Squee
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance
Theme: Friends to Lovers, Second Chance, Small Town
Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves. Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them. At length.
If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping a particular book for Squee from the Keeper Shelf, please email Sarah!
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I first declared my love for Poppy Jenkins on this site when I reviewed Clare Ashton’s most recent release, The Goodmans. And truly, I adore Poppy and have since I first read it. It’s one of my very favourite romances of all time because it has everything I want in one delicious, re-readable place: engaging characters, crackling chemistry, and enough angst to make things interesting.
Like Daffyd Thomas from Little Britain, Poppy Jenkins is the only gay in the village of Wells, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of place in mid-Wales. It’s not like Poppy doesn’t have any love in her life, though. She lives with her parents and grandmother, helping to run the family cafe and raise her much younger sister, Pip. Poppy is also the most beloved person in town. She has a smile for everyone and they have nothing but kind words for her.
One morning while walking Pip to school, Poppy is struck by the sight of a curvaceous woman reaching into a much fancier car than is usually seen around the village. Naturally, her brain screeches to a halt, only to get thrown for a loop when she realizes who it is.
[…] it was the figure leaning through the driver’s door that turned Poppy’s head – long slender legs in slim-fitting jeans, smooth heart-shaped buttocks and a loose T shirt that rode high over a smooth, tanned back. The woman’s face was hidden by blonde bobbed hair that cascaded smooth as flowing water around her cheeks. The haircut was expensive. Even Poppy who went to the economical Super Snips knew that. The woman dipped into the footwell so that the T shirt hung low and Poppy was afforded a brief glimpse of bra. And what a fine thing it was, or rather, what a fine shape it made curving around ample breasts. Soft, voluptuous breasts.
Poppy cast a nervous glance at Pip. Her sister hadn’t noticed the woman or Poppy’s admiration and was skipping eager to buy her allowance of treats. When Poppy looked up again, the woman was standing on the pavement beside the car. Her face was in full view now. It was a face worthy of that elegant body, one of the most beautiful Poppy had ever seen, and one she recognised without a doubt.
“Rosie,” she whispered. The recognition punched her in the stomach.
Roslyn Thorn is back sixteen years after shattering Poppy’s heart. Fast friends from the age of six when Roslyn’s family moved to town, they’d been inseparable until the day Roslyn stopped talking to Poppy ten years later, for reasons Poppy still doesn’t know. When it was time for uni, Roslyn left Wells and never looked back until, apparently, now.
As much as Poppy may not want to rekindle a friendship with her, having Roslyn back in town is flooding Poppy with memories of their closeness and what Roslyn had meant to her (plus, of course, an added suckerpunch of attraction, since Roslyn is gorgeous). And since people in Wells don’t like Roslyn and her English ways any more now than they did when she was a kid, thinking her stuck up and arrogant, Poppy finds herself in the surprising role of defending the former friend of her heart. She just has to decide if she can trust anything Roslyn has to say and figure out how to handle herself around Roslyn, who’s given no indication that she’s anything but straight (*stage whisper* she’s SO GAY and that reveal is SO GREAT).
I adore Poppy. Like, big time, I’ll-get-in-arguments-about-her-I-don’t-even-care love her. Although Poppy Jenkins isn’t told in the first person, it’s entirely from her perspective. She’s warm, funny, kind, and like a bubbly ray of sunshine. It’s no wonder that everyone in town loves her as much as she loves them. And the way she’s so committed to her family and all the lovely interactions we get to see between them? Wonderful. Don’t even get me started on how cute her obsession with curves, and particularly breasts, is. I mean, it can’t be easy being the lone lesbian in Wells and it’s another aspect of Poppy that makes her feel real.
And yet… as much as I want to declare myself 100% team Poppy, there’s something about Roslyn that draws me to her too. On the surface, she’s everything that Poppy isn’t because she comes with an edge and doesn’t let anyone in easily. She has more depth than Poppy, though, and with that comes an ability to feel things more keenly, and watching as that’s slowly revealed is rewarding. It’s fucking heartbreaking when we learn why she cut Poppy out as a teenager and that alone almost made me team Roslyn. Of course, I was too into the story to settle on who I loved more and by the time I got to the ending, I was so pleased by the perfect HEA that it didn’t matter.
Poppy Jenkins fits the typical contemporary romance mold much more neatly than The Goodmans or any of Ashton’s other books, and although Poppy and Roslyn had never been together as teenagers, it also has the feel of a second-chance romance. And while she builds the chemistry between them until it positively crackles, Ashton’s writing is so vivid that she makes us fall in love with mid-Wales as we watch the leads fall in love with each other. Like I mentioned in the intro, it has a good amount of angst to it, but for me it was enough to keep me glued to my screen and not so much that it was painful to read.
Because Poppy Jenkins truly is a keeper on my personal squee shelf, I can’t really be objective about any flaws it may have—to me, there are none, and I savour it every time I read it. If I have any complaint about this book, however, it’s that it hasn’t been turned into an audiobook yet. It needs to be in audio and, dammit, if I’m putting my wish out in the universe anyway, I’d like it to be narrated by Joanna Page. She was the cutest thing ever in Gavin and Stacey, and she’d be brilliant at bringing this story to life in a new medium.
If all of this hasn’t sold you, download a sample to check it out. You’ll immediately know whether it’s going to be your jam or not, although I truly hope it will be. Poppy Jenkins knocked my socks off the first time I read it and it’s made my heart happy on every subsequent readthrough. I’ve recommended it many a time before and will continue to sing its praises for years to come.
This great Squee from the Keeper Shelf is from Tara Scott. If you want to see Tara’s other guest reviews (and we highly recommend that you do), you can see them all here.
Tara reads a lot of lesbian romances. You can catch her regularly reviewing at The Lesbian Review and Lambda Literary and hear her talk about lesbian fiction (including romance) on her podcast Les Do Books. You can also hit her up for recommendations on Twitter (@taramdscott).
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I AM SO BUYING THIS
Your review is a delight. Off to get a sample.
SOLD!
This is a wonderful recommendation and write-up.
My favorite book ever. I re-read every year and I fall a little more in love each time. I wish we could read more of that world, a epilogue or something.