Friday is the beginning of a much-needed long weekend, with no solid plans, deliberately, so please don’t invite me to anything. I cannot wait to binge trashy reality TV shows and read a load of schmaltzy novels.
First on my list is Jo Watson’s What Happens on Vacation. This weekend I plan to live through Margaret, a journalist who loves trivia quizzes. It seems Margaret and I have a lot in common. Years ago, quiz nights were something I looked forward to every Tuesday.. I belonged to a winning team — we called ourselves The Pissed-Off Publishers. It was a nerdy, wild time of beer, tequila, quite a few frantic, whispered discussions about correct answers and a glorious hangover the next day. Apologies to my boss of the past for my Wednesday output.
Back to the book, Margaret is excited about the office quiz night, where the prize is an all-expenses trip to Zanzibar. If she wins, she wants to take her mom, but her nemesis, Jagger Villain (excellent cheesy romcom name!), is also entering. Something happens and they end up going to the tropical paradise together. What Happens on Vacation sounds like a perfect vicarious beach read with a classic enemies-to-lovers romance plot. The writer, Jo Watson (who lives in South Africa), is an award-winning author and her previous novel, Love to Hate You, was number nine on Amazon’s top 10 chart. It sold more than 600,000 copies. Like the prolific Colleen Hoover, she started by self-publishing her stories digitally and to date they have accumulated more than 80-million reads on Wattpad. So look out for more, especially if you enjoy light romance.
Talking about Coho, Simon & Schuster recently republished her novel, Heart Bones. It’s a young-adult romance, but nevertheless, I cannot resist speed reading a Hoover as a brain break. The blurb is deliciously sappy: “Beyah Grim finally has her hard-earned ticket out of Kentucky with a full ride to Penn State. But two months before she’s finally free to change her life for the better, an unexpected death leaves her homeless and forced to spend the remainder of her summer in Texas with a father she barely knows. Devastated and anxious for the summer to go by quickly, Beyah has no time or patience for Samson, the wealthy, brooding guy next door. Yet, the connection between them is too intense to ignore. But with their upcoming futures sending them to opposite ends of the country, the two decide to maintain only a casual summer fling. Too bad neither has any idea that a rip current is about to drag both their hearts out to sea.”
This will be total indulgence between my Real Housewives bingeing.
For more substance, but still about love, The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything is a debut novel by Johannesburg-born Kara Gnodde. It focuses on the relationship between devoted brother and sister Mimi and Art, who formed an unusually powerful bond after the tragic death of their parents. Art believes maths is the answer to everything, so when Mimi decides to search for romance, he insists she follows his strict algorithm. But when stargazer Frank enters Mimi’s life, he clearly does not fit the code and this causes Art to deeply distrust him, testing the siblings’ closeness.
Can’t wait to escape into these mushy romances and ignore outside autumnal Joburg. Happy long weekend everyone.
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