MC

You did not. Right down to the tiger and the escaped convicts and the sister’s token gay neighbor. Wow, I apparently remember every detail of this book after over 20 years. Shit like this is why I can’t remember my child’s social security number when I need it.

I think that book can be summed up as “cishet men will do anything to avoid going to therapy, including convince themselves sleeping with their sister’s therapist is like therapy.” With a side of WTF.

What the entire fuck was that. I also never figured out what Pat Conroy had going on in his head about Jewish women (the plot of Beach Music, which I also read, is almost as bananapants), but he could not Be Normal About Them to save his life.

And the National Parks being ADA complaint to the extent they are is a marvel of modernity. (If only we could say the same for all the hotels near them, sigh).

It’s not easy to emigrate to Europe with a disability, but from what I know even if they made it easier I would not especially want to. The ADA is the floor and not the ceiling, but the broader culture it helped grow is worth defending and building on.

Watching a Jeopardy rerun where I grudgingly give the correct response about this website’s least favorite Maine Senator. Glad my kid knows me well enough to ask, “You sound grumpy. Is she terrible?”

It’s a miscalculation as foolish as wearing a Dallas jersey in Philly. Please keep threatening all of us with a good time, Abbott.

Some disabled folks call this sort of thing #CripTax: the ways the US makes being disabled hideously expensive. But it’s also a classic example of how the things that hurt us are not actually *good* for anyone but the super rich. (Why yes, I’m a disabled contract worker, how could you tell?)

I clicked through a few threads and thought placidly “oh, one of those names sounds familiar” and then I got to the title and it all made sense. I love a Tuesday in Romancelandia. We’re just mosying along while everyone else goes “wait, what?”

Sick of everything being Orwellian or Kafkaesque. I demand more Scarrylous situations, where animals drive vehicles and run small businesses.

Bowser voted Kamala and is a pronoun respecter, but Wario definitely voted Trump.

Every time someone posts about burrito taxi, I imagine some kind of amazing Richard Scarry pickle car but a burrito and a taxi and then I'm mad it isn't that.

I got a quick lesson in how much money there is in being right wing when I got to grad school and realized the FIRE co-founder had both an endowed chair and truly massive office. Sigh.

My middle-aged personality is listening to the episode of @thisendsatprom.bsky.social about The Faculty for the second time, because wow did I love that movie in my youth. Also it’s really validating to hear Famke Janssen was key to someone else’s queer awakening.

I’m a regular listener to Sarah’s podcast, so I’m delighted she channeled her Eat the Rich energy into a book. And I have loved various soap opera and soap opera adjacent shows in my life, so I think my romance reader self and family drama reader self will both be happy in the end.

I knew it was generally good when the person whose taste overlaps with mine in my book club was pleased. But she’s Canadian and therefore no help on the RI angle, haha.

Today I came to Bluesky specifically to to see if you had read this yet, and I’m delighted to hear it worked for you. (I’m hoping to get to it soon myself, I think I have a spare Libro.fm credit).

That’s so frustrating! That premise should have inherent stakes, if she’s his first relationship since leaving prison. My book club recently read one where the hero was in recovery and the heroine was probably his first relationship while sober, and that was barely touched on. I don’t get it.

Yeah, I think it is a genuinely delicate balance. On the reader side a grand gesture often fails for me if I feel like the author is imagining the most dramatic movie scene version, but I don’t totally buy it because the gesture isn’t tied to the core problem or doesn’t really solve it.

It’s a weird moment in the genre when dark romance proliferates but contemporary is spending more time than ever going light on conflict, seemingly to spare readers pain. But it’s just as painful to think these people could have real security if they worked harder, only to not see them do any of it.

This thread is already long enough, but I think that’s also why I will forgive a lot in a contemporary if the characters are going to therapy in the epilogue: it’s a way for authors to show the internal work is still happening. And that’s what conflict-light books are skipping over.

To go back to Thomas, I probably wouldn’t forgive Fitz. But I absolutely believe by the end that whatever Millie needs, he will do—because he finally knows her well enough. I cannot imagine them splitting up even when I think she deserves better, because they have the tools to navigate change.

It’s also why external change alone isn’t sufficient—if someone is going to radically change careers for the HEA, it only works if I truly believe they won’t regret it and their new path fits who the love story has made them become. Otherwise I usually think “oh, they could still split up later.”

I’ve read novellas less than a hundred pages that had HEAs or HFNs I believed in. What it takes is the characters realizing what they did before no longer works, because their love needs something else. The grand in grand gesture is in the meaning of the change for the people making it.

When Fitz chooses the house he built, he finally understands himself. Millie usually knows him better than he does—for them to be together he finally has to stand on his own the way she has learned to the whole damn time. And it’s why even if I’m mad at him I believe in their HEA.

I think it’s just as genius we do not know whether Fitz sleeps with Isabelle or not, because that’s not what wounds Millie about her. What wounds Millie is Isabelle meeting his train with his family, or Fitz choosing another house. Because he only lives with people he likes, not his mistresses.

Thomas also does her conflicts on hard mode, because she gives her characters big problems! Fitz is an unfaithful doofus! But Millie can handle it as long as she knows he *likes her best* and their house, like their life, is a team project. Until she can’t, because of Isabelle.

When I think about most of my favorite third acts, they often have exactly this combination Sherry Thomas is so good at: a grand gesture that rights the central wrong and is as romantic to the person receiving it as it is to readers. It says “I know you and what we’ve been through, and I love you.”

The thing Millie wants most in the entire book? For Fitz to see her. She doesn’t need to see he would be helpless without her so much as that he is desperate to be *with* her. Would I forgive him with no groveling? Nope. But I’m not Millie and her opinion counts more.

Which brings me back to Sherry Thomas. We don’t see a single moment of Fitz’s frantic search for Millie at the end. And partly that’s because we’ve already seen him turn down Isabelle. But it’s also because the grand gesture Millie needs is happening as soon as Fitz kisses her.