Love Buzz by Neely Tubati Alexander (Review by Stephanie Rowitz)

Seattleite, Serena Khan thinks that she has her life figured out until she meets Julian, a fellow Seattleite, at her cousin’s bachelorette party at a Bourbon Street bar in New Orleans. She and Julian feel an immediate spark, but after they each get pulled away by their drunken friends’ shenanigans, Serena goes on a quest to find Julian in their home city of Seattle. I really wanted to like this book. The writing is smart and witty, but the plot made this book difficult to digest. After she meets Julian, Serena totally upends her life in Seattle. She quits her job, she dumps her longtime boyfriend, and otherwise makes a bit of a mess of her life. It’s not all because of Julian, but he is the catalyst that makes her realize that the life she’s living isn’t the one she wants. I can understand how a random moment, or in this case, a random meet cute, can make you reevaluate your life, but I didn’t like that she changes nearly everything in her life because of it. It just felt a bit rash and fed into the misguided idea that you need to have everything figured out by the time you’re 30 years old. Eventually, she comes to realize that you don’t (and often won’t) have everything figured out by your 30th birthday, but the fact that this idea is still in the story at all just shows how much contemporary literature needs to evolve to better reflect how modern, Western women actually feel about turning 30. It’s not as scary as previous generations made it out to be because we’re living longer and therefore have more time to figure things out. I gave Love Buzz three stars because I like how this author writes, I just personally didn’t like the plot or the heroine of this book. However, if you appreciate smart writing and perhaps find yourself at a crossroads in your life, this book may be for you.