Want: A Novel by Lynn Steger Strong

 

 

Named a Best Book of 2020 by Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, Vulture, The New Yorker, and Kirkus

Grappling with motherhood, economic anxiety, rage, and the limits of language, Want is a fiercely personal novel that vibrates with anger, insight, and love.

Elizabeth is tired. Years after coming to New York to try to build a life, she has found herself with two kids, a husband, two jobs, a PhD―and now they’re filing for bankruptcy. As she tries to balance her dream and the impossibility of striving toward it while her work and home lives feel poised to fall apart, she wakes at ungodly hours to run miles by the icy river, struggling to quiet her thoughts.

When she reaches out to Sasha, her long-lost childhood friend, it feels almost harmless―one of those innocuous ruptures that exist online, in texts. But her timing is uncanny. Sasha is facing a crisis, too, and perhaps after years apart, their shared moments of crux can bring them back into each other’s lives.

In Want, Lynn Steger Strong explores the subtle violences enacted on a certain type of woman when she dares to want things―and all the various violences in which she implicates herself as she tries to survive.

Quit Bein' Ugly by Lani Lynn Vale

 

 

There’s a crush, and then there are the type of feelings that Croft Cruisie evokes from a person.He’s everything that any straight woman would want: tall, handsome, charismatic, muscular, and sweet.At least, Carmichael thought he was sweet, until he brings another woman to the gym she owns with her brother, on the night that’s to be their first date, and lets her know in a quick and painful, non-verbal way that her feelings are not reciprocated.Fast forward six months, and she’s still trying to move on from the rejection.It doesn’t help that the jerk moves in next door to her, and that she has to see him workout shirtless every single day.How can a woman get over a silly crush when that silly crush won’t so much as give her room to breathe?***Croft doesn’t know what happened.One day he was supposed to go on a date with the girl that wouldn’t leave his thoughts for even a second, and the next she’s avoiding him like the plague.No matter how hard he tries—and admittedly, it isn’t all that hard due to the biggest case of his career taking over his life—he can’t get her to tell him what he did wrong. She refuses to give him a second chance.At least, not until he’s nearly killed in front of the courthouse, that is.The moment he sees his chance, he pounces. Or, more literally, he limps.But the limping is what draws Carmichael in. The Southern charm that was instilled in him since birth will be what gets her to stay.That’s his plan, anyway.Funny thing about plans… they never seem to work out how you expect them to.