Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers Book Review
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Blurb
When becoming an adult means learning to love yourself first.
With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She’s a straight A, work-through-the-summer certified high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know…until she does exactly that.
This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her parent’s expectations, a struggling job market and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.
In New York, she’s able to ignore all the constant questions about her future plans and falls hard for her creative and beautiful wife, Yuki Yamamoto. But when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she’s been running from all along—the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.
Triggers
There is no content warning for this book. Here is some the of sensitive content that I observed while reading.:
- Alcohol
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Homophobia (mentions of)
- Misogyny
- Profanity
- Racism
- Self-Harm
Ratings
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There are possible **SPOILERS** beyond this point!
Overall Rating
4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Honey Girl reads like a coming-of-age story about a woman who spent her adult life trying to achieve a Ph.D. Told from a single point of view, from Grace our main character, we get to explore what happens now that Grace has pushed her plan to the side to fall for Yuki. After a spontaneous marriage to Yuki while celebrating her graduation in Vegas, Grace must figure out what she is really doing with her life and what she wants. The two are so different but the way that they come to care for each other was wonderful!
Morgan’s writing feels very lyrical and immersive. I loved being on Grace’s mom’s farm or at the apartment with Yuki’s roommates or even the bar Grace and her brother went to one night in NYC. I liked the writing the most because of how poetic it could be at times. The same goes for the difficult subjects broached in this novel like anxiety, depression, racism and family struggles. The way that Grace shows us her truth in these topics but also the manner in that she communicates about them makes them feel discernible in a way that is interesting and beautiful. Grace’s introspection and thoughts were familiar to me but also more eloquent than mine. This book is more focused on her character arc. She has a lot of self-discovery about what she wants from her life, friends, career, and romantic relationships.
As soon as Grace goes to New York to be with Yuki, the story becomes so sweet. There are strong elements of found family as their romance becomes more prevalent. I would often swoon over how thoughtful Yuki is and her “rip-the-bandaid-off” honesty with Grace. Yuki and Grace are very sweet together and I wished for more of their pleasant interactions! They have an understanding of each other that grows as they spend time together. As Grace processes her relationship with her wife, she learns to understand herself more. The moments of her introspection were some of my favorites. The metaphors and analogies she toys with as she tries to make sense of what she is doing in NYC were absolutely beautiful. Yuki is my favorite and I wanted to hit Grace over the head with how she nearly fumbled this relationship! Thankfully she gets it together at the end!
I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to readers who like introspective novels with lyrical writing. This story is very emotionally dense and there is grit to the subjects discussed. I would also recommend this book to anyone who has pursued higher education and tried to find love!
Spice Rating
1/5 🌶
It’s got a couple of somewhat closed-door scenes in this book but nothing too explicit.
Genre & Tropes
Genre
Contemporary Romance
Tropes
- Found Family
- Opposites Attract
- Emotional Scars
- Slow Burn Romance
Favorite Quotes
It’s okay to admit that something can be best just because it makes you happy, and not because you had to tear yourself apart to get there.
“I think lonely creatures ache for each other because who else can understand but someone who feels the same dark, black abyss?”
“You are made up of stars and the black glittering universe.”
“The stars glimmer above her. They gleam under the gaze of people like Grace, searching for meaning in their formations. They are doing their best for all the people that stare up at the dark and do not know that they, too, shine brilliantly.”
Intrigued?
Check out Honey Girl on Amazon here.
