My Favorite Quote:   “You deserve better than some place that doesn’t’want you in all your glory.”

Honey Girl kicks off with a romantic story about Grave Porter – millennial, Black woman, astronomy PhD – who wakes up after a wild night in Vegas married to a woman she does not know. 

Rogers has written a great story with heart, humor and honesty tackling an issue many millennials deal with  life after college and for many –  lacking  job prospects for a black, lesbian astronomer.  Dr. Grace Porter has devoted over 10 years of her life earning her PhD in astronomy.  And she cannot find a job!!!!  She is feeling lost and displaced in her own life.  She decides to take off to New York City to meet the woman she married and hopefully find purpose.

Honey Girl is filled with great characters of friendships and support.  Grace’s friends Ximena, Agnes, and Raj seem like my close friends.  Each of them wants Grace to conquer the world and her field.  For Grace, she is learning to stop trying to live up to her father’s ridiculous standards. 

Honey Girl demonstrates a story of compassion and insight. It tells the story of a young black woman who learns to embrace herself just the way she is. It celebrates her challenges seeking the perfect job and the triumphs of finding love and acceptance.

Rogers’  debut novel surprises you with great dialogue and she tackles complicated issues with warmth, humor, and truth.  It is a celebration of women.  I am sure many readers will find it as important, enlightening, and entertaining.

When becoming an adult means learning to love yourself first.

With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She’s a straight A, work-through-the-summer certified high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know…until she does exactly that.

This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her parent’s expectations, a struggling job market and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.

In New York, she’s able to ignore all the constant questions about her future plans and falls hard for her creative and beautiful wife, Yuki Yamamoto. But when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she’s been running from all along—the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.