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Bitter Texas Honey
Bitter Texas Honey: A Novel | Ashley Whitaker
2 posts | 1 read | 1 to read
The Royal Tenenbaums meets Fleabag in this hilarious and dizzyingly smart debut about an over-the-top evangelical Texan familyand the daughter at its center racing to finish her very important novel before her ex-boyfriend finishes his. Its 2011, and twenty-three-year-old Joan West is not like the rest of her liberal peers in Austin, nor is she quite like her Tea Party Republican, God-loving family. Sure, she listens to conservative talk radio on her way to and from her internship at the Capitol. But she was once an America-hating leftist who kissed girls at parties, refused to shave, and had plenty of emotionless sex with jazz school friendsthat is until a drug-induced mania forced her to return to her senses. But above all Joan is a writer, an artist, or at least she desperately wants to be. Always in search of inspiration for her novel, she catalogs every detail of her relationships with menincluding with her former muse slash current arch nemesis Robertoand mines her very dysfunctional family for material. But when her beloved, credit card debtracked cousin Wyatt finds himself in crisis, Joans worldview is cracked open and everything comes crashing down. Funny, whip-smart, and often tender, Bitter Texas Honey introduces us to the unforgettable and indefatigable Joan West: ambitious, full of contradictions, utterly herself. As she wades through it alladdiction, politics, loss, and, notably, her fathers string of increasingly bizarre girlfriendswe witness her confront what it means to be a person, and an artist, in the world.
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review
Amor4Libros
Bitter Texas Honey: A Novel | Ashley Whitaker
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Mehso-so

3.5⭐️ I liked this debut novel but it just felt very chaotic at times and it kinda lost me in the way…

But what I did like is the author‘s descriptions of Joan‘s life and how she was trying to navigate that very confusing time in your early 20‘s.

Good debut! I will keep my eye out for Whitaker‘s future work.

TW: Suicide

#arc Pub Date: 4/15/25

blurb
Amor4Libros
Bitter Texas Honey: A Novel | Ashley Whitaker
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Next up… #arc

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