You know those times when you purchase a new book and, since the premise sounded interesting and the reviews generally positive, you were excited about it, but when you sit down to read it, …well, you don’t feel the same way as the blurbed?

👋🏻 *waves* hi there!

That was me on Tuesday morning.

On Monday, I began reading a book I had recently acquired, largely on the strength of a review by a respectable Canadian author and supported by a story about the publishing industry in this country. It turns out that in the same way Canadians share an “internationally-remarkable taste” for re-runs of Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon, Canadians also share a remarkable taste for gay romance novels with a hockey theme.

In both cases, it can make it a challenge for both the supply and demand for alternatives to find one another. So moved by the review and the cri de cœur of Canadian authors whose truck-and-trade has fewer sticks and pucks,¹ I quickly moved on to my favourite local book store and picked myself up a copy.

Unfortunately, what began as just not being quickly hooked,² I found myself putting it down and scrolling my phone instead, reading over the same sentence over again, and just staring at the page not reading. By the half-way mark, I made it official: my second DNF of the year.

Which also meant that I needed a new book. Fortunately, that very morning, while scrolling Instagram, I saw that one of my favourite authors — Emily Austin — had shared and recommended You’ll Love it Here by Natalie Sue, which sounded like just the right book for my next.³

I now had a specific mission for my walk on Tuesday: I would meander a little in the sunshine (sunscreened, of course 👋🏻 hi Mom!) and stop in at Octopus Books in The Glebe to get myself a copy. Aside from being soaked in sunscreen, the sun also meant that I would continue to draw down on my slide film supplies.

Sunny days and slide film: a real delight.

1. Most of the fiction I read — really, nearly all of the fiction I read — is gay (often very gay), but doesn’t involve men and I don’t even think something more fitting, like softball-related lesbian romance, would move the needle for me. ↩︎
2. Not all books are going to hook me immediately, but there is often a point in the first half where things just snap into place and I am invested. With this book, since it had no real narrative arc, plot, or even really named characters. It seemed as if the author were trying to write flash or microfiction into a single space and their goal was mostly cute little lines and bon mots in the realm of a single theme. I appreciated the point they were trying to make (the importance of human connection in an increasingly atomized world), but I don’t believe that the final product was well-baked. ↩︎
3. I am about half way through it and I am really enjoying the story. ↩︎