Review: The Marriage Sabbatical

If you see the title of this cute novel and think “sabbatical, like a work sabbatical, but with marriage?” then you would be correct. That’s the unique and spicy little twist to this love story between a middle-aged couple that’s already been together about 20 years. The Marriage Sabbatical is a fun look at marriage, the story after the “will-they-won’t-they” of all the chick lit about young adults in their twenties and early thirties. Here, Jason and Nicole hear about the idea from their doomed swinging neighbors, who they admittedly can’t stand. It’s called the 500 Mile Rule, which states that if the two partners in a couple are more than 500 miles away from each other, they’re allowed to participate in whatever kind of sexual, frivolous escapade intrigues them. Jason is about to take a year-long work sabbatical, which he planned to spend traveling with Nicole. But shortly after hearing about the 500 Mile Rule, Nicole admits she doesn’t want to venture to any of the wildly outdoorsy places Jason planned to visit. So they argue, and then compromise on spending (about a year) apart: Jason will do his wild bro trip (a trip that he had originally planned to do with his best friend, who sadly died during COVID, and who Jason is still grieving) and Nicole will go to Santa Fe and take silversmith classes in an effort to learn to make jewelry. At the onset, I wondered whether either of the characters would actually do the dirty and sleep with other people. I doubted it. That’s just not how these books go. They have to find their way back to each other, after all! But as the book continues, the reader quickly learns Jason and Nicole’s relationship was a lot more complex than it seemed. Maybe they really needed this sabbatical. And maybe they really needed to see other people. It’s an interesting exploration of long-term love and the lengths some are willing to go to to reconnect. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. But author Lian Dolan (whose previous book, The Sweeney Sisters, I also really enjoyed) manages to make everyone come out on top at the end, especially true love.

Lara’s Top Picks of 2023

Better late than never, right?! Here are my favorite 10 books of all the 26 books I read last year, in descending order, complete with links to full reviews of each of them. You’ll notice a small handful of Colleen Hoover books; that’s because I did a Colleen Hoover binge last summer and discovered they are a true guilty pleasure for me. Last year happened to be a year of great reads for me, and the top 5 on this list could have really gone in any order. Each of them was incredible.

10. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. It’s the ultimate story of “girl tries to fix boy,” but in this one, she actually does it. While people may hate that trope, I couldn’t put this book down.

9. November 9 by Colleen Hoover. Two lovers meet on November 9 every year as their love story grows. It’s a silly trope that’s been done before, and yet here, it still works.

8. Naturally Tan by Tan France. The Queer Eye host uses his memoir as a vehicle for also offering fashion advice and self-help tips he’s learned along the way. Eloquent and fashionable, just like Tan, himself.

7. Verity by Colleen Hoover. A thriller and page-turner that will make you feel a little icky, but that you won’t be able to put down. For those who like Gone Girl.

6. The Incomplete Book of Running by Peter Sagal. It will make you laugh, and it will make you cry. NPR Host Peter Sagal writes a compelling memoir about how running is not just for physical health, but for mental and emotional health and gets you through the hardest of hard times.

5. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. This is a fun novel for anyone who loves novels about: love, feminism, chemistry, cooking or parenting. Yes, it manages to tackle all of that into one powerful story.

4. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. Egan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad revisits many of the characters from that original book, telling what feels less like a novel and more like a collection of short stories about characters who are all somehow connected.

3. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. This is a one helluva page-turner told through the eyes of a journalist reporting on an elderly actress who recalls all the men she married over the years. But the real story is who Evelyn Hugo’s true love was, and how she and this journalist are connected.

2. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A sad and yet still hopeful novel, Tomorrow tells the story of soulmates, not in love, but in video game creating.

1. Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. A statement on mid-life in New York City, Fleishman is depressing in how deeply relatable the characters are as well as their perspectives on marriage, parenthood, anxiety and meltdowns.

Review: The Candy House

Recap: In a dreamy, interwoven bit of organized chaos, Jennifer Egan once again delivers an exceptional story that’s not really a story, a tale with connecting throughlines, characters and themes but no real plot. It’s a tough one to explain to others. In fact, I tried to explain Egan’s storytelling to one of my coworkers recently who looked at me puzzled, and may as well have responded by saying “well, that sounds awful.” But what’s confusing, once understood, becomes brilliant and truly awe-some.

About ten years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan published The Candy House as a sequel, following some of the characters from Goon Squad. Those carryovers include Sasha, LuLu and Bennie among others. Egan does the same thing in this sequel as she does in her first book: each chapter reads like a short story about a particular character. A minor character from that story is then the “hero” of the next chapter, so the reader learns more about another person in the story. Then another minor character tells the story in the next chapter. That same thread continues throughout. The stories aren’t necessarily connected either. They’re just little slice of life pieces of each of these characters. Some stories are told in present day, some in the future, some in the past. There’s a lot of hopping around and putting together the puzzle pieces of who’s connected to who, how and on what section of the timeline.

In Goon Squad, Lulu was a young girl. In Candy House, we meet her as an adult, where she is a spy (and has maybe the coolest chapter in the book?). Here, Lulu is also part of another chapter made up of emails sent between many of these interconnected characters, which further emphasizes the brilliant interweaving of everyone. It’s very “Love, Actually” and fun to read! The connections between the characters is one of the central themes of Egan’s books: that each person has an impact on another. But Candy House has another overarching theme about social media, authenticity and who you are versus how you portray yourself online and preserve yourself for the future — big themes about which we are already talking when it comes to AI and which make this story particularly relevant.

Analysis: What’s fun about The Candy House that I don’t remember from Goon Squad is that Jennifer Egan is playfully meta in her writing. Near the end of the book, she calls out the book’s title by writing “tongue in cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them.” It’s exactly what she’s doing with this book: trying to lure in a new generation of readers to her eclectic writing a decade after publishing her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that younger readers may have missed altogether. She goes on to question “do all roads start to converge after age 70?” The Candy House has an answer for that too: yes, or maybe even earlier.

When I read A Visit from the Goon Squad years ago, I remember being excited to read an award winning book. I liked it, but it didn’t have much of an impact on me. It took me a while to understand what was going on, and by the time I got it, I felt like I had spent so much of the book focusing on the wrong things and missing the beauty and creativity that was right in front of me. So sadly, it didn’t land. But for some reason, The Candy House clicked much more easily and earlier for me. Reading it felt like an adventure and made me appreciate Goon Squad and Jennifer Egan much more.

MVP: Lulu. There are a dozen characters I’d love to put here, but Lulu’s chapters were the most creatively written format-wise, and her character displayed such strength and a beautiful mix of masculinity and femininity.

Get The Candy House in paperback for $15.19.

Or on your Kindle for $13.99.

Review: The Incomplete Book of Running

Most people who know The Incomplete Book of Running author Peter Sagal know him as the host of the decades-long running NPR show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! But I must confess I’m one of the few running fanatic oddballs who knew him first as a columnist in Runner’s World magazine. I always liked his articles, as he identified as an “amateur” runner. New to running, I could identify with that and quickly came to laugh at and enjoy all the silliness and embarrassing components of running he wrote about, like the inevitable, but unexpected, undesirable “egress” that will inevitably happen when you’re running near the woods and nowhere near a suitable toilet. I could also identify with his description of the power and high of finishing a quality run or setting a new PR in a race. After continuing to read his columns for some time, I was not at all surprised when he wrote in one issue that this would be his final column, that he felt he was no longer properly representing the true “amateur” runner anymore. I agreed. This was a guy who started as an amateur, but had very quickly gone on to run many marathons with objectively speedy finish times. And yet, I knew I would miss his columns.

Boy, was I surprised when years later, I discovered the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! podcast and put all the pieces together that the host of the weekly news quiz podcast was same Peter Sagal whose columns I’d lovingly read years ago. So when I finally stumbled upon his book, The Incomplete Book of Running, I knew I would love it. And I was right.

His memoir revolves around running and how he came to it as a boy, how he fell off the habit during the family-building years of adulthood and how somehow it reeled him back. He writes about his quest to PR in the marathon. He writes about the marathons that were completely unfocused on finishing time, but instead focused on running with people with physical handicaps. He writes about his experience running the Boston Marathon in 2013 when the bombing happened. He writes about jumping into races he wasn’t signed up for and the consequences he face when he was so transparent about his frowned-upon misdeed.

Some parts of his book seemed familiar to me, particularly the section about “egress” when you run, and I wondered if parts of this book were made up of some of the columns he’d written in Runner’s World. It wouldn’t surprise me, and it seems like a highly effective way to take on writing a memoir. Hey, if you’ve already done the writing, why not re-use it?

All of these little running anecdotes I expected and loved. It tempts me to say if you’re not a runner, you may not like this book. But then I think about the other stuff that’s also in his book: the depression, the anxiety, the end of a marriage, the body image issues and disordered thinking about food and fitness, a second shot at love, coming to terms with his childhood, coming to terms with his parenting, forming friendships, building community. The Incomplete Book of Running is a reference to the famous running book, The Complete Book of Running by James E. Fixx. But it’s also incomplete because it’s not completely about running; it’s about how running affects all the other stuff in your life, and the other stuff in your life affects running.

And then I realize this book probably is for everyone. After all, it made me cry, which most books do not do. There has to be more to a book than running to make me cry. To make me cry, a book has to have heart. And inspire. And this one does both, in spades.

Buy The Incomplete Book of Running in paperback for $11.87.

Or on your Kindle for $13.99.

Review: It Starts With Us

Recap: It Starts With Us is the sequel to Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us and picks up immediately following the epilogue of It Ends With Us. That epilogue ends with about a year’s time jump and a brief interaction between Lily and Atlas, Lily’s first boyfriend from high school. As this second book in the series starts off, Lily is wondering if it’s even possible to make that relationship work again when she still has Ryle in her life. She and Ryle are now divorced, and their daughter is now about a year old. Co-parenting has not been easy. It never is, but when your ex is an abuser, there are added layers of challenges. She and Ryle have learned to get along while passing the baby between them but Ryle is clearly still holding out hope that they will get back together. He doesn’t quite understand the deep-seeded fear that now lies in Lily’s body. She quite literally contracts when he’s near. And he seems to be near a lot as he still has access to Lily’s apartment.

For the first time in the story of Lily and Atlas, the reader gets a clearer idea of how Atlas feels about their history and relationship. The book alternates narration between Lily and Atlas, bringing Atlas to the forefront of the story, compared to the first book in the series. As Lily deals with creating distance and space between her and Ryle to make room for Atlas, Atlas is ready to make room for Lily in his life, but it comes at a bad time. Someone has been vandalizing his new restaurant, and he quickly learns there’s a personal connection. As the two try to navigate all the complicated relationships around them, the one relationship they know they don’t have to question is the one they have with each other.

Analysis: After not loving much of It Ends With Us, I was concerned I would like It Starts With Us even less. But I was wrong. Revisiting familiar characters got me on board with the sequel much more willingly. I was happy to see Lily finally get the true happiness and joy she deserved. I was also happy to see Atlas deal with some of the abuse he faced when he was younger. It’s a point of pride – and relief – when Lily finally creates space between her and Ryle. My biggest gripe is her best friend, Allysa, who also happens to be the sister of Lily’s ex, Ryle. Though Ryle’s actions were reprehensible, it felt pretty implausible for her best friend to so quickly and willingly denounce her brother and stand by her friend. That makes her strong, sure. And her actions are right. But I do find it hard to believe that someone who loves her brother would so quickly take the other side.

It’s interesting to note that author Colleen Hoover did not originally plan to write this sequel at all, but her fans – and later, publisher – demanded it. It was nice to the rest of the story flushed out though. This is a rare occasion in which I feel the sequel actually added something of value, allowing for a real happy ending for Atlas and Lily and a more clear picture of and plan for how Lily and Ryle would continue to co-parent their daughter despite their relationship status. After having read this book, it makes It Ends With Us feel unfinished. This really completes the tale.

MVP: Atlas. He really is the best. He takes on new challenges without doubts and instead, full confidence that he can either a) handle it or b) it will all work out even if he can’t.

Get It Starts With Us in paperback for $9.65.

Or on your Kindle for $13.99.

Review: Ugly Love

Recap: When Tate Collins moves in with her brother, Corbin, she anticipates she’ll have to share space with him and his friends, focus on school and work and make friends with classmates. All that is true. What she doesn’t anticipate is coming home to find a drunk friend of her brother’s outside their apartment, who she then has to drag to a couch. He’s a messy drunk and upset, sad about an ex. Tate is annoyed. This isn’t exactly what she signed up for. When she learns this drunk friend is a guy named Miles who not only works with her brother, but also lives down the hall, she realizes she’s going to be spending a lot of time with him.

And suddenly that’s not so bad. Every time they’re together, she feels an electric pull toward him and his eyes always starting deeply at her, almost through her. It’s not long before it becomes clear she must have Miles. So when he makes a move, another move, a smile, Tate starts to lose it. Before she knows it, the two of them can’t keep their hands off each other. All of this is kept secret from their mutual connection, Corbin, of course. And it’s not officials because Miles refuses to be in a relationship. In fact, he refuses to allow himself to fall in love. Tate thinks she can “handle” this, but of course she can’t.

As this “A” plotline is happening, a separate “B” plotline is underway too, as the book switches narrators. Tate narrates her relationship with Miles, while Miles narrates the story of his relationship with his ex from six years ago, eventually leading up to the reason he is the way he is; aka: completely blocked off from love and any kind of meaningful relationship.

Analysis: Ugly Love is one of the first books I read in a while that feels like a through and through “romance” novel. In fact, the only thing I can compare it to is Fifty Shades of Grey, which…would we really classify that as a romance novel anyway? Regardless, I stand by Colleen Hoover, despite all the flack she gets. Her writing: not the best. Her tropes: many are pretty obvious and have been done time and time again. But the sex scenes are sexy! And the woman can write a good twist. I thought I figured out why Miles was so closed off to love with Tate, and I was 95% of the way there, but I still didn’t figure out that last five percent. I still found myself destroyed when I learned what happened to him. And ultimately, I was so compelled by the story, I couldn’t put the book down. For me, plot trumps everything, even mediocre writing and weak female protagonists. Which is exactly what I found Tate to be. I wanted her to be stronger. I wanted her to speak up against Miles and his assholery even more. But if Hoover is going for realism in that respect, she pretty much hit the nail on the head because I think most women would want to hold onto a guy like Miles even if the situation was messed up. Particularly women in their early 20’s like this character is portrayed. Verity was the book that made me understand why people liked Colleen Hoover, but Ugly Love is the book that made me realize why people stick with her.

MVP: Miles. He’s mysterious. He’s an asshole. But in the world of mysterious assholes who women date and try to fix, he’s one that actually is fixed! And it stems from his own willingness to step outside his comfort zone and grow. Respect.

You can get Ugly Love in paperback for $10.34.

Or on your Kindle for $11.99.

Review: Verity

Recap: You know the start of author Lowen Ashleigh’s journey is off to a dark start when she’s on her way to a meeting, witnesses a deadly crash at an intersection and finds herself covered in blood splatter. What follows is a man walking behind her until she can get to a public bathroom. He locks himself inside the bathroom with her and offers her his crisp, white button-down to replace her shirt. That’s how Lowen first meets Jeremy. The second time she meets him is minutes later when it turns out her important meeting with him. Jeremy is the husband of another author, Verity Crawford, who is injured from a terrible incident and isn’t able to finish writing the series she had started. Jeremy, along with Verity’s publishing team, now want Lowen to complete the series for her.

Despite all the red flags (she doesn’t want the attention, she doesn’t want the pressure of living up to Verity’s writing, etc.), Lowen signs onto the project in part for the money and certainly in part because she is naturally drawn to Jeremy. Jeremy insists that Lowen stay at his and Verity’s home so she has complete access to all of Verity’s work, manuscripts and outlines. But while there, Lowen finds herself becoming more intrigued by Jeremy and his and Verity’s family. She wants to understand how their two daughters died, what led up to Verity being in this fragile state, what Jeremy’s relationship is like with both Verity and their one remaining child, a son. Lowen also finds something else in Verity’s house: a manuscript, not for the book she’s supposed to finish but for a memoir/autobiography that indicates Verity is much darker than the public, or even her husband, knows her to be. Lowen starts to question the truth about what happened to Verity, what happened to her daughters and whether she’s safe living in Verity’s home…all as the relationship between she and Jeremy evolve.

Analysis: Verity was my entry into Colleen Hoover novels since this is the one I’d seen all over the bookshelves, all over Goodreads and all over the Internet. As such, Verity gave me huge Gone Girl vibes, and I immediately understood why it’s so popular and beloved. There’s the back-and-forth narration between Lowen and the Verity manuscript, the deep, dark secrets, the unreliable narrators, the mysterious deaths of children and the mystery of Jeremy. Reading it promises to put you in a constant state of discomfort in that you don’t know who to trust. There’s nothing you can do but to keep reading to have your questions answered.

And the twists! The twists! There are several. And just when you think there couldn’t be another, Hoover sneaks it in. I tend to find myself a pretty good reader and often pick up on the foreshadowing in books, but I didn’t conceive of what was to come in Verity. Not knowing anything about Colleen Hoover before picking up this book, I didn’t realize that part of what she’s known for her is her sexy writing, and that was a fun surprise. Listen, Colleen Hoover is not a prestige, literary, Nobel Award-worthy novelist. Her writing can be a bit hokey at times. BUT Verity proved her plotline cliffhangers, sex scenes and twists make her books the definition of the kind you simply can’t put down. Making Verity even more interesting is the open-ended interpretation of the ending of this book. The end is finite, but the characters are left wondering why they did what they did, if they made the right the decision and what’s the right thing to believe. There’s no way of knowing, and it’s a fun ending to debate with other friends who have read the book.

MVP: Jeremy and Verity’s son. The reality is none of the lead characters in this novel are good, likeable people. But maybe that’s the beauty of this book; that even so, it’s still a great, entertaining read.

Get Verity in paperback for $10.98.

Or on your Kindle for $13.99.

Review: Popism: The Warhol Sixties

Andy Warhol is an artistic icon, a legend in the art world, photography, film industry and pop culture. He’s known for the big risks he took in pop art and being one of the few artists to become a household name by becoming a celebrity in his own right in the 1960s. I’ve always been fascinated by him because, quite frankly, who hasn’t, with his silver white hair, oddities, fangirling around with the most beautiful models of yesteryear and successful Marilyn Monroe and tomato soup pieces of art? But after visiting The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, I realized there’s a lot I didn’t know about him. So I picked up this book, maybe or maybe not realizing in that moment that he co-authored it. Written years later, Warhol and co-author Pat Hackett detail what it was like to be Andy Warhol in the 1960s.

He spent most of his time in New York but of course made big trips to Los Angeles too. But he was a city boy through and through, and The Factory in New York was his biggest canvas. The Factory was where Andy lived during this time and hosted dozens and dozens – no, maybe hundreds or thousands of parties? I say thousands because practically everyday and eveyr night was a party at The Factory. He writes that people would just show up. Sometimes he knew them. Sometimes he didn’t. But always, it was fun. Until the end.

What’s interesting about Warhol’s writing in Popism is that it’s just as you would expect. Fairly nonchalant and matter-of-fact like a blase journal entry, and yet, there are tonal shifts in these moments of pure poignancy that remind us why Andy Warhol is one of the most iconic artists of all time for a reason. At the end of a paragraph, he’ll make a statement full of deep meaning that clues the reader into just how observant Warhol really was, and how even though he was so “cool” and “nonchalant,” things mattered to him just as much as the next person. Warhol was never too cool to feel.

Popism is extremely detailed and assures me that Warhol had so much of his life documented. That’s the only way he could have remembered all the shenanigans, all the pranks, all the art, the people, parties, trips, drugs, and extravagances. The time he was shot. The friends who disappeared and later died. The book may be best for those who lived through that time, who would be more familiar with some of the mega name drops throughout the memoir. But anyone who reads it will be fascinated by the lifestyle, whether they recognize those name drops or not. And everyone can appreciate the warmth, yet distance Warhol holds in his heart for the fun times of youth before they turn sour and the ability to look back on those times with the benefit of age and wisdom, knowing when to leave it behind and grow up.

Get Popism in paperback for $6.99.

Or on your Kindle for $13.99.

Review: The Hurricane Sisters

Recap: It’s hurricane season ins South Carolina, and while a big storm hasn’t happened yet this season, Ashley and her mother, Liz, have their own personal hurricanes brewing. Ashley is a young, beautiful artist who’s working a pretty easy job and has a crush on a local lawmaker. So when he notices her at a party, she starts to think her life about it be right on track to be the artistic wife of a politician. But when they start dating, she pushes all red flags aside: his temper, his territorial and controlling nature and his ego. Some of her friends and family see it, but she refuses to accept that he’s not the “one” for her. Meanwhile, her mother is losing sight of her priorities as she hits middle age. While her work in the nonprofit world is going well, her mother, Maisie, is driving her nuts with her quirky elderly boyfriend, and she thinks her husband may have a sidepiece up in New York, where he often travels for business.

As Liz uncovers more family secrets and Ashley and her roommate come up with schemes to make some fast cash (they are poor twenty-somethings, after all), the truths are revealed about the men in their lives and suddenly things aren’t so perfect after all. Everything peaks as a massive hurricane is set to hit the coast where Ashley lives. Amid the internal and external storms, three generations of women must determine their next steps and whether they want to stay with the men who have done them dirty.

Analysis: This book came recommended to me, so I expected it to be a fairy high quality piece of literature. So I was surprised to find it was fairly reductive, predictable and lazily written. Upon more research, I learned these kinds of books are author Dorothea Benton Frank’s M.O. She is known for her chick lit beach read fare which often takes places in the South Carolina Low Country, where she’s from. She’s the author of many bestsellers. Knowing that, I kept with it and better appreciated it for what it was.

While the writing didn’t impress me much and I found myself mentally yelling at Ashley as her boyfriend started to abuse her, I did actually like the way Frank brought everything together in the end. The storylines started to feel as serious as they were, and the characters ultimately made the right choices. Liz even made some decisions I didn’t see coming, as did Ashley. Both of them proved to be much stronger characters, ultimately, than they seemed to be in the onset or even throughout the journey

The women stood together in the end in a way that was very hokey. A bit too saccharine for me. I don’t know that I would read another Dorothea Benton Frank book again unless I was in the mood for particularly light, brainless summer fun.

MVP: Maisie. The grandmother in this novel is a lively, elderly wackadoo and I loved it. She offers some lightness and playfulness that helped offset the melodrama of the women surrounding her in the novel. We could all use someone like Maisie.

Get The Hurricane Sisters in paperback now for $14.99.

Or on your Kindle for $11.99.

Review: Naturally Tan

In my ongoing theme of reading Queer Eye stars’ memoirs before watching the latest season of the show (no, I still haven’t gotten around to it; there are a lot of shows to watch!), I read Tan France’s memoir in quick succession after reading JVN’s. Anticipating it to be not-so-great after reading and not loving JVN’s, Naturally Tan turned out to be a pleasant and vast improvement in the way of QE books. Naturally Tan is as fabulous as the author himself. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised after all. Tan France, as we know from the show, is fashionable, prim, proper, soft-spoken and kind. From his memoir, we also learn he’s an intellect who is extremely in touch with his feelings, self-aware, and lives with intent and love. His showcases all this through his book, which is much more than just a memoir.

It’s part memoir, part self-help, part fashion how-to with chapters about him and his life growing up gay and brown in England interspersed with “PSAs” about little black somethings, T-shirts and accessories as well as life advice asides about not gossiping in the workplace and dating dos-and-don’ts. If it seems like that might be a lot to mix into one book or if it seems like that might become a jumbled mess, it actually isn’t and doesn’t. With the bullying and rebellion Tan went through growing up as a brown outsider, the love he found in his partner and the the no-bullshit approach he’s taken to become an extremely successful business owner and TV personality, the reader quickly trusts him with every piece of advice he offers. After reading about his businesses and the hard work he put into building them, including hiring associates, his chapter on not gossiping with or about coworkers affected me and made me want to be a kinder, more generous employee. His chapters about clothes made me re-think my closet. Even his dos and don’ts of dating forced me to consider the way I treat my partner and myself.

When a person you respect offers advice, you’re more inclined to listen. Naturally Tan enforces – or if you’ve watched Queer Eye, reinforces – that Tan is a person to not only be respected, but admired. He may only be 40 years old, but he’s lived quite some life, one worth writing a memoir about and one worth reading about.

Get Naturally Tan in hardcover for $18.20.

Or on your Kindle for $11.99.