The Politics of Love

by Jen Jensen

Overview

Is it possible to love across the political divide?

Shelley Whitmore is a successful attorney, working on behalf of her Evangelical parents’ faith-based organization, championing conservative values of individual liberty and limited government. Everything’s totally fine, except that it really isn’t. Shelley manages depression and crippling anxiety because of the secret she can never reveal: she’s gay.

Rand Thomas is a psychotherapist, transgender rights activist, and political liberal. Widowed and struggling with her wife's toxic parents, Rand isn’t going to allow herself to love again.

When Shelley and Rand meet in Manhattan, neither one expects to find that the other is exactly who they need.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635556933
Publisher:	Bold Strokes Books
Publication date:	07/14/2020
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jen Jensen lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with a pack of rescued senior dogs, lovely family, and friends, and spends too much time reading books.

Editorial Reviews

07/13/2020

With this underdeveloped lesbian romance, Jensen (Jamis Bachman, Ghost Hunter) attempts to depict love across the progressive-conservative divide. It’s a difficult premise to pull off, and it’s almost immediately gutted by the characterization of the conservative protagonist. Georgia evangelical Shelley Whitmore, the 31-year-old daughter of a hate-filled pastor, is sufficiently notorious for her appearances on TV news shows—yet her first act in the novel is to drop her talking points in a debate and instead cordially agree that the right’s antagonism toward transgender people is “not rational.” Her adversary, 40-year-old activist Rand Thomas, is so impressed that she invites Shelley to get acquainted over dinner. But Rand hasn’t processed her wife’s death and Shelley isn’t out yet, so their small sizzle goes nowhere—until Shelley engineers a move to Rand’s hometown of Phoenix. The romance is slight, with more time devoted to Shelley’s coming out, Rand’s therapy, and shallowly conceived partisan talking points. Neither characters’ politics develop over the course of the novel: Shelley’s socially liberal notions are presented as what she’s always felt but never voiced (the hypocrisy of this goes largely unaddressed), while Rand’s journey begins and ends at the revelation that maybe not all conservatives are as bad as she once thought. Readers will be unconvinced. (July)

Publishers Weekly