Shy, nerdy and super smart, Ivy sweet Ivy is looking for love.
This Jay Spencer Green novel subtitled A Birmingham Romance is a book to fall in love with.
Ivy Feckett is Looking for Love is the story of our love seeking protagonist's relationships – at the top of the list: Ivy’s relationship with her longtime friend Sam, with her two housemates, Maggie and Siobhan, and her recent relationship with an attractive bloke who just so happens to be her new boss.
As the subtitle makes clear, Ivy Feckett is also a romance. But it should be noted, this is a romance for readers who don't object to colorful, risqué language and dabs of adults-only content, even, on occasion, raunchy adults-only content. Case in point: on the book’s first pages we catch up with Ivy at the library, doing private research that leads her to identify and compile a list of 739 harsh, offensive terms for the female genitalia - among the many neatly recorded on her paper: Red Snapper, Cum Canyon, Jenkin’s Ear.
Did I mention a novel to fall in love with? There’s good reason a number of reviewers report once they started reading Ivy they couldn’t stop. That was my experience as well. Jay Spencer Green’s writing style certainly helps: each paragraph and scene has its place, not a wasted sentence in sight, an economy of words reminding me of the master of the tightly constructed short novel – Georges Simenon. Here’s a batch of snapshots from Ivy that I hope will give you a nudge to read for yourself:
Lively Fellow Lodgers: Bookish, introverted Ivy continually compares herself to the flight attendants sharing her living space: Maggie, a shapely looker forever swinging her hips in a new pair of jeans and confident Siobhan, slender and feisty, with long flowing golden hair and whose sleepy eyes and playful mouth remind Ivy of "a cross between Drew Barrymore and Winona Ryder, only without the compulsive shoplifting or questionable taste in men." When asked to join them in their Friday evening out, what Ivy knows will be an adventure filled with groovy dancing and supercharged sexy men, Ivy feigns disinterest to cover up her sense of inadequacy.
Sam I Am: Ivy has been friends with fellow nerd Sam since her school days. Living with his grandma and sister in his granny's house, Sam spends most of his time either researching nerd topics at the library, reading comic books, watching Star Trek or playing geocaching, a game of treasure hunting for geeks. Sure, Sam is what all those polished go-getters refer to as a weirdo, dork, dweeb or goober - but, dang, Ivy treasures her time with her kindhearted pal.
imposing Sibling: Tall, athletic, muscular, stunningly attractive, Sam's sister Caroline works out nonstop and practices her Tae Kwon Do moves to keep up her championship status. Oh, how Ivy desperately wanted Caroline''s long, supple arms and legs, graceful movements and model's face but alas, sweet Ivy knows she isn't about to come close since she spends her days "sitting on her arse with her head lost in arcane texts about medieval invective."
Ultimate Anti-Nerd: Ned comes into Ivy's life in his capacity as her new boss at the foundation where she works freelance as an outside writer. Oh, Ned, what a guy! On Ivy's first meeting the man: "The truth was that she'd been so stunned by the force of his voice . . . Ned Hartfield conveyed nothing but power, confidence, strength. He radiated positivity, from the vice-like grip of his handshake to the beaming, perfect grin he gave her as he reached towards her, a movement that he'd been told communicated a desire for friendship, a nonthreatening, generous gesture but which nine times out of ten scared the bejeezus out of anyone who met him." Whoa! Does this sound like Jay Spencer Green might be setting up a sort of Ned-Ivy-Sam love triangle? You bet your sweet bippy it does!
Sweet Ivy, One: Many are the clues given to round out Ivy's personality and draw us closer to her sweetness. I was overjoyed to discover Ivy and I share one particular love: listening to CDs of the Kronos String Quartet. From now on, when I listen to the Kronos playing their Philip Glass or Kevin Volans, I will be thinking of Ivy!
Sweet Ivy, Two: During one touching exchange with Siobhan, a conversation on the heels of a downturn in her romance, Ivy is reassured by her housemate that any romance inevitably includes times of heartbreak, chaos and conflict. To which Ivy replies: "But . . . like . . . even crappy romance novels have happy endings, don't they? I mean, I never read one, but everybody likes a happy ending."
I encourage you to pick up Jay's novel to find out if Ivy's story has a happily ever after ending.
A photo of Jay Spencer Green retracing Ivy's path across Birmingham: "Just past Needless Alley, she reached the doors of the Hartfield Foundation, the HQ of those very astute and discerning folk who had spotted Ivy's genius, who had hired her to produce a series of position papers on. On? On what, exactly? Even after a couple of months, Ivy still wasn't entirely sure. All she could infer from the topics she'd been asked to cover over the past few weeks was that it had something to do with human rights."
The proud author! Jay Spencer Green currently resides in Dublin, Ireland
"And she realized for the first time what it meant to be in love. It meant to no longer be oneself. It meant, in her best postmodern academic jargon, to accommodate the alien, the foreign, the Other. That to love is to reach out beyond yourself, beyond the familiar. It meant to taste the world, to join the world, and at the same time let the world taste you." - Jay Spencer Green, Ivy Feckett is Looking for Love
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