First Love Language Is an Exploration into Many Firsts

 

Image copied from NetGalley

First Love Language by Stefany Valentine is a refreshing YA contemporary romance that explores so much more than love. In fact, it explores many firsts from first love to firsts in terms of one's birth country, language and identity. The premise for the story is also very timely for the Gen Z readers it is marketed to. Love language represents many things for these young adult readers and it is a very important thing for them in terms of communicating how they care for those important to them whether they be friends, sweethearts or their family. I have often heard my children refer to someone's form of expressing themselves as their love language. I think it was very on point and clever for Valentine to develop her romance for her main character, Catie, around this concept. It also provides a vehicle in the plot for us as readers to engage with Catie's dad even though he has passed away before the story begins. He gifted Catie, before he died, with a book that he'd annotated called The Five Love Languages. It was a book he referred to both while he was dating Catie's mom and later as his daughter and stepdaughter grew up.

In addition to this romantic element the novel also gives a first-person account of what it is like to be a biracially adopted child struggling to find your identity after losing touch with your culture from your birth country. At the beginning of the story, we learn that Catie has lost her white dad from cancer and is faced with moving to Salt Lake City, Utah from San Diego the summer before her senior year with her stepmom, Andrea, and stepsister, Mavis. The upheaval brings to the fore the missed opportunities she had to question her dad before he died about why he and her Taiwanese birth mom divorced and why he brought Catie to the U.S. afterwards, causing her to lose touch with her birth mom. Not only that, but the move means living with her stepmom's very conservative Mormon sister and her family. But things begin to look up for Catie when she finds a summer job at a successful Korean spa and beauty salon. Her first day on the job, Catie lies to a customer about having a boyfriend to stop him from hitting on her, and Catie's co-worker, Toby, concocts a plan to have Catie coach him on dating if in return he'll help her re-learn Mandarin, Catie's original language. Using the book on Love Languages that her dad gave her, Catie begins putting together a series of practice dates for her and Toby to go on. From there their friendship soon starts to blossom and Catie's quest of self-discovery, on so many levels, begins.

Of the many things I loved about this novel, one is the humor involved around Catie and her practice dates with Toby. She becomes a surprisingly glib liar about her knowledge of dating and relationships. The most amusing part is that she is no more experienced on either than Toby. With each date, their friendship deepens and their connection slowly blossoms into first love. The ideas centered around expressing love through the different languages such as acts of service, gift giving, among others is very sweet, making for a quiet and tender romance. In relearning her first language, Catie also learns to open up to Toby about things she hasn't ever felt she could discuss with her adoptive family since losing her dad. Even before her dad got sick, Catie had trouble finding the courage to ask him so many of the questions about what happened between him and her birth mom, about why her birth mom agreed to give her up. We also see firsthand the racial bigotry and negative stereotyping that Catie has endured growing up in the U.S. that are sometimes intentional and sometimes not, but still annoying and painful. 

Other themes that are explored in this novel are ones about reconciling one's religious upbringing with one's own identity if you are not white or straight. In Catie's case, her dad and stepmom were both raised in the Mormon faith, but stepped back from the faith when Mavis, Catie's stepsister, identified as being pan sexual as a young teen. Being with Catie's aunt and uncle, who are both strict Mormons, is a hard adjustment for both Catie and Mavis for different reasons and the author does not shy away from portraying how hurtful and confusing it can be to be told that God only accepts those who fit a very narrow and restrictive mold for Christianity. In the midst of being forced to attend church with her stepmom's family, in return for being able to move in with them, a door opens for Catie, though, and she does find unexpected support and acceptance from a woman of the church who works in the genealogy office. There she helps Catie search for answers to what became of her birth mom and for how Catie can reconnect with her Taiwanese roots.

The journey of love and self-discovery and acceptance that Catie, Toby and even secondary characters Mavis and cousin Rayleigh go on is rich and includes a few unexpected twists and turns along the way. However, the way the story ends is both realistic and satisfying. Catie not only learns to importance of accepting herself, she also learns the importance of facing up to the truth when her false claims about being a love expert are exposed. But as this is a romance at it's heart, nothing stands in the way of true love in the end. Nevertheless, I think that the many themes explored in this book make it so much richer than that. I think many YA readers who might have similar things they are coming to terms with will find themselves represented here, whether it be searching for answers as an adopted child, dealing with cultural bias as an Asian American, or facing bigotry and intolerance for identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community. In her author's note at the end, Valentine admits that this book was loosely based on her own experiences as a biracial adoptee and that her hope is that anyone reading this book will feel seen in some way in it. If you love contemporary YA romance and can appreciate one that is quiet and sweet while also complex and heartfelt in terms of other things it explores, I highly recommend First Love Language which comes out for publication in mid-January of 2025.

I cannot believe that this is the last book review post for 2024. I hope you have found this a good source of reading material throughout the year. I plan to continue posting more reviews in 2025 and invite you to continue exploring new works coming out in the new year with me along with some older published gems. For January, I will be reviewing an adult romance, Here Beside the Rising Tide by Emily Jane from NetGalley and I will be reviewing an old favorite that is a work of historical fiction from Judith Merkle Riley, A Vision of Light. Below are book covers and blurbs of both copied from NetGalley and Goodreads, respectively.

A romance author takes a trip to her childhood beach home, but her summer is upended by the startling return of a deceased childhood friend, newfound love, and . . . sea monsters?

At age ten, Jenni Farrow and her new best friend, Timmy Caruso, enjoy a glorious summer on Pearl Island filled with fireworks, beach days, and carnival rides (not to mention that strange sea creature they rescue from a tide pool). Then, one late summer day, Timmy disappears.

Thirty years later, Jenni—now Jenn Lanaro, bestselling author of the Philipia Bay action-romance series—is desperate to escape the fatigue of her career and her soon-to-be-ex-husband. With her Pokémon-obsessed kids in tow, Jenn rents a summer house on Pearl Island. But shortly after she arrives, a boy emerges from the nighttime sea. His name, he says, is Timmy Caruso. He’s ten years old. He’s on a mission to save the world, and he needs her help.

In the days that follow, as Jenn grapples with work deadlines, spirited children, and her burgeoning interest in a very sexy contractor, alarming and mysterious events unfold along the coast. And when a terror appears in the deeper waters, Jenn begins to wonder if, just maybe, Timmy is onto something.

This second book by the author of On Earth as It Is on Television continues her voice-driven, genre-bending multiverse of fiction that is just flat-out fun.

Set in England during the fourteenth century, A Vision of Light introduces Margaret of Ashbury, an unforgettable heroine who resembles a contemporary woman in spirit and thoughts. Young, wealthy, twice married, Margaret has a modest enough ambition: she wishes to write a book. But this is 1355, and the notion of a woman wanting to record her experiences and thoughts is not just arrogant, it's possibly heretical.

Three clerics contemptuously decline to be Margaret's scribe, and it is only starvation that persuades Brother Gregory, a renegade Carthusian friar with a mysterious past, to take on the unseemly task of chronicling her life. As she narrates her life story to Brother Gregory, we discover a woman of unusual resourcefulness who has survived the Black Plague, invented the forceps, and been accused—but acquitted—of witchcraft. But most astonishing, Margaret has experienced a Mystic Union—a vision of light that illuminates her soul and endows her with a miraculous gift of healing. To every person she encounters in her life, she becomes special—to her traditional parents, to the band of traveling players who adopt her, to the bishop's court that tries her for heresy, and ultimately to the rich merchant who saves her and whom she marries.

With exceptional narrative power, Judith Merkle Riley has recreated in full and rich detail a period that has fascinated her since her adolescence. Although her professional career has taken her into other byways, it has never lessened her long and intense interest in the fourteenth century. At the world-renowned Huntington Library in California, where she did much of her research for the book, Judith Merkle Riley uncovered remarkable primary-source documents. When she felt she knew the fourteenth century as well as a twentieth-century woman could, she set her pen to paper. The result is a remarkable novel that challenges all of our notions about women's roles in the medieval era. Anything but ordinary, Margaret of Ashbury is a heroine for all time.