This show—sorry I meant book—lives somewhere in the vast exotic jungle between Romance and Erotica. You never know when you'll stumble into a "love scene". There's romance, slight comedy, introspection, passion, and self-questioning at every turn.
The book is presented in division of "seasons" with "episodes". (Apparently they were first published separately? I'm not sure. Whatever.) Five stars because I cried at least twice.
One could imagine this novel entirely re-worked into a set of screen plays for a one-hour video format TV show, including twenty minutes of commercial interruptions of course, and two scoops of product placement internally. The narrator especially likes to mention clothing and food brands, and to drop in the occasionally celebrity name—most of which zipped by over my head. OK, I understood a reference to MASH, which kind of date-stamps me. For good measure, this volume even ends with a light "season cliff-hanger" so when I finished it I immediately cracked open the next season to peek at the outcome.
The T and G of the sub-title are Tegan, who narrates, and her girlfriend Gemma. Criminy, they can't be more than nineteen, if that. Gemma has known she's lesbian for yonks and had a girlfriend once before (who left her for a guy, yuck), but Tegan has just discovered that she's not as hetero as she's been telling herself all these years. That doesn't mean she's 100% lesbian, either, so there's some angst over self-labelling throughout.
As this book opens, the two women are dorm-mates, sharing one room, in their first year of college, just falling in love, so you know how that is. Tegan is a blue-eyed blonde nursing student who is vocally proud of her double-Ds (and slips in mention of the girls once in a while so we don't forget). Gemma is a slim emerald-eyed redhead, whom I imagined as sort of a real-life Merida, but her part in the TV show could probably be played by Lou Broadbent with green contact lenses. (Look her up, yes.) The volume runs through the year up to the beginning of summer.
Overall, this is sort of an X-Rated college-gal sitrom—that's like a sitcom only romantic. If you're asexual, homo-phobic, or lez-offended, I can probably list sixty-nine reasons for you to avoid this book, but otherwise it's good clean fun and has a definite good vibe and nice messages, including plugs for various products we all know and love. With all the brand-name and pop-culture references, I'm sure Andy Warhol would have given his imprimatur as well. (Oh, wait, uh huh, I just got a message from beyond, and yes, Andy says two thumbs up.)
The writing is good and very clear; and this indie-published book gets a Golden Rodent award for editorial excellence: I didn't spot any typos. I obtained this for free during a 'Zon promo, but happily would have paid, in retrospect. So that means the author now has a standing invitation for a fabulous fancy coffee drink at [product place holder] next time she's in California.