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radiojupiter's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I generally enjoyed the book a lot. I liked the various voices she wrote in, I liked the plot, I liked the turmoil. However she really didn’t spend a lot of time talking about the implications of being a single mom lesbian. There’s very little exploration of the reaction of her found family, just an epilogue like section. Also spent NO time unpacking the “I would almost rather you’d been roofied” part— I needed her and Nina to have it out over that or at least some acknowledgment later about their issues.
ramonapest's review against another edition
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
sabrinaliterary's review against another edition
5.0
“She was not a parent but a mom, a species held in somber, near-spiritual regard while being for all practical purposes steadily crushed by the forces of public policy, like the American bison.”
tayroz's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I randomly pulled this book off the shelf in my local library and I think it chose me more than the other way around.
I love a good found family book, this one is deep, raw, and open. I was pleasantly surprised with how much of the book is dedicated to Andy and Ryan. I was somewhat expecting a Mama Mia type book, but instead felt like I truly understood each person's motives and drives. This book pulled on so many of my heart strings.
Definitely will be recommending to my friends!
I love a good found family book, this one is deep, raw, and open. I was pleasantly surprised with how much of the book is dedicated to Andy and Ryan. I was somewhat expecting a Mama Mia type book, but instead felt like I truly understood each person's motives and drives. This book pulled on so many of my heart strings.
Definitely will be recommending to my friends!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia
nikii94's review against another edition
3.0
3.
Picked this book up on a trip to flagstaff a few years ago. It was under the “local author” section and the synopsis had me wanting to give it a try.
I like that this wasn’t really a romance book, but there is love mentioned.
I grew frustrated with Andrea and Ryan halfway thru part 1. They were honestly a mess. Andreas friends also seemed very narrow minded. It broke my heart to see this was how her “found family” acted.
Writing style was confusing. Part 1 was first person, part 2 was a collection of media, and part 3 was 3rd person. Why the change?
It does have aspects of LGBTQIA+ but is set in the 90s, so mostly focuses on the lesbian community in Portland.
All in all, I am neutral on this.
Might read again, but probably in the future.
Picked this book up on a trip to flagstaff a few years ago. It was under the “local author” section and the synopsis had me wanting to give it a try.
I like that this wasn’t really a romance book, but there is love mentioned.
I grew frustrated with Andrea and Ryan halfway thru part 1. They were honestly a mess. Andreas friends also seemed very narrow minded. It broke my heart to see this was how her “found family” acted.
Writing style was confusing. Part 1 was first person, part 2 was a collection of media, and part 3 was 3rd person. Why the change?
It does have aspects of LGBTQIA+ but is set in the 90s, so mostly focuses on the lesbian community in Portland.
All in all, I am neutral on this.
Might read again, but probably in the future.
coffeenbooks74's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Andrea Morales moves to Portland in the 90s to escape the constraints of her hometown in Nebraska. In Portland, she feels free to live her life as a lesbian, and has the support of the family of friends she meets there. Then she meets Ryan Coates, the drummer of local band The Cold Shoulder, and everything changes when they have an affair.
cbradley's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
thatotherlisa's review against another edition
2.0
There was so much I loved in this book. The 90s Portland setting. The scrappy found family created by a bunch of young, poor, artsy lesbians. The music. The writing (mostly).
But it has a few fatal flaws that knock it down to two stars.
For a book ostensibly about lesbians, this book is just way too invested in a heterosexual relationship. I was intrigued by the premise: young lesbian woman has a fling with a man and decides to keep the baby. From the blurbs, I was expecting the affair would be a minor part with the focus on what happens when a single lesbian has a baby. But no. It’s a full-blown, messy, dysfunctional relationship between immature, selfish adults. While examining a relationship between a straight man and lesbian woman COULD be fascinating, the author backs down from any sort of real reckoning with the role of their sexual orientations.
Then there’s the writing. The first two-thirds are first person narrative from Andrea’s POV. I usually struggle with that, especially with somewhat unlivable characters, but I was in! Then, it switches for a minute to first-person from Ryan’s perspective because...reasons? It certainly wasn’t to add any insight into that character. Then all the sudden, we’re ten years later, third person omniscient. The shifts are jarring, annoying, and felt vaguely lazy.
Also, overly-precocious hipster children are 1000% not my jam.
But it has a few fatal flaws that knock it down to two stars.
For a book ostensibly about lesbians, this book is just way too invested in a heterosexual relationship. I was intrigued by the premise: young lesbian woman has a fling with a man and decides to keep the baby. From the blurbs, I was expecting the affair would be a minor part with the focus on what happens when a single lesbian has a baby. But no. It’s a full-blown, messy, dysfunctional relationship between immature, selfish adults. While examining a relationship between a straight man and lesbian woman COULD be fascinating, the author backs down from any sort of real reckoning with the role of their sexual orientations.
Then there’s the writing. The first two-thirds are first person narrative from Andrea’s POV. I usually struggle with that, especially with somewhat unlivable characters, but I was in! Then, it switches for a minute to first-person from Ryan’s perspective because...reasons? It certainly wasn’t to add any insight into that character. Then all the sudden, we’re ten years later, third person omniscient. The shifts are jarring, annoying, and felt vaguely lazy.
Also, overly-precocious hipster children are 1000% not my jam.
jackiehorne's review against another edition
4.0
Recommended by BITCH magazine.
A gorgeously written literary novel about the lesbian community in late 1990's Portland Oregon. And more specifically, about Andrea Morales, a former Nebraska child who ditched her conservative Catholic family to join said community after said family discovered that the good girl they thought they'd been raising was really just a mask Andy had taken on to protect herself and her burgeoning lesbian sense of self.
At the start of the novel, Andrea's been ensconced for years in the Portland "Lesbian Mafia," but a bad break-up has left her feeling unwanted and unloved, ripe for falling into an affair with a guy who kindly, but persistently, pursues her. This is not a traditional romance, nor a "straight for you" story; all along, through Andy's first person voice, we know that she's not all that sexually jazzed by Ryan, even while she longs for the affection and attention he pays her when he's not off touring with his band (he's a drummer). Why else should she be keeping her relationship with Ryan such a deep secret from her queer friends?
All through the first half of the novel, we're expecting/dreading/anticipating the breakup we're sure is to come. But instead of a break-up, a pregnancy happens. Andy's pregnant, something that she can't keep from her extended friend group. A group that suddenly doesn't seem quite so welcoming as it once did...
Johnson is both loving and bitingly witty as she captures not just the sense of belonging that Portland lesbian culture in the 90's gave girls and women who did not fit into their families of origin, but also the prejudices and blind spots of the new culture itself (against bisexuality, against trans identity, against any whiff of heterosexuality). As Andrea thinks after her pregnancy secret comes out and her "Lesbian Mafia" cred starts to tarnish:
"I realized I had traded one small town for another. I thought about some of the most dogmatic anarchist punks I'd known, whose parents turned out to be bankers and oilmen. I thought of the class-discussion radicalism police who leaped to call out everyone else on their shit, desperate to cover their own. How even I had thrown myself deeper into the Lesbian Mafia as soon as I started sleeping with Ryan. It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we'd formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic" (194).
The final third of the book shifts in time (10 years later), and to the third person, and multiple points of view. We hear from Ryan, whose wanderlust led him to leave Andy before their baby's birth, only to find himself settling down in rural Minnesota; from Beatriz, the Brazilian musician who has become the love of Andy's life; from Lucia, Andy and Ryan's curious daughter; and from Andy herself, anxious about Beatriz's immigrant status, anxious about raising a feminist daughter, and especially anxious about Ryan somehow reemerging in her life. It's a bit odd, but a thematically rich move, as the "Lesbian Mafia" culture of the 90's opens wider in the 2000's, growing more accepting of other ways of being queer.
Unlike many of the m/m romances I've read, few of the f/f romances I'm familiar with feature a strong sense of lesbian community. I really appreciated seeing such a community portrayed here, with both deep affection and deep awareness of its own downsides and flaws.
A gorgeously written literary novel about the lesbian community in late 1990's Portland Oregon. And more specifically, about Andrea Morales, a former Nebraska child who ditched her conservative Catholic family to join said community after said family discovered that the good girl they thought they'd been raising was really just a mask Andy had taken on to protect herself and her burgeoning lesbian sense of self.
At the start of the novel, Andrea's been ensconced for years in the Portland "Lesbian Mafia," but a bad break-up has left her feeling unwanted and unloved, ripe for falling into an affair with a guy who kindly, but persistently, pursues her. This is not a traditional romance, nor a "straight for you" story; all along, through Andy's first person voice, we know that she's not all that sexually jazzed by Ryan, even while she longs for the affection and attention he pays her when he's not off touring with his band (he's a drummer). Why else should she be keeping her relationship with Ryan such a deep secret from her queer friends?
All through the first half of the novel, we're expecting/dreading/anticipating the breakup we're sure is to come. But instead of a break-up, a pregnancy happens. Andy's pregnant, something that she can't keep from her extended friend group. A group that suddenly doesn't seem quite so welcoming as it once did...
Johnson is both loving and bitingly witty as she captures not just the sense of belonging that Portland lesbian culture in the 90's gave girls and women who did not fit into their families of origin, but also the prejudices and blind spots of the new culture itself (against bisexuality, against trans identity, against any whiff of heterosexuality). As Andrea thinks after her pregnancy secret comes out and her "Lesbian Mafia" cred starts to tarnish:
"I realized I had traded one small town for another. I thought about some of the most dogmatic anarchist punks I'd known, whose parents turned out to be bankers and oilmen. I thought of the class-discussion radicalism police who leaped to call out everyone else on their shit, desperate to cover their own. How even I had thrown myself deeper into the Lesbian Mafia as soon as I started sleeping with Ryan. It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we'd formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic" (194).
The final third of the book shifts in time (10 years later), and to the third person, and multiple points of view. We hear from Ryan, whose wanderlust led him to leave Andy before their baby's birth, only to find himself settling down in rural Minnesota; from Beatriz, the Brazilian musician who has become the love of Andy's life; from Lucia, Andy and Ryan's curious daughter; and from Andy herself, anxious about Beatriz's immigrant status, anxious about raising a feminist daughter, and especially anxious about Ryan somehow reemerging in her life. It's a bit odd, but a thematically rich move, as the "Lesbian Mafia" culture of the 90's opens wider in the 2000's, growing more accepting of other ways of being queer.
Unlike many of the m/m romances I've read, few of the f/f romances I'm familiar with feature a strong sense of lesbian community. I really appreciated seeing such a community portrayed here, with both deep affection and deep awareness of its own downsides and flaws.
m_scrimshaw's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Read for 50 State Challenge - Oregon
A vivid exploration of a particular time, place, and culture. Those of us in the current wave of LGBTQ+ activism might cringe a bit at the essentialist philosophies of the '90s activism and scene, but I always find it's enlightening to explore the past and see all that's changed (I can't see the "Lesbian Mafia" rules flying in most modern queer spaces) and all that's stayed the same (the DISCOURSE).
The deep interiority of our main narrator Andy does hinder connection with the rest of the cast (the city feels like a character with more depth then some of her friends) and some of my interest was lost when the POV switched to Ryan and Lucia later in the book. I liked the framing of Ryan's perspective with postcards, phonecalls, and unsent letters—the story would have been stronger for me if the author restricted him to those formats rather than switching into his POV entirely. And it's always a challenge to write from a 10-year-old's perspective in an adult novel—there's a reason author's spend their entire careers in children's lit—a child's perspective is hard to capture authentically and this doesn't quite clear that bar. As mentioned above, the descriptions of Portland from the grungy late-90s to the rapidly gentrifying mid-00s are deftly and believably drawn—definitely the highlight of the book for me.
A vivid exploration of a particular time, place, and culture. Those of us in the current wave of LGBTQ+ activism might cringe a bit at the essentialist philosophies of the '90s activism and scene, but I always find it's enlightening to explore the past and see all that's changed (I can't see the "Lesbian Mafia" rules flying in most modern queer spaces) and all that's stayed the same (the DISCOURSE).
The deep interiority of our main narrator Andy does hinder connection with the rest of the cast (the city feels like a character with more depth then some of her friends) and some of my interest was lost when the POV switched to Ryan and Lucia later in the book. I liked the framing of Ryan's perspective with postcards, phonecalls, and unsent letters—the story would have been stronger for me if the author restricted him to those formats rather than switching into his POV entirely. And it's always a challenge to write from a 10-year-old's perspective in an adult novel—there's a reason author's spend their entire careers in children's lit—a child's perspective is hard to capture authentically and this doesn't quite clear that bar. As mentioned above, the descriptions of Portland from the grungy late-90s to the rapidly gentrifying mid-00s are deftly and believably drawn—definitely the highlight of the book for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia and Biphobia
Moderate: Pregnancy