Tag Archives: vegas

Shana reviews Didn’t Stay in Vegas by Chelsea M. Cameron

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the cover of Didn't Stay In Vegas

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Didn’t Stay in Vegas is a lighthearted romantic comedy about two best friends who wake up after a wild night in Las Vegas, and discover that they’re married. To each other. 

Callyn’s life is a bit of a mess, but her best friend Emma is always there to bake her cookies and marathon TV shows.  So when Callyn has a terrible hangover and underwear full of glitter the morning after their mutual friend’s bachelorette party, she immediately looks for steady, reliable Emma—only to discover her in a similar state, holding a marriage certificate. Emma claims she doesn’t remember the wedding, but she also suggests they stay married for financial reasons that feel like a stretch. After a string of life setbacks, Calyyn ends up moving in with Emma, getting a puppy, and being extremely adorable while spending most of their time nesting together. Even clueless Callyn starts to wonder if Emma’s been in love with her all along. 

Didn’t Stay in Vegas is a low-conflict romance, perfect for when you want the book equivalent of a cup of sweet hot chocolate. As a reader, it was fairly obvious early on  that Emma is into Callyn, so most of the book is just watching Callyn slowly figure out her own feelings, while getting her life together along the way. I liked that Callyn and Emma are both comfortably queer before their marriage. This is a friends to lovers romance, not a coming out story. And accidentally falling in the love with your friend is certainly something queer women are good at! 

Of the two main characters, I found Emma’s kindness and competence more enjoyable than Callyn’s frenetic energy. But this story is told from Callyn’s point of view, so we can only guess at what Emma is feeling. This leads to many hilarious moments, because Callyn is incredibly slow about noticing that her BFF is definitely in love with her. Callyn’s denial persists even after they have sex! 

Still, I was left feeling like Emma’s character was a little flat, and we don’t really learn much about her outside of the relationship. Since Callyn feels younger and less comfortable in her skin, reading the story from her point of view sometimes made the relationship feel immature.

I did enjoy the theme of chosen family. Callyn and Emma’s big queer friend group felt like extras on L Word Generation Q—attractive, vaguely interesting people that I found myself more interested in than the main characters. 

Didn’t Stay in Vegas lacks the emotional substance of Cameron’s other romances, but it’s a frequently funny, comforting, easy read.

Mo Springer reviews Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

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Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

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Grace Porter has spent a lifetime striving for perfection only to find all her hard work falling apart, making her turn to a Vegas wedding to escape.

In this debut novel, Rogers explores the realities of post-grad life for a queer black woman in the titular character, Grace Porter. She has achieved the plan by getting her doctorate, but now finds job interviews dissecting her identity, race, sexuality, and questioning her accomplishments as if they weren’t her own. In the face of this, her overbearing and harsh father has no compassion and continues to remind her of the need to be the best. While her friends are supportive, it is not enough, and after a Vegas wedding, she flies off to New York City to be with her new wife and escape the escalating existential crisis – but another city won’t make the problems go away.

This was written in a very beautifully poetic style that added to Grace’s romanticism and gave the reader a sense of how she views the world. However, at times it felt as if the poetic writing seemed to stand on its own and didn’t necessarily always add to the plot or character development. For example, I thought Yuki Yamamoto, Grace’s wife, would be a more grounded and realistic figure based on her first conversation with Grace post-wedding. I thought that would have been a much more interesting juxtaposition to help the character development, Grace’s romanticism against Yuki’s realism. However, Yuki often talked in the same manner as Grace’s narration and internal monologue. I can see this may be a stylistic choice of the writer, and objectively I appreciate that, but subjectively it did limit my enjoyment of the book.

There was a large cast of characters that could easily each have their own books. Rogers clearly put a lot of thought into them and that could be seen by how easily they leaped off the page. They were enjoyable to read about, but it felt distracting to care so much about characters that in the end the book doesn’t dive too deeply into. There is a hint at more stories that could play into the overall theme, but this is felt off the page.

There did seem to be a lot of plot and character development happening off the page and I would have liked to have seen that on the page. Rogers is clearly a fantastic author and for this to be her debut, I can see her writing amazing things in the future. That I wanted to see more of her characters and story is a result of how well she has crafted this book. I look forward to reading more of her in the future.