Welcome to Litsy!

3.5⭐️ I read this for the most recent #bookcougars #readalong. For the most part I enjoyed the book, but I didn‘t expect it to be as steamy as it was. As I said during the chat session, I enjoyed the historical context of the book, but the rest of the story seemed to be a bit contrived in places. I‘m not much of a #romance reader, but I was glad to dip my toes in this genre. #2024 #fiction #bookreview #historicalfiction #fiction

Skye is just unapologetically herself and I couldn‘t help but enjoy falling into her world. I‘ve read books/seen movies when the random sperm donor meets the person(s) he helped create so I thought this was an interesting take on a child of an egg donor searching for their biological maternal connection.

#Dancing 💃🏻🕺 #LuckyInLove 💋👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻💌💘

#BookNerd 🤓💙📚

This week was “messy queer women in Philly” week for me, I guess. Skye has a metric fuck ton of baggage. How she attempts to sort through that while also navigating a relationship with the 12 year old product of her previous egg donation was warm and witty. I really liked it.

Skye‘s cranky first-person narrative is peppered with AAVE and Philly-specific vocabulary (“jawn”), her droll manner (calling someone Captain Interrupting Pants) & her general hugging-is-not-how-I-do-life attitude. She‘s a lesbian, almost 40, with a successful business… but she still hasn‘t sorted out her emotional baggage. Although the style is breezy, serious issues like found vs bio families, forgiveness, & racial profiling are tackled. #LGBTQ

“You have bourbon?”
He shakes his head. “Nah. I have some scotch, though. It‘s not too peaty.”
I agree to scotch. He goes inside and brings it out in a coffee mug. I take a drink. It‘s peaty as hell. Like licking the mossy side of a tree. Like what you‘d expect a hobbit‘s butthole to taste like, if you happened to be part of the ass-eating community of the Shire. But I have a rule that I never complain about free liquor.

“There are many levels between sex and a serious relationship, Viva. There‘s friends with benefits. Love affairs. Situationships.”
“Situationships?” She looks horrified.
“It‘s a thing,” I tell her. “Ask the millennials.”
“That sounds like some cishet nonsense.”

“I‘ve known Philip Michael for 30 years. He and his wife used to run the corner store. Folks called it the ‘Chinese store‘ back then, even though Phil and his wife, Linh, were Vietnamese.”
The corner store I frequented as a child was also run by Vietnamese people. We also called it “the Chinese store.”

[internet image of a show about a store run by Korean immigrants]

Blues sections of record stores are where I feel the most calm. There‘s something about being surrounded by old, blackity-Black music that settles my nerves.

I feel like I could create a Pantone post about these books I‘m reading concurrently. Instead, I will mention the serendipity of one being nonfiction by a Ugandan climate activist and the other a novel with this passage: “It‘s sunny and warm out, unseasonal for early April in Philly, and I say a little prayer to the global-warming gods for their generosity. I‘m kidding; I know climate change is bad.”