Grace Porter has always been the best, always had a plan, and always worked five times as hard as everyone else. After getting her PhD in Astronomy, she’s supposed to go on to work at the most prestigious company there is—but a disastrous interview, and a drunken Vegas wedding to a girl she doesn’t know snaps the tension she’s been putting on herself and causes everything to come tumbling down. This book is by turns fiercely funny, and cathartically heartbreaking, with the poetic lyricism of This is How You Lose the Time War, and the witty banter of Red, White, and Royal Blue. Honey Girl tore me to pieces and then put me back together again—I laughed, I cried, I said “this is so sweet” out loud multiple times. This book is for you, you lonely creature. Are you there?

Honey Girl follows Grace, a woman who recently graduated with a PhD in astronomy and is now trying to find her place in the world. Grace took a recent trip to Las Vegas where she drunkenly marries another woman who she had a beautiful night with. After their night together Grace continues thinking about this mystery woman, who is now her legal wife.

If you’re going into this book thinking it’s going to be a funny happy-go-lucky type of story similar to something like the movie What Happens in Vegas, you better change your outlook because that is not this book. Honey Girl is definitely on the heavier side due to the characters themselves. Both of our main characters are dealing with heavy life issues, such as finding their way in life, choosing their careers, and many other everyday struggles. This level of seriousness had both added positives and negatives to the plot. For the positives, the emotions the characters were dealing with made them feel real and relatable. For the negatives, it didn’t make sense for these two people to get drunk married in Vegas and it made the way they dealt with the marriage seem absolutely unrealistic. I also felt that every situation got turned into something serious, which honestly got exhausting to read after a while.

There were still many plus sides to the novel! This book was very heartfelt and did have amazing representation throughout it. You see many different races, genders, sexuality, and mental illnesses represented through many of the characters. This book is all about finding comfort in the world and those around you. I also loved the side characters and I want them to all have their own stories! I also wish they were all my roommates because they are so sweet and caring.

While this book wasn’t my exact cup of tea, I believe many other people will love it!

The beauty of this book lies in the poetic, yet honest and articulate, way that Morgan Rogers creates a character and a story that is relatable. I think I read it at a good time in my life because I found myself crying at the uncertainty Dr. Grace Porter feels about her career, her future, her relationship with her friends/family and her relationship with herself. Not knowing how to take care of yourself is something I can definitely relate to and it felt so incredible to know that this is something that some people struggle with as well. The world-building is so simple yet so fulfilling, and Morgan Rogers does such a fantastic job in getting you to care about those in Grace's life.

This seems like one of those books that will resonate differently with each person who reads it. I am kind of glad that I wasn't in a state of romanticism (is that a thing?) when I read this. This is not to say that I think the romantic aspects of the book aren't significant or underdeveloped, but rather I think the focus on Grace herself and her journey in all areas of her life is so much more rewarding to read about. I enjoyed the dynamic of Grace and Yuki and I like that we are given permission to continue their story in our minds.

To be a lonely creature is something that is universal. Morgan Rogers did such a wonderful job in exploring the loneliness that exists within individuals who are surrounded by others but still feel it within themselves. I like to think of myself as a lonely creature as well, and I will recommend this book to all of those who feel lonely too.

Thank you to NetGalley and HARLEQUIN for the eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Honey Girl has the prettiest book cover ever!
I was excited to start reading Honey Girl when hearing what it was about but after I finished I feel as though the synopsis is a bit misleading. From it, I thought the book was going to be a light romance between Yuki and Grace. The book does focus on their relationship but the main theme is Grace dealing with her mental health. This isn't a bad thing-just more of an observation. I personally did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. The writing style is a bit too "flowery" for me, I wasn't able to connect with any of the characters or get into the story fully because of that. I also did not like the ending, the way it ended felt unfinished to me, like there should've been another chapter. I do think readers will enjoy Honey girl but unfortunately, it was a miss for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for an eARC copy of Honey Girl!

Another favorite of this year. I flew through this book so quickly and I cannot wait to read more from this author. I could not find anything I disliked. The characters were well written and they were my favorite part of the story. I loved Grace and her found family of friends. I loved Yuki too and their relationship as well. This was a lovely book and I will definitely read again.

"It's okay to admit that something can be best just because it makes you happy, and not because you had to tear yourself apart to get there."

The 'I married someone I just met when I was drunk in Vegas' trope has never been so good!

Grace Porter, 28, has always been, or tried to be, the perfect daughter to her divorced parents; an orderly, military father and a care-free, travelling mother. When she finishes her PhD and doesn't end up getting the job she thought she had secured through her hard work and determination, she takes off to Vegas with two friends to try and forget what happened. In a drunken haze, she meets Yuki, a girl who smells like sea salt and sage and has flowers blooming on her cheeks. The two get married in their drunken stupor, only to have Yuki leave Grace behind to return to New York. What ensues is a story of friendship and found family, finding and growing love, confronting our inner demons and our past, owning up to ourselves and our mistakes, and realizing what is 'best' for us may not always be what we thought it was or what we planned/had planned for us and that so many people are in the same space; we are never alone.

Rogers had me HOOKED immediately with her whimsical descriptions of things that can be, simply put, mundane. One wouldn't think marrying someone you just met hours beforehand or finding that love again over radio waves could be whimsical, but Rogers makes it so! The representation in the book is immaculate! Every single character was completely their own, had a fully realized back story, had their own issues, and was amazingly loveable.

I feel like I have been Grace in my head 1000 times. The struggle to please my parents but not let myself down either, hard work never seeming to pay off, being a woman in STEM, thinking everyone else is leagues ahead of you and you somehow fell behind along the way. Obviously Grace deals with many other issues as well, including the unfortunate presence of the systemic racism in academia and scientific fields, among others. Grace's character growth and development is amazing, and so real. It isn't like some stories where the main character has some epiphany and is all the sudden 'cured/solved/better'. We watch Grace struggle and we watch her attempt to become better, and we see that isn't an easy road and recovery is NEVER linear.

This will definitely go down as one of my favourite reads of 2021 and I am honestly highly considering purchasing this book when it is out in stores because I just enjoyed it so much!

Thank you to NetGalley and HARLEQUIN publishers for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own!

I was immediately drawn to this beautiful cover and the blurb to go along with it. I love Vegas wedding stories and as much as I enjoyed a lot about this book, it was nothing like I expected. The writing was stunning. Absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t believe this was a debut novel. I was expecting a romance, but I personally wouldn’t classify this as a romance. It has romance in it, but it’s much more a coming-of-age contemporary.

Grace Porter holds herself to extremely high standards. She doesn’t let herself make mistakes and a lot of that has to do with her upbringing. Her father, also known as Colonel, expects great things from her. Grace is almost thirty and has officially completed her doctorate. Eleven years of her life was dedicated to this achievement and she’s not so sure where to go from here… Getting away from Portland and heading to NYC to meet up with her wife that she doesn’t know is very out of character for Grace, but she does it anyway.

Grace goes on quite the journey in this book. She finds herself and learns that it’s okay not to be perfect. It’s okay to change your mind and do things that make you happy. She also learns that a lot of the expectations she felt were placed on her shoulders by herself. Grace went through so much in this story and there was some heavy subject matter. This wasn’t a light story by any means.

I truly loved Grace’s found family. Her older brother Raj, her friends that were like sisters to her. This book had some amazing secondary characters. I also liked how it explored the relationships she had with both of her parents. Though the writing was fantastic, I found it hard to get into at first. I think I personally would have liked it more had it been in first person. Also, I wanted so much more romance! I do think readers that don’t care so much about the romance in a book would love this. I would recommend this one and would be more than willing to check out more form this author in the future.

This was adorable and so cute and sweet. I loved the LGBTQ+ representation, but at it's core it's a story of love, both personal and romantic. It's a great read for the upcoming Valentine's holiday for ladies out there.

There are so many things that fascinate me about this book! It's a contemporary lesbian romance, which we simply need more of. And the main characters and her love interest are both women of color; we absolutely need more of these stories. People who love found families will have lots to love in this book. Both Grace and Yuki have loving crowds of friends/roommates. I was fascinated by the prose in this book, it's kind of dreamy and swirly, which made it really different than a lot of what I read. I was fasinated by the choice to keep it in one POV, which is fairly uncommon in genre romance, but this book isn't quite that.

Like a lot of contemporary romances of late, the book is really more about one woman's journey navigating family, career, friendship, and love. The love bookends the story but it's not center stage. We don't get to know the love interest very well, partially because the book never offers her POV and partially because she kind of speaks in riddles? I still thought she was great. Anyone who loves lake monsters is A-OK in my book. They actually went to my home turf looking for lake monsters in this book! I wanted more than the brief glimpses I got of her.

I was personally excited about this book because I have an astronomy background, but the details in this book needed more grounding. Mostly astronomy was a metaphor for other things, which is fine. While I believe the depiction of racism and misogyny and privilege in academia were accurate, there were some nuts and bolts details that threw me off. Like how graduate study and research are funded, what the paths to teaching/industry careers look like. I never even got a handle on what Grace Porter's field was? Maybe planetary science? So I had to suspend disbelief there. Ultimately, I thought this book was best in its swirly feeling mode and less interesting in the career examination mode.

A sharp, relevant mirror into the moments that make us all come of age; Honey Girl is pragmatic in it's appeal and manages to delve into heavy hearted territory with it's prose. Author Morgan Rogers certainly has a gift for being able to capture feelings into words. Without giving too much away I will say the representation this novel allows was done exactly right without tip-toeing around word choices and without hesitation. If you have ever felt lost (and who hasn't?) this book will feel all too reveling in a comforting familiar way.

This novel feels warm. It feels like home and it should absolutely feel like your next read.

It's rare to find a book which captures the millennial experience as fully as Morgan Rogers' Honey Girl does. Within its pages features Grace Porter, a Black lesbian who just acquired their doctorate degree in astronomy. When the declined job and interview requests begin rolling in, Porter goes from the overachieving star pupil to an undesirable company match. Suddenly, everything from her work's integrity to who she is is questioned and scrutinized by companies and universities who do not want to make space for anyone but their own. Porter responds to this quarter life crisis in an interestingly uncharacteristic way: she goes to Las Vegas and gets married. The rest of the book follows the fallout and lessons Porter learns from her past decisions. At the core is one single action: Porter must ask herself if she wants the best or what's best for her.

Grace Porter is 28 years old and facing a world which doesn't have the opportunities for her she was promised. After nearly a decade of additional schooling and nothing to show for it, this book delves deeper into what it means to make life tolerable in a very fraught and lonely world. While it does have it's share of light-hearted conversations and romantic intrigue, at its core, Honey Girl is about the decisions people make while coping. It's not just Porter who feels as though she is falling behind. Porter has friends who are stuck in jobs they never wanted, whether it be out of obligation or the paycheck. The stress of maintaining appearances wears on each person differently, and its fascinating to see how each character copes and makes sense of the life they are given. The end of the book is particularly rewarding, as lapses in understanding are fixed with honest communication.

On a personal note, this book was particularly relatable in ways I was not expecting. Porter's experience was not too unlike my own, excluding the clear difficulties that systematic racism plays in academia. I had also lived in the world of STEM research and academic grinding, wearing myself out at the cost of my mental and physical health. Honey Girl starts at the beginning of Porter's independent life, and I related strongly to the emptiness the main character felt when the research opportunities and university classes ran dry. There is a great emptiness that comes with selecting a job field which does not make space for you. Like Porter, I had also had to evaluate what the best truly meant and what was important to me to have in my life moving forward. After finishing the book, I was astounded that Rogers had no documented experiences in either STEM or graduate programs. In either case, Morgan Rogers' debut is a strong and realistic entrance into the realm of literature.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this advance reading copy!

i don't think i enjoyed this book as much as i thought i would. it wasn't much of a love story, it was more of the story of a black woman trying to find out who she is what she wants to do, after spending a decade studying in a predominantly white field (astronomy) and facing systemic barriers.

i loved the way the author wrote the characters. i enjoyed the friend groups and loved the main love interest. i think i was expecting more, though. i dont know more of what... but more.

the ending left me unsatisfied. i felt like my arc was cut. i'm not saying it was, im just saying if that's truly how it ends.... im not at all satisfied. there were important things that were left unanswered and it bothered me.

nonetheless, morgan rogers is a promising author whose work i will keep on reading in the future.

Readers need the voice of this author! Morgan tells the story of a quirky set of BIPOC characters who readers will soon come to love. I enjoyed this book tremendously.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Honey Girl was a book with

-f/f insta love
-marriage of convenience/vegas wedding
-flirting through a radio show
-found family
-opposites attract

I have been so excited for this book since I heard about it, but it was a lot heavier than the blurb conveys. Morgan Rogers is a talented writer, Her writing pours off the page as almost poetry. It was beautiful. But the content of the book was more than just a girl burnt out, it was heavy. While the writing and flashbacks provided an emotional read, the romance didn't strike me. I would have loved to have seen Grace have a conversation with Yuki that was a bit deeper. The radio show as a way of outreach was a great twist. The writing also appeared to change once Grace began medication and therapy which I also found interesting.

I loved the elements of found family, the reality of having people close to you yet feeling so alone. Not feeling like you can let people in, trying to figure out your life. That is relatable at any age. Especially with the state of world right now that feeling of loneliness and trying to connect with others was especially poignant to me. This is a book about the traumas of childhood that build and finally dealing with them as an adult.

Rating: 3
Steam: 2

CW: major depressive disorder, anxiety, suicide attempt (Side character), self-harm, microagression, racism, parental abuse (emotional), parental abandonment, mental health

The characters in this novel are smitten with love and don't know how to process their feelings, thanks to a number of missteps throughout their childhood. The cast are mostly black or brown lesbians, which adds a nice dimension to those of us who aren't either. I found myself immediately warming to the opening premise: two women vacationing in Vegas get drunk and then married despite having just met. And while the situation could easily have degraded into some "Hangover" spin-off, the book remains true to their characters and brings us deeply into their world. The couple is an interesting pair: a recently minted astronomy PhD and a radio talk show host who reminded me of Allison Steele of WNEW-FM days. The book will challenge you to think about love and loss and conflict and reconcillation, and I highly recommend it.

I know some readers will be disappointed when picking this one up because it's much heavier than is typical for the romance genre it's been pitched as. I'm torn between irritation and appreciation. On the one hand, I expected a light, fun read that would balance out my heavier nonfiction reads. On the other hand, every time I read a romance novel I come away complaining about its lack of depth. This one delivered LOTS of depth.

I loved the found family element the best. Both Yuki and Grace have forged these beautifully queer found families and, in Grace's case, non-queer chosen family, as well. That's not something you see often in any book, especially in romance novels. Queer romance novels also have a tendency to fall into a very heteronormative romantic ideal that gets very boring very fast. (I'm thinking particularly of the recent romcom novel Written in the Stars and how I DNF'd it halfway through because it was so incredibly cis- and heteronormative.) This book resists that in just about every way possible. Yuki and Grace's relationship never feels insular; they're not abandoning their people to be with each other.

My rating is 3 stars because I had a hard time making myself go back to it every time I paused to read another book. The constant references to "honey girl," "rosebud girl," "bees," "honey," "sunshine," the smell of [insert same three scents in Yuki's room], etc were a little much for me, and I had trouble sorting out the chronology in places. I also feel like this could have benefitted from a little tighter editing.

Overall, though, I'm excited for this book to hit shelves. I want to be able to give it to people at the library and say "here, read this, it breaks a lot of molds."

Thanks to Harlequin and NetGalley for the advance reader copy.

Description: After 11 years of schooling, Grace finally has her PhD in astronomy, but Grace is not having the best time. She’s struggling to find her place in academia as a Black queer woman, meet her military father’s expectations, and she just woke up married.
In Vegas. To a woman that doesn’t even know her name.

A little warning: I went into this book thinking it is a romance. It is not. It is a coming-of-age novel, that includes a romance. Yet, it is a pretty good coming-of-age novel. Grace is nearing 30, but only beginning to enter the workforce. As she discovers expectations she had for post-grad are not attainable, or even what she wants, she grapples with her mental health. This is a story of loneliness, found family, expectations, growing up, and love.

The dialogue was a little unrealistic and the book overall was a borderline self-help book. Some of the author’s writing choices felt out of place in an adult novel, but I think they would be great in YA. Despite this, I was still captivated by this story. If I wasn’t reading, I was thinking about Grace and I finished it in only a few sittings. The developing relationship between Grace and her new wife, while not the main focus of the novel, was very sweet. A lot of the writing, (like the prologue and one character’s radio shows) were sometimes an out-of-place preachy monologue, but very beautiful. There were also a lot of characters that made up Grace’s found family and I wish a few of them were developed more.

The writing had its problems, but I was still very entertained and engaged throughout the whole novel and loved the conversations about friendships, family, and life expectations. If Rogers was to release a few companion novels following Grace’s friends I would be quick to pick it up.

CW: self harm

Another book with a Virgo main character... is this a new trend in literature? Sources are unclear.

The writing was filled with metaphors, every thought, every conversation, every observation was described with metaphors. While objectively I can see that it is beautiful, it is not a writing style that resonates with me. I had a hard time staying committed to reading the book because it felt dense to me. I absolutely recommend this to people who like more flowery, poetic writing! I think they’ll find this gorgeous and exactly what they want. The rep is this was amazing and I LOVED how confidently the term lesbian was used and how embraced it was by the main character. We need more of this!

If I had to sum up Honey Girl in one word, it’d simply be exquisite. It's a tale spun out of stars; a million warm hugs and tough-love conversations wrapped in tales of lonely monsters and folklore. Every once in a while, you’ll find a book - or maybe, the book has found you, I’m not really sure how the magic of books works - that seems to be exactly what you need to hear at that moment. A story that has nestled its way into your soul, and has said “I’ve made myself a permanent home here”. Honey Girl is one of those books, for me.

Morgan Rogers is a brilliant wordsmith; her words have a way of making you feel like you’re there in the story. I want to frame her words and hang it in a museum, tattoo it on my skin, imprint it in my brain - you get the idea. Point being, Rogers’ writing is simply beautiful. There’s no other word for it.

Full review to come on 2/16, on here, Goodreads and on my blog www.teatimelit.com/

“Us lonely creatures have to stick together.”

*3.5 beautifully relatable stars!

Do not let my rating dishearten anyone from reading this book, because the book is beautiful!

The premise of the book alone is enough to hook you in, it adds a little mystery into the romance that’s done amazingly. The found family aspect within the book is enough to make your ‘I want friends like that’ heart swoon.

This book does not shy away from tough topics like mental illness, racism, the crazy (sometimes toxic) dynamics with family, self harm, loneliness, and the pressure we put on ourselves, and at some parts I found myself tearing up at all of the feelings I was getting, relatable or not, I was feeling so much throughout.

The way the romance is written between the two characters is slow, but in a way fast, which might not make sense. But, with half of the book being about a mystery girl the main character married and then finding and interacting with said mystery girl, and learning to love this girl after one night of champagne bliss, it all flows slowly when it comes to the meeting and understanding. Then, when it comes to the feels? The love? The intense emotion? That’s fast and as I’ve already mentioned: beautiful!!

But there was something about this book that made it hard for me to breeze through, the book is not incredibly long and it is the perfect length in my opinion. I just found myself taking forever to read through it/finish it, and I’m sure it had more to do with myself than the actual book and it’s writings.

Which is why, even though I adored it so much, I’m giving it a 3.5.