Blood Test Blues Beget New Shoes -- And Also Happy Endings

I'd just read a book that left a bad taste in my mouth (I've endured many a dud that I've spared you) and was in need of something super sweet.  Enter Kerry Winfrey's Just Another Love Song.  It's about a small-town girl and the high-school-sweetheart-turned-country-music-star who got away.  They meet again fifteen years later while planning the annual summer fair, an event bursting with bake-offs and corndogs in a charming if sometimes caricatured tribute to the Midwest.  Now, it isn't the best romance I've ever read.  It's not even the best Winfrey romcom I've ever read (that would be Not Like the Movies).  But it was amusing and cheerful and soothing.  And with that other sordid story still fresh in my mind -- plus a trip to Lab Corp looming -- it was exactly what I needed.  

Indeed, as the phlebotomist prepped me, I was already buried in its pages, prompting her to ask if I was okay. "Yes," I said, still not looking up, "I've got my book friend here."  I actually uttered those words: book friend.  But I didn't care.  Because through years of trial and error, I've learned that books get me through icky stuff, however weird and antisocial it may seem to others.  So a shoutout to all the authors out there who weave worlds to take us out of ourselves -- and our less-than-ideal day-to-days.

And also a shoutout to Samantha over at PinkBopp and The Big Hair Diaries, who generously shared the Amazon link for these adorable blue flats: 

Shoes: Amazon

I know, I know.  I'm supposed to be on a buying ban.  And one month in, I still am (as recently as today, I resisted 10% Rakuten cashback from Kohl's; how strong am I?).  But for me, getting blood drawn always means getting a small prize, and I wasn't about to deny myself because of some self-imposed fashion fasting (especially because I'd had enough of actual fasting).  And these ten-dollar beauties were just the thing.  Cute and retro, they remind me of the earlier 2000s when I last had a pair, marveling at their cloud-like comfort as I crawled the mall.  Now the mall is mostly empty storefronts and subpar pizza.  Although to be fair, even in its heyday, food court pizza wasn't that great.

So that's how buying the blues -- and reading about a guy singing the blues -- made me feel anything but.  

Just Another Love Song may be just another romcom.  But to me it was a symphony.  

Stranger Flings: Writing to Mr. Right

It's not every day that a toy store saleswoman and a puppeteer fall in love.  But that's just what happens in Kerry Winfrey's Very Sincerely Yours.  Their meet-cute?  Theodora "Teddy" Phillips starts stalking local kiddie TV show host Everett St. James.  Maybe stalking is too strong a word.  After all, it isn't Teddy's fault that her dud of a doctor boyfriend dumped her instead of proposing, forcing her to seek comfort in emailing an entertainer best known for curing emotional boo-boos.  

Now may be a good time to point out that Teddy could've been tiresome.  The woman wore nothing but neutrals because her boyfriend told her to, then made him dinner post-breakup just because he texted her he was hungry.  Need I say more?  A wussy-woman-scorned-turned-needy-fangirl might've made for a soggy last straw.  But Winfrey's pitch perfect prose paints Teddy as more sympathetic than sad sack, rendering her epistolary relationship with Everett as a step forward rather than a leap back.  Because there's something about pouring your heart out to a stranger.  You can tell them things you'd never tell people you know, and writing is more cathartic than speaking.  Maybe that's why I liked Teddy and Everett better on paper than in real life.  

Which may say more about me, an incorrigible introvert, than it does about Winfrey.  After all, I've read and loved three of her other books: Waiting for Tom Hanks, Not Like the Movies, and Love and Other Alien Experiences.  They checked all my fiction boxes, i.e., overflowed with the kind of colorful quirkiness and trigger-quick dialogue that make storytelling special.  What's more, I recently read another rom com about a couple who met through letters, and it left a much be desired.  (Can't remember that one?  That's because I never blogged about it.  Exactly -- and also, you're welcome.)  So although Very Sincerely Yours doesn't top my Winfrey list, I still sincerely enjoyed it.  And anyway, there are lots of other books in the sea.  

Like Winfrey's Just Another Love Song, which will be out in August.

Life Imitates Heart: Putting the Moves on Movies

Not Like the Movies is like the movies because it's a novel that's rom com gold.  Kerry Winfrey's (and no, she's not related to Oprah) sequel to Waiting for Tom Hanks has it all: romance, snappy dialogue, and baked goods for days, and it picks up right where Tom Hanks left off.  Big things are happening for Annie Cassidy.  Her first screenwriting coup, Coffee Girl, is about to debut, and she's tying the knot with her very own Tom Hanks, actor Drew Danforth.  But in Not Like the Movies, the spotlight is turned on her bestie, Chloe Sanderson.  Wise-cracking, colorful inside and out, and with a life that's in shambles, Chloe is every inch the quirky, chick flick sidekick.  She struggles to look after and financially support her father, who has early-onset Alzheimer's, while slogging away at a coffee shop and finishing her degree online.  Her only bright spots are the unusual pies she bakes (whiskey apple, anyone?) and the rainbow-rific clothes she wears, both of which help her avoid the mini breakdowns that she refers to as "Five-Minute Cries."  (There's a whole sequence where she mocks marketing her time-limited tears strategy in an infomerical.  Hilarious.)  But as it turns out, Chloe's troubles are only beginning.  Because Annie's movie is all about her and the will-they-won't-they thing she's got going with her boss, Nick.  Chloe doesn't want anything to do with Nick.  He's crotchety and set in his ways, a reluctant coffee shop owner who's thirty going on sixty.  He likes his broody indie rock, thank you very much, a passion he gamely defends to yacht rock-loving Chloe on a daily basis.  He's like Ray from "Girls."  Only cute and not a sad sack.

Unlike Annie, Chloe isn't a disciple of rom coms.  Actually, she hates them (true crime is her thing) and is intent on avoiding love -- making her, as Annie is quick to point out, just the sort of woman-who-has-no-time-for-love about and for whom rom coms are made.  But the thing is, Chloe's likable.  And it's fun -- if sometimes sad -- to join her on her journey of getting knocked down and back up again.  Even when she tries to distract herself from Nick by glomming on to a dense but affable stoner named Mickey Danger.   

Sounds like everything else you've read, right?  Some of it is -- which is what makes it comfy.  But some of it's not, which is what makes it clever.  The real beauty of Winfrey's writing is that she (lovingly, reverently) lampoons rom coms even as she celebrates them.  She's a smart, funny woman who owns her adoration for all things girly -- so, a goddess.  She doesn't take herself too seriously and in doing so (not doing so?), shows us that rom coms are -- wait for it -- not always the stuff of fantasies but sometimes the stuff of real life.  And there's no better heroine to deliver this message than Chloe.  She's believable because she's so against it.  Kind of like someone who hates marshmallows (not that I imagine such a freak of nature exists) but then is force-fed a bunch and admits they're delicious.  

Which brings us to the point in the book report post where I share my favorite parts.  Or, as I like to call them, passages, because it makes them sound like secret passageways.  Only they're not so secret because I'm telling you.  

On Chloe walking down the lackluster hallways of her dad's assisted living facility:

"But that's why I'm dressed in one of my favorite outfits.  A red skirt that flares out to my knees, and a shirt with red and purple flowers, topped with a bright yellow cardigan.  Some may call it "kindergarten teacher chic," but I know what it is to me: a slight pop of color in a world full of beige." (96)

On the outfit Chloe wears to Annie's premiere:

"I chose a sexy/funky dress, one that shows off my body while still mixing patterns, with stripes on top and a green-and-purple floral pattern on the bottom.  It says, Yes, I'm quirky, but also, boobs.  It's kind of like if ModCloth and some skanky store at the mall had a baby." (214)

Yes, both of these "passages" are about clothes.  So no, ahem, secret there.  But they're also about so much more.  Because clothes make the woman.  And this woman's a winner.    

That said, Not Like the Movies is as magical as an outfit montage.  Buoyed by a supporting cast of returning characters such as trips-over-his-own-feet barista Tobin, Wookie-suit-wearing Uncle Don, and ferret-obsessed shop regular Gary, it's weird in the most warm-hearted way.  Will Chloe sail toward true love or end up alone like that classic yacht rock heroine Brandy?  I'd say you have to read the book to find out, but let's be honest: rom coms aren't about the world's Brandys.  They're about happy endings, life's pie a la mode. 

And that, of course, is why we love them.