I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. Danica Nava's writing was great, but I just couldn't get over all of Ember's ridiculous lies. It made for a tense reading experience, which I didn't love. I also would have liked to see a bit more development in the romance between Ember and Danuwoa. I did, however, enjoy all the insights into Ember's culture. While this book wasn't for me, I'll still pick up the next book Nava writes.

This was a great debut! I am excited to read more from this author. It was really great reading about indigenous experiences. The main character was flawed and her arc grew as the book carried on. I wish we would have seen a but more romance but overall a good read

*3.5 Rounded up to 4 Stars*

THE PLOT
Debut author Danica Nava introduces us to Ember Lee Cardinal, a Chickasaw woman who is down on her luck and feeling like it’s time to do things a little differently. Thirty seven job rejections won’t deter her, she’s on a mission to get out of working at the local bowling alley where everybody knows your name but scrubbing toilets is not endgame. Ember has taken some accounting courses but she hasn’t finished any of them and isn’t certified in the field. This however, doesn’t stop her from applying to her dream accounting job in the Park Avenue area of Oklahoma City. Ember employs some creativity while applying for this position by changing her race, for this job she is white Ember who is further along with her accounting experience and qualifications. Ember’s resumé is selected for an interview and before she knows it, she has snagged a corporate job as an accounting assistant. She decides to go for it and improvise along the way but also continue the lie and then lie some more, she’s actually pretty good at it until she crosses paths with the IT guy Danuwoa Colson. A fellow Native American working for the same company, Danuwoa is beautiful to look at. He isn’t hiding his race but in their flirting he’s kind of letting on that her lies don’t add up, at least not to him but he’s game to play along.

THOUGHTS
Was this a little stressful at times to read? yea just a bit but in a fun and for some may be a bit unrealistic. Although it may not seem like something that happens, Ember’s situation is not at all unheard of. I’ve been on the receiving end of rejection in a room full of white hopeful interviewees while being the only Latinx applicant. To say or think that racism and prejudices don’t rear their ugly heads during the interviewing of applicants is unreal. I found it more unlikely to not have been caught earlier but Ember is quick thinking and resourceful, she was killing it in this new role. Ethically she should’ve completed her courses but I gave her kudos all the way for using what she had learned up until that point and super exceeding expectations. At her new workplace we see Ember navigate microagressions aimed at some of her co-workers from different ethnic backgrounds. She isn’t above checking the higher ups for their racist remarks and for that alone I loved Ember. I rounded up from a 3.5 to 4 stars simply because although I enjoyed my time watching Ember wiggle her way out of tough moments where her lies came dangerously close to being uncovered, it was perhaps too much time. There is a no-dating policy at work but that doesn’t stop them from gravitating towards one another. Dan provided a different perspective by openly embracing his race and not really caring if it made others uncomfortable. I wanted more time spent between Ember and Danuwoa, especially since Dan didn’t judge her for how she got her foot in the door. If anything he seemed entertained by her scheming 😂 which hey! we love a King who loves you for you! I’ll be keeping an eye out for more from Danica Nava 💜

This was a wonderful contemporary romance, where the story centers around FMC Ember, an indigenous woman, who works in publishing.

I thought this was such a great debut, with so many funny moments! I paired the book with the audiobook and loved the narration.

WHAT TO EXPECT
-workplace romance
-romcom
-inner monologue
-Chickasaw representation

*many thanks to Berkley, PRH audio and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

The Truth According to Ember is the debut from author Danica Nava and is a fun office rom-com. It follows Ember who has been having a hard time getting a job, so after many rejections she decides to embellish her qualifications and checked the box for "white" instead of "Native American". But those little white lies end up snow balling into a whole string of lies. She ends up getting the job of her dreams as an accountant and immediately meets the cute IT guy, Danuwoa. With her job going well and sparks flying with Danuwoa, her life couldn't be better. That is till she gets caught up in her lies and she has to choose between continuing the story she's been spinning to everyone or actually telling the truth and probably loose everything she's been building in the process.

I had a lot of fun reading this book, even if it was hard sometimes to not cringe at Ember's lies. I know that was the point, but dang it was hard at times. I absolutely loved Danuwoa's character and he was one of the big highlights of this book. While there were times the pacing of the book seemed a little off, I still enjoyed reading this book and I'm excited to read more by this author.

This was a good romance with somewhat of a unique storyline. Ember's basically just trying to make a better life for herself with the tools she has and runs into love along the way. I like that the book touches on unjust power dynamics in the workplace.

I liked that the main characters in this book weren't white for once in an office/corporate romance. I found myself really rooting for Ember and Dan. And there was some great spice!

I HATED the miscommunication though. I know it was mostly Ember's personality. But all of the lying and then not just telling the truth felt a little juvenile. She created so many issues for herself over and over again.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava!

An indigenous story by an indigenous author! This story was real and brutal at times but it beautiful and fun!
Ember is…. Complicated but don’t let that push you away. She is as real as a fictional character can get and yes she lies a bit and might be a tad naive, but I can tell you we’ve all done the same things she has. Struggling through a series of dead end jobs, a degree in the works but no end in sight she does what we all do on our resumes, she fibs. She lands a job and in comes the romance. I’ll end that there, spoiler free but I’ll say this Danica Nava knew what she was doing.
This story while a romance does not shy away from the racism and misogyny that exists in the work place especially for indigenous women.

I love the Native American representation and the rom-com-esque premise, but the romance ultimately didn’t do it for me.

The Truth According to Ember starts out with Ember in desperate need of a better job; she’s so desperate, in fact, that she lies about her experience on her resume and sends it in. Lo and behold, she gets the job. Ember is thrilled but nervous, especially because the job seems to come with very attractive IT guy Danuwoa — who Ember starts to date, even as her lies get murkier and murkier.

The plot is pretty much what you’d expect; from the start you know that it’s a car crash waiting to happen and that all her lies will come back to bite her in the end. I don’t mind this at all, but it’s one of the reasons why the romance didn’t work for me.

Even though Ember’s lies were looming over us, it felt very disconnected from their growing relationship. Danuwoa and Ember’s romance at the start felt, in a way, too easy. They met and liked each other pretty much right away, and then started to date. Character-wise, Danuwoa felt very thin when written from Ember’s perspective; I didn’t feel like I knew him outside of his job, his jokes, and his good looks. I wish Ember was written as a more careful and thoughtful character so there could be more tension in their relationship, and it would’ve progressed more slowly, allowing the relationship to feel more high-stakes, and the ultimate fallout to feel more impactful.

Outside of the romance, I felt like the plots and subplots were a little too on-the-nose sometimes. Bad characters are extremely bad, and they got their comeuppance in a way that was a little bit too dramatic.

Overall, I think this is a fun read but it really felt targeted to a younger audience than me. The writing style is easy to read, but the story and characters didn’t quite click.

I was not the reader for this title, but it is one that I will recommend to romance-loving patrons at the library.

This book was just too stressful for me, I could not enjoy any of it. If the constant lying doesn't bother you than you may like it.

This was such a fun rom-com. I had such a great time with it. Not only is it exceedingly rare in the traditional publishing space to have an Indigenous romance, much less an Indigenous romance where all the romantic heroes are Indigenous, but at the same time, the story isn’t hung up on being groundbreaking. It’s not trying to do too much. It’s a charming, funny, sexy romance.

I especially love Danica Nava’s use of physical comedy in the story. It struck this weird balance for me where it made me nostalgic for the kinds of rom-coms we used to see in the 90s and early 2000s, but it was also refreshing to see these characters—or at least Ember—bumble their way through this romance. There’s something especially messy about physical comedy, about fully committing your body to the bit no matter how disastrous things become, that I find so satisfying for a romance, because in a weird way, it allows the characters to build trust. Like if you start off a relationship with someone and they’ve already seen you at your worst or most chaotic and they still like you, that signals a sense of safety.

I feel like I can see where the story wanted to go in terms of this plot line about Ember constantly telling lies. To me, it seems like her childhood forced her to become this toxically independent person who learned that she can only rely on herself for anything and everything. So she doesn’t know how to ask other people for help, and she thinks that saving face at any cost is how she can avoid failing outright. There’s a lot of emotional depth there, and I do think the story is able to tap into that, especially with the rocky relationship that Ember has with her younger brother and her family. But at the same time, I think there was space for the story to go even further with that concept.

But all in all, this was a fun and delightful office romance. It has heat, it has endearing characters, it has some social commentary—although I also think the part about Ember lying about her ethnicity marker is kind of a red herring in terms of what the story’s actually about, But I had a good time listening to it. Would definitely read more from Danica Nava in the future!

THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO EMBER is a fun rom-com about a woman who tells a white lie, which then snowballs into much more.

My only complaint with this book was that there were TOO many lies. Ember is a Chickasaw woman struggling to get an interview. She lies on her resume, saying she is white, and ends up with her dream accounting job. I was okay with Ember embellishing her resume, but from that point forward, almost everything she said was a lie. It became frustrating as a reader, especially when she was lying about little, inconsequential things.

That aside, I really loved theswoony MMC, Danuwoa, and his connection with Ember. There were great family dynamics that added more complexities to the story as well.

I wish I would've picked this one up sooner, and I cannot wait for Danica Nava's sophomore novel!

3.5 stars. I really enjoyed this. I felt that it showed a perspective and a story that I had not seen before.

Ember was a fun main character and I loved her devotion to her dreams and bettering herself. I did struggle with her lies at times but overall a good FMC.

Her love interest and co worker Danuwoa is a strong MMC and I loved his supportive and kind nature.

I think this struggled with pacing at times and the overall continuing lying by Ember, but I would recommend it.

The Truth According to Ember is a romance - the first by a Native American author to be published by a major publishing house. The novel follows Ember, a Native American woman determined to beat the system that was built to put her at a disadvantage. A few lies on an application and she lands a dream accounting assistant job, where she meets Danuwoa.

Listen, in this economy? I can understand lying on a job application, even if I couldn’t do it myself. And I can relate to the shame that can come with knowing you are in a lower income bracket than those around you. The ways in which the author addressed real-world systemic racism and sexism was frankly badass and empowering to read.

But Ember lied so much and so often, it was difficult to empathize with or root for her. I didn’t know I would feel so strongly, but it turns out that having the protagonist lie over and over again is a frustrating way to create conflict. And in the end, Ember showed a lack of accountability that was surprising and a tad infuriating.

“Why was I always being punished for just trying to do the right thing, no matter what fucked-up way I had achieved it?”

I also struggled to see the sexual tension between the Ember and Danuwoa. Ember saying they had “hearts in their eyes” for each other just didn’t do it for me.

While I am not Native American, I am a woman of color, and I’m so glad we are getting a wider representation of what it means to be a woman in this world. I am just sad this one did not work for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I love a rom com and appreciated the unique premise of The Truth According to Ember! Ember stressed me out a little bit but I'm happy everything worked out in the end. Looking forward to reading more from this author!

The Truth According to Ember
Rating- 3.5⭐️/really enjoyed
Genre - Rom com/ contemporary romance

Thanks @berkleypub for the digital copy - this is out now🙌🏻

This was a solid debut! I loved the cultural bits about Native Americans and am always a sucker for good food in a rom com. The writing and setting were both descriptive without being flowery, and the pace was between medium to fast - what I prefer in a romance. Steam was light for those concerned about open door versus closed door. Overall, I'd definitely read more from this author in the future.

I thought this was a wonderful debut and I loved the culture added in!! This was the perfect romcom because I had my lol moments. This book also covered some heavier topics, which I thought was well done and not just thrown in there. I'll be looking out for Danica's sophomore novel!

I really wanted to love this book. The concept is great, and I enjoy supporting debut authors. I liked it—I truly did—especially the second half, when the pace picked up. However, it lacked the depth I was craving at the time. I just wanted a bit more.

Read this if you’re looking for a story that proves you can achieve anything you set your mind to, where formal education holds little weight in the real world. Or read it if you’re in the mood for a story about a hot mess finding love.

I was given an advanced reader's copy via NetGalley, thank you to them. All thoughts and opinions are my own.