Book Review: Love and Hot Chicken
Based purely on the title, I had expected Mary Liza Hartong’s Love and Hot Chicken to be…well, just that. A romance novel set at a hot chicken establishment in Tennessee. And while I wasn’t completely off, this charming debut novel wound up taking me completely by surprise and delivering something far beyond what I had expected.
PhD student PJ Spoon returns to her small town of Pennywhistle for her father’s funeral, and mired in her own grief, takes a job as a fry cook at the local chicken shop. There, she develops a crush on their waitress and fellow now employee, Boof, who’s come to town looking to solve a family mystery. The crush is mutual, but it takes PJ a while to open up, still grieving and stuck with years of regret and new perspectives only just now surfacing.
While the budding relationship between PJ and Boof is certainly a very important angle to the story, Love and Hot Chicken isn’t a romance novel per se. Rather, it’s a quiet - yet very funny - meditation on life, and how those around us shape who we are, and how time, and distance can offer an new and sometimes uncomfortable perspective on our pasts and presents.
For a debut novel, Hartong starts off very strong, speaking so authentically I could practically hear the twang leaping off the page. PJ’s narration is so seamless, so lyrical, so full of metaphors that make perfect sense but that I would never think to come up with myself. It’s the type of unique authorial voice that a writer hoping to merely “sound” Southern could never hope to replicate. Not that I’m any great expert on the American South (though I have been to Tennesee, to Dollywood, and actually driven through Pigeon Forge), but I don’t think you have to be to appreciate this book.
With Love and Hot Chicken, Hartong has written a charming, small town queer romance full of heart, heartbreak, beautiful prose, and a memorable ensemble, and I look forward to seeing what else this author comes up with.
Love and Hot Chicken hits shelves on February 20, 2024. Special thank you to William Morrow for the advance copy for review purposes.
