Yoicks

YIKES, interj. This colloquial exclamation of astonishment or alarm is “of unknown origin,” per the OED, but might be related to “yoicks,” which is apparently what rich Brits who hunt foxes for sport yell to urge their dogs onward. (Yikes.) “Yoicks” left the world of fox-hunting and became “an exclamation indicating excitement or encouragement” by 1884.

When I read the word “yoicks,” it sparked a vague memory of an old cartoon. My searches yielded Daffy Duck as Robin Hood and this essay about yoi(c)ks, yikes, oy, and “noice” by Ben Yagoda, which was a fun read.

Sorry to be so short on the word part of Word Suitcase this time! This newsletter is also a day later than I intended. I… have perhaps overcommitted myself lately, going to library fundraisers and volunteering for my state’s immigrant justice network and also raising a small child and still, for some goofy reason, trying to write a novel and have a life. But what am I gonna do, not protect our library and our neighbors? Yikes.

Here’s what I’ve read in small-r romance: three books by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, a romance author with a decades-long career who’s still publishing today. She's very famous and has many passionate fans, but is decidedly not everyone's cup of tea, and either way I thought I should find out for myself.

Heaven, Texas (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. If you’re asking “but why did you start with this one, which was published in 1995?”, well, the first answer is that it was immediately available at my library back in August when I started this journey, and the second answer is that I’ve been interested in reading older books lately to think about what’s changed in the genre.

This book is charmingly 1995—the hero has a car phone! the heroine says “electronic mail”! when she storms off after an argument, he has no way to contact her except wandering around the small town and asking people if they’ve seen her!—and also not so charmingly 1995. I think the two references to gayness are meant to demonstrate to readers that our hero and heroine are Not Homophobic, but as they are seemingly surrounded by homophobes, and no actual gay characters appear in the book, it’s a little hard to tell. This book is gratuitously rude about fatness, but also women who look like they exercise. It prizes virginity in a way that made me roll my eyes. Lastly, the secondary romance plot (between Bobby Tom’s mom and a villainous local business owner) was so coercive and creepy that I never got over it. I hate writing about books this way, making a list of all the ways they failed to align with my values. I don’t want to give purity tests! Gross! But also, I can’t in good conscience write more about this book without slapping a warning label on it. Luckily it’s not a “This place is not a place of honor, nothing valued is here” warning. Just, you know, Hard Hat Zone.

Something valued is here, and it’s the story of two interesting, flawed people intensely remaking themselves, changing for the better, so they can be worthy of each other. Bobby Tom Denton is a pro football player whose career just ended suddenly—and early—due to injury, and now he has to figure out what he’ll do with himself and the rest of his life. He’s made plans with a film production company to make a movie in his hometown of Telarosa, Texas—formerly known as “Heaven” due to its beloved brothels—as a way of supporting the town’s economy. But he was supposed to be on set four days ago and he just can’t seem to make himself get there.

The production company hires Gracie Snow, a woman who formerly ran a nursing home and is used to cajoling stubborn people, to fetch Bobby Tom from his home in Chicago. Gracie thinks of herself as “homely,” and certainly she dresses and styles herself that way, so she’s totally unlike any of the glamorous women who surround Bobby Tom, all of whom are trying to pass his infamous “football quiz” to become his wife. Gracie doesn’t know anything about football; all she knows is that she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life in the nursing home where she was raised, so she has to prove herself by doing this job right.

Both of these characters are over the top—at one point, Gracie dives in front of Bobby Tom’s car to stop him from leaving without her, and this is a good benchmark for how things unfold between them. There’s a real sense of adventure in this novel that I think is sometimes missing from contemporary romance that is too focused on either tying a bunch of tropes together (here’s how we get them to do Fake Dating, and here’s how they wind up in Only One Bed, etc., etc.) or on taking its characters to literal therapy. That’s not to say there aren’t tropes in Heaven, Texas, but when a major one appeared, I was genuinely surprised by it. Having read nothing about the novel prior to checking it out, I had no idea it was coming—and more importantly, it wasn’t the only thing going on. A lot happens in this book.

But mainly what I will remember is (1) the ice cream sex scene, which is the moment that made me go “oh, this is why readers are so devoted to Susan Elizabeth Phillips.” Eccentric and endearing and memorable.

And (2) the climactic sequence, which features a car chase and a multi-person brawl. The current trend of complaining online about hating “third-act breakups” is because authors aren’t doing it like this anymore. We’re not lining up enough loop-de-looped plot and character dominoes and knocking them all over in just the right way at the end. Like, of course readers are tired of seeing main characters have the same fight they’ve been having and then talk it out and kiss. It’s too normal. Even if you stick a so-called Grand Gesture in there, it’s nothing, it’s cliché, I’m already bored. Get weirder. At no point in the climactic sequence of Heaven, Texas did I know what was going to happen next, and I loved it. Turn on the sirens. Finagle your way outta jail. I wanna see a man dynamite his reputation and everything he thought he believed in—for love. I wanna see nursing-home-raised, Sunday-School-teaching sweet little Gracie Snow punch a cop. Now we’re talking.

Kiss An Angel (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary ish, or it was in 1996) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Note to my past self: you thought Heaven, Texas was over the top, you naïve little baby. Does it have the heroine’s father forcing her into a marriage with a stranger in the very first line of the book? (“Daisy Devreaux had forgotten her bridegroom’s name.”) Does it have a traveling circus? Does it have the long-lost heir to the Romanov dynasty? It doesn’t even have a psychic tiger in it. Note to my readers: the hero in this one is a dick and a half. I’m not sure I ever came around on him. As such, this isn’t a recommendation; I’m just recording what I read. But if you decide to go for it, you will not be bored. (This one’s got an accidental pregnancy due to the heroine’s Russian Imperialist [?!], eugenicist [?!] parents tricking her about her birth control pills, which the book does not treat as the serious crime that it is. The tiger should have mauled them.)

Heroes Are My Weakness (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Okay, this one is a gem. All the way through. I mean, sometimes a diamond has flaws inside if you get out your jeweler’s loupe, but it’s still a diamond. Heroes Are My Weakness is from 2014, so smartphones and the internet exist, but it’s a gothic romance set during winter on an island off the coast of Maine, which is a neat little trick to get rid of the internet. The heroine, Annie, is a down-on-her-luck ventriloquist, and the book opens with her talking to her puppets, so we are already in pleasingly Bonkers territory. (While I am not usually an audiobook listener, the audiobook of this is great specifically for the distinct puppet voices.) The hero, Theo, is a horror writer (sigh), but at least he’s also a brooding recluse who lives in a creepy house and lots of the island residents seem to think he did a murder, so he’s got that going for him. Two Freaks? Check. And you’ll never believe this, but boy do they Fuck It Up Bigtime. Delightful. Since this is in the gothic tradition, there’s a ton of death, trauma, abuse, mental illness, and suicide in it, reader beware. But it’s also pretty funny, has wonderfully specific-to-the-characters sex scenes, and the subplot where Annie connects with a traumatized four year old legitimately made me cry. (As the parent of a similar-age kid, I did also get irrationally angry at the characters for losing track of the four year old in one scene, so I was having big feelings about parenting in general. But I think the book deserves credit for my tears.) And, as a happy coda to my confusion/worries about Heaven, Texas, this book has gay characters in it! They’re very minor, but they’re written as real people, not jokes or villains. I’m so pleased they’re there, and I’m even more pleased by how captivating this book was.

This newsletter was obnoxiously heterosexual and I do apologize for that. You know what's cool? My local library has a queer romance book club now! This month's book is Edward Underhill's Always the Almost (gay trans m/queer cis m), a young adult romance starring a newly out trans guy who's a classical pianist and the mysterious and fascinating new kid at his high school. I don't read a lot of young adult books, but I thought it was charming and if you like YA, or have a reader in your life who likes YA, I recommend it.

That's all for this time. I'll be back in your inbox on November 23.

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