Honey Girl

A refreshingly timely and relatable debut novel about a young woman whose life plans fall apart when she meets her wife.
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 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.
In New York, she’s able to ignore all the annoying 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.

Hooooo boy. What a book. What a magnificent masterpiece of a book. I’m not this will be a review, so much as me rambling and spewing thoughts. I think a lot of people went into this one expecting it to be a romcom type of book. However, it is more of a coming of age/exploration of adulthood with some romance. The main focus is Grace and her journey, rather than the romance (though that is definitely a part of her journey). I just. Ugh. Reading this as someone who is nearing the end of an astrophysics PhD (like Grace) and experiencing burnout, depression, and anxiety (like Grace) hit so me so hard. It really made me feel SEEN.

I think a lot of people will be able to relate even if they don’t happen to be astro PhDs like Grace haha. Her experience is what sooo many people go through in their 20s. Uncertainty of the path ahead, questioning everything that you’ve already done, and feeling alone even if you have loving people surrounding you. It is really hard to figure everything out. I love that the overall message of this book was that it is OKAY to take time to figure things out. It is okay to not know what you want, and you are not a failure for that.

There are so many wonderful things that this book has that I could talk about. For one, exploration of all types of relationships, from parental to romantic to friendship/platonic. Also, the absolutely amazing cast of characters, most of whom are queer and non-white. And how all of these things help shape who we are, and how each relationship brings something important to your life. Oh man and I haven’t even mentioned the writing yet!!! Morgan Rogers has such dreamlike and beautiful prose in this novel. It made me feel like I was actually listening to Yuki’s late night radio show about lonely creatures. I know this won’t work for some people, but wow I was totally hooked.

But I think ultimately, I loved this one because it felt like a punch to the gut. In a good way? Like I was just reading it and was like oh my god this is me, this is me, this is me. I don’t cry from books (well, not since I was a kid). But this one got me. Not while I was reading, but afterwards because I just couldn’t stop thinking about it and how much it felt like reading about my life.

I warned you this would be me rambling haha. I hope that you at least enjoyed reading why I think this book is so special. And I really do hope you pick it up and give it a try.

TWs for the book: discussion of alcoholism, self harm, racism, queerphobia, depression