Good light reading and I love the main character. ( )

My first book by Saxon Bennett and . . .um . . . hmms. All editions that have covers have Saxon Bennett on the cover. And only Saxon Bennett. Yet the book page says Saxon Bennett and Laycee Gardner. I’m not sure if this is a co written book or a solo work. Whichever it is/was, let’s move on to the book.

I’ve been adding and removing Bennett books to my possibilities pile for a longish while now. I kept adding because they both looked interesting and were part of the Kindle Unlimited program. I kept removing them because they were humor books. Books that out and out say they are hugely funny tend to go two directions. Be entirely about the humor, or have other things. And if the humor is flat; and or just not my type of humor, I’m stuck with nothing – if it’s one of those that rests entirely on humor. So, yeah, I was reluctant to try a Bennett & Gardner book. And now I don’t even know if I did. Since the cover only has one of their names.

The book opens with Chase Bennett in her writer’s room moodily editing. She’s been estranged from her long time girlfriend/partner for several miserable days. Well, they are both lesbians in a long term relationship, and they both had just learned that Gitana is pregnant. One of those things that seems unlikely to happen by accident when the people involved in a relationship are both lesbians (or both gay men, but that’d be an even weirder book).

Fairly quickly everyone learns that there actually had been an accident. Gitana went in to the doctor’s office to have one thing done at the same time someone with the same last name went in to be artificially inseminated. So, it was all a mix-up. They decide to keep the kid.

This means that Chase, here-to-for a grouchy, hermit-like person with borderline insane issues, and deep hatred of other humans, has to, as the book description puts it, grow up.

Oddly enough two things occurred while I was reading this humor book – I found the humor to actually be humorous, and I found a rather compelling, riveting, good story. Now I don’t know if I’d have still liked it if the humor part had hit me wrong, and/or didn’t work for me, but the strong story line that doesn’t rest on humor indicates that I just might have.

Re: riveting – This is one of those books that I found hard to stop reading. I just kept reading and reading and . . . book done. I purposely started a book by a different author this morning so that I’d not be distracted by knowledge of the second book in this series before I had had a chance to write a review. I even read 25% of that book. This seems like an odd thing to be mentioning in a paragraph about ‘riveting’ books. No, that’s coming up – the book I’d read 25% of just wasn’t doing it for me, so I switched to the second book in the Chase series to glance at over lunch. And I just couldn’t stop reading. And am now 19% through that one in a really short batch of time.

So, humor that is actually fun, a good solid story – an interesting intriguing story, good solid supporting cast of characters and actual genuine character growth. Plus, the main character being a writer, and the writer’s group was quite fun to read about.

So, I had fun, I liked the book, and apparently it won some award I’d never heard of before. The “Golden Crown Literary Award for Dramatic/General Fiction (2010)”. Hmm. That sounds like an award for a television program. Drama. Or a play. Or an acting performance. I’m not sure how that corresponds to this specific book. I don’t recall drama, or melodrama. Confusing. Weird. Three books win each year for the same category? Along with ‘Family Affair’, ‘Detours’ by Jane Vollbrecht, and ‘Gemini’ by Geonn Cannon also won this award in 2010.

I just spent way too much time trying to figure out this ‘Golden Crown Literary Award for Dramatic/General Fiction’ – it’s the catch-all category for fiction that doesn’t fall into any other category. It’s not erotica/historical fiction/mystery/thriller/romance/etc. And there were three winners because at least . . . um . . ah, 8 or more books were nominated. If there had been less, say 5-7, 2 winners, 2-4 books, 1 award.

I’d originally awarded . . bah, I got too distracted with awards. I originally rated this book 4 stars last night immediately after finishing the book. Thinking more about the book as time has passed, and I’ve upped the rating to 5 stars. Why? The only negative I can think of associated with the book is the confusion over whether this is a solo or two author work. This isn’t really a negative one way or another. Therefore I can’t think of any negatives, only positives. And it was a good solid humorous book that brought me much joy. So, 5 stars. ( )