REVIEW: Not His Girlfriend (Yet) by M.T. Liu
She called his mother at 1 AM and said sa copine. She told the nurse at 5:47 and said girlfriend. He doesn’t know about either one.
Four and a half dates. Two kisses — one accidental, one deliberate.
Nora Chen spends two hours before every date becoming the version of herself she thinks he wants to see. Ethan Morin is a Québécois firefighter who deflects the brave parts of his own stories. She performs. He protects. Neither knows the other is doing it.
Then a freak accident puts Ethan in a hospital bed — and Nora does something distinctly un-rehearsed. She stays. All night. In his jacket.
Now she’s in his apartment. With his two cats (one black and judgmental, the other orange and ten pounds of unsolicited emotional support). Navigating a hallway that’s exactly the wrong length — too short to pretend she isn’t thinking about him, too long to do anything about it. Rebuilding the performance every morning at 6 AM because she’s sure the version of her that cried on his kitchen floor at midnight is the one that will make him stop wanting her here..
He thinks she can’t wait to leave. She thinks he’s pushing her away. He watches her fall apart and thinks it’s the best version he’s ever seen. He doesn’t say it. Neither of them says it. Both of them are idiots, and both of them have reasons.
The cats know.
Dear Ms. Liu,
I really liked this. It’s short but has depth, two people posing as their best selves and trying to not show how much they think they might care – for different reasons – plus two opinionated cats. I know the critical cat gaze.
“Password,” I’d said. Calm voice. Practical voice. I’ve got this voice.
He’d looked up at me through whatever the IV was feeding him — morphine, probably, or something close enough — and his face had done a thing I wasn’t prepared for. Not pain. Something softer. More confused.
“Zero… seven… one… four.” A pause. Then, half-slurred: “Don’t judge the wallpaper.”
His phone wallpaper was his cats. Of course it was.
Ethan Morine and Nora Chan don’t really know each other that well yet. After being introduced, he hesitated to call her but reached out to the guy who introduced them (something she doesn’t learn until later) while she called the intermediate person for Ethan’s number due to work. After four and a half dates (he had to return to his station, cutting the date short), he’s being kind to help her friend with her car parked on an ice-slicked slope and bam.
Now with a newly pinned hip fracture and living alone in an apartment up fourteen steps, he reluctantly admits that he can’t manage alone. Maman (and I love this woman. She ‘tu’s’ and hugs Nora immediately.) was all set before sister Camille looks at Nora, sa copine, in the hospital room and tells mother that Nora will be there. So Nora, having already researched and installed the grab bar in the bathroom, is there as Ethan hobbles around, easing himself down and then up off the couch. Is there to help with Poutine and Bagel (Ethan loves his cats and watched cat videos at 1am while in the hospital) and talk to friendly Bagel in the middle of the night. Perfects herself to be what she wants to present to the world without realizing that Ethan can see it’s a facade and that he wants to know the real Nora even as Nora feels that Ethan is slowly and carefully pushing her away as he’s used to being strong. Well, he sort of is distancing himself but for his own reason. Will they ever unmask and relax enough to show who they are and how they feel?
I think that you’re either going to see Nora and Ethan as delightfully confused and emotionally cautious people or you’re gonna hate ’em. They talk but they don’t really talk. They’re “fine” or “okay” or don’t need help when they really need help. Nora’s fear of vulnerability seems to come from watching her immigrant Chinese mother put on a face of perfection and happiness to make her place in Montreal, especially when Dad goes back to China after eleven years. Ethan seems to have had a relationship that ended shortly after he opened up his feelings to that woman. It’s not described as being traumatic, just that Ethan was deeply hurt. The rest of the ‘we won’t show our true selves’ is, I guess, due to the fact that they’ve barely seen much of each other (remember four and one half dates) before the forced proximity starts.
But now these two are getting close up glimpses of each other from living and interacting in Ethan’s apartment. Do they actually say what they’re feeling or hope for? Nah. So of course there are misunderstandings about why Ethan called his sister over to cook after Nora (who really can’t cook) almost set his kitchen on fire. While he hides how her changing his wound dressing affects him. He also wants to know what she’s whispering to Bagel at night while eating BBQ chips in the kitchen while she thinks he’s merely tolerating her in his space because … crutches and cats. Merci, Dieu for the garbage or they might never have talked in time.
Behind him, sitting on the kitchen counter like she owns the building and has strong opinions about the new management: Poutine. Black. Motionless. Staring at me with the expression of a cat who specifically arranged to be on the counter when the door opened so the visual impact would be maximum.
One thing I really like is how the health care is shown. Yes, this is how a hospital works, surgery works, and recovery works. It also dives into how so many of Ethan’s healthcare workers just expected that the women in his life would step up and look after him at home. Ethan’s careful negotiation of his body’s pain also seems real.
The writing is sharp and often funny. As someone who has been owned by cats all her life, I enjoyed Bagel’s and Poutine’s scenes and additions to the story. Given that there is forced proximity in a small space for much of the novel, some scenes feel a bit repetitive but this shared space lets these two spend time together so when the romance arrives, it doesn’t feel to me like insta-love. The story ends with them just beginning to be together and finally work out their relationship. And then continues a bit – with more Maman and Camille – if you get the bonus short. I liked that, too. B
~Jayne
Nobody has spoken since the last thing we said, which was everything.
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Lovely review, @Jayne. And lucky for budget-shot-at-the-moment me, the book is available as KU.
@LML: If you like it, check out the free bonus that you get from signing up at her website. Yeah, I know … signing up. But she swears that she doesn’t spam people and so far, she hasn’t.
@Jayne, I receive reasonable email from many authors. Sometimes I think I should have a separate email address, but then checking it would be yet another thing to keep up with.
This does sound charming, @Jayne, so thank you for bringing it to my attention.
@Jayne, I read this last night and noticed one thing especially interesting. The many descriptions of light in the story included the color(s) of the light. The cleverness of this tickled me, because character Nora is a graphic designer and of course she would notice color.
What surprised me is that I enjoyed a book with so little dialogue. Usually I’m pulling my hair at pages of running interior thoughts, but once I realized that I wasn’t going to get dialogue, I settled into the writing and enjoyed the story.
@LML: Yes, I enjoyed how Montreal was described through light.
@LML: I wish I’d known the book was in KU before I read the review. Am I the only romance reader in the world for whom the blurb has enough plot detail? I just want the reviewer to tell me whether the book is any good and why…. Maybe I’ll check this one out in a year or so.
I hear you, @oceanjasper; I often skip reviews (save for the grade) if I plan to read a given book. On the upside, reviews often introduce me to books and authors I didn’t know.
@oceanjasper, Sometimes, when I’m certain I’m going to read a book, I skip the review until after I read the book. (As I did with The Correspondent, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.) If I’m not certain, I read and enjoy reviews second only to reading a book. There are days when I remind myself to knock it off with reading the reviews already, and read a book!
@oceanjasper:
I’m curious what difference this makes.
I think a conversation on this topic might be better had as a discussion of reviews generally (perhaps in an Open Thread — though a few years ago we had a conversation post titled What’s Important to You in a Review) than in the comments section of a specific review. It’s worth keeping in mind that reviewing is a labor of love and we don’t get compensated for it other than with the hope — and if we’re lucky, the knowledge — that our work was helpful to readers.
Another great recommendation for a book I had never heard of before! I liked it a lot and am excited for the next book in the series.
@Jenreads: Yes to the next book and then I want Ethan’s sister’s story.