Review by Jesus Gonzalez, 15
Love and Other Natural Disasters By Misa Sugiura
Love & Other Natural Disasters by Misa Sugiura was an eye-catching lesbian rom-com which after reading, I couldn’t really decide on whether I hated or loved it. In it, our main character, Nozomi, just moved to San Francisco. She’s lonely and has always dreamt of having the perfect summer romance until one day she meets Willow who she envisioned as the perfect girl. WIllow then wants her to be her girlfriend but there is a catch: Willow just wants Nozomi as a fake girlfriend so she can make her ex jealous. Nozomi agrees because she plans to make the fake relationship not so fake by the end of it. Surprise surprise, Nozomi starts falling in love with another girl from her workplace so now she must decide between two people who she likes, and she’s still trying desperately to turn her fake relationship with Willow into a real one.
I did not like the book. I had mixed feelings about if I wanted to keep on reading and ended up continuing but not for the right reasons; it was more of a “let me see how much worse this book can get.” I mean no hate to the author–her writing was good, but it was the equivalent to creating sugar coating on a burnt cookie. Let me start off with the positives of this book: one thing I enjoyed was how realistic everything is and all the representation the book gave to minorities. Some examples being the inclusion of LGBT, lesbian, bisexual, Asian, and African American representation. Now the negatives: Willow is only portrayed as beautiful, happy, and wears makeup and those are her only defining character traits. Another major example is the attention given to side plots near the beginning of the book where we learn about how Nozomi has issues with her family about her being gay but then that gets completely abandoned with the main focus turning to Nozami’s love life. My bigger issue was Nozami. I’m not sure what it is with writers wanting to make their characters unlikeable, but the character of Nozami was so one-dimensional I would describe them as one of those girls who just go off about how good she is 24/7, which is really annoying.
Overall, this book left me with mixed feelings about how I perceived it, but my opinion may be biased as the more romcoms I read, the more things I notice they have in common which makes it harder to like the theme. I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to read something they will have a hard time putting down or anyone interested in some books featuring a huge cast minority representation.
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337 pages