Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki

TL;DR Monty is a metaphorical shaken-up soda

TBR #1560, added May 7 2016*

finished 7/21/16

I am ashamed of the fact that I had this book checked out since May 18th and only managed to get around to reading it after renewing it twice (the limit at my library) and forgetting to return it on time. I finally got around to reading it because it was a day overdue and I had to run an entire load of laundry before I could get dressed for the day.

(On a related note, you can get through this in about 2 hours. It's a good light read.) 

I'm glad for the company it made while I was waiting for the laundry to finish, but I'm not sure I would've had the motivation otherwise. It was a good contemporary novel that felt real in that the plot progression felt organic, but the downside to that is that the plot didn't feel entirely unified. I didn't quite understand the point of the book until I reached the end. 

Which could go either way, depending on if you like being along for the ride over reading with a purpose. 

(To clarify the plot progression thing: I've found with a lot of contemporaries that if there's a chapter that ends with the MC saying something like "everything was perfect" or "in this moment, I was content", there's a 99% chance that the next chapter is immediately something to ruin that. There was never a setup like that in Saving Montgomery Sole and I wasn't able to tell by the narration setup whether the next chapter would bring something good or bad for her. Which is good! I don't like whiplash chapters like most contemps have around the climax.) 

The characters didn't quite feel organic, though. I think the book was a little too short to explore anyone with any depth. We got to see some of them in different lights but it was never as long as I would've liked. I did appreciate the background for Monty's parents explored within the context of the story. I was glad that we got to see her parents as a happy and established couple, and how they fit into the world, but that it wasn't the entire story. I feel like so many LGBT+ books focus so much on the troubles of being gay that we rarely ever explore them just being happy and existing like people.

Honestly, my favorite thing is that there was no romance for Monty. I didn't realize it until I'd finished the book. It was just so natural that I never noticed it, and I really wish more books were like this. This story worked perfectly well without a romance and I loved that the focus was on Monty's relationships with her family and friends. So many contemporaries focus heavily on love interests, too, and it gets really tiring as an ace girl. Saving Montgomery Sole gets major thumbs-ups from me for that. 

TL;DR it's most likely not your thing if you don't like character-driven plots, but it's a contemp with no romance and I'm gonna be happy about that for a long time. 

(I'm a little deprived.) 

*I added this book to my TBR after I read its Google Play sample. I was lucky enough to find a copy at my library soon after that. I can officially say that downloading a bunch of Google Play samples at once did actually help me find a book I enjoyed.