I practically devoured this book, I loved it.
Charish Reid has a real knack for writing stories featuring people of color in higher education and their love stories. This book is another in that milieu, and it comes down hard on the University industrial complex which runs on the exploitation of its work force, especially its adjunct staff. The titular Mickey Chambers is one such adjunct, and we open the book with her finding out that she will only have one course for the summer term, which is not enough to keep her financially afloat, certainly not with a chronic illness that requires her to be on top of her medication and its expense. Mickey finds her way into Diego Acosta’s bar as he’s holding interviews for a variety of positions as he desperately needs more help to keep The Saloon running. Their meet cute is centered on Mickey not realizing that Diego is the boss/owner of the bar because he’s not the one leading the interviews. Once she’s hired, they quickly realize that Diego’s first course as a returning university student in his 40s is Mickey’s class, making their professional lives complicated and their budding attraction a real problem.
There is something between Mickey and Diego from their first interaction. It is in the ways in which each carry their proverbial baggage into their burgeoning relationship that shows Reid’s writing strengths. Mickey feels behind in life due to her illness and puts a lot of weight into being self-reliant and having a profession in which her parents can be proud. Diego cared for his sick mother before her death in his early twenties, and then lost his wife to cancer in their 30s. The Saloon was his wife Lucia’s dream – she was the one concocting specialty cocktails and working the bar. Now he’s on the bar and has been mourning her loss in a space made by her for five years. He made Lucia a promise to go back and finish his college degree that was interrupted by his mother’s illness, but at 42 he is self-conscious that he will simply be too old, and too far behind. These are the people who are dealing with the various power imbalances of him being her boss and her being his professor as they deal with a spark and attraction that won’t be ignored.
Reid does the work building character interactions so that the feelings that are developing ring true and never ignores that she is writing a story with many different points of power imbalance. Reid, as usual, deftly handles this complicated web of emotions, at no point does any of the action feel ill-timed or misplaced. All the characters engage in the kinds and types of conversations that feel real, and often made me laugh along with them. But perhaps most importantly Mickey and Diego talk to each other. They talk to each other about what is happening, and how complicated it is, they talk to each other about their pasts (at different speeds), and they figure out how to have what they want. For no other reason, the amount of excellent communication in this book would likely earn it five stars, but everything was great.
Bingo Square: Disco. One of the main settings of the book is the bar, which is full of a found family I loved, working the night shift and all that entails. There’s also a great subplot of Mickey (a literary professor) encouraging Diego to pursue history and the arts on his return to university and not the business degree he’s chosen because he feels like he should.
