This guest review from S.M. Lundberg is a perfect tie in to our recent guest rant on academic heroine, as the heroine works in a STEM field!
S.M.’s a recovering journalist turned tech support and hobby writer. She got started with romance novels as a teenager, sneaking paperbacks in and out of her mom’s closet (sorry, Mom). Now she proudly reads romance novels while enjoying a happily ever after with her husband and four kids (she really took those HEAs to heart, folks).
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TW: The plot deals with suicide, mental illness, and recovery.
Remedial Rocket Science is Susannah Nix’s first full length book, following the release of a short story collection I and Love and You. I’d read the latter and kept a lookout for Remedial Rocket Science, and when the chance to get an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest review popped up, I took it.
And really, this book is like my own personal catnip, if I’m being honest. There’s a geeky cover! The heroine’s working in a STEM field! It’s a romantic comedy! Did I mention the cover’s pretty?
The book opens with socially-stunted Melody Gage taking a night off from her studies at MIT to make an attempt at interacting with fellow humans. Her date’s a no-show, and circumstances contrive to send her (literally) into the arms of Jeremy Sauer, a hot, rich college dropout with whom she has nothing in common except lust. They have a pleasant but short-lived interlude, and part as friends, promising to get in touch if they’re ever in the same place again.
Fast forward three years, and Melody finds her herself in Los Angeles, Jeremy’s hometown, preparing for a major interview with an aerospace giant (which, hey, just happens to partly owned by his family). Keeping her promise, she calls on Jeremy to help her get the lay of the land and decide if LA’s actually somewhere she wants to live. Of course, it’s just the beginning of a longer journey together neither Melody nor Jeremy is quite prepared for.
In Remedial Rocket Science, nothing is as straightforward as it seems, and it’s not straightforward for real, meaty reasons. Both Melody and Jeremy are struggling with issues of identity and expectations, and then later with guilt and grief. Both keep getting in their own way, but for different reasons.
Melody is struggling because she’s terrified of making herself vulnerable again, following the death of her college boyfriend.
I’m about to get very spoilery here, but this is my second pass on this review and I realized that this is an important part of the book to talk about, in case it’s triggery to anyone:
“It was my fault Kieran killed himself,” she said instead.
Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t even know what happened. If you knew the whole story…” She shuddered.
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever you think you did, there’s no way it was your fault.”
“We had a fight. I found out he’d been selling prescription drugs on campus and threatened to break up with him if he didn’t stop. He stormed out, then a few days later, they found him. He’d taken a whole bottle of tranquilizers.”
She never should have let him leave that night. She should have followed him. At the very least, she should have checked on him instead of leaving him on his own for days. She knew he was bipolar; she just hadn’t realized how serious it was. She hadn’t ever thought he was a suicide risk. He’d been on medication to manage it, and most of the time, it worked pretty well. It had kept him more or less level—until suddenly it hadn’t.
Melody thinks of Kieran throughout the story, remembers both the things she loved about him and his faults, and she wonders anxiously what he would make of her professional and personal choices. She’s not just worried about what a relationship with Jeremy would mean, but also whether she’s ready for a relationship at all, which seems realistic for someone coming out of this kind of tragedy.
I don’t have bipolar disorder, so I’m not qualified to say how well Nix handled this portion of the story. I can say that it didn’t feel exploitative to me personally, and that Melody’s journey after Kieran felt earned, but it’s important to note this part of the story so that you can be forewarned and make up your own mind about it.
Jeremy’s experience with grief feels more distant, because he lost his father to cancer just weeks after his night with Melody. It’s clear he misses his father, but years have passed, and Jeremy is more concerned about living up to his expectations and honoring his legacy.
When Jeremy and Melody meet again, his biggest fear seems to be that he’s failing at on each front.
“Hey.” She touched his shoulder, and he looked up without meeting her eyes. “You did just fine. Everything’s going to be okay.”
He gave her a half-hearted nod and turned back to the computer screen.
She realized her hand was still on his shoulder and shoved it behind her back. “You’ll see. Mr. Horvath is going to rock that presentation tomorrow because of you.”
Jeremy pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Believe it or not, my career to date has not exactly been marked by success.”
“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
He shook his head again, his eyes still fixed on the screen. “I’ve been a screw-up for so much of my life, I don’t think I know how to be anything else. I’ve been trying to do better, to do what my father would have wanted, but I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, and it feels like everyone’s just waiting for me to fuck up again.”
That fear isn’t necessarily unfounded. Jeremy makes several bad decisions early on, and the ramifications of those poor decisions ripple throughout the rest of book.
The most severe mistake in my eyes is two-fold:
Unfortunately, shortly after they reconnect, he invites Melody to a (predictably disastrous) dinner with him and his new girlfriend, Lacey (Charlotte’s sister, as if his idea wasn’t bad enough, right?), and his best friend Drew, during which the truth comes out in explosive fashion.
If this turns you off initially, you’re not alone. I’m not a fan of that particular trope, and I dreaded the even more common romance trope of the romantic hero saying he was changed and sorry and that being all that’s needed to resolve the problem. But I gave the story I’d been enjoying the benefit of the doubt and powered on, and I’m glad I did, because his choices are never excused or justified by Melody, other characters, or the narrative.
On the contrary, Melody is allowed to be angry, to express her anger frankly, and Jeremy has to deal with the immediate consequences by losing their burgeoning friendship (at least temporarily — this is a romance, after all). More importantly, Jeremy doesn’t try to change Melody’s mind: he respects her feelings, and leaves her alone. It’s not until later when he finds Melody crying in her car on the anniversary of Kieran’s death that he offers comfort, opens up about himself, and afterwards extends an olive branch. Even then he leaves it up to her to accept it:
“It’s funny,” Melody mused while he was waiting for his latte, “the first couple months I worked here, I never saw you at all, but now I seem to run into you all the time.”
He reached across her to stuff a few bills in the tip jar and lowered his voice. “That’s because I was avoiding you.”
The admission took her by surprise. “You were?”
He glanced around to make sure no one else was close enough to overhear. “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want anything to do with me, and the last thing I wanted was to make you uncomfortable at work. So, whenever I saw you around the building, I just…went somewhere else.”
Melody winced at the memory of how harshly she’d spoken to him outside the restaurant. “I feel bad. You shouldn’t have had to do that.”
“It did cut my latte habit back,” he said, patting his stomach as though it had ever been anything other than washboard flat. “Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m glad you’re not doing it anymore. It’s much easier this way, isn’t it?”
Jeremy grows and redeems himself throughout the story, in large part because he’s repeatedly forced to confront the consequences of his choices and learn from them. Nix excels in organically growing imperfect characters, and returns again and again to the concept of trust and identity, not just with Melody and Jeremy, but with the supporting characters as well, who themselves are often very lonely.
Melody and Jeremy are surrounded by people maintaining images for the sake of others, often unhappily. Lacey, Jeremy’s brief girlfriend, becomes integral to Melody’s growth, and, without spoiling too much, arguably has the greatest revelation regarding identity in the book. Jeremy’s mother, his best friend Drew, and Charlotte to a lesser extent — they all must figure out how to come to terms with who they are and who they love and how they treat other people, and they all play a role in helping Jeremy do the same.
This is true even when the drama resembles an episode of Grey’s Anatomy more than everyday life (as the author herself jokes in the narrative at one point).
Which brings me to my next point: despite the heavy themes, this is not a depressing book. Although she has her moments of sadness and seriousness, Melody’s also a dorky, snarky character with a dry sense of humor (at one point, she makes a really judgey, deadpan assessment of a blind date who’s being That Guy™ that had me accidentally snorting my coffee). I found myself frequently grinning or laughing outright at some of her internal monologues, like during this passage:
Her feelings for Jeremy were like Schrodinger’s Crush. As long as she didn’t open the box, their relationship existed in a state of quantum superposition: both possible and impossible at the same time. She was too much of a wimp to find out whether the cat was alive or dead.
And as much as I loved watching the relationship grow between Melody and Jeremy, I would recommend the book on the strength of its female friendships alone. Melody longs for friendship almost as much as she longs for love, and Lacey and her circle of friends become important support for Melody as the story progresses. These scenes in particular shine, bringing levity whenever things get too heavy:
“Han Solo, Princess Leia, or Chewbacca,” Tessa asked Devika after Terrance brought out their second round of gin and tonics.
“New movies or old movies?” Kelsey asked.
Tessa waved her hand. “Whichever.”
“It matters,” Kelsey insisted. “Right?” She looked to Melody for support.
Melody nodded in agreement. “Definitely.”
“Old movies, then,” Tessa said.
“Um…” Devika frowned, thinking it over. “Okay, marry Leia—I mean, obviously.”
Tessa nodded. “Obviously.”
“And kill Han Solo, which means I’d have to fuck Chewbacca, I guess.”
“You’d kill Han Solo?” Melody said, aghast. Han Solo was the first man she’d ever wanted to marry. Her heterosexual mind couldn’t comprehend such sacrilege.
Kelsey raised her hand. “I’d like to talk about the fact that my girlfriend just said she would fuck a Wookiee.”
(The rest of the conversation is too crude to include in this snippet, which may be why it tickles me so much. Humor’s a funny thing.)
The story ably avoids what would otherwise be really clichéd plotlines: catty women fighting bitterly over a dude, or just bitterly hating each other for existing, period. Instead, she uses said plotlines as opportunities to let women support women. Even Charlotte and Melody — who might be justified in being at odds given their history with Jeremy — get a chance to get to know each other as women and have an opportunity for friendship, even if it’s not a close one. It’s very refreshing, and it shouldn’t be notable in romance, but it is. A+ just for that.
Now for the potential downsides:
This is a slow slowburn romance. I’m not exaggerating — aside from their interlude at the beginning, Melody and Jeremy aren’t a real couple for most of the book. They each have to figure out their messes before they can come together. Often those messes involve each other, but sometimes they don’t.
My preference is for characters to drive romance, not the other way around, and this is what makes Remedial Rocket Science an enjoyable read for me, but if you like a romance that hits the gas early and often, this may not be the book for you. Let me put it this way: if you like books like Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, you’ll like this one.
Melody and Jeremy express their affection in unique ways, namely in that they take turns “saving” each other. It happens in small ways, like Melody helping Jeremy with an important presentation, and in big ways, like Jeremy pretending to be Melody’s boyfriend for her mother’s benefit. (Oh yeah, did I mention there’s fake dating? If that’s your jam, you’re going to enjoy this book.)
Having said that, there’s also a fair amount of failure on the part of Melody and Jeremy to just use their words, particularly on Melody’s side. In addition, as the book is told in third person exclusively from Melody’s POV, Jeremy’s motivations can be hard to figure out. Everything is filtered through Melody’s perceptions, and as readers we get to know and like Jeremy as Melody does (or as she doesn’t). I didn’t necessarily feel that anything was lost by seeing things through Melody’s eyes, just that there might have been a more thorough understanding of Jeremy’s actions had we been able to see things from his point of view.
All in all, Remedial Rocket Science is a really satisfying read and I highly recommend it. On second pass I’m torn on the grade — the slowburn coupled with what could be considered a limited storytelling perspective might bring the grade somewhere around a B for some readers. But, honestly, for me it was an A, so I’m going to average it out to a B+ just to be safe.
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Thanks!
At only 99c I have to give it a try!
This sounds so good! Great review.
Thanks for your thorough review, S.M.! With all the heavy subjects mentioned in this review, it doesn’t sound like a romantic comedy to my middle-aged self. Seems like there may be a lot of witty dialogue, and there is a STEM heroine and geeky cover, so I may spend 99 pennies on the book and give it a try. I’ve had Intermediate Thermodynamics, the second in the series, on my radar.
@Leigh — thank you for reading! XD
@LauraL — I hear you. It’s definitely clever and funny in places, but as far as category goes, I think it’s more a romantic comedy in the way something like Much Ado About Nothing is a romantic comedy (not that I’m saying it’s Shakespearean!). I.e., that the couple has to overcome misunderstandings and are involved in hijinks before they reach their happy ending, if that makes sense?
I’ll take a chance on it for $2.99 🙂 Thanks for the thoughtful review!
At $2.99, it’s definitely worth a go. I like the woman in search of a one-night stand because she’s more focused on her academic career much better than the more typical so focused on her career that she doesn’t know how to interact with people outside of her field. That happens too often with STEM heroines.