A Crazy Kind of Love- Mary Ann Marlowe

I am a massive sucker for celebrity-falls-for-regular-gal books. MASSIVE. If extremist cults and escaping secretive religious groups is my favorite flavor of nonfiction, this is my favorite kind of fiction. Despite not really following any of Hollywood, this is a genre I've always loved (I'm going to go ahead and blame Just a Summer Romance by Ann M. Martin- yes, she of my beloved Babysitters Club- for this. That book was probably one of my first real YA titles as a tween and is fully responsible for my starry-eyed devotion to celebrity-dude-as-love-interest novels). So when I saw A Crazy Kind of Love by Mary Ann Marlowe on the New Fiction shelf, a quick scan of the back cover and I was hooked.

In order to pay the bills and keep her health insurance, fine arts major Jo Wilder has taken a job stalking celebrities as a member of a paparazzi crew. It's not her style at all; she'd much rather snap pics of normal people, doing normal things, but that's not exactly a major source of cash. Problem is, she's not great at what she's been hired to do. Too much heart. Too much seeing celebrities as people and not as product.

A missed photographic encounter with Maggie Gyllenhall leads her straight into the life of Micah Sinclair, the uber-gorgeous frontman of the rock band known as Theater of the Absurd. Micah's a known flirt and major manwhore...but Jo's definitely feeling the attraction too. Sparks burst into flames, and suddenly Jo's in front of all those paparazzi cameras, not just behind them. With her jerk of a boss demanding seriously unethical stuff, Jo's got to figure out what's real, who she can trust...and who trusts her.

God, this was a fun read. Jo and Micah's blossoming romance was both sweet and steamy, and despite his bad boy rep, Micah was an utter charmer. Building off of my last review, though, my favorite part of the novel was the fact that Jo has Type I diabetes. She tests her blood sugar often, experiences a few scary lows, and is often hunting down appropriate food or digging into her stash of snacks, but with the exception of informing Micah of the ins and outs of her condition, it's just part of the story, something Jo lives with, takes care of, and goes about her life. It's her normal, and although she occasionally shows her displeasure with it, it's not treated as A Major Deal, and that's something I really appreciated reading. My father has Type I diabetes, and everything Ms. Marlowe wrote about here, I grew up seeing and hearing about. Jo is never represented as anything other than just a normal person; her best friend and roommate, Zion (whom I absolutely adored) does a good job of caring for and about her without crossing the line into being hovery. There's also the inclusion of a transgender character, which made my heart smile. Representation absolutely matters, and Ms. Marlowe has done a fantastic job. This was truly a fantastic escapist read on a weekend where my pain levels were ridiculous (seriously, how have we gone to the moon and figured out how to transplant hearts and do brain surgery, but the human back and SI joint are still a nebulous mystery???) and I needed that mental getaway.

Peeking around on Goodreads, I see that my library has her other book, Some Kind of Magic, so that's exciting news. And her next novel, Dating By the Book, sounds amazing and comes out in June. I'm going to need to borrow Hermione Granger's time turner here...


Visit Mary Ann Marlowe's website here.

Follow Mary Ann Marlowe on Twitter here.

Switch and Bait- Ricki Schultz

In my quest to fill my life with more fiction, I decided to wander through the New Fiction section at Library #2 (my card works at four; I'm extremely lucky to live in an area where so many libraries offer reciprocal borrowing privileges) and nearly punched a hole in the shelf reaching out to grab this copy of Switch and Bait by Ricki Schultz. I couldn't get enough of her sharp wit and snappy prose in Mr. Right-Swipe and knew a few chapters in that I'd follow her anywhere, literarily-speaking. Switch and Bait didn't disappoint.

By day, Blanche Carter (a girl of the south, natch) manages Literature and Legislature, a DC bookstore; by night, she's side-hustling her way to freedom from student loans by helping desperate women clean up their online dating profiles and posing as them in order to attract the right sort of guy (buzz off, douchebros). Her own dating life is a bit...emptier. There was the one-night-stand with her terminally ill best friend's delicious (but Republican!) brother-in-law Henry a few years back, but other than that, nah. Blanche is better off alone. She's seen what love can do to a gal and she's sworn it off entirely.

When she signs a new client who has all the grace of a vertigo-afflicted elephant on oiled ice, Blanche figures she's got her work cut out for her, but she's thrown for a loop when said elephant, aka ridiculously gorgeous Ansley, matches with- who else?- Henry. Hot, best-friend's-brother-in-law, entirely-way-too-shaggable Henry. Breaking her #1 rule of never getting involved in a relationship of someone she knows, Blanche forges ahead, meeting someone new in the process...but all roads, it seems, lead back to the same place, the very guy she swears she's over.

Ricki Schultz has an instantly recognizable style. Her characters teem with sarcasm, acerbic wit, and up-to-date slang, all things I absolutely adore about her books. Switch and Bait had me laughing out loud several times, just as Mr. Right-Swipe did. I enjoyed reading a story set in DC that wasn't specifically about politics (politics are, of course, mentioned, but only in a more generic sense). Blanche and Isla, the best friend who has Huntington's disease, disagree on politics but still remain friends, and I admired how Ms. Schultz handled that. Isla's failing health and Blanche's grief over it also made an intriguing side plot. As someone who suffers from chronic pain, it's gratifying to see disabilities and major health conditions represented in literature, and I hope this is something that continues, not just in Ms. Schultz's work, but in fiction in general.

Switch and Bait is a fun read that sneaks in a message of honesty, loyalty, and being true to yourself and those around you. If you haven't read Ricki Schultz yet, question every decision you've made about your life up to this point, then head to your nearest library/bookstore/electronic device with online bookstore access and grab yourself a copy of either (or both!) of her books, because she's utterly fabulous. I can't wait to read whatever she writes next.


Check out Ricki Schultz's website here.

Follow Ricki Schultz on Twitter here.