Globetrotting Automatons, Lesbian First Loves, and a Cocktail for When All You Want Is Chocolate

Plus: We all love Paris

First, a public service announcement: The Slowest Burn is on sale at all North American ebook retailers for $2.99! Can you think of another equally delightful cultural experience that costs $2.99 in the year of our lord 2025? I, for one, cannot. Please tell your friends, your family members, your high school frenemies, whoever you think would enjoy an opposites attract romance that’s all sharp banter, delicious meals, and California love. It is Valentine’s Day, after all…

On a totally different note, I think one of the most famous pieces of modern British culture that few Americans have ever heard of is the movie Withnail & I. My study abroad friend Erin showed it to me my freshman year at Berkeley, and it’s probably the most bleakly funny thing I have ever seen, and shows Richard E Grant at his imperiously louche best. More than that, any British person can quote at least one line from it on command, e.g. “finest wines available to humanity” or “Get in the back of the van!”

Why am I mentioning this movie? Well, what I was thinking from around 6pm on Friday January 31 to 7pm on Monday February 3 was…

“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!”

My trip to Brittany was like a series of first world plagues: ferry strikes that had my friends scrambling to find alternate transport before the trip even started, overcomplicated Parisian train stations, a very fancy Airbnb with no running water and a feckless management company, and, best and most exquisite of all, FOOD POISONING. Two weeks later and I still can’t think about shellfish without shuddering.

It was the kind of vacation that made me get down on my knees and kiss my front doorstep when I got home (not literally, because, again, motherf***ing food poisoning). It was also the kind of vacation that after a year or so becomes stand-up comedy material…but not quite yet.

Recently I read and loved…

Loot by Tania James

I read Loot on the two long train rides from Brittany back to London, and as I read, the phrase “I just want something that’s mine” replayed on a loop in my head. Loot is a brilliant meditation on ownership in all its positive and negative senses - on taking things that aren’t yours at the point of a gun, on leaving behind a physical legacy for the generations after you, on how sometimes we try to collect people like we collect objects.

The other thing that makes this novel so good is that the author takes what could be a sprawling thousand-page epic of Empire and compresses it into a diamond-sharp 280 pages that encompasses the luxurious brutality of Tipu Sultan’s court in Sriringapatna, the bleak narrowness of a provincial town in Normandy, and a sprawling country estate just outside London clearly inspired by Strawberry Hill. It’s as compact and meticulous as the mechanism of a luxury watch, and it’s a tremendous feat of craft.

Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century by Simon Kuper

I really enjoy Simon Kuper’s weekly columns on urban life, politics, and sports in the Financial Times, and I love reading books about what makes modern cities tick, so the second this was out in paperback I snatched it up. Reading this book is like walking around central Paris with an erudite, dryly witty expat uncle as he explains the pleasures, the tragedies and the very specific quirks of this legendary place, wandering through neighborhoods and stopping for coffee or wine (or both!) and watching the world go by. Highly recommended whether or not Paris is a two-hour train ride or a ten-hour flight away.

Zoe Brennan, First Crush by Laura Piper Lee

This one had me kicking my feet in sheer glee in Chapter 1 and biting my knuckle with…um, feelings in Chapter 2. Laura is one of the strongest comedy writers working in romance right now, and also writes brain-meltingly hot Sapphic love scenes. Beyond the laughter and lust, I loved the emotional depth of her second book - she’s brilliant at capturing how incapacitating anxiety can be, in life and love, and the human ability to find the tiniest thing wrong in a situation that’s otherwise going right. She also makes me want to book a vacation to Blue Ridge, Georgia as soon as possible. It sounds pretty idyllic!

I also enjoyed…Wedding Dashers by Heather McBreen, My Season of Scandal and The Beast Takes a Bride by Julie Anne Long, Unloved by Peyton Corinne, Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera, Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson, Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

And I mixed…a Chocolate Manhattan.

As a rule, I don’t order Manhattans out, or mess around at home with them, simply because I think the best possible version is the one I make with equal parts High West Double Rye and Carpano Antica Formula, both Angostura and orange bitters, and with a dash of syrup from the cherry jar. But the Manhattan is kind of an ur-cocktail so there are loads of variations, and the bottle of crème de cacao on my bar was asking to be used…so, deliciously, here we are.

Despite the name, I promise this isn’t like drinking Hershey’s syrup straight from the bottle. There are definitely hints of chocolate and vanilla and almond, but they’re there to mellow out the burn of all that bourbon. I drank this sitting on my sofa on a freezing night, and all I wanted to top off the experience was a roaring fire and a velvet smoking jacket.

I also drank…a Vieux Carré at home, a Pineapple Cake Old Fashioned and a yuzu-pomelo soda at BAO Marylebone, a calamansi-ade at Ramo, and a glass of Côtes-du-Rhône Rive Droite Rive Gauche 2023. (If you live in the UK and you like wine, I highly recommend becoming a member of the Wine Society. Incredible value!)

Bonus! Some other things that made me happy recently:

A daube de boeuf: There are hundreds of brilliant food and cooking Substacks out there so I’ve held back on sharing recipes, but I loved this one for beef stew with a southern French accent so much I just had to spread the word. Diana Henry is a wonderfully evocative recipe writer, and if you’re looking for a dinner that’s cozy and comforting but that also hints at warmer climes, *looks out at London in February, sighs* this will hit the spot.

SAS: Rogue Heroes (Rogue Heroes in the US): I really like James Bond movies, I really like morally complicated war stories with flawed heroes like Patton and Lawrence of Arabia, and I very much enjoy watching people beat the ever-loving crap out of Nazis. Perhaps you, in this moment we’re living in, might enjoy this too? Fair warning, Rogue Heroes is foul-mouthed and bloody and the token woman makes me sigh in frustration at how little she has to do, but it’s a great show, and Connor Swindells as the very posh, highly reckless, and utterly ruthless lead is brilliant.

“Girl From the North Country” by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash: Imagine me putting this elegiac, yearning song on loop as I draft Book 3.