title: When Grumpy Met Sunshine author: Charlotte Stein publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin publication date: February 26, 2024 pages: 336 peppers: 3 (on this scale) warnings: fatphobia, dead parents, some meanness summary: When Mabel gets the job of ghostwriting a former soccer star’s memoir, she ends up having to fake-date him to explain why they’re always together. It…
Author: caritagardiner
242. Why Name Delights
Usually, I make the photos on the top of each post smaller than this one, but not today. This essay will go live twenty-six years after the photo above, taken (obviously) at our wedding on August 16, 1997. We took dance lessons in preparation for the big day and had a great time whirling around…
NetGalley Review of Bloom
title: Bloom author: Helen Hardt publisher: Entangled: Amara publication date: August 22, 2023 pages: 352 peppers: 4 (on this scale) warnings: consensual sexual violence summary: Frankie, mad about the announcement of her sister’s engagement on the day that was supposed to be her own wedding day, flees to a bar where she meets a man in a…
NetGalley Review of An Earn to Remember
title: An Earl to Remember author: Stacy Reid publisher: Entangled: Amara publication date: 22 August 23 pages: 266 peppers: 3 (on this scale) warnings: talk of death, nothing that bothered me summary: Georgiana takes a job as a chef on a private cruise party despite knowing that the ship’s owner is an infamous womanizer. She needs…
241. Why We’ve Upgraded
I was recently feeling a little embarrassed about how fancy my car is. Who am I, a teacher, to have a super expensive car? This (I realize ridiculous) line of thinking led me through a memory-lane stroll through all of the cars I’ve owned. I’m no Sammy P (Hi, SP), so the story is only…
240. Why Reframe
The cartoon above was the first one to pop up in my image search for reframe. The article, which I’ve linked to the photo above, once again shows that every time I have an idea, someone else has thought of it first and written about it better. I don’t let that fact stop me because…
239. Why Today isn’t Special
If you read and remember my post from one week ago today, you might recall that the title was the exact opposite of today’s. Well, that’s not a mistake. On her podcast, Gretchen Rubin has said that the opposite of a profound truth is also true. Today, I’m going with that. As I wrote last…
238. Why Today is Special
I like the image above, which was the first one to show in a Google image search for “one chance to live today,” even though I don’t understand what the water or hand mean. Maybe is an upper-body version of “You can step into the same stream only once.” In any case, you can click…
237. Why It’s Okay to Be Not Okay
For the second time, I’ve come up with a title for my blog post only to find out there’s already a television show with the same title. In this case, the show is South Korean, but I assure you that the title on the screenshot/link above, in case you can’t read it, translates to the…
236. Why Take Mulligans
I don’t play golf. My husband tried to teach me, about a quarter of a century ago, shortly after we moved to a campus that sits in the middle of a golf course, but a love of golfing didn’t take. I do, however, love the idea of taking a mulligan. At so many points in…