Whitney D.R. reviews The Love Song of Sawyer Bell by Avon Gale

Victoria “Vix” Vincent is an alt-country rocker girl and Sawyer Bell is a sweet, innocent violinist running away from Juilliard to join in Vix’s band. Vix is an out bisexual and Sawyer is figuring out whether or not she’s a lesbian (spoiler: she is). I feel like this might be a basis for an Avril Lavigne-type song. Now I have “Sk8r Boi” stuck in my head.

I’ve always wanted to be in a band and go out on the open road with my friends and play music. The Love Song of Sawyer Bell didn’t candy coat how hard it would be to live that kind of life when you don’t have financial backing of a major label. Touring is grueling and often gross, but at least you’d be doing it with your band-family instead of completely alone. And you’d get to live the dream of being a performing musician. It’s not glamourous, but the book still made it seem fun, and I felt like I was there with the band.

The relationship between Vix and Sawyer was just so…normal. I don’t mean that in a bad way. These two women would have fights, sulk about it for a day or two then talk it out and make up. Just like most normal couples do, but with a little flair to kick up the story. I did think Sawyer, perhaps because she was newly out and insecure about her place in the world outside of being a fiddler, was quick to push Vix away. While Vix was afraid of telling Sawyer how she really felt. Both are perfectly relatable for ~us millennials~ who are still figuring our lives out while entering into a new relationship.

Sawyer’s unhappiness at Juilliard and her bit about feeling betrayed that something she wanted she got, but ended up hating it really resonated with me. It’s hard when you work hard towards something, think you made it, and then it turns out worse than you expected.

I did find Vix to be a bit preachy about bisexuality, but with so much erasure and misunderstandings in all forms of media, I couldn’t really be mad at it.

Completely unnecessary for this review, but can I say that my fancasts for this book are totally Melanie Scrofano for Vix and Dominque Provost-Chalkley for Sawyer? I know they play sisters on tv and the opposite in height, but it’s who I pictured the entire time I was reading.

I liked The Love Song of Sawyer Bell. I’ll definitely read the next book in the series and I hope Victoria Vincent gets the success they deserve.


Whitney D.R. reviews Fetch by B.L. Wilson

I wanted to read Fetch for two reasons: Black lesbians and my most beloved enemies-to-lovers romance trope. I don’t know what it is about two people who initially can’t stand each other realizing they’re in love (despite their better judgement), but it really turns my crank. Fetch also contains another of my favorite tropes and that’s opposites attract.

Amber is a no-nonsense femme with money and power and connections. Morgan is motorcycle-riding artist on the more stud side of the spectrum, working as a doorperson at Amber’s building. So there’s the ‘haves and have nots’ and ‘type A vs. type B’ personalities. On paper at least. I found that they were two sides of the same coin; two women who both liked to push and pull and wouldn’t back down from a real fight.  

I did find it odd that until the very end, the women addressed each other by their last names. They did have pet names for each other, but the last name thing was irritatingly consistent and I wish they had been more personal with that regard. And I recognize that these women had lived and loved before meeting each other (and some even during their interactions) but I didn’t particularly want to read Morgan have sex on-page with another woman (even if it was in the past/a flashback). Call me a romance traditionalist, I guess.

I really liked their sexual chemistry.  Despite her snotty attitude, I think Amber was more of a pussycat and Morgan saw right through it and pressed all the right buttons. Amber, as afraid of loving again as she was, really needed Morgan’s dominant side. I loved that Morgan brought out Amber’s docility. Also, this my very first time reading the word ‘punanny’ in a romance book and I was taken aback at first, then tickled pink. I’m so used to seeing other go-to raunchy euphemisms for vagina, that it was kind of refreshing.

One thing I had trouble with was the time and setting.  I wondered throughout reading why the author decided to use the events of 9-11 in a romance. Morgan and Amber have both experienced grave losses in the their lives, so I guess it could be argued the two women connected the theme of losing loved ones but on a grander scale. But it just didn’t fit or make sense to me because it felt more like a thing that just happened instead of a life-changing event that affected not just New Yorkers, but everyone in America. Though, obviously, New Yorkers felt it more keenly.

The pace of the novel was weird to me. I could never tell what time or day it was. For instance, when the women were in an office building together and the towers first got hit, it was roughly 9am, but the power went out and it was pitch black. At 9am? Did the office building not have windows? Then after, when Amber went to Morgan’s apartment it was still day and they were talking about breakfast and then all of a sudden it was night and Amber slept over.  When I reached the 40% mark in the book, only a day or two has truly gone by when it felt like a week or two in the book. And the flashbacks didn’t help.

Honestly, I felt like I was skimming more than I was actually reading. Not to say that this book wasn’t well-written, but maybe I wasn’t reading this at the right time. Characters had depth and dimension, but Fetch wasn’t for me as much as I wanted to love it. But I love the chemistry between Morgan and Amber and anyone that loves the same romance trope as I do may like this a lot.

2.5 stars

Whitney D.R. reviews Goslyn County by AM McKnight

goslyn-county-am-mcknight

This was a labor, and not one particularly of love.  I really wanted to read this because it was two black women, one a detective, the other an FBI agent–both lesbians– falling love as they solve a joint case.  I love a good cops/FBI crime book and then to add older Black lesbians, which is hard to find in the lesbian romance genre?  I expected to LOVE this.  SHOULD have loved this.

But this was just boring. Capitals B-O-R-I-N-G.

It was very realistic with regards to Maureen and Olivia. Two women just getting to know each other, going on dates, figure out each other’s likes and dislikes. I liked this aspect of the book a lot. Though I didn’t feel like their conversations were all that natural. I don’t know, maybe they were. It’s been awhile since I’ve progressed passed date three.   This isn’t a romance, really.  At least, it didn’t feel that way to me.  There was a crime to be solved and these two women just happen to be lesbians that start dating.  And maybe that was Knight’s intention.  Chapters go by before a first date, then a second and third, then we fast forward a month and two and they’re already in love.  What?  I needed more relationship development than that.  Especially when there was more focus on these idiot criminals than our main women.  

There wasn’t a single character that I was invested in, not even Olivia and Maureen.  There were too many points of view, too much head-hopping.  Too many players on the board, too many motivations.

I understand that Goslyn County was a crime drama, but the aspect of this plot was so dull I skimmed the majority of it.  You have a detective and an FBI agent teaming up on a case about the robbery of a crooked taxes preparation place? Snooze city.  There could have been a more exciting case.  Olivia and Maureen could’ve teamed up on a drug bust, since meth labs  were apparently so prevalent.  Or trying to catch a serial killer.  Hell, the perps could’ve committed a major heist of a bank or jewelry store and that would’ve been more exciting.  But all that for robbery and taxes when there wasn’t even a body count?  All criminals must be brought to justice, I guess, but I just couldn’t feel the “high stakes” of the chase to make me want to root for either bad guys or good guys.  

Honestly, the lack of high stakes suspense and the easy solutions were my biggest issues with reading this.