Ever since I started blogging, Elin Hilderbrand’s novels have been one of my summer staples. She writes fantastic beach reads, and every year, I look forward to her latest title on the publisher’s list. I’ve never been to Nantucket, but if I ever do vacation there someday, it’ll be in large part because of how perfect for a summer vacation the place seems in Hilderbrand’s novels.

The Perfect Couple is the first mystery/thriller I’ve read from Hilderbrand, and I absolutely loved it. Hilderbrand’s strength has always been her characters and their (often messy) relationships with each other, and she plays this strength to the hilt in this mystery. Despite the police investigation, the identity of the killer felt almost secondary to all the family and friendship dynamics going on. Like with all Hilderbrand books, I was fully caught up in the story and the characters, and I was curious about the murderer’s identity mostly because of the additional insight it would give me to one of the characters.

In The Perfect Couple, a lavish wedding is planned in Nantucket. The bride, Celeste, is a shy and awkward science nerd who works at a zoo. She agrees to a quick wedding mostly because her mother Karen has breast cancer and only months to live. The groom, Benji, is a trust fund baby who introduces Celeste to a glittery new world. His mother Greer is a mystery novelist who takes over the wedding planning so it’s done just right. The morning of the wedding, a body washes up on shore — it’s Merritt, the maid of honour who happens to have recently had an affair with a member of the wedding party. The best man, Shooter, is also missing, and Chief of Police Ed and his super hot Greek detective Nick must interview all the people involved in the wedding to get at the truth.

The result is like Agatha Christie meets Days of Our Lives. The whodunnit element is deliciously intertwined with the soapy details of the characters’ lives. Flashbacks during a mystery often leave me just impatient to get back to the present-day, but in this case, I found the flashbacks at least as strong as the present-day scenes. I was caught up in all the backstories amongst the characters, and in how they intersected with each other at various times and in various ways. Hilderbrand does a great job in signalling to us when things aren’t quite how they seem, and even when characters make reasonable assumptions about each other (e.g. Greer thinking their family friend Featherleigh is having an affair with her husband Tag), we can tell there’s something else going on that Greer hasn’t quite guessed yet.

I had so much fun reading this book, and I’m only sorry it had to end, as I wanted to see what happens next with these characters. There’s a niggling (minor) loose end about Karen’s health at the end of the book that part of me wishes had been resolved, but on the other hand, I’m equally happy to continue believing it’s a sign of hope. The answer to the mystery turns out to be sadder than I imagined, but it’s also very fitting given who these characters are and what they want to happen.

Overall, Hilderbrand once again proves why her books are such a fantastic summer staple for me. This is a great story to lose yourself in — preferably on a beach, by the water, as you once again treat yourself to a few hours with the rich and glamorous residents of Hilderbrand’s Nantucket.

+

Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

How We Roll is really, really well done. Quinn, who has alopecia, and her family move to a new town so that Quinn’s younger brother Julius, who is autistic, can go to a better school. Quinn is mostly relieved to be in a town where no one knows she has alopecia, and she can wear a wig and fit right in. She befriends a group of popular girls at her new school, and a boy Nick, whose legs were amputated after a snowmobile accident caused by his brother Tommy. A former football star, Nick’s still coming to terms with the changes to his life and with his resentment over his brother’s role in the accident, and Quinn’s too afraid of her own reputation to admit to him why she understands what he’s going through so well. I love how thoughtful and intentional this novel is, and how much it subverts expectations and defies the usual tropes we find in young adult fiction.

First, I love how Friend treats her characters’ disabilities / conditions (is alopecia a disability?). Friend is very honest about how autism, amputation and alopecia all impact not just the characters’ lives but also their families. For example, each of Quinn’s wigs costs $2,000, her mom is practically in daily meetings with Julius’ therapy team, her dad keeps trying (and failing) to break Julius from routines, and Nick sleeps in the family den rather than his old bedroom. Moreover, I love how, even though Quinn is super comfortable about how to act around persons with disabilities, she still gets it wrong sometimes. But more importantly, her missteps don’t make her freeze; rather, she deals with them. For example, she invites Nick to her house and it’s only when he shows up in his wheelchair that she realizes her house is up a steep incline and accessible only by steps. Instead of immediately giving up on getting Nick into her house, she asks his permission to have her and her parents carry his chair up the steps. And later, when he visits on his prosthetic legs, she knows she has to resist the temptation to help him up the steps.

There’s also a great scene where she sees him at an event in his wheelchair and is super curious about why he isn’t wearing his prosthetics. She’s literally about to ask him why when she realizes — not that it’s an inappropriate question, even though it is — but that he maybe just felt like using his wheelchair that day, just like she feels like wearing a wig some days and not wearing a wig other days. I love that because so often the question of what is or isn’t appropriate to ask a disabled person is framed as a series of do’s and don’t’s that, quite frankly, can be intimidating and, worse, reductive. So I love that Friend shows how important simple thoughtfulness and empathy can be. It’s not so much that you should never ask a double amputee why they’re using their wheelchair, but that you should consider whether you want someone to ask you why you’re, e.g. wearing your hair a certain way or wearing a particular item of clothing or whatever other visible decision you made that morning.

I also love Friend shows that Quinn’s hesitation to let people know about her alopecia isn’t innate but rather directly linked to how society responds to people with alopecia. There’s a great moment where Quinn goes to a party and feels really cute because of the hat she’s wearing, but then a total jerk makes her baldness the butt of a cruel joke. I think it’s really important because again, so often book and movie characters are portrayed as being very self-conscious about their disability, and while those experiences are equally valid, I love that Friend puts the blame for this self-consciousness squarely on the shoulders of society, which is really where it belongs. I’ve heard that of all the barriers disabled people face, attitudinal barriers are the most difficult to deal with, and I think Friend really brings that point home. And I also love that Quinn can feel absolutely cute while bald, not because it’s inspirational, but because it’s realistic, given the disabled people I’ve met in real life. And again, this type of representation is so rarely seen in media.

Finally, I love that the whole mean girl / mean popular people is turned on its head. Quinn’s friends at her new school are the popular crowd, and so often the It Girls are portrayed as bitchy and the indie / nerdy girls as the only nice ones. Here, there are no immediate villains (even the jerk who bullied Quinn at her old school was obviously ashamed of his behaviour when she confronted him later on, though he was too much of a jerk to apologize). I like that each time Quinn hesitantly reveals a bit more of herself to her new friends, they don’t react the way she expects them to, and instead reveal their own experiences that are somewhat similar. For example, upon learning of Julius’ autism, one of them reveals she has a sister with Down Syndrome. I also love that Nick’s ex-girlfriend (who is one of Quinn’s new friends) handles Quinn and Nick’s friendship with such maturity. To be honest, I don’t think I would have had that level of maturity at her age, and it’s behaviour I aspire to even as an adult. So I really like that Friend deliberately steers away from stereotypes for all the characters.

+

Thank you to Raincoast Books for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Elaine Castillo is a fresh and welcome new voice to Filipino immigrant fiction. I loved the Filipino touches throughout America is Not the Heart — the sprinkling of Tagalog and Ilocano, the obsession with pancit and Pinoy-style BBQ, and all the talk about faith healing and the power of brujas to heal things like eczema. There are some great passages about Filipino folklore — the white lady of Balete drive, the consequences of a supernatural being (I can’t remember which one Castillo referenced) falling in love with you and not wanting to let you go. There are also all-too-real depictions of Filipino gatherings, and the oddly instantaneous sense of closeness when Filipinos encounter each other abroad — from a grandmother figure tactlessly discussing Roni’s eczema in front of everyone to a complete stranger asking Hero about the condition of her hand.

Major kudos as well to the audiobook narrator (Donabella Martel), who really brought the story to life. From other Goodreads reviews, I learned the text version of the book doesn’t use quotation marks, which often pulls me from the story and particularly when the story is this long. So I was glad to have her voice clearly distinguishing between characters for me. I’m also often wary of how non-native Filipino speakers pronounce Tagalog words, so I’m really happy that Martel did a good job overall with the accents.

Like many other Goodreads reviewers, I had been captivated by Paz’s story in the beginning, so it was a bit of a disappointment to realize she’s not the actual protagonist of the book. I was glad to see her play a prominent role again near the end, and wish I’d seen more of her throughout. She was probably the most compelling character to me, and so often, like Hero, I wanted so badly for her to fight Pol and win. (No spoilers, but basically he does something I find unforgiveable later in the book, and due to the power of his family, Paz is relatively helpless to fight back.)

Even while I wanted more of Paz, I also found Hero to be a compelling heroine. I loved her love story with Rosalyn, and I also enjoyed reading about her experiences as a doctor with the New People’s Army (NPA), a militant Filipino communist group. I rarely see the NPA featured in Filipino fiction, much less in such a sympathetic light, so it was interesting to read.

Roni, as the American-born daughter of Paz and Pol and cousin of Hero, is fascinating to me mostly because of what she represents. There’s a great line about Roni early in the book (Paz’s section, as she looks at her baby girl) that reads:

She doesn’t have to love America; she’s of it. (7%)

And it’s so incredibly true. For immigrants like Paz, Pol and Hero, who struggle between their longing for home in the Philippines and their desire to make a home in America, there’s almost a requirement to become super-American. To love America so much that no one can question your right to be here. It’s a very familiar feeling to me as an immigrant — much as I sincerely love Canada, there was also a touch of the performative in my love for the country at the beginning, almost like I felt I needed to prove my worth to become Canadian. So that line about Roni being of America and therefore not being required to love it really resonated with me, and so much kudos to Elaine Castillo for capturing this complex feeling so succinctly.

There are so many similarly brilliant gems throughout the book — Hero’s observation that Rosalyn’s world in Milpitas is primarily Asian people and places, Roni’s story of her classmates calling Filipinos “more Mexican than Asian” — that beautifully capture various aspects of Filipino immigrant experiences.

It’s a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it, ideally with a bowl of pancit and a stick of Pinoy BBQ by your side

+

Thank you to the Toronto Public Library for taking my recommendation and acquiring the audiobook of this title. Libraries are amazing, and the Toronto Public Library is (in my admittedly biased opinion) simply the best.