A showy and superficial style

by Dorothy Parker

Paul and Linda McCartney once wrote a song that goes “Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs, and what’s wrong with that?”

Lish McBride wants to fill the world with silly love stories that are also warm and human, serious at their core, and a wonderful blend of fantasy and romance. I’m here to say there’s nothing wrong with this, and I’m here for books that make me laugh so hard it hurts, and also make me cry over the hard parts of life.

Rough Around The Hedges is one of those books, and a sequel to A Little Too Familiar. Fans of A Little Too Familiar will find a cast of characters full of familiar faces, and the return of Damnit and the ferrets.  (The ferrets have a starring role.}

Will and Vanessa have been best friends practically since the day they met. Will has loved her just as long, but he plays the best friend role, afraid if Van finds out how he feels, he’ll lose her. Will always has Van’s back, day or night, and since Van is a single mother, Will answers more than his share of cries for help in the middle of the night. He adores Vanessa’s daughter, and he’s calm in the face of a toddler screaming at midnight, and always prepared to handle the crisis. Will has a calming presence, and calms a frazzled Van down too.

Vanessa doesn’t know what she’d do without Will having her back. She thinks of him as the one person in her life who will always be there for her, and when the two of them give into the feelings and mutual attraction they’ve denied for years, her dad suddenly steps back into her life. Van’s PTSD, a gift from her psychological​y abusive father, kicks into high gear. Watching Vanessa struggle with a self-sabotaging doubt about Willi’s feelings, and whether reaching for her career dreams was foolish – this part of the story wasn’t silly, and McBride handled it very well.

The ferret’s helped. Five stars for the ferrets and how I still giggle each time I think of certain lines, and the balance they brought so the book didn’t get too serious. Another five stars for Will’s dad and step-mother for the same reasons.  

[Decades in the future] “Well, the good news is that we’ve received definitive communication from aliens. The bad news is that they’re asking about Cats (2019).”

Then I erase it. And keep digging.

They probably didn’t work super well compared to modern tools, but have you ever seen such a lovely pair of scissors?

A variety of possible fur patterns for Dutch and English rabbits respectively from William E. Castle’s Contributions to the genetics of the domestic rabbit (1932).