Finished my seventh book for Sapphic Book Bingo, putting us a fair bit ahead of schedule at this point. The book in question is Because I Said So, by Karin Kallmaker. The book fits solidly into the "sibling relationship" square, half of the premise and a big portion of the plot centering around the troubles between two sisters.
This will be a spoiler-free review, but the tl;dr is that I think this is the best book of the seven I've read for the Bingo so far. If anyone out there likes characters dealing with difficult and complex emotions like I do, I don't think you'd be disappointed from reading this. But if you want more details, well, that's what this post is for.
Story Premise
One fated day at UCLA, Josie Sapiro and Phoenix "Paz" Lopez meet each other and fall for each other, hard. They start dating, and they hit it off with each other so well that within just a few weeks they're positive they're ready to marry each other.
Their guardians are not happy about this.
Kesa, Josie's older sister, has been the sole person providing for Josie since she was seven years old. Their parents died in a car crash and left them with so much debt that Kesa had to spend the next twelve years fighting to keep their heads above water. From Kesa's perspective, things have only recently been starting to stabilize for the both of them, and she was counting on Josie taking the opportunity to finish college, so she's alarmed at the prospect that a rushed marriage might do anything to sabotage that.
Paz's unofficial guardian Shannon Dealan doesn't have quite so many fears, but she's still wanting to secure a future for him as well. When Paz was younger and the two of them were just neighborhood friends, Paz was witness to a violent crime; Shannon, who works for the US Marshals Service, had him placed into the witness protection program immediately. Since he was the closest thing she had to family at the time, she followed him to his new location and has been looking after him ever since.
Paz and Josie are still deadset on getting married in spite of the protests of their caretakers, though, so they arrange a meeting for the four of them to get together and discuss the future together.
It's at this meeting that we learn that the situation is even more complicated than originally assumed.
"The demons of the parents were powerful long after they were gone, Kesa thought."
It's been a recurring topic in my reviews at this point that "awful parents" are a common trope in sapphic literature, especially in the books I've been reading up to this point. But up until now, I feel like I haven't seen a sapphic book that deals with awful parents as a focal plot point, particularly in an effort to address the impact it can have on a person and how to deal with it, until this book.
Kesa and Shannon's parental figures aren't even alive anymore, and haven't been for most of their adult lives. Even so, the sheer carelessness of these parents during the time they were alive have left both Kesa and Shannon with enough mental and emotional baggage (and financial baggage, in the case of Kesa) that it is still an obvious presence in their thoughts, feelings, and decisions even in the present day. It's still impacting all of their relationships in a negative way. Kesa and Shannon are both conscious of this fact, too, but it doesn't stop it from influencing them.
And more to the point, these effects are powerful enough that they are carrying down through the generations. Kesa and Shannon are both parental figures too, now, and though they are trying to do better than the people who (ostensibly) took care of them, sometimes the overcorrection itself leads to new problems... and of course, they continue to maintain some of the problems they inherited, though more subconsciously. This leads to a souring of their relationships with those that they're looking after, which may in turn lead them to make some bad decisions.
This is not the kind of story that offers big, clear revelations for how to resolve these kinds of issues, and I'm glad, because there aren't any clear answers. Instead, the book simply treats its cast as a case study, diving deep into all the varied complex and interconnecting emotions that are contributing to their problems, and going over why they make the choices that they do. Sometimes the characters make mistakes, but it's always understandable why. In watching everything play out, we can see bits and pieces that connect to problems in our own lives--or at least, I certainly could--and we can reflect on why we do or don't do things differently.
The Romance
It's a recurring theme of the book that love can hit hard, hard enough to be scary, and when it gets that heavy it has a tendency to start interfering with someone's ability to handle things in a practical or reasonable way.
But it's also a recurring theme of the book that this doesn't have to be an inherently bad thing--but without ever indicating that rationality is bad, either.
I already had the sense that this was going to be a well-written book when it opened with Kesa and Josie arguing about marriage in the first chapter, and it made me relate to both of them. To be clear, I also think getting married after just a couple weeks of dating is way too soon, and effectively unnecessary. Nonetheless, Josie's position of following your heart because you never really know what life is going to throw at you is something I believe in, too.
That kind of nuanced understanding of the situation--that love can make things more difficult, but that things are difficult no matter what anyway, and wouldn't you rather love be part of that than not--is the kind of thing I hope to see when authors explore any emotion, but love in particular, because love is so important to me. And I think Because I Said So succeeds at doing a full exploration of what it's dealing with.
In regards to the book's style of romance, it struck me that it was less focused on the physicality of romance than most of the romances I've read. The physicality is still there, it definitely is. But when characters are hit with that instant attraction, the book focuses more on the instant comfort that they feel around each other more than it focuses on how hot they find each other. And when intimate scenes do happen, they're abstract and fleeting, like someone reliving the emotions associated with a memory more than the actual series of events itself.
I thought that approach was unique and interesting. My own style of romance is still different, but I see this as another example of the book choosing to highlight the subtler emotions of a situation, the more hidden emotions that are still incredibly important, and I really appreciate it taking that kind of approach.
The Mystery/Intrigue
I'm starting to feel a little silly for making this a regular section, since I'm getting the impression it's not something most romances aim for. But I like intrigue and I'm stubborn so I guess I'll keep talking about it anyway.
I don't feel like I can say there's much in the way of "mysteries" in this book. When you lay out the actual events of the plot end-to-end, they're pretty straightforward and simple. The focus of the book is more on how the characters react to each new occurrence as it happens, because every new step just adds new complications to the heavy emotions they were already feeling. If there's intrigue, it's in wondering how the characters are going to juggle all these different emotions. And I find that kind of thing just as compelling as mysteries, if not moreso when it's done properly, so I don't feel like there's anything missing here.
I will say that the end result of it is that the book ends in a fairly simple way, because... well, since there weren't any big concrete events to resolve, the characters ultimately just needed to sit down and talk to each other enough times to sort out their feelings, and that's what they did. But the other side of that is... well, that that is the appropriate way for it to end. It's not going to excite people who are hoping for things to end with a bang or some kind of spectacle, but that's okay, not all endings need to be like that--especially in a nuanced story like this one.
In conclusion
Uhhh I liked it. I'd be lying if I said it was going into my list of top personal favorite stories of all time, but it is in the top three lesbian romances I've read so far, and as a result I'm putting Karin Kallmaker right next to Clare Ashton on the list of authors I want to follow more. And again, I think the book is a safe recommendation to anyone like me who enjoys stories that explore emotions and their various contradictions and complexities.
It also gave me a fair bit to think about in regards to how I want to write, so look forward to thoughts on that in my eventual longer analysis.