Another great story from one of my favorite authors ( )

Welp, that'll teach me. I put this on my no-thank-you shelf for a reason.

Kristan Higgins generally writes cute, competent contemporary romances. She used to do them in 1st person and switched to 3rd sometime in the last couple of years. The switch makes them feel more like traditional romances and less like chick-lit but I think her voice was stronger in 1st. Whatever, none of this is really the point.

This particular book, the first set in upstate NY wine country, starts out fine. Charming, if a little saccharine, a small-town contemp that is neither garbage nor diamond. The lady protagonist, Faith, is kind of silly but that's fairly typical for Higgins. Faith was jilted on her wedding day when her fiancé comes out of the closet at the altar (basically). She is understandably a little bitter and runs away to San Francisco to lick her wounds. She builds a successful career and doesn't let her heartbreak get the best of her. Alright so far. The tone of the story is a little fluffy and verges on slapstick in some areas, which isn't awesome, but fine, whatever, I'll deal. Through most of the book, while there isn't any outright gay-bashing, I was getting a slight whiff of homophobia. Nothing I could put my finger on and I thought maybe I was being a little too sensitive. It happens. But still, there are some jokes that could be misconstrued. And then, boom! Transgender joke. As in, a person who is transgender is made the butt of a joke merely for the sake of the plot. This shit is not funny. NOT AT ALL. I should have put the book down and DNF'ed it, but I was already 80% through, goddamnit, if I'm going to be subjected to this kind of nonsense, I at least want to get the HEA.

And if that shit isn't enough, there is some serious slut-shaming going on here. Everyone is calling everyone a whore, and judging the ladies who like the sex outside of the bounds of matrimony, and there's a bit where this conversation takes place:

"My slutty roommate's with her boyfriend."
"I thought you liked her."
"She's a slut, Levi. So what's up?"

As if being a slut, however one defines the word, is diametrical to liking someone. That is motherfucking trifling bullshit, right there.

So anyway, this book would have been cute if not for all this bullshit. It was nothing special, although it had potential, since Faith has epilepsy and seems to be treated pretty well by the story (as in, she is not a speshul snowflake for "overcoming" her disability. There is a brief bit where it's implied that Levi must be The One because he never tiptoed around her, though). There were some genuinely funny bits (hemorrhoid as an exclamatory, frex) that weren't homo-or-trans-phobic. Faith's family seems pretty nice, Jeremy (the gay ex-fiancé) isn't a stereotype and he has a really great relationship with Levi, there's some poking fun at [b:Fifty Shades of Grey|10818853|Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1)|E.L. James|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1372516342s/10818853.jpg|15732562], but really, none of it is enough to make up for making someone's personhood the punchline. Especially a minor punchline.

I'm undecided about whether I'll keep reading Kristan Higgins' novels, but I will most certainly not be buying them. ( )

This was lovely and charming. The beginning took a bit to get into because I didn't find Faith very sympathetic. But she grew on me, and so did her weird and quirky family.

This book had flaws. I wasn't thrilled with how Higgins made a transgender woman the butt of a joke, for example. I also wanted to smack Faith at times. ( )

This book had it all. Romance. Humor. But also some touching, heart wrenching moments. Very enjoyable read. I look forward to more books by this author. ( )

Has anyone read any books by this author? All the funds from her preorders go to St. Judes', which is AMAZING, but none of my Goodreads friends have read any of her books! So idek if they're good or bad or somewhere in between