Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

Genre | Contemporary Fiction
Page #s | 241
Publishing Date | February 2021

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 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 father’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.

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. 

Goodreads

Honey Girl is a book about letting go of your control-freak plans and accepting the goodness that sometimes comes from the least expected places. Grace is a high achiever with a military father and a PhD in astronomy she has worked 11 years to earn. When she is kept out of jobs because of her race and sexuality, she and her friends take a holiday in Las Vegas…where she wakes one morning with a picture of her new wife. She is surprised to realize that this drunken mistake might actually be the best thing happening for her; but this book isn’t pure romance. Grace has to deal with her depression, fear, and immanent adulthood with the help of her friends and family.

Grace (attempts to) escape from her depression and professional disappointments by fleeing from Portland to New York to see her new wife. They fall in love very easily (she has good drunken taste) but ultimately realizes she needs to work on herself. She then goes to Florida to visit her mom and soon-to-be-stepdad, goes to counseling, and does some serious self-care. From there, well…you’ll have to read the book.

Although I liked that the book covered both romance and mental health, I sometimes felt like it might have flowed better if it had leaned more fully in one direction or the other. Perhaps that is just me desperate for a full on lesbian Las Vegas romance that starts with marriage and works backward to dating and falling in love.

What makes this book stand apart is the fact that it is about a queer biracial woman struggling and dealing with mental health issues while dating/married to a Japanese-American woman. More of this representation!

Who Would I Recommend This Book To?

This would be a great book for academics and new adults who need reminding that hard work ought to be balanced with serendipity.