Part of May's journey involves a make-over scene, a standard trope of romance fiction. Ben may prove a potent example, but part of May's journey is to realize that the only one who can teach her not to care, not to embody the stereotype of the good girl that everyone around her wants her to occupy, is herself. How did someone get to be that way? If she asked him, would he teach her?' (Loc 958).

To be rude without guilt-without even obvious awareness. 'How liberating it must be to be able to say whatever you wanted that way. May finds snarly, snarky Ben fascinating, particularly the way he doesn't seem to worry about what others think of him. He'd screamed at his kitchen staff and fought with his wife so much, they'd practically made an Olympic sport of it. And that was great, except he'd also been a miserable bastard with stress-induced hypertension, insomnia, and a tendency to fly into unprovoked rages. He'd wanted to be the best chef in New York. Surly and angry, he's about as far from an affable Midwesterner as anyone could find: Ben, like May, is in the midst of major life upheavals-recently divorced, the restaurant in which he'd been chef and co-owner taken away in the settlement, unable to take on another cooking job due to a non-compete clause, and squatting in the apartment of a friend who is due to return home in a week. Instead, May finds herself 'rescued' by belligerent Ben Hausman. And after a series of mishaps had left her alone, without money or ID, loitering in a New York bar devoted to Green Bay Packers fans, hoping to find a friendly Midwesterner to offer her a helping hand. We're introduced to her shortly after her penchant for keeping her true feelings bottled up has come embarrassingly, publicly uncorked-the rejection of a most suitable suitor, a rejection involving lots of cameras, lots of witnesses, and the less-than-conventional use of an uncommon table utensil.

She often does her best to be invisible, but disappearing can be a bit difficult 'when you were five foot, eleven-and-three-quarters inches and had some meat on your bones' (Loc 75). May 'hated drama and anger, disapproval, any kind of tension' (Kindle Loc 1664), and constantly finds herself apologizing, even for things that are clearly not her fault. Knox's latest heroine, May Fredericks, is your quintessential Midwestern good girl. But I couldn't name a romance that confronts internalized sexism, particularly internalized sexism that a romance heroine must recognize and fight in herself. Until, that is, I got hold of an ARC of Ruthie Knox's latest contemporary romance, Truly. I've certainly read romances that call attention to, and protest against, more overt forms of sexism.

Truly by Ruthie Knox