I’d like to propose a corollary to Chekhov’s Gun - Kait’s Carabiner - that states any two (even possibly) queer people who are single in the first romance novel have to get off by the third book. I thought it a bit too convenient that the (spoilers, I guess?) best friend and the new-but-then-not fiancé wound up single at the end of The Love Lie, and my Sapphic Sense™ didn’t fail me.

The story picks up fairly recently after the end of TLL (and there are lots of appearances by both Sydney and Reese throughout), with Hallie needing someone to cover for her at the inn while she visits family over the Christmas break. And wouldn't you know it, philosophy PhD Brynn (former-post-Sydney-finacee-of-Grant) volunteers for the gig! Shenanigans, predictably, ensue.

I wanna talk about the involuted nature of modern media for a minute, though. In the early 2000s, Chris Anderson codified "the long tail" as a term for using a variety of low-volume items coupled with a few very popular items to draw people in. This has basically been the business model for bookselling since probably the 50s?

But with the advent of the modern internet, it was posited that you don't need mainstream success to make a living creatively, you just need to find 1,000 true fans – that is, fans who will buy anything you make. It's an inversion of the idea that everything needs to appeal to everyone in order to make profit. The rise of winner-take-all capitalism/enshittification has led those media outlets that previously relied on the long tail to squeeze the creators for even more (Spotify, publishing, journalism, porn), leading to an increasingly large number of creators to go indie (Substack, self-publishing, OnlyFans).

And I'm glad that creators are seizing control of their livelihoods! They should own the relationship with the customer because it's a better experience for everyone ... mostly.

But a thing I've noticed about these somewhat insular fan groups is that, over time, they trend toward even more inversion until it borders on solipsism. Haley Cass, an author I dearly love, not only writes sequels to her romance novels (always a weird situation since, like most romance novels, they're pretty buttoned-up at teh end), she essentially rebooted her most popular book because .... well, why not? She knew her fans liked it, and they wanted more stories on that universe, so why not keep the universe?

And to be clear, that is absolutely her right to do as an author. But as a lover of books and stories, it feels ... cheap? Yes, 50 Shades of Gray is a reboot of Twilight, but at least she put her own spin on the characters, made them her own and expanded it beyond the original source material. I have no doubt that Cass is moving beyond the parameters of the original book (it's pitched as an AU where the first go-round didn't take), but it's also ... boring?

That's kinda how I felt about the beginning of the Pining Paradox. Reusing the characters seemed more like an excuse not to world-build than a necessary component of the story. Sure, for those of us who were fresh off the first book it was kinda nice to see familiar faces. But as with any serialized story, you have to recap enough for those who are just tuning in that any preexisting knowledge wasn't super helpful.

Look, I'll level with you - 30% of the way through the book, I thought this was gonna be a dud. The idea is cute, the characters are lovable-ish (I thought both mains are a bit too far to the edge of their respective personality matrices), and the forced-together circumstances aren't terribly contrived.

But then we got to the part where they were starting (individually) to reckon with their feelings and ... I found myself utterly captivated. Like, yes, OBVIOUSLY I related to the autistic-coded character, but some of the lines hit me hard.

She barely wanted to hang out with herself some days, so it wasn’t a far leap to assume the same must be true for other people.

...

"But I think about you—about how much I like you, how I care about you, how good you make me feel—and it makes me feel like maybe I’m not broken, after all."

I dunno, I have a hard time not recommended a book that so perfectly encapsulates that feeling. It's hard to describe just how throughly the emotions of the book poured directly into my soul, grief and celebration and anguish and bliss. Add in the emotional tumult evident as the titular pining was described? Fetch me a fainting couch, I'm overcome by this new Victorian invention, the novel. I can't be sure, but I think it'll catch on.

I'm an editor by nature (and, formerly, by occupation). I have a very high bar when it comes to good writing. But I gotta tell you, this book's writing is nearly transcendant, in that it completely swept me away. You can skim/ignore the 700-word digression above and just rest on this: This book made me feel.

It's funny, between this and The Love Lie, I almost feel like I need to reevalute what constitutes a "love story." I got so used to the tropes and the third-act breakup that I forgot the self-evident definition: A story of love. TLL and TPP are both just stories about people falling in love. It's kind of intoxicating.