If you enjoy the fake dating trope, this book is absolutely for you. Irreverent, a little bit raunchy, and hilarious, A Drop in the Ocean had me laughing from the very first page.

Angst is virtually nonexistent, which makes this friends-to-lovers tale an exceptional choice if you are looking for a light read or something to get past a reading slump. At just over two hundred pages it’s on the shorter side, and it’s a fast read, but you’ll find yourself wishing it were longer. Author Nikki Winter manages in those two hundred pages to deliver a vast array of emotion, with a thread of humor and delight tying it all together. Kairo and Audrey and even manwhore Antar are the sorts of characters the reader enjoys getting to know and finds themselves reluctant to say goodbye to, and Kairo’s French bulldog Sudi is so true-to-life that lovers of the breed will swear Winters had met their dog. Sexual tension between Kairo and Audrey will have you torn between laughter and swearing that the temperature in the room just went up several notches, and the sex scenes are endearing as well as erotic, but the parts you’ll really love are the ones where they just show up for one another.

In short, this book is a helluva fun ride.

Sundown Towns is undeniably one of the best books I have read this year. It’s also the book it took me the most time to finish. It’s a slow read – thoroughly researched and chock full of information – but it’s also a difficult read. It speaks not only of an ugly history, but of how it continues to this day in ways many people are entirely unaware. In clear, easily understood terms, it describes how the practice of sundown towns in a particular region has had a considerable and longstanding influence not only on race relations but also on politics and economics.

If you find yourself wondering how the United States came to the pivotal point it has arrived at, read this book. You will realize that it’s been perched at this precipice virtually since its founding, and contrary to popular belief racism is not concentrated primarily in the Southern States, or a thing of the distant past. The bulk of the sundown towns the author was able to verify were outside of the Deep South. Furthermore, many of them were still sundown until at least the late 1990s. Only in the early twenty-first century did the trend begin to reverse itself, and the author himself points out that this does not necessarily reflect a decline in racism. Sundown suburbs and neighborhoods still exist. Minimally desegregated towns and suburbs turn a blind eye to ongoing racial injustice by convincing themselves that their communities remain largely white due to economic factors – without a thought as to what causes that economic inequality.

This is not one of those books that sugar coats history. It falls squarely under the category of “things they don’t teach in American public schools”. In Sundown Towns, Loewen talks about things the establishment does not want the American people to learn, which makes it all the more important that they do. Sundown communities are a symptom rather than the source of the infection, but they are a persistent and powerful means of perpetuating it, even today.

A few years ago, I ran over a turtle. It was unavoidable, but I was devastated. It bothers me to this day, and I try not to think about it. I didn’t stop when it happened because the flow of traffic made it unsafe, and when I was able to go back and look, the turtle was clearly beyond any help, so I wrapped it in a blanket and buried it in the woods in the back of my land. There are a lot of turtles here, and whenever I see one out in the open I move it to safety if I can, and clearly there’s nothing I can do to change the past, but I will say this: while I hope I never find myself in that position again, now that I know that turtle rescue organizations exist I have already looked up the nearest one and put them in my contacts, just in case.

I sometimes find turtles in the middle of my yard, out of nowhere. This little lump slowly making its way across my property, clearly heading towards the stream feeding into the marshy land in the back corner. I have often wondered how these turtles ended up in the middle of my yard, which is large and quite an expanse to traverse for a creature with tiny legs. When I see them I will pick them up and, as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, give them a lift, to limit their exposure to the heat and any predators. Most of the time they accept the ride quietly, simply blinking at me, but every once in awhile an agitated snapper will swim along, neck stretched out while I croon softly to it. I can only guess that these turtles likely spent their winter hibernation in the mud and shallow waters of the ditches lining my property, and emerged to look for mates or nesting sites.

There is, about turtles, something eternal. They can live well over a hundred years and heal from injuries that are beyond imagination. They have been on this earth for millennia and are centered in the creation myths of several peoples. They are slow and plodding and ancient and their gaze, when they look at you, contains the multitudes of the universe. They are ungainly and primordial, but they are unspeakably beautiful.

Of Time and Turtles is a love letter to turtles but it’s also a musing on the passage of time and, because it was written during the earliest days of the COVID pandemic, it examines isolation and the ways we all choose or need connection, and how we cope when it is severed. It discusses transphobia and offers a glimpse into the world of two trans women who have made it their life’s mission to protect as many turtles as they can. And a brief master class, frankly, on how to navigate treating the transgender with respect, acceptance, and dignity even if you don’t understand them. And, finally, it discusses institutionalized racism and the beginning days of Black Lives Matter. Through it all, there are the turtles.

Sy Montgomery has a rare talent for making you fall in love with the subjects of her books. I knew that before I started this one, because I have read her books before, so I was prepared to not only learn a lot but to have my heart a little bit broken over turtles. As prepared as one can be, anyway. It didn’t lessen the effect. You feel the triumph and relief of every miraculous recovery, and the anguish and sorrow of every loss. I absolutely do recommend this book, but with a caveat: prepare to leave it feeling just a tiny bit shredded over a reptile.