Here’s Jennifer Cruisie’s blog post from yesterday: This is a Good Book Thursday, August 24, 2023
It’s amusing because the good book I’m reading right now (slowly, while working on multiple projects of my own) is one of Jennifer Cruisie’s books, Faking It, which I expect I’ll be writing a post about one of these days because I like it a lot, so this post is sort of meta.
What’s Cruisie herself reading?
’ve been reading books and getting halfway through and giving up, fast forwarding to the end just to see what happens which is never a surprise. And then I hit the jackpot: Connie Willis’s new book, The Road to Roswell, is fantastic. It starts a little slow, and then it hits the ground running and it’s wonderful. A maid of honor who needs to talk her best friend out of marrying a UFO nut gets abducted by an alien who looks like a tumbleweed made of tentacles, and they start a road trip that gets more and more crowded as the alien picks up others along the way–a smart con man, an annoying UFO nut, a sweet little old lady, a cowboy–and it’s just flat out wonderful. Of course, it’s wonderful. It’s Connie Willis.
That does sound pretty wonderful! Here’s the description from Amazon:
When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate’s UFO-themed wedding—complete with a true-believer bridegroom—she can’t help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don’t exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one.
Odder still, her abductor is far from what the popular media have led her to expect, with a body like a tumbleweed and a mass of lightning-fast tentacles. Nor is Francie the only victim of the alien’s abduction spree. Before long, he has acquired a charming con man named Wade, a sweet little old lady with a casino addiction, a retiree with a huge RV and a love for old Westerns, and a UFO-chasing nutjob who is thoroughly convinced the alien intends to probe them and/or take over the planet.
But the more Francie gets to know the alien, the more convinced she becomes that he’s not an invader. That he’s in trouble and she has to help him. Only she doesn’t know how—or even what the trouble is.
Part alien-abduction adventure, part road trip saga, part romantic comedy, The Road to Roswell is packed full of Men in Black, Elvis impersonators, tourist traps, rattlesnakes, chemtrails, and Close Encounters of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth kind. Can Francie, stuck in a neon green bridesmaid’s dress, save the world—and still make it back for the wedding?
I have to say, this sounds better and better. It’s been a good long time since I read anything by Connie Willis. Maybe I should add this to the TBR mountain.
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I started The Road to Roswell and quit before I got very far into it. Since Crusie says it starts slow, maybe I quit too soon. (I’ve returned the e-book to the library but maybe I should put it on hold again.) There was nothing dreadful about it, it just didn’t fit my mood. In general I’m less open to light rom-com kinds of stories than I used to be. Character quirks and interactions that are supposed to be amusing tend to strike me as annoying. I think it’s a me-thing, not a book-thing.
I really like Connie Willis books. Some are lighter than others. Roswell was definitely on the lighthearted and fun romp end of the scale. I had an issue with the heroine’s … um… motivations in helping the alien. But I enjoyed the book regardless.
I’m the opposite: I’m more okay with light rom-com than I used to be, as long as it’s not so overly light that it floats off in a puff of nothingness. Connie Willis is great at the sentence level, which means I’ll probably appreciate this story for that before I really get into it. Still, I picked up a sample, not the full thing.
Forgive me for being vague. I’m trying not to be a spoiler
Good job, Jeanine! That was just about right for making me wonder what’s up with the heroine’s … um … motivations. Glad you avoided spoilers!
New Connie Willis that I hadn’t heard of! yay! If this one is in the vein of Bellwether and To Say Nothing of the Dog, then I’m all there for it. Slow starts is a Willis trademark, I think.
Was going to say that Faking It is a great Crusie, but, nope, I was thinking of Trust Me on This. Faking It sounds great, too!
Connie Willis seems to jump between (often madcap) comedy and tragedy, with very little in between. This sounds like her best comedy, right up with “Spice Pogrom” from _Impossible Things_ collection.
To me, Connie Willis seems to sometimes write fiction that’s more satire than comedy — I’d say Bellwether fits that category. I’m curious to see what she does with this Roswell story!
It is an excellent bedtime read–fun, but low stakes and easy to put down. Yes, everyone gets kidnapped by an alien–possibly even an alien outlaw!–but at no time does this feel like any kind of problem. I will probably finish tonight.
Just about any description could be a spoiler, but it starts with the main character at the airport, with the intent to break up her best friend’s wedding to a UFO conspiracy theorist that is taking place at the Roswell UFO museum. Then things immediately start to go wrong.