Honey Girl

Honey Girl is a novel by Morgan Rogers, published in 2021, and it begins with a marriage and then spends its length working out what to do with it.

Grace Porter is twenty-eight, and she has done everything her stern ex-military father planned for her, including completing a doctorate in astronomy. The celebration in Las Vegas is supposed to be the reward for that, and instead it produces a wife whose name Grace barely knows, which raises the question of why finishing the degree has not made her feel the way she expected. Burnout, a difficult job market and her father's expectations press on her, and rather than stay in Portland and explain herself she goes to New York for the summer to spend time with the woman she married. The novel follows the two of them as they decide what their accidental arrangement is, and Grace as she works out how much of her life so far has been hers. Rogers writes about family, ambition and depression with a light touch and an ear for how people talk to each other.

The book is a romance and also a story about a young woman discovering that a plan followed perfectly can still leave her exhausted.