You're Feeling a Bit Lost

Are a skin care junkie or have been to a fan con

Hi friends,

I hope you’re doing well. The pink cherry blossoms (My favorites! They look like little pompoms!) are in full bloom and I spent a good chunk of the weekend just taking them in.

If you missed my conversation with

Valorie Castellanos Clark

about her new book, Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You've (Probably) Never Heard of, you can listen to it here. I had so much fun talking with Val about her research and writing process and what it means to be unruly.

And, now, what to read if…

You’ve Ever Felt a Little Lost

Chemistry by Weike Wang

As Chemistry opens, its unnamed narrator seems to have the perfect life. She’s working in a lab while finishing her PhD in — you guessed it — chemistry, her long-time boyfriend just proposed and the couple has an adorable puppy. Yet, she’s ambivalent about it all (except the dog, obviously), uninterested in her research and unable to give her boyfriend an answer. Until one day, it all boils over, and she begins to throw her glass test tubes against the wall.

After security escorts her from the building, her life collapses around her. From there, our narrator falls into a routine of drinking, takeout and hiding her employment situation from her parents. 

I read — and loved — Weike Wang’s second novel Joan is Okay in 2022. I’m not sure why I waited a few years to go back and read her debut, but I’m so happy I did. Wang excels at writing quirky, loveable and lost heroines that I want to wrap in blankets. Both Joan and the unnamed lead of Chemistry have stayed with me long after finishing the books.

You Have an Intense Skin Care Routine

Glossy by Marisa Meltzer

I do not have an extensive skin care routine. I wash my face and wear sunscreen, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing Glossy, the story of juggernaut beauty brand Glossier, after seeing it described as “Devil Wears Prada for a Bad Blood generation.”

Glossy tracks Emily Weiss’s rise from a “superintern” on the MTV reality show “The Hills” to makeup influencer to CEO of Glossier, a $1.9 billion business with an obsessive following. Meltzer, a reporter with more than a decade of experience on the beauty beat, drew on in-depth interviews with former Glossier employees, investors and even Weiss herself to bring readers into pitch meetings, development labs, storefronts and the company’s pink headquarters.

The most interesting part of Glossy, for me, was Meltzer’s dissection of the 2010s-meme of “the girlboss,” female executives who melded their “professional self and identity, capitalist aspiration, and a specific (and arguably limited) vision of empowerment,” according to a 2021 article in Vox. Weiss falls into the category, as do influencer Rachel Hollis, Away CEO Steph Korey and the founders of The Wing. It’s this analysis — as well as the examination of the brand’s wild success — that makes it a great pick, even for those who don’t use retinol daily.

Reminder recs: I would be remiss not to mention two friends of the newsletter with #Girlboss books.

Leigh Stein

wrote the definitive essay on the phenomenon, and her novel Self Care hilariously skewers the idea. Laura Hankin’s A Special Place for Women depicts a journalist working to infiltrate a Wing-esque exclusive, women-only social club.

You’ve Been to a Fan Con

I Didn’t Do It by Jaime Lynn Hendricks

Malice Domestic, the annual convention celebrating the “traditional mystery,” is coming up later this month. When I went a few years back (and interviewed Julia Spencer-Fleming!), I commented that everyone was so nice, and a mystery writer said to me, “It’s because we all kill people on the page. We get our anger out that way.”

 The four authors at the center of Jaime Lynn Hendricks’s I Didn’t Do It, though, find themselves under suspicion of murder when a beloved, best-selling author is found dead at a mystery writers’ convention. As if that’s not enough, a creepy Twitter account is sharing threatening messages, implying that one of the four of them will soon be killed as well.

The writers — a newbie, a golden boy, a has-been and a midlister — attempt to work together to find the murderer. Their efforts are undermined by the Twitter poster turning them against each other and their knowledge that someone who crafts murder mysteries for a living would know how to get away with a crime.

The best compliment I can give I Didn’t Do It is that the audiobook kept me going on dog walks during hundred-degree days last summer. Featuring a full cast, the narration plus the taut suspense had me outside walking when I wanted to by lying in the air conditioning.

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Thanks for reading! It might sound cheesy but it’s an honor that so many of you let me in your inboxes each week.

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