While families across Manhattan and beyond are gearing up for back-to-school season, my fianc\u00e9 and I are preparing for the biggest event of our lives to date: our wedding. Naturally, as an avid reader of romance and romantasy, I\u2019ve been reading many books with marriage plots and books about creating real life happiness whenever I\u2019m not working on my own happily ever after.<\/p>\n
The most recent title that mirrors my current feelings is \u201cTea You at the Altar\u201d by Rebecca Thorne. The third book in the romantasy \u201cTomes and Tea\u201d series follows Kianthe and Reyna as they prepare for their own upcoming wedding while also hunting down missing dragon eggs and overthrowing a corrupt queen. Though the sapphic couple struggles with their professional roles as the Mage of Ages and Queendom guard turned tea shop owner, their love for each other never falters. It is this commitment to each other that inspires me to follow their example. I\u2019m eagerly awaiting the continuation of their story in \u201cAlchemy and a Cup of Tea,\u201d which will be published on Aug. 12.<\/p>\n
What would the romance genre be without the \u201cmarriage of convenience\u201d trope? India Holton runs with this idea and kicks it up with an extra dose of humor in \u201cThe Geographer\u2019s Map to Romance,\u201d the second of her \u201cLove\u2019s Academic\u201d series. This title focuses on side characters from \u201cThe Ornithologist\u2019s Field Guide to Love,\u201d the Professors Tarrant \u2014 that is, Elodie n\u00e9e Hughes and Gabriel Tarrant, who are both experts in thaumaturgic geography. As storm-chasing tourists are turned into cows and innkeepers consistently fail to have more than one bed available, the rockily married couple are forced to reconcile their mutual mixed feelings for each other to tame the unnatural disasters plaguing England and Wales. It takes all of their combined cunning, hex skills, and a bag of magical items to find the truth, evade their foes, and break the enchantment. And if one mystery isn\u2019t enough, their adventures continue in \u201cA Tangle of Time,\u201d which will be published in September.<\/p>\n
Want a marriage plot without a lot of romance? Check out \u201cI Want to be a Wall\u201d by Honami Shirono. The third and final volume of this manga neatly ties up the slice-of-life story between Yuriko and Gakurouta, an asexual woman and a closeted gay man. After getting married to stave off attempts by their parents to arrange partners for them, the couple\u2019s relationship transcends romance as they learn what it means to live together as platonic partners. Equal parts touching and hilarious, their story validates the lives of people who value nontraditional partnerships.<\/p>\n
For the people watching other people getting married or struggling with their own marriages, Alison Espach\u2019s \u201cThe Wedding People\u201d could offer some catharsis. This New York Times bestseller satire stars recently divorced Phoebe Stone, a woman with plans to take her life at a ritzy seaside resort, only to be mistaken for one of the guests of bridezilla Lila\u2019s wedding. The two women seem to have nothing in common, and yet they manage to build a friendship that surprises both of them.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re more interested in nonfiction books about marriage, pick up \u201cI Do (I Think): Conversations About Modern Marriage\u201d by Allison Raskin. This series of essays explores what marriage means today for millennials and Gen Zers, two demographics with new approaches towards lifelong commitments. The essays include Raskin\u2019s life experiences as well as expert research. \u201cI Do (I Think)\u201d also covers topics such as prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, division or unification of finances, non-monogamous and LGBTQ relationships, intimacy, and a fresh perspective on divorce. For anyone who wants to broaden their understanding of how people create, sustain, or peaceably end relationships, this book is a must-read.<\/p>\n
If you couldn\u2019t care less about holy matrimony but you\u2019re still looking to rebalance the relationships in your life, this next book might be for you. \u201cFair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live)\u201d by Eve Rodsky illuminates a new way to look at how work is divided in a household. Though most of the advice is geared towards married couples with children, it\u2019s also helpful for non-traditional families or people with roommates.<\/p>\n
Whether you\u2019re in a partnership or single, I hope you\u2019ll connect with one of these titles. Marriage might not be for everyone, but everyone deserves to experience love in any of its forms.<\/p>\n
Steph Wallace is library assistant 2, adult services at Manhattan Public Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While families across Manhattan and beyond are gearing up for back-to-school season, my fianc\u00e9 and I are preparing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134,46160],"class_list":{"0":"post-55810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-social-institutions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}