Keep This Off The Record by Arden Joy

Narrated by Mara Wilson and Gail Shalan

Sapphic (Lesbian) RomCom. Stands Alone.

I have been wanting to try a lesbian romance for a while now, and I found Keep This Off The Record by Arden Joy while I was compiling a list of books with Jewish characters. It was available in audio and on Hoopla (bonus!), so I grabbed it. Right after that, my book club chose this book for February as well.

“You know who you are. You are royalty. Put on your crown and fight for your kingdom.”

For Abigail and Freya, it was hate at first sight in high school, and apparently, 10 years later, that hatred has not waned at all, as we see from an awful Mean Girls type of confrontation at their High School reunion. They each brought their best friends to this reunion: Freya’s producer of her TV show Will, and Abigail’s best friend Naomi, who ended up falling for each other, keeping Abigail and Freya in the same orbit.

Abigail’s cheating sister Becca and the very funny gender-fluid Riley rounded out the group of friends. They were all caricatures but they were still such fun I was able to just go with it and I think they saved the book for me.

I was looking forward to my first “Sapphic romance”, but I found the romance between Will and Naomi to be much more compelling than the simmering hatred-to-love between Freya and Abigail. When Will and Naomi decide to get married on Freya’s TV show, Abigail and Freya are the Best women/Matrons of Honor and have to plan some of the wedding together.

Here is where it gets weird: these two have hated each other for years, never giving any indication that we can see that they feel any other way. Abigail is openly gay, but Freya has never even hinted that she is anything but straight, and her conservative network would not accept it anyway. Still, the friends make elaborate schemes to have Freya and Abigail overhear fake conversations about how one is in love with the other. Suddenly they look at each other differently and the next thing you know, they’re together and in love in a closed-door romance.

I never saw the slow burn and I felt the hatred but never felt the love. Will and Naomi’s romance and wedding had me more invested than the supposed main character’s romance because I never actually felt them falling for each other.

Likes:

I laughed out loud several times.
The LGBTQ+ representation.
Jewish representation as passing mentions, not as a main focus (I love this!).
Riley was so funny!
The dynamics of the friend group and how fun they are together.

Dislikes:

Becca’s cheating.
I never felt the connection between the main couple.

The Narration:

Mara Wilson and Gail Shalan did a great job with the narration and I think their acting added to my enjoyement of the book.

The Down & Dirty:

Keep This Off The Record by Arden Joy was a fun listen. I wanted to dive into a lesbian romance though, and this was barely one at all. I don’t even think the romance started before 70% and I never really felt the chemistry. But the friend group was so much fun and I loved the secondary romance which was way more interesting than the main FF one.