Honey Girl

Another book with a Virgo main character… is this a new trend in literature? Sources say maybe.

Honey Girl is about a woman named Grace Porter and it starts with her in Vegas the day after she drunkenly gets married to a woman she’s just met. When Grace is back home, she is confronted with all of the things she was running away from: disappointment, lost jobs, loneliness, fear. It’s all a bit much. Grace is a Porter and Porter’s are the best. They do the best, they achieve everything they set out to achieve, they are committed, determined, ambitious, their plans do not falter. Expect Grace’s has and now she has no idea how to tell her father, her friends, anyone. The guilt becomes too much and she decides it’s time to get away so she goes to New York to live with her wife.

This story is really relatable. Mad relatable even. Grace is 28/29 and finding herself stuck. She’s worked so hard for one goal and now feels like none of it mattered. She’s not getting the jobs she wants, she’s being prevented from achieving things because of her race and gender, she feels like a burden to those she loves, and she feels like her father isn’t proud of her. This time in our lives is so hard. This weird precipice that we all face at this time in our lives (as an aside, this tends to be our Saturn Return and it’s this astrological event where Saturn returns to the sign it was in when you were born (this happens a few times throughout you life) and it is a reckoning. It’s basically like this big spotlight on your life and comparing your current position to your hopes and dreams and it is a rude awakening. If you aren’t meeting the standards you set for yourself, whatever they may be, you’re gonna feel ROUGH. I did, hoooo buddy my Saturn Return knocked me off my feet and sent me spiraling. So when I say I understand how Grace feels, I understand it.). Grace studied astronomy, got her PhD in astronomy, she went as far as she could go, as hard as she could, for as long as she could. And now…. what?

This does have a BIG warning for self harm. It is written blatantly and with no real acknowledgement of the seriousness of it except for one sentence near the end and it is important to me that you know this going in. It made me uncomfortable and I wish I had known just to prepare myself. The writing was filled with metaphors, every thought, every conversation, every observation was described with metaphors. While objectively I can see that it is beautiful, it is not a writing style that resonates with me. I had a hard time staying committed to reading the book because it felt dense to me. I absolutely recommend this to people who like more flowery, poetic writing! I think they’ll find this gorgeous and exactly what they want. The rep in this was amazing and I LOVED how confidently the term lesbian was used and how embraced it was by the main character. We need more of this! I’ve loved that I’ve read a couple books now that have a New York setting of an apartment filled with diverse, queer characters, and all of the shenanigans that come with that. It makes me so happy. I’m eager to hear what you guys think of it so when you read it, let me know! I want to know what you thought of Grace and her friends (who, btw, I absolutely adored. The female friendship representation in this was TOP NOTCH. Xi and Agnes and Meera (and Raj) were just *chef’s kiss*) and anything else that you want to talk about.