time and time again

I cannot stop thinking about time. In many ways time has always been difficult for me. Obviously, I can lose hours reading and feel like very little time has passed. But beyond that, time was hard for me to learn. Even now, asking me the time when only an analog clock is visible gives me a slight shiver of panic and a moment of hesitation. I remember it being difficult in fourth grade to manage both hands, the numbers, the quartering of hours, and all in the sort of hectic timeline of getting it right before the minute shifted. It remains a joke in my family that I cannot tell time (lovingly but no one comes for you like your immediate family). Aesthetically, I love an analog clock. Logistically, it always feels like a test I had difficulty mastering (hate that!). Don’t even get me started on time zones and falling back or forward. I don’t know! I prefer to be willfully ignorant. Time is going to pass whether I know how it works or not. 

Unfortunately, all the cliches are right. Time is a gift. Time is a thief. Recently, my son started kindergarten. As I am sure the experience is for many parents, the horror in my head did not match the daily bus stop drop off. There were tears the first few days. But school is fun and new and exciting for a social child, a curious child. School has new friends and toys and projects. The end of summer has, ironically also, been difficult for me. I pride myself on being a student! Someone who loves learning! But the shift from a free and open summer to back to school has always felt abrupt to me. Maybe, it is because I had a parent who was a teacher so it felt like we both had to change gears so rapidly. For my childhood and still some schools nation wide, school started after Labor Day. Labor Day felt like a last gasp of ice cream for dinner, the beach, the pool, the bedtime routine that felt looser, bare feet no socks, the sun peeking through the blinds of my bedroom in the evening. Now, school began for my son in mid-August. It feels like a summer cut short. It’s not, let’s be clear. The sun will still set well past bedtime. I will still eat ice cream more days than not. But something about the light in August, peaking through trees and blinds, the days slowing shortening, the way it gets less green, makes me so sad. A melancholy kind of sad. The sadness of change and a bit of nostalgia. The sadness of August and Everything after. It’s hard to shift from August to September and not think of childhood, my son’s now and not mine. Change is uncomfortable and difficult. I know…I know it is often a good thing but I cannot see through the haze of a baby, a toddler, a BIG kid now getting on the bus and waving to me through the window. What is it Darcy says in his famous proposal scene? I am half agony, half hope. 

What does the inside of my brain look like?

• Death in Paradise - We’ve been watching this older BBC show Death in Paradise. It is one of those shows I can fall asleep to or zone out to, I can wake up in the morning and my husband will tell me the end of the mystery. It feels very Scooby Doo for adults with the added bonus that the stories really are surprising. I will say that BBC remains very sick in the head (looking at you, Julian Fellowes) because there is so much chemistry and no kissing and then boom! They kill off a character. You’d think with more than ten seasons available I would have realized the investigator changed over a few times…

• After the End Kickstarter - Fun fact: I have never participated in a Kickstarter campaign. I barely know what that is…however, I was anticipating this post apocalyptic romance situation. Adriana Herrera! Sherry Thomas! Cat C. Wells! All bangers all the time. I am not usually one to care about hard covers so I did the ebook and paperback package. Friends, this kickstarter reached its $10,000 goal in 3 minutes. The people yearn for post apocalyptic romances and by mostly indie and BIPOC authors no less. 

• Olivia Waite’s Review of August Lane - Full disclosure that I have not yet read this book but this review is a BANGER. “The angst is glorious. Everyone in this book is ruined in some way that will never be fixed. People do monstrous things to the ones they love. This is not the aw-shucks kind of country: It’s the murder ballads, the rolling thunder, the long black road - and the best romance I’ve read all year.” I pretty much want this from every book I read and more of this type of review.

• Kpop Demon Hunters - Yeah so, my son watched this at Taekwondo camp and then made me watch it. Wow, I get it. The songs. The look. The story. Was I immediately on Reddit looking for similar romance novels? This and this came up. 

• Here’s the thing: Wuthering Heights is not a book I ever hyperfixated on. I do enjoy it in theory and respect all my fellow weirdo gals who probably hyperfixated on it. I don’t care about that boy from Euphoria and Margot Robbie is fine? Good for her! I think book adaptions that are wonky and wrong will happen. I think book adaptations that are perfect and beloved will happen. I think we should adapt more than the same five books…..However, I DO think that Heathcliff is not white, is probably her half brother, and that robbing those two things and likely, much of the class politics out of the book defeats the purpose. But I am happy for erotic weird movies to exist. Whatever! Adapt books that have not yet been a movie or six movies!

• In what may seem like a swerve away from my usual fair, I love Alien: Earth. Perhaps this is because my mom made me watch the entire franchise in my youth (truly it is shocking that my name is not Ripley and yes, I have even seen the bad prison one more than once). The Amelie bangs! Miss Fisher as the evil scientist! BOY WONDER EVIL TECH GUY! The Bishop to Morrow through-line. All of those Peter Pan callbacks! Something really to be said about the adult actors playing their roles in the kind of childlike wonder that strikes a nice balance between farce and believability. I am not caught up but I know from social media that my eyeball queen is going to make me love this show even more.

But what have I read??? I’ve been in series mania. I have mainlined quite a bit since my last update and we can blame all that on my frantic pre elementary school mental state. 

• Brunch Bros series by Sarah Estep - This series is super popular on Instagram and in romance book circles. I can see why! It’s small town but not country (Pacific Northwest!). It’s definitely dealing with adults. Everyone is older than thirty and acts like it. So Flocked is a bit of a Susan Elizabeth Phillips light. He’s an edge of retirement football player and she’s an ornithologist. Fret Me Not has a rockstar who does not recognize the heroine as a woman he had a one night stand with and wrote a hit song about. Big yikes! And the third book in the series poses the idea that mean wife + simp husband is genetic. It is light fare but hot and genuinely felt like contemporary romance for grown ups. 

• Consortium Rebellion series by Jessie Mihalik - Obsessed with these. The first book was very well reviewed when it came out in 2019 and I did not read it till now. This reminds me a lot of Ilona Andrews’ Clean Sweep and really would work for anyone with a sci-fi flare. They’re propulsive and high action. The romances feel a little insta love, a little fated mates, but the challenges to their happy endings are real and hard. Stay for the competence porn and Jason Bourne in space. The worldbuilding is cool as hell.

• Lost Lords series by Lorraine Heath - There comes a time when I have to break out the out of print mass markets. There are only so many Lorraine Heaths left that I have not read so I try to read them sparingly. It’s been fun to read this series because I can see the imprint of her later works. The Lorraine Heath highlight reel is alive and well: a mercenary heroine, an evil twin, infidelity, a paternity play, a long lost heir. She’s doing a little too much telling and not showing in these but I love to see how she figures out more complicated and yet, more realistic ways to delve into these themes. I’ve been doing a new, to me, thing where I read a chapter or three of a Lorraine before bed. It’s helped to stop my book binging behavior a bit and get me off my phone. It’s been a fun way to watch a story unfold somewhat slower than my usual speed.

• Love at First Sighting by Mallory Marlowe - A rare miss for me. And it might be a me problem. I enjoyed Marlowe’s debut. It was fresh and it had cryptids! This had a little too much influencer plot lines, one too many Taylor Swift references, and just got to be a bit of a slog. And it was basically Men in Black! A 90’s movie I loved! I don’t know, man. 

• Ravaged Wolf by Cat C. Wells - Do not judge these covers! I know it’s hard! I promise you that Cat C. Wells is doing things with redemption, with fated mates, with class politics that you do NOT see often enough. I don’t have time to wax poetic about Run, Posy, Run right now but trust me that Wells is really the blue collar romance standard. To be clear, this is the most recent book in the series and it should be read in order.

• In a nod to the After the End kickstarter, I read most of Claire Kent’s Kindled series. A super dark post apocalypse series on KU. It is more like novellas, relatively short, an excuse I give for reading 10 books in one week…The real hilarity here is how often Kent is like EVERYONE SMELLS BAD! No showers, no soap, outhouses! Sex! Girl, this really is down and dirty. I am impressed and horrified. The realism works for me though. The apocalypse would suck but people would get on with it. It is happening every day already.

talk soon,

Britt