This was such a fun romcom! The plot moved fast and the cast of characters was so relatable. While all of Ember's lying (even the little white lies) made me so nervous for her, the author deftly kept me on the edge of my seat, and emotionally engaged. So important in a romance! Ultimately the payoff at the end was so satisfying and if you love a good grovel, this one has a great one! While I would have loved a few more moments of emotional connection, The Truth According to Ember was a great read!

Thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy!

I read this book in 4 hours, so it's certainly a quick, engaging read. I enjoyed Ember as a protagonist, although she is also the source of almost all of her problems. I think her initial lie is justifiable, but it quickly devolves from there. We don't ever really get an explanation for her long list of lies by the end of the book, so it feels like there's a bit of a maturity problem, which is juxtaposed against Danuwoa's personality and maturity level. This was a good read, and I'm happy to read Native romances by Native authors and will definitely seek more of those out!

Really enjoyed this debut from an Indigenous author! I wish the pacing was a little different and all of the lies started to feel a little silly (which is the plot but I wish she wouldn’t have started lying about small things) but super funny and readable. Can’t wait to see what’s next

Romance loves to build triumphant outcomes out of terrible decisions. And Danica Nava’s contemporary THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO EMBER (Berkley, paperback, $16.99) stars a heroine who makes more bad decisions than most.

Ember Lee Cardinal’s route out of her dead-end bowling alley job feels like an impossible climb. After hundreds of job applications and not a single interview, she impulsively checks the box marked “white” instead of “Native American.”

Suddenly Ember breezes into a job as an accounting assistant, where she meets a superhot I.T. guy named Danuwoa who smells like lavender and wears his dark hair long. But lies have a way of turning on the teller. Now she’s working overtime for the moody chief executive, scrambling to hide her relationship with Danuwoa from H.R. and being blackmailed by a colleague who saw them together. Ember’s always prided herself on being the steady, independent one in her family, but now she might have to do something unprecedented and ask for the help she needs.

It’s the details that really bring this book to life: the zip-lock bag Ember puts over the can of beans in the fridge, the shock of going from plunging clogged toilets to working in pristine corporate offices, the way Ember and Danuwoa have spectacular sex and then fall asleep with their pinkies entwined. It’s funny and messy in the best way, and I was rooting for Ember even as she dug herself deeper and deeper.

Probably my favorite romance book of the year. It was nice to see actual Native rep in a romance book. Having worked in many offices and in IT for years, the extra duties, micro and not so micro aggressions, and general feeling was spot on.

A quick and delightful read with honest and flaws characters. Ember is a difficult and empathetic person is is fighting for her best chance at life while trying to pretend she has her life a little more together than she actually does. And along the way she meets Danuwoa and secrets begin to pile up.

4.5 "Native Daddy" ⭐️s!!! 😩🫶🫶🫶

I must say... I loved this book right off the bat!! 🥰❤️ Coming off of a book that bored me and didn't reach me emotionally, I noticed how I actually FELT something only 4% into this one.

I read a lot of reviews for this book before starting it, and I realized that the common denominator is that a lot of them complain about Ember lying. WELL... THATS WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT!! 🤣🤣🤣
Ember lies, digs herself into a ginormous hole, pays dire consequences and LEARNS. GROWS. Ember is a different person at the end of her journey, in large part thanks to Danuwoa, who is her complete opposite. He is emotionally mature and very put together. He is charming, but in a subtle way. He is smart, but doesn't flaunt it. I loved his humor, and the flirty banter between him and Ember, especially in their texting sessions 😂🥰
Danuwoa is honestly perfection 🫶 and I fell completely head over heels in love with him 😩❤️‍🔥

Personally, I found that Ember's lies lead to hilarious scenarios and I laughed out loud more times than I can count, throughout the entirety of the book!!

I was also super intrigued by the native representation and the little morsels of their language, and I'll definitely be looking forward to more books from this author 💞

[P.S. I loved the book and the cover so much that I actually bought the paperback 🙃🥰]

***

~Some of my favorite quotes:

“He teases me just as much, if not worse. He still won’t change his name on my company computer. It still says ‘Native Daddy.’ I have to hide my laptop whenever he messages me.” “Marry the man, Ember. Men of that quality do not grow on trees.”

“Be careful, Danuwoa, I wouldn’t want to ruin you,” I said, laughing. He sat up and rested his arms on the bed. “It’s funny. I woke up this morning thinking, ‘I hope this girl destroys me.’ ”

“You’re blushing, so I know you like me,” he said smugly.

His hand lifted my chin. “Why are you sorry? Family comes first, Ember. I don’t care, because I know I’ll have you in this bed and mine. It doesn’t matter if it’s tonight, tomorrow, or a month from now.”
“I really hope we don’t have to wait a month,” I said, smiling.

The Truth According to Ember was a refreshing take on how the disparity is in some communities when it comes to finding a job, nevertheless a career. It was really eye opening to see that, even though this a romance, the divide between the Native American population and the white people in the work place. I loved the chemistry between the two main characters. I was on the edge of my seat wondering "will they won't they." I loved how in depth the characters were and how I felt like I could be best friends with them. I loved how diverse the "cast" was and how everything was so real. Love, love, loved this book. I will be recommending it to others.

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Format: Audio

4🌟 - I liked it!

I have never read a Native romance before, and I thought this was such a good debut! Love a workplace romance and thought Danuwoa was such a sweet MMC! This book had a good mix of humor and tackled on bigger themes of racism and microaggressions in the workplace. Can’t wait to read more by her in the future!

So happy I got to chat with my #seasonsoflovebookclub girlies about this one!

A great pick for my local romance bookclub! We appreciated the Native rep and hope to see more from publishers in the future!

I read about one romance book a year. And I am glad that this was the one that I got to read. I was very stressed by the choices made by the main character, and the love interest is almost too perfect... but overall I had a really good time with this book and I think it had some substance besides just a romance which is what really made a difference for me.

I would consider reading another romance next year by this author!

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the ARC.

This novel was frustrating by design. Ember is a pathological liar and it drove me crazy. However, she justified her lies in a way that gave you pause and really made you look outside of your own experiences and question whether the lies were necessary. I enjoyed this uncomfortable feeling I had as she continued to lie and how it affected her quality of life. The romance was beautifully written. They slow burn will-they-won't-they, the coupling, and complications that came with it were very believable. I enjoyed the hard growth Ember had to go through in this novel to become who she needed and deserved to be. Even the family and found family aspects were done with care. Great job!

I absolutely adored this. What a perfect romcom! I could totally see this as a screenplay. Thanks, Danica!

It's a fun book. The heroine is clearly VERY flawed, so you have to handle that with care given the situation she's putting herself in. We're kinda in our era of fmcs doing questionable things, and Ember really put herself in a situation where she's forced to lie all the time. She reads like a teenager at times, but I think we just want mature heroines, and maturity looks different depending on your raising and such. I look forward to what this author does next.

Unfortunately this one was not for me. I had a hard time with the main characters constant lying. It was always the silliest things. Also, this book read very much like a YA title. I enjoy YA books, but when I am reading a book about full grown adults, I expect a little bit more maturity than this had.

This was a pretty great office romance, romcom, but it was so much more. Not only was it an #ownvoices novel, but the first by an indigenous author that I’ve read. It was set in a location I would not have actively sought out to read about but it ended up being an important backdrop to the story.

I appreciated how the author not only pointed out and focused on how women are still discriminated against in office settings, but just how much worse it is for BIPOC women and people of the lgbtqiap+ community. While this is fiction it is still an important read. Excellent book.

3⭐️
"I want you to have all my ugly truths"

*insert that meme that’s like “why you always lying , why the fuck you lying mmmmmm oh.my.god STOP FUCKING LYING"*

From the perspective of someone who lives outside the U.S. but consumes its media daily, I’ve noticed that Native Americans seem to be the least represented minority in mainstream media—and I don’t mean that in a weird, whataboutism, oppression-olympics way. So, it’s incredible, albeit embarrassingly overdue, that The Truth According to Ember is the first traditionally published rom-com written by a Native author , starring Indigenous characters. Nava’s author’s note at the end deserves five stars alone. It was so powerful and well-written.

The book itself on the other hand?…..not so much

I loved the cultural representation and the commentary on the struggles indigenous communities face like : fetishisation , systemic socioeconomic barriers , overt and covert racism etc. Ember’s motivation for lying about her ethnicity on her job application was (unfortunately) very realistic .However , she did lose me when she started lying about dumb shit .

The unnecessary fibbing got old very quickly and hindered her character (imo) . I’m all for messy , complex characters but within reason ! . I felt for her and her situation but her immaturity was so embarrassing . I didn’t understand nor believe that Danuwoa genuinely liked her other than the book telling me that he did to further the plot. I don’t like defending men but if I was his friend , I would tell him to dump her - the red flags she displayed were crazy.

Furthermore , I wished that someone in the editing processes of this book asked Nava to elaborate or flesh out Danuwoa and Ember's relationship because it was unsubstantiated . There was a severe lack of chemistry and we were just told and told and told and then boom they are suddenly in love??? Where was the evidence to support this ? They had cute moments but it didn’t go anywhere.

Additionally, the stakes of their forbidden office romance felt very wishy-washy. While the consequences (losing their jobs) were serious, they acted so recklessly. Plus, their uninteresting dynamic just looked like poor decision making instead of unbridled passion . Ember just lies and lies and Danuowa, with heart eyes, gently calls her out. Side note but I will say that the conflict resolution was nice!

In conclusion , I appreciated the sentiment behind this story . It's incredible that stories about natives are finally getting the chance to reach a broader audience . I will probably read Nava's sophomore novel Love is a War Song and I hope that she executes the romance better but her debut didn't quite hit the mark

Audiobook review
3\5⭐️

I looked into the narrator, Siena East, because she was new to me. She’s a comedian and actress, but I think this was her first audiobook. I might be wrong, but if I’m correct, explains why it was quite evident in her performance.

East’s narration was very inconsistent. There were high highs: I liked her voice (it wasn’t breathy or nasally, which is a big thing for me) and how she gave the side characters distinct voices .
She was great during the comedic bits, and had bursts of interesting line delivery. But she would quickly slip into this borderline monotonous cadence.

She voiced frustration and panic well but struggled with sadness and flirtatious banter. It an was unbalanced performance and, like the book, was one-dimensional. I’m not asking for her to overact, but she sounded like she was reading a textbook whenever Ember would talk about how much she liked Danuowa. She no longer embodied the character, but was just someone reading
which isn’t all that fun to listen to.

So cute, and at the same time I wanted to shake Ember for the choices she made. I loved seeing the traditional beats of a romance applied to a lesser represented group within the genre. I loved the contemporary struggle that alot of people could identify with. The desperation of wanting to get a job, being thrust into more responsibility than what you truly desired, and navigating authenticity for you and your romantic partner. Absolutely adorable read.

This is the romance novel you didn't know you needed. And the book you'll be recommending to everyone!

Author Danica Nava isn't afraid of difficult stories, keeping it real while also bringing humor and spice to the story.

Ember is the most relatable character. I feel like I know her. Like I want to know her! Perhaps it all feels so relatable since I live and work in Oklahoma, just like Ember.

And Danuwoa is the leading man we all need. I mean, he's good with tech!

"I'm a grown man and I don't need protecting." Mmm.

I absolutely loved the drama and laughter that filled this story, right to the very end. A must-read.

So great to have a Native American romance set in Oklahoma with a 25-year old FMC who's just trying to catch a break and get her life on track. This one's gonna be most relatable for readers just breaking into their first office jobs. If you've been around a minute, you're gonna see the office politics, casual racism, nepotism, and her ultimate downfall coming from a mile away.

Ember lies her way into an accounting job at a start up in OKC. On her first day she meets Danuwoa, also Native, who works in IT.
She ends up getting promoted to executive assistant when someone goes out on maternity leave. She was already on thin ice having only partially completed accounting work at a community college and then she finds herself scheduling, doing expenses, and coordinating a team building event in Santa Barbara.

I had real reservations about the lying premise (just a personal thing about hating liars and people who lie to get ahead.), but I came around and was rooting for Ember. With a brother and estranged dad in jail, she's mostly been raised by her auntie. And the two of them are always picking up the pieces. I loved the supporting characters -- Ember's BFF Joanna is hilarious, Danuwoa's sister Walela is a delight, even Tito, her brother's annoying buddy is a crack up.

Ultimately, I loved that Danica Nava was willing to expose what it is to be mixed, how checking one box over another, or having a certain look, or a certain sounding last name can open doors that are otherwise closed to you. I loved that she brought a Pretendian into the story, that she showed the casual racism in the workplace, I can't wait to see more from Danica. Maybe Joanna will finally get knocked off her feet by a new man.