From My Margins: May 13

Royal fiction and the surprise episode of The Bear

I hope your weekend was lovely and exactly what you wanted it to be. My Mother’s Day was considerably nicer than last year’s (when Oliver threw a big fit at brunch). I read in bed for a while in the morning with a latte acquired for me from our favorite local place. We went to the botanical gardens for their Mother’s Day festivities. We went to the pool and enjoyed the sunshine and I read a lot.

The one real downside was that we had planned on doing nice takeout for dinner and I’d forgotten that nearly everywhere halfway decent in this county is closed on Sundays. C’est la vie. I ran to Publix and got us some steaks, creamed spinach, and a nice bottle of wine. That did the job just fine.

If You Only Have Time for One Thing:

The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage (4.5 stars)

Well, this was a delight. Lexi Villiers is in her third year of residency in Tasmania when her life is turned upside down and she’s returned back to the royal palace under a cloud of family tragedy. Suddenly, she’s the heir apparent to the throne of England and has some decisions to make.

I thought this novel was so fun and a nice twist on many of the royal fiction that has come out in the last decade or so. Armitage clearly pulled a lot of inspiration from the real British royals, but kept things just different enough to keep you wondering and waiting for how she’d roll out her version of their story.

My biggest complaint is that the Prince Andrew stand-in wasn’t actually villainous enough. I get that Armitage didn’t want to bring pedophilia and rape vibes into her story, but it’s hard to have a Prince Andrew character come across as slimy enough for your villain role when the real guy sucks so much.

I almost wish I’d saved this to read by the pool this summer, but am glad I didn’t wait. It was a fun escape at a time when I needed that.

Reading:

The Compound by Aisling Rawle (3 stars)

Lily wakes up in a desert compound with strangers, the kickoff to her reality tv journey. Contestants are forced to pair up and receive increasingly elaborate prizes for completing tasks alone and together. This was an entertaining read with some surprisingly deep moments.

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny (3 stars)

This isn’t my favorite of the series and that held true on reread. As book ten, it feels like a real turning point in the series in a lot of ways. I’ve started book eleven and you can feel that Penny was giving herself and her characters a bit of a fresh start there. I don’t know if she meant it at the time of writing, but this book reads like it was meant to tie up some loose ends before introducing new ideas.

Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell (4 stars)

Grab this one for an afternoon by the pool this summer. I’ve always really enjoyed Rainbow Rowell’s work, but especially now that she’s carving a lane for herself writing about very normal grown-up relationships and the complications that arise in them. This is romance with the pragmatism and complexity of middle age.

Watching:

Gary, the standalone episode of The Bear

The Bear team surprised us all this week and dropped a standalone flashback episode of the series last week, presumably in anticipation of the upcoming final season (which lands on June 25). The episode follows Mikey and Richie as they take a trip down to Gary, Indiana for Uncle Jimmy. It delivers all the emotional highs and lows we’ve come to expect from the show, along with masterful acting from Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, who wrote the episode.

It’s a hard episode to watch in many ways. Though it’s set five years before the series, all the warning signs for Mikey’s addiction and mental health problems are on display. The emotional peak of the episode has him behaving so much like his mother does in the incredible Fishes episode from season 2. It’s powerful and heartbreaking.

The episode ends with a flashback to the current timeline and a cliffhanger that I assume is meant to lead us into season five. This episode is clearly both a chance for these actors to play in this sandbox a little longer and also an incredibly smart play to remind viewers why they fell hard for this show in the first place and entice them back for the final season. Like many people, I found the most recent season to be the weakest and really did not enjoy the finale. It’s both smart and a bit baffling to put out a standalone episode like this that ends with something that will presumably be a key plot point at the start of the season.

I guess we have to wait 6 weeks to see what happens next and if the strategy paid off.

Hacks, season 5, through episode 7

We’re in the middle of the final season and you can really feel that. While I loved The Amazing Race episode, it mostly feels like we’re getting some filler before we head into the final stretch. I’ve loved this show, but it’s the right time to wrap it up.

Widow’s Bay, season 1, episodes 1-3

This new comedy horror from Apple TV+ has us hooked. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a show where I both laughed out loud multiple times each episode and was genuinely scared. I can’t wait to see what they do with this.

Cooking:

I made these Chicken Piccata Meatballs (The Beach House Kitchen) last week with some chicken meatballs I already had made and frozen. I thought they were decent, but if I did them again, I’d use the piccata sauce recipe I usually use instead. It has no shallots and more lemon and just suits our taste better.

On the Docket:

Right as I was finishing up this post, I got a notification from Libby that my hold on The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty is ready to borrow! You may remember I read the first book (The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi) back in the spring and loved it. I can’t wait to get into this one.

I also really need to find my groove in the kitchen again. I’m feeling my typical end-of-season malaise about all my options. I’m ready for summer produce and it’s not quite here yet. Give me some easy inspiration with what you’re cooking right now! Bonus points if you’re using the grill, because that’s all I want to do this time of year.