence is conclusive that the industry is in need of major changes. What can we do as consumers to protect ourselves from such practices? I hope more people read these brave accounts of honest reporting and that companies that literally have the power to heal or harm their consumers choose to act in the best interests of the public instead of their own pockets. 

One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune: Fortune makes me want to purchase a lakeside cabin to escape to in the summertime. This breezy, flirty book follows Alice, a burnt-out, uninspired photographer who wants to make art that is true and beautiful but is forced to follow artistic visions she doesn’t agree with. When her beloved grandmother needs time to recover emotionally and physically from a fall, Alice takes her to Barry’s Bay, the site of fond childhood memories. She hopes to safely and quietly explore what it means to be an artist and to have a bucket list of enjoyable moments in her “golden summer.” Of course, she didn’t plan for Charlie who is distractingly handsome and an expert at banter. Together, they flirt, they start to fall in love, and they become a bigger and bigger part of each other’s families and lives. 

The novel is sweet, but my one complaint is that I’m really tired of characters stopping relationships for secret medical diagnoses. Writing narratives like these gives the idea that being ill is a burden, and I wish it didn’t take tension, conflict, and heartache for characters to share the truth. While the diagnosis is meant to be a plot twist (sorry for the spoiler), it’s pretty predictable if you’re familiar with the tropes. Otherwise, I enjoyed this one and its summer setting. I didn’t read the first book in this series, but if you have, there’s some many throwbacks to it that seem very fulfilling and wholesome. I think it’s the only Fortune book I haven’t read, so I need to get on that soon! 

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Watching: Tom’s favorite part of the honeymoon was watching the F1 race at Silverstone, and even with our massive time difference, he always finds time to watch the races throughout the season. We went to watch F1: The Movie recently, and it was an unexpected delight. I thought I’d be bored with 2.5 hours of cars racing a track in some endless action sequence with the barest semblance of plot, but I was wrong. There was genuine heart and emotion, an actual plot line with stakes, and the action scenes made me laugh and, shockingly, sit on the edge of my seat in suspense. It felt like the best parts of Top Gun, and while it is cliche and predictable if you know the basic sequence of action movies, there’s a lot of comfort in the fulfilment of a genre’s expectations. I can see us rewatching this again, but will the experience be the same without the giant bucket of popcorn? 

Listening: There’s a lot I loved about the song writing and sound of Tyler Childers’s Purgatory album, so I was excited to listen to his newest release, Snipe Hunt. It is a completely different feel that strays from the traditional Appalachian and country roots he was known for and experiments more widely. I don’t dislike it, but some of the songs stray into the territory of “weird.” Based on his interviews, that’s kind of what he’s going for, but I'm not sure I'm entirely sold.

Cooking: The blueberry muffins with lemon-sugar topping and a simple blueberry jam filling from America’s Test Kitchen were a hit with Tom and his coworkers, and I've made them twice in two weeks. I tried out a cookbook club at the Navy Base’s library, and we were given 5 ingredients we had to make a dish with. I was assigned butter, chili powder, rice, carrots, and Spam, so, of course, I made Spam fried rice. Fried rice was a staple dinner for us when we first moved to Guam because it’s cheap, versatile, and so quick to make. Fresh, frozen, and canned veggies can be mixed and matched with whatever proteins we have on hand, and the Japanese rice companies make great “ready in 2 minutes” single serving rice containers. My “healthy” meal prep of the week was making Buddha Bowls following the Love and Lemons recipe and including a turmeric tahini dressing. Like fried rice, this is a versatile meal that can be adapted to whatever you have on hand and includes some pantry staples that are easy to rotate out. Basically you need some roasted vegetables, some fresh vegetables, something pickled, some kind of grain, and some kind of dressing. This time I used brown rice, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted carrots, roasted chickpeas, bell pepper, purple cabbage, and chicken-apple sausage. While the roasting and chopping takes a little time, it comes together fairly simply and makes a lot of food.