This book was amazing! I saw a lot of myself in Grace: depression, anxiety, perfectionism, self doubt, feeling alone... It was both so good but also hard to read at times. I was so proud of the journey that she went on and it made me reflect on my own journey and places in my life I still could work on. I was pulled in from the very beginning and couldn't get enough, I read it in 24 hours because I couldn't put it down.

There is so much here - LGBTQ±, chosen family, coming of age/finding oneself, mental health, falling in love... But it was all done so well. Especially the mental health aspect, it was treated the best I have seen lately. I recommend this book to everyone. I love Grace and Yuki and wish we could have more!

Thanks to NetGally, Harlequin Books and Girly Book Club for my copy.

Honey Girl was not what I was expecting at all, and I'm shook. Not only is Morgan Roger's writing exquisite, but her story is a remarkable reminder to all the souls out there that are lonely, lost, and struggling that there is always someone out there who is willing to listen. I can go on for eons about how beautiful this book is, the but I'm just going to leave it as this: BUY THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY. You will not be disappointed.

Have you ever read a book where you thought it was just what you needed when you needed it? Honey Girl has been that book for me. Those of you who know me know that I don't do romance novels. I simply don't do them. So why did I say yes to this blog tour invitation? (Thank you Lia Ferrone by the way. :D) Being a Black woman who has gone through a PhD program I was curious how Rogers was going to write and represent those of us who have ventured this road alone. It can be a very isolating and lonely existence. And then I was trying to wrap my head around how someone like Grace, supposedly so put together (believe me I know how "F.I.N.E." - ie f'd up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional - we overachievers can be.) would allow her walls to come down long enough to get married to a perfect stranger. But Rogers pulls it off. You understand what brings Grace here AND you acknowledge what Yuki brings to her world. Honey Girl, at its heart, is more of a character study about a woman coming to find her own path in life. I think this is why it resonated with me. Both women were relatable. Both women had found families that I adored. Grace's angst was palpable. Yuki's stories were heartfelt and earnest. This was one of the places where Rogers's poetic voice truly shines.

The synopsis sounds catchy but Honey Girl is so much more deep and honest than that. Rogers addresses racism, mental health and family dynamics and yet she leaves the reader with hope.

Honey Girl is a wonderfully rich debut that showcases Morgan Rogers' amazing talent.

CW for anxiety, self-harm, mental health discussions (including depression, anxiety disorder, and borderline personality).

This book ruined me so completely and in the best way. The writing was poetic and flowery and gave a lightness to what is actually a pretty heavybook. Anyone thinking this is a fluffy fun romance, buckle up. There is romance involved but this book is heavy and beautiful and about discovering your place in a world that refuses to make a space for you and...it...HURTS!

Grace, who also goes by Porter, has spent the last 11 years working to be the best in her chose field of Astronomy. Now that she's graduated with a doctorate her plan should be falling into place. The problem is though, her plan is actually falling apart. When she wakes up with the drunken memory of marrying a stranger she realizes just how much she's detoured from her plan. She attempts to jump back into her plan, but the harder she pushes, the more things seem to be spiraling. With friends who are like family surrounding her, a mother on her own journey and a father with impossible expectations, Porter feels more alone than ever. Maybe the rosy cheeked girl from her Vegas night is the answer to all her questions. Maybe the wife she never expected to have will lead her on a path where she can find herself.

So here's what I loved about this book: while yes it has romance and yes the two women are instantly drawn to one another and connected, it doesn't solve their problems. While Porter goes on a journey with Yuki in hopes that it will help her loneliness and help her figure out her life, in reality she comes to realize that finding live will not fix everything that has gone wrong. Sometimes running away is the best way to catch your breath. Sometimes running away is just running away. Sometimes, it can be both. I don't want to give too much away, but essentially Porter has to unravel her life and her feelings to determine exactly which one she's doing.

I also really enjoyed the mental health aspect of this book. One of Porter's best friends is someone dealing with mental health issues and Porter does her best to help as much as she can. What's interesting about this dynamic is that Porter doesn't see her own mental health struggles clearly. I think that really speaks to how easily it is to dismiss or overlook the help that you need while attempting to help others. Further more the inclusion of mental health in this story adds a layer to the relationships that Porter has, both romantic and familial, She's so hell bent on doing things herself that she doesn't understand that she has so many people she can rely on, not to fix her, but to help her along the way. Watching Porter make this journey isn't easy, but it resonated with me so much, especially when Yuki asks her what "being the best" looks like for her and what if being the best doesn't mean what she's thought it meant for all these years.

Overall this book just had me feeling so emotional, both over Porter and Yuki's connection, but also over Porter's journey of self discovery. It may not be an easy read, but it's certainly a beautiful one.

This book made me feel so many things but I loved it so much. This is a great book for anyone who feels lost as a young adult- coming of age books always end when a teenager becomes an adult or graduates high school but this is a good book that describes the insecurity of what comes after. Grace has been working towards a goal for so long and once she accomplishes it- there is not a magic solution to all her problems.

The writing was dreamy and beautiful and the characters were very well written. I especially liked the found family and the relationships with the friend groups (both Grace's and Yuki's). The characters are all messy and complicated and they don't try to fix each other but they take care of each other to the best of their ability. This book tackles many important issues like racism, mental health, and the crushing weight of expectations but Grace and Yuki's friend groups are a safe place of support and encouragement. I also liked that it was a story about a lesbian relationships that faced a lot of issues but homophobia was not one of their challenges.

I really enjoyed this book and it is great representation that portrays the struggles of being a Black, queer woman in the workplace and the complexities of all sorts of relationships. I definitely want to read this again at some point

No matter who you are, there's been a time where you question your life path. I know when I lost my job earlier this year, I questioned if I was on the right career path, if I was even good at what I've wanted to do. It's incredibly tough to go through in your mid-20s after thinking I'm finally on the right track. Along with the pressure you put on yourself, you feel the pressure from outside forces: be it friends, parents or mentors. So I totally felt what Grace Porter, the main character of "Honey Girl," and her struggle with trying to find herself.

But my, this book was romantic. Whenever Yuki and Morgan would speak to each other, I would actually swoon. And I'm not a swooner!

However, I went into this book thinking it would be a romance, but I was completely wrong. This was a book about finding oneself, with romance on the back burner. I found Grace's chosen family -- and her biological one -- to be compelling and nuanced, and gave Grace a complicated and layer back story.

This book was a surprise. But a very welcomed, enjoyable surprise.
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Thank you Net Galley and Harlequin Books for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

Honey Girl is a beautifully written story about a young woman's struggle with her self and her place in the world. While yes this is a romance, it's much more about the main characters personal growth and self acceptance.

28-year-old Grace has spent the last eleven years of her life accomplishing her plan to achieve her PhD in astronomy and be the best. To celebrate she goes to Vegas with her best friends and wakes up married to a stranger who she can't seem to forget. Back home she thought her hard work would pay off, yet she still has to work just as hard to prove she belongs in her profession. Her race and her queerness are keeping the workforce from believing in her, and now she questions if it was all worth it. She tries to avoid her problems by going to New York to spend time with her new wife, but that only holds of her reality for so long before she runs to the one place she can breathe. When she lands at her childhood home she acknowledges that she needs to seek help and work on her self before she self-destructs.

I loved so much about this book. The writing flowed and had a soothing quality. The story itself was believable with real characters. Characters that struggle with self harm and depression. Characters that believed in love and myths. Characters who formed unbreakable friendship and found family. Characters who embraced each other and loved without judgement. I honestly don't know what to say except Honey Girl was so much more than I expected it to be.

I started this book thinking it was going to be a sweet, easy read about two girls who get married in Vegas and figure it out. It was definitely a lot more than that. I related to Porter so much, and I imagine a lot of people likely will. It's a perfect book for all of us in our late 20s who have accomplished so much and still don't know what the hell we're doing. So good. I loved it.

Grace Porter is a 28 year old with a pipping hot PhD in Astronomy and a ton of familial baggage. Raised by her military father, Grace has made it her mission in life to win his approval and followed a life plan to the strictest of her abilities. As a celebration of her graduation, Grace is gifted with a girls’ trip to Vegas. One night she gets absolutely drunk one and ends up marrying an unknown woman. She wakes up the next morning to find a card and a note but no wife.

Grace is having a difficult time post college. Having finished her plan she finds herself lost and not knowing what to do with her life. The job market is difficult and Grace finds herself angry that one wasn't waiting for her after graduation. The one interview she went on was a bust due to racist and bigoted implications of her "fit" with the team so she walks out. She thumbed her nose up at working for a small college because it was not up to her best standards and didn't feel like it would help her grow. I'm sure many of these thoughts she has were an accumulation of her unchecked stress.

This book is marketed as a romance but it is far from one. You don't see a budding relationship between Grace and Yuki. They hang out together for the summer but I never felt any intimate connection. If anything it was an intimate look at mental health and the benefits of entering therapy but it takes a while to get to this point.
While a wonderful and important story, the writing didn't really work for me and I struggled to stay with the book. The constant calling each other by their full names felt repetitive and irksome. Also everyone calling her Porter was strange. I understood it coming from her military dad but not everyone else. She seemed indifferent to it so too each their own I suppose!

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book.

I really liked how real this book felt. From the academic burnout (it's real and it's brutal okay) to the relationships throughout the novel, everything rung authentic.
My favorite part of the whole thing had to be the coming-of-age theme. As a grown up who loves academia, and would love to get back into it at some point, the burnout and confusion after graduating is extreme. And, for me, that was just with an undergrad. I can imagine that Grace's sudden emergence into the world post-PhD was just as traumatic and confusing for her as it read. Figuring out who you are outside of one thing is so hard, and Grace's struggles hit home.
I also loved the various relationships throughout the book. Ximena and Agnes, Raj and Meera, Colonel and Sharone, and, of course, Yuki. The different ties to people and how they impacted Grace were woven together in such a beautiful way.
Really I think this was the perfect novel for someone in their 20s trying to figure things out. It was sweet, and full of heart, and oh did I mention really gay? Yeah, super gay. That always makes everything better. I think my favorite character overall is probably Agnes but really I loved them all.

I wanted to so badly love this book. Since hearing the author of a book I loved talking about this several months ago I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I was thrilled to get a NetGalley ARC. Unfortunately, I struggled with this book. I felt like the storyline was all over the place, the character development was not strong, I found myself more annoyed with the characters than connected. The premise of the story is wonderful. Women trying to figure out her life gets drunk, meets another woman, and gets married in Vegas. Only to wake up alone trying to put the pieces together. It just did not hold up.

Grace has always been a disciplined over-achiever, as evidenced by her new PhD in Astronomy. That’s why she’s surprised by her own actions at a drunken girls’ trip to Vegas that end with her married to a woman she doesn’t know. Struggling to figure out the next move in her career, she spends a summer in New York with her new wife and learns to embrace the unexpected.

I really, really wanted to unabashedly love this one. While I did enjoy it, I don't think it quite lived up to its potential. Grace and Yuki are great foils for each other, and a lesbian Vegas wedding set-up is so fun! But I think the pacing and plot didn't quite work, and the prose was a little forced. I appreciate Rogers' focus on that post-academia-what-do-I-do-with-my-life-now anxiety, but I wish we'd seen Grace and Yuki find a bit more joy with each other.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I haven't had the best luck with ARCs, I tend to put them off and then have ambiguous feelings about them and feel guilty for not openly praising them. I don’t tend to post about things I don’t love. So I'll just say right off the bat, this wasn't really for me.

First, I requested it assuming it was a pretty tropey f/f romcom, a drunk Vegas wedding between opposites, an academic and a free spirited type. But as other reviews will be quick to point out, it isn't a romcom so much as a somewhat meandering journey of self discovery for Grace, the academic. That’s not automatically a bad thing, and to be fair, I could see where she was coming from, caught between the pressures of her father, a military man, while dealing with the sexism, racism, and homophobia in the academic community. I certainly understand parental pressure on WOC (Grace is Black, the love interest is Japanese American) and the anger and frustration at the unfairness of her lack of career prospects came across quite well, but I suppose my issue is how much I didn’t feel her joys?

I felt her frustrations keenly, often even more angry at her parents and friends on her behalf than she seemed to be, but it when it came to her love for them, I was left colder. Honestly, it’s not the lack of relatability so much as the writing style? I’m a bit too literal-minded for what turned out to be pretty poetic prose, so whenever it veered in that direction, I wasn’t really willing to go along. So this is where I want to point out that though it didn't work for me, it’s a great example of why I’m so against rating something low when I know it's a personal disconnect. If it hits right for you, I think it could be a fantastic read. She has a group of close, interesting friends, when her love interest does show up, she and Grace are sweet and fun together. I personally just spent a lot of time impatient with certain arcs and characters.

I think, for sure, if you’re into f/f, you ought to at least try out the preview/sample when it comes out next week, on February 23rd.

I went into this book not knowing anything about it and I really enjoyed it. I love a good love story and that's exactly what this is. I've read several romance books with this same set up -- wild night in Las Vegas and "how is it that we are married and what are we going to do?" But Honey Girl is definitely a fresh twist on that trope. The main characters are interesting and relatable. The writing carries you along and keeps you interested. Plus, I loved all the STEM content -- girls + science = sexy!
I'm looking forward to what this author does next!

a wonderful debut from an author full of promise. the book was witty, charming, and heartwarming. excellent prose as well. 4/5 stars for this lovely debut.

I had such a blast reading this, thank you for the opportunity to do so! A modern day love story featuring an educated, biracial lesbian who is learning how to navigate life authentically after academia in the ever-present shadow of familial pressure. Passionate writing and interesting characters carry this plot along at a great pace. I am endeared to the presence of different locations across the US, which come alive with the hopes and memories they embody.

Honey Girl is so much more than the romance novel it is pitched as. It's deep, thought provoking and so relatable. ⁣
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Honey Girl follows Grace Porter, an astronomy PhD graduate, on her path to find a job post-grad. In celebration of her degree, he father give her tickets to Las Vegas. While in Vegas celebrating with her two friends, she gets drunkenly married to a woman who lives in New York. We then follow her journey she takes to truly discover what it is she wants in life and WHO she actually is. ⁣
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You ever relate to a character so hard it HURTS? That’s how I felt with Grace. She is surrounded by people who love her, yet still feels completely alone. She feels as thought she is disappointing everyone around her since she's not following the path her friends and family originally expected from her. (AHEM MEEEE!!!)⁣
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Each and every character was so complex and had so many layers. You couldn't help but fall in love with them all. I loved that the book took us to different settings- Portland, Vegas, New York, and Florida. It kept me engaged and kept things interesting. ⁣
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Morgan Rogers had me crying during my hour long lunch break at work. She ruined me, man. I can't BELIEVE this was a debut novel and I can't wait to see what Morgan Rogers comes up with next- it will definitely be an automatic buy for me.⁣
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Thank you to the publisher, Park Row Books, for providing me with an ARC of Honey Girl in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Gist
Who among us hasn’t felt lost? Lately, because of the global pandemic or just in general? So incredibly lost and untethered to anything solid underneath their feet?

I certainly have. I graduated from grad school while the pandemic and first lockdown were in full swing. And I spent the summer sending out over 50 job applications, only to receive a whole lot of silence.

Where can I go from here? What options do I have?

I get it. A lot of you get it, too. And the author of Honey Girl certainly got it.

It has been a very long time, since I felt this deeply connected to a character in a story. At times I just wanted to curl up and hug this book to my chest.

But I’m jumping ahead.

The Details
I loved the characters. Plainly and simply stated. They were real and flawed and sometimes raw and unapologetically human.

They were well-developed and had dimension. Each character was unique and full of life.

I appreciated Grace a lot. I could identify with her and feel the struggle she was going through in my own bones.

The writing brought these characters to life. I’m probably not the only one to be
pleasantly surprised by the fact that this is the author’s debut novel.

I have to say though, some of the dialogue felt a little choppy. But I only noticed this because everything else flowed so nicely.

Other than that, it felt like I was right there with Grace and the rest of the characters, hanging out, at work, at awkward dinners with the parents. It unfolded like a well-scripted film inside my head.

I’m glad Honey Girl had a LGBT theme and contained characters from all walks of life and nationalities. It’s a contemporary romance that steps outside of those restricting checkboxes.

The Verdict
Overall, Honey Girl is a wonderful read. It’s rich and honest and real.

I struggled with this review, because I really wanted to gush and talk about it more, risking giving things away that should be discovered by each reader.

I would definitely recommend it.

Disclaimer: I got this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'll admit I requested this book out of curiosity (thanks, booktube!!) and it was really good! Grace is 28 and she is struggling to find a job as an astronomer. I loved the fact that for once I was reading about a protagonist who was also struggling with job hunting. It's such a real struggle especially with covid and I liked the fact that Grace is battling with burnout and a lot of angst. Perfect for anyone in their 20s-30s.

Wow this was not at all what I expected, in the best way. I figured this would be another beach read romance and that honestly couldn’t be further from the truth. This book is deep and layered, with characters struggling with love and loss and finding their own place in the world.

Grace Porter is the daughter of a Black army colonel and a white orange grove owner (now divorced). Grace has spent her entire adult life adhering to the plan she and her father laid out, with one giant exception of her choosing to major in astronomy rather than medicine. She went straight from her Bachelor’s to her Master’s and then her Ph.D., and every step of the way she’s been challenged and pushed by her (white) peers and classmates into believing the only way she’ll be successful is by being the best.

After a disastrous interview, she and her two closest friends take off for Vegas for a weekend. Grace has never, ever done anything rash in her entire life, but she wakes up the morning of their departure with a head full of half-formed memories, a fresh indent on the pillow next to her, an unsigned note, and a ring on THAT finger. How could she have gone off and gotten married, to a woman whose name she can’t even remember?

Grace tries to leave everything behind her but her 11 straight years of pushing herself to be the best have taken a toll on her mental health and she decides she needs a break before figuring out the rest of her life. She finds herself in New York, staying in the apartment of her wife and her wife’s lovely trio of roommates. Grace has to do a lot of soul searching and feels like she’s finally at the beginning of something good, but it all blows up when her mentor suggests a teaching job at a small college in upstate New York. Grace needs to be the best and teaching at some small school no one has heard of won’t cut it, even if it means having to leave her wife behind. Push comes to shove and Grace flees to the orange grove of her childhood, where she finally starts focusing on her own mental health and well-being.

I loved these characters, I loved how real and authentic they were, and I love how central mental health was to this storyline. It’s not talked about enough, and especially for BIPOC who carry the weight of their entire race on their shoulders and who are never allowed to be vulnerable lest they cast a shadow on their people. I think this book shows how important it is to see someone’s humanity and that we need to stop asking BIPOC to be emblematic of their entire race and instead let them live as people, with their vulnerabilities and insecurities and strengths and weaknesses. What an amazing story.