I liked this story, but I went in expecting a completely different set of conflicts based on the cover copy. Jaq is a high school teacher and she’d like to find a long-term partner. She’s got a stable life in La Vista, the town where she lives: she goes to mass with her dad (one of the most interesting, poignant, and under-explored parts of the story) and sees him regularly, and she has a strong, loving community of friends. She’s an adult ally and supporter to the young queer people in her school and in the town, and she’s got most of her shit together.

She meets Hannah at a wedding, the attraction is ferocious, and they hook up – explicitly so, in a scene that clearly pushes some of Jaq’s sexual boundaries. Hannah is divorcing her wife, in the process of selling their home, and setting up her new life in La Vista, and Jaq isn’t sure Hannah’s in the right place for what Jaq is looking for, relationship-wise.

This is the line in the cover copy that tripped me up: “But she’s just out of a disastrous marriage, she’s in the process of moving across the state, and Jaq can’t take a chance on yet another relationship where she defaults to being a caregiver instead of a partner.”

I was looking for that conflict. It wasn’t there. Hannah is aware she’s in a massive state of uncertainty and transition. She knows she overwhelms Jaq a little, and Jaq isn’t sure what to do with her powerful attraction to Hannah in light of Hannah’s situation in life. Very little was said about Jaq being a caretaker. There were a few recollections about having to pick someone up at a bar because they were drunk and lost their keys, but nothing substantial. The “default to caregiver” part wasn’t something I saw.

I otherwise would have liked this story a lot more except for the part where for at least a third of the book, Jaq’s friends, including the brides of the wedding she attends at the beginning, warn her that Hannah is “crazy.” Do they define what they mean? Not really. Does Hannah do anything that seems unsafe or erratic? Not really. For me, it was another example of the story suggesting one thing, and then delivering another, and I found that really tiresome and frustrating.

The parts I did like: Jaq likes who she is, and there’s a matter-of-fact good-natured humor to her character, such as when she jokes in her narration about the un-sexyness of removing a binder. The story is from Jaq’s first-person point of view, and she’s very funny. For example, at one point, she gives Hannah her jacket:

And yes, you’re damn right I offered her my jacket. I’m a gentlewoman. I’m fucking dashing.

Jaq’s humor and loving acceptance of herself made reading her narration fun, and compensated for my irritation at the story. Jaq also has wonderful friends and co-workers, and she gets called on her missteps, such as when she inadvertently insults a bisexual friend and he points out the actual meaning of a thoughtless comment. And she owns her mistakes.

I wish the story had delivered more of the conflict it said it would, and that the characters insisting that Hannah was “crazy” and a bad match for Jaq were more specific about why they thought so. As written, it came across to me as a thin, poorly-supported conflict that didn’t do much for the overall romance. The romance itself is the weaker part of the story; for me, Jaq’s life with her father, her students, her queer student support group, and her connections to the queer community were all far more interesting, and contained more relevant, realistic conflicts. Essentially, this book delivered a completely different story than what it said it would, and while I liked parts of it, I finished it feeling confused and a little disappointed.