Must Like Spinach, by Con Riley

[Ulysses]

Must Like Spinach
By Con Riley
Four stars

It’s been a while since I read Con Riley’s Seattle series, so I was happy to pick up another Seattle-based novel.

“Must Like Spinach” is a conventional romance in some ways…it follows the m/m rules nicely. But, while the romance between Jonathan and Tyler is at the core of the narrative, it really is a story about the choices one makes along the path of life that determine one’s future happiness.

Jonathan Fournier is a twenty-something hotshot at a cutthroat NYC financial office, in fact a glorified intern fighting for a top position. He’s good at what he does, but he has just messed up in a big way by letting his heart get in the way of his business brain. He gets sent off to Seattle for a second chance, far enough away that nobody in the business world will have heard of his screw-up. Jon is determined to redeem himself in memory of his mother, who sacrificed everything to make a life for him.

However, once he starts apartment-hunting in Seattle, Jon finds himself drawn not to the hard-headed business that happens in the skyscrapers of the city on Puget Sound, but on the oddball, nature-filled life that goes on in the forgotten places, where cozy neighborhoods still flourish as they did before Seattle went high-tech. For all Jon’s skill at analyzing the foibles and weaknesses of a corporation, it is the gardens of his happy childhood he keeps remembering as he settles into his temporary home.

One of those gardens is owned by a quirky old lady named Peggy, and her tenant Tyler Waitt. At first, Peggy and Tyler seem like the antithesis of what Jon wants in life. Gradually, however, Jon begins to understand the little world they inhabit with the same careful observation he brings to the corporate workplace. As Jon learns how Peggy and Tyler fit into their Seattle, he begins to question everything he thinks he knows.

Riley brings a richness to the characters, both the MCs and the secondary players, that makes them jump off the page. Because it’s all from Jon’s viewpoint, the reader only knows what Jon knows, and thus we experience the gradual reveals in the various characters’ personalities just as he does. This is what makes the book so much fun to read. There are no cardboard people here, and as Jon discovers their motifs and emotions, his own outlook changes.

This is not a new story; there is a certain classic structure that guides the entire premise of the book—the young careerist who begins to question the rightness of what he’s doing. But Riley doesn’t keep it simple. She probes, and helps the reader discover that the path to happiness depends on the person walking it.