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A review by kayken24
The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava
3.5
This is definitely a solid debut which puts my rating at a 3.5. The Truth According to Ember is a single POV funny romcom featuring Native American protagonists in Oklahoma. The female main character Ember is stuck in an underpaying job with unfinished college credits. She feels backed into a corner to lie about her ethnic identity, work experience, and college degree on her job applications to be approved for a interview. When she makes it into a corproate job assisting in the accounting department she meets the man of her dreams, Danuwoa. Ember feels overwhelmed though as her amount of lies increase and she can't keep her story straight, but she feels compelled to share her ugly truths with Danuwoa. As Ember wrestles with her flaws and past family trauma, she seeks to find stability and let herself love and be loved by her community.
The book shines with a great cast of characters and intriguing use of existing tropes like forced proximity, etc. A huge standout is Ember's eccentric best friend Joanna. Also, the book strikes a great balance between romcom absurdity and realism. There are a lot of moments that speaks to Indigenous, female, and class experiences that are coupled with the absurdity of great joke or just hilarious circumstances brought on the nature of Ember's lies. This also speaks to the book as two romances - one with Danuwoa and one within Ember herself. Ember has to love herself before she can love Danuwoa. There are a lot of themes and moments that more or less get their moment within this book, but with further iterations of the author's work I believe they will have the opportunity to focus on less and flesh these themes out more regarding parental abandonment, community responsibility, presentation outside of your ethnic community, etc.
There's only a couple things that I struggled with the book - one, I believe this book needs a prologue and two, the propensity of "show telling". The main reason I believe this book needs a prologue is that Ember brings a lot of past trauma to our entry point as readers. When we meet her she has a tumultuous relationship with her brother Sage that occurs before the story begins. Because, we never see the actual moment that leads to Ember and Sage's falling out and how it derailed her career and personal goals, it skews the readers viewpoint of their interactions on the page. Most times I felt that Ember was too harsh with Sage. Many times I felt that there was no love at all in their relationship as siblings up until the epilogue. At times, Joanna or Ember's Auntie would point out her harsh perception of Sage, but she never apologizes or considers the hurt that she's impacting on him even when she reveals that he cannot change her viewpoint until he pays her back (an act that will take a long time/she doesn't think he will able to do at all). I believe seeing and feeling the emotions Ember goes through when Sage betrays her that I will be on the journey with her to trust Sage again. On the note of "show telling" is a trend I see in a lot of debut authors because their intended audience is very broad at the beginning of their career. What I mean by this term is that for example in this book it will show you a bout of misogyny and then explain what misogyny occurred, why it's pervasive, and how the audience should see this interaction. This is only a problem for me is that I'm bringing my own experiences to this book that may have experience these moments the author is explaining, so it comes off redundant. I gave those moments grace for the reasons I previously stated but it does hurt the momentum I had reading the book.
All in all, I love the fun, crazy energy of this book. At moments, I wanted to give Ember a hug and other times just throw a sock in her mouth so she would stop lying. It's been awhile I've read a single POV romance, but I didn't find myself missing the male POV at all. It was refreshing to get a cheesy romcom that had all the stress and tension of real-life problems thrown into the mix. Can’t wait to read more from this author!
The book shines with a great cast of characters and intriguing use of existing tropes like forced proximity, etc. A huge standout is Ember's eccentric best friend Joanna. Also, the book strikes a great balance between romcom absurdity and realism. There are a lot of moments that speaks to Indigenous, female, and class experiences that are coupled with the absurdity of great joke or just hilarious circumstances brought on the nature of Ember's lies. This also speaks to the book as two romances - one with Danuwoa and one within Ember herself. Ember has to love herself before she can love Danuwoa. There are a lot of themes and moments that more or less get their moment within this book, but with further iterations of the author's work I believe they will have the opportunity to focus on less and flesh these themes out more regarding parental abandonment, community responsibility, presentation outside of your ethnic community, etc.
There's only a couple things that I struggled with the book - one, I believe this book needs a prologue and two, the propensity of "show telling". The main reason I believe this book needs a prologue is that Ember brings a lot of past trauma to our entry point as readers. When we meet her she has a tumultuous relationship with her brother Sage that occurs before the story begins. Because, we never see the actual moment that leads to Ember and Sage's falling out and how it derailed her career and personal goals, it skews the readers viewpoint of their interactions on the page. Most times I felt that Ember was too harsh with Sage. Many times I felt that there was no love at all in their relationship as siblings up until the epilogue. At times, Joanna or Ember's Auntie would point out her harsh perception of Sage, but she never apologizes or considers the hurt that she's impacting on him even when she reveals that he cannot change her viewpoint until he pays her back (an act that will take a long time/she doesn't think he will able to do at all). I believe seeing and feeling the emotions Ember goes through when Sage betrays her that I will be on the journey with her to trust Sage again. On the note of "show telling" is a trend I see in a lot of debut authors because their intended audience is very broad at the beginning of their career. What I mean by this term is that for example in this book it will show you a bout of misogyny and then explain what misogyny occurred, why it's pervasive, and how the audience should see this interaction. This is only a problem for me is that I'm bringing my own experiences to this book that may have experience these moments the author is explaining, so it comes off redundant. I gave those moments grace for the reasons I previously stated but it does hurt the momentum I had reading the book.
All in all, I love the fun, crazy energy of this book. At moments, I wanted to give Ember a hug and other times just throw a sock in her mouth so she would stop lying. It's been awhile I've read a single POV romance, but I didn't find myself missing the male POV at all. It was refreshing to get a cheesy romcom that had all the stress and tension of real-life problems thrown into the mix. Can’t wait to read more from this author!