“A Shore Thing” Reviewed by the New York Times

The English Department is pleased to celebrate the review of Joanna Ruocco’s book. See below. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/books/review/new-romance-books.html

A similar kind of alchemy happens in Joanna Lowell’s glorious A SHORE THING (Berkley, 368 pp., paperback, $19), where — brace yourself — the recent invention of the safety bicycle leads to a summertime coastal road race as a widowed botanist and a trans painter-turned-mechanic try to outspeed a group of irritating penny-farthing riders. No, I’m perfectly serious, and it’s lovely.

Kit Griffith is thrilled to live as himself for the first time in out-of-the-way Cornwall; this pleasure is almost enough to make up for the fact that his will to paint has deserted him. Which is bad news for the well-traveled widow and botanist Muriel Pendrake, because she’s determined to have Kit illustrate her upcoming lecture in New York. Somehow, via romance shenanigans, this can only be resolved via a multi-day bicycle competition.

Every scene in this book is a treasure: a stolen kiss on a lonely road, a rescue during a sudden flood, jokes about seaweed and terrible men. It’s marvelously specific in time and place — and about queerness as a range of experiences: who can hide, who can mostly pass but have queer encounters on the side and who has to rebel against the world just to have space to breathe.