One of the great things about reading books is that it can really teach you something about yourself. For instance, after reading a number of books labeled “romcoms” this year (and DNFing at least a couple of them), I can safely say that I really don’t find romcom novels funny. And for the most part, since the humor falls flat for me, and the humor is a main component of the book, the entire book fails to work for me.
Such is the case with The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava. This is supposed to be a romcom. The marketing materials all talk about how funny it is. The main character keeps telling us how funny the love interest is. But I didn’t laugh once. I didn’t even smile.
It’s hard for me to accurately review a romcom, because written humor just so rarely works for me. I need either humorous images to go along with it, or for a talented actor to amuse me with great line delivery. So if you enjoy romcom novels in general, don’t take my review as proof that The Truth According to Ember isn’t funny. This is really more of a me problem than a book problem. But the book does have other problems, so that’s what I’m going to focus on.
Ember is stuck in a terrible dead-end job at the bowling alley. She’s barely able to cover bills while rooming with her best friend, she has no savings, and she can’t afford to go back to community college. She’s been rejected from the last thirty-seven jobs she’s applied to, and she’s decided she’s figured out why: it’s because she’s checking that “Native American” box under the race section of the application. If she checked “White” (because she is half white), she’s sure she’d get an interview.
So that’s what she does on her next application.
But she also lies about her education and experience, and gets her best friend to serve as a fake reference.
Ember’s point about racism in hiring is immediately undercut by her lying about her qualifications. We’ll never know if she would have been called in if she had used her accurate resume and said she was white, because she decided to change multiple things. Any one of them could have been the secret sauce that got her hired.
I do sympathize with Ember. While I’ve benefitted from white privilege in my job search and my life, I’ve also had a very non-standard education and career path. I’ve applied for jobs that I suspected I’d do great at, but never heard back from because I didn’t look qualified on paper. Others, I didn’t even apply for, because I didn’t meet the artificially high “requirements.” I know how frustrating it is to feel like you’ll never find a decent job. And while I never lied on a resume, I understand where the temptation comes from.
If that had been the only lie Ember told, and she had just spent the entire book trying to actually do the job she said she could do, while hijinks ensued, she could have remained a sympathetic character. But she kept lying about everything. If a problem could be gotten out of or avoided by lying, that’s the option she’d take, even if other solutions were available, all the while wondering why she did it and trying to convince us that she’s a fundamentally honest person.
Of course, this is a romance novel, so there’s a guy. A hot guy. Ember makes sure to tell us constantly how hot Danuwoa the IT guy is. He does sound attractive, and while his personality personally didn’t do it for me, he didn’t give me the ick the way some heroes do. He seems like a decent guy. He’s good at his job and he supports his little sister, who is in her 20s and has Down Syndrome. He’s involved in his community. I did think he perhaps pushed some of Ember’s boundaries too much, but she seemed into it, so who am I to judge?
There are two main problems with this book. The first that it is boring, and the second is that it doesn’t spend enough time on the rom part of the romcom. These two problems are actually related, and they stem from the fact that far too much of this book is spent on really mundane day-to-day workplace scenes as Ember learns how to do the new job she lied her way into.
Ember wants to be an accountant, but she finds herself temporarily filling in as the executive assistant to the CEO. What you may not know about me is that I have actually been an EA at a small business for almost two years now. I love my job! I find it really fulfilling and it takes enough of my creative problem solving skills to be interesting for me to do, without taking up all of my creative energy the way content marketing did.
But here’s the thing: my day-to-day would be really boring to observe! I write a lot of emails. I schedule meetings. I research things. Because this is a small company, I also do invoicing and payroll. I help with strategic planning. I serve as a sounding board for my boss. I help with procurement. I proofread documents. I do a lot of things that keep me from being bored! My job isn’t boring to me. But it’s not exactly exciting or entertaining. While I may enjoy composing a firm but polite email enquiring about a past-due invoice, it wouldn’t make for compelling reading.
At first, I thought that maybe there was something really shady going on at Ember’s new job and these boring work scenes would result in her slowly uncovering what was happening (my vote was Ponzi scheme). But while there is something going on, it was pretty low-key and the early work scenes have very little to do with it.
I suspect the author was trying to go for some sort of workplace comedy vibe, a la The Office or Parks and Rec or something, but it just didn’t work for me. Then again, maybe I would also feel differently if I wasn’t an EA. Most people don’t want to read about their job during their leisure time after doing their job all day.
The Truth According to Ember isn’t all bad. There were moments I really enjoyed. I liked Ember thinking about how much she likes Oklahoma City and how excited she is to be working downtown. I feel like a lot of times if a book doesn’t take place in either a glamorous coastal city or a quaint small town, the characters just hate where they live. It was nice to see a less-represented city in the middle of the country get some love. I also appreciated that Ember had female friends, and that there wasn’t any girl-hate or slut-shaming.
And most importantly, it’s great to see a novel by an Indigenous author with Indigenous characters. Nava said in her acknowledgements how important it was for her to write a romcom for her community, and I love that. I hope that there are readers that really connect with this work. The Truth According to Ember is Nava’s debut novel, and I hope she grows as an author and is able to inspire other authors to write the books they want to see.
CWs and TWs: Racism, especially anti-Indigenous racism; Ember and Danuwoa’s backstories contain parental abandonment and parental death, but these are mentioned briefly; sexual content.
Source and Format: I read this as an ebook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): Light Reads. If there’s one thing you can give romcoms, it’s that they’re light. Even though Ember and Danuwoa face racism, the racists are the butt of the joke and just make themselves look like fools without having too much impact on our two lovebirds. The tragic events in their past don’t cast a big shadow on the story. And you know there’s an HEA coming. That said, I could see Ember’s increasing web of lies causing some real anxiety for some readers.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 22 out of 25 prompts complete. 6 bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 18 out of 25 prompts complete. 3 bingos.