Apparently when you dream of a house, the house is you. (The other people in your dream are also all supposedly you? I don’t know. I love interpreting other people’s dreams but I do think it’s a lot of the time nonsense.) When you dream of finding new rooms in your house, for instance, it’s meant to represent exploring new sides of yourself. Whether that’s true of dreams or not, I don’t know, but I like the alignment of house with self. One of the reasons (I suspect) house-hunting and house-renovation shows are so popular is that it’s fun to daydream about houses as if we’re trying on possible selves, maybe new shinier versions of ourselves who never have hangovers or feel too exhausted to wash our hair before bed or let the mail pile up unopened on the dining room table.
Playing House is about a woman finding her place in the world after a divorce (that’s Fay) and a man finding his place in the world after losing a job (that’s Oliver). In the relatively small world of urban planning, they’ve been casual friendquaintances for years. But when they run into each other at a home tour, and pretend to be dating to scare off a pushy guy harassing Fay, sparks fly.
In my master list of romance novel recs organized by trope (which I am keeping private until it reaches some not-yet-defined state of finished-ness), one of my favorite tropes is “Shared Project,” which is nearly, but not exactly, a subset of “Forced Proximity.” It’s a trope I love because it offers a tidy way for the characters to externalize their interest in each other and it humanizes them by showing us what they love (apart from, eventually, each other). It’s impossible not to love Fay and Oliver for loving what they do. Look at this adorability:
“What have you been up to today, then?”
“Helping my mom. Yard work. She lives in Forest Hills.”
“In Forest Hills Gardens–?”
They chorused, “One of the oldest planned communities in the United States.”
It was the first real laugh they’d had together that morning. Oliver had thrown back his head, and he was looking at her with something like affection. Blink and it was gone. “No, not the Gardens area. If she lived there, I’d lead with that. Hi, I’m Oliver Huang-my-mom-lives-in-Forest-Hills-Gardens-which-was-conceived-by-Omlsted-and-Atterbury.”
“They’re right when they say Asian names are difficult.”
I defy you not to feel love for these two charming nerds.
As they’re seeing each other, and looking at houses, they’re also both trying to figure out what they want their lives to look like. Oliver’s long-time firm recently shuttered, and he’s currently awaiting a call back from Fay’s quickly-expanding firm (which Fay doesn’t know). In the meantime, he’s living with his brother, working contract jobs, and struggling with the feeling that he’s disappointed everyone who knows him. Fay, for her part, is coming out of a marriage that made her feel isolated and unsupported, and she doesn’t feel much like taking a chance on anyone, let alone someone who’s friends with all her friends.
Playing House is the perfect book for a grim day when all you need is a cup of tea and a book that will make you feel cozy and safe and hopeful. There’s no operatic stakes here: Nobody’s threatening anyone’s livelihood, or getting murdered in an adjacent hotel room, or escaping a stabby step-parent. The biggest conflict Fay and Oliver face is he doesn’t tell her right away that he’s up for a job at her firm, and she’s mad about it. But that’s exactly what I love about Ruby Lang in general and Playing House in particular. The stakes are normal human stakes, because these are normal human people, albeit wittier and better at banter than normal human me. Even within the length constraints of a novella, Fay and Oliver feel like entire people with entire messy lives. Playing House isn’t pure fluff exactly because Fay and Oliver’s lives feel so real, from the things they love (penny? tile? I don’t understand house words) to the things they fear (inadequacy, parental disapproval). I was so happy for them to talk through their problems and get their relationship on track.
Ruby Lang continues to be one of my favorite romance novelists working. I have languished many years in the dark after her Practice Perfect series ended,1 but now she is returned! Playing House is but the first in a new series about REAL ESTATE, a setting that now seems such an obvious one for romance novels that I am shocked I don’t have an entire raft of housing-related romances on my bookshelf. Please hit me with any real estate-focused romance novels you may know of. Like maybe one where the protagonists are bonding over home renovations?
Note: I got an e-ARC of this book from the publisher for review consideration, probably because of my noisy and boundless enthusiasm for the author’s previous books. This has in no way influenced the contents of my review.
- Fact check: Two years. ↩