This suspenseful slice-of-life second-chance love story explores grief, loss, and taking down a mob boss.
“My best friend and first love who drowned fifteen years ago is alive and works for a criminal businessman?”
When Christopher does a quick favor for a fellow attorney by attending a hearing in his place, it’s supposed to be a five-minute favor. Instead, it turns his entire world upside down.
In the courtroom, he comes face-to-face with his first love and greatest loss, Mat: his boyfriend who disappeared when their canoe capsized, the teenage boy presumed dead. It’s a loss that Christopher never got over and never told anyone about in his adult life.
Mat now goes by Connor Malenko, son of mob boss Victor Malenko. Christopher’s just barely holding himself together with fifteen years of unresolved grief and trauma; this stunning reveal immediately unravels his entire life. He’s determined to reconnect with Mat, while Mat is committed to keeping Christopher away, afraid of what Victor may do if he learns that Christopher recognizes his friend. But the fire of their teenage romance burns fiercely, and there’s too much unsaid between them, so they can’t stay away from each other for long.
“The apology ripped through him like something alive. For fifteen years, those words had followed him everywhere. They had lived in sleepless nights, in quiet drives home after work. He had whispered them into pillows. Screamed them into empty rooms. Written them down on torn pieces of paper. And now, finally, Mat could hear them.”
Bitter Honey’s second-chance love story is written with profound humanity, careful and cathartic. The novel’s title is a reference to the way unresolved trauma has saturated Christopher’s entire being. The taste and scent of honey was once a comfort, a reminder of Mat (whose parents make and sell honey products.) “Honey had become poison after Mat’s disappearance, something too closely tied to grief to tolerate. But now it seemed to pursue him relentlessly. Sweet, golden, and cruel.”
When they escape a violent altercation, Mat takes Christopher to his secret cabin in the middle of nowhere, where they hide out and reconnect—awkwardly at first, but they finally sink back into their mutual adoration as if they’re teenagers again.
Yona Katz infuses Bitter Honey with a sentimental blend of nostalgia and grief, echoing even in moments like Christopher noticing that Mat’s toothpaste at the cabin is the same brand he used as a teenager: “There had always been a Colgate Sensitive for Mat at Christopher’s house. His features darkened. He had waited until he went to college before he threw away the last one Mat used.”
Interactions with people on the sidelines of Christopher’s daily routine give us glimpses into the wonderful support network he could have. They’re beautiful, loving windows into what his life could be, but he keeps going back to the life that hurts him, determined to stay emotionally closed-off from everybody around him. Christopher’s work friend Audrey is one of these incredible people. She sees his heartache for what it is and offers him unconditional kindness. However, at times, it can be difficult to read Christopher’s perception of Audrey (her looks, her dating life, her insecurities) through his unknowingly chauvinistic lens. The same patronizing undertone is evident in Christopher’s narration when he talks about other women.
We eventually learn that Mat was drugged, beat up, and raped throughout his childhood, by Victor’s men, at Victor’s instruction. “Every day, he showed me missing persons reports, but I was not one of them. He said it was because no one was looking for me.” This is all part of the violent reality Victor devised so that he could swoop in and patch Mat up afterwards, grooming him into the son Victor always wanted—someone reliant on him, fearful of the world outside his brutal house, and unable to see the point of escaping.
Until he moves into the cabin with Mat, Christopher lives with his longtime boyfriend, Julian, who is emotionally, sexually, and physically abusive. Katz writes their relationship in exquisite, enraging detail; it’s a brilliant exploration of what an abusive relationship looks and feels like, but it’s frustrating for readers to be stuck on Julian’s emotional rollercoaster when we can’t stop wondering why Mat is pretending to be a mob boss’s son if he clearly remembers his life with Christopher.
Suspenseful and stunning as it is, Bitter Honey consistently takes you to the last place you expect, which makes for an at times disorientating read. When all you can think
about is asking Mat why he hasn’t contacted his family to say he’s alive, author Yona Katz instead takes us through relationship drama with Julian.
This novel is a mix of slice-of-life storytelling that swirls with grief, scenes of abusive relationships, and a smaller portion dedicated to the mob boss takedown drama. It takes time to get into the jawdropping Mat storyline. For the right reader, this is perfection, but it’s worth knowing ahead that it takes time to find your pace in the novel.
This back-and-forth reminds me of Hulu series Tell Me Lies (based on Carola Lovering’s novel of the same name; Tell Me Lies’ Stephen and Bitter Honey’s Julian are the same kind of diabolical.) If you love a slice-of-life story about a unique, life-altering situation, this one’s for you.
Without being spoiler-specific, I will say that some readers will be left wanting when it comes to some expectations of emotional payoff in the end. That said, we’re always propelled by the magnetic pull Christopher feels toward Mat and his desperation to be reunited. We want the best for them, feeling deep compassion for the broken teenage boys they once were.
Bitter Honey’s strength may not be the mystery-suspense I expected, but it’s in Katz’s deliciously detailed slice-of-life prose. In the middle of thrilling, high-stakes drama, we sit in traffic with Christopher and learn how the smell of hospitals make him feel. We watch him unpack the food he bought at the grocery store, and then decide on the meal he’ll make that evening. The author’s writing is undeniably rich, immersive and evocative. This is a story with poignant emotional depth that you can’t help but connect to.
In all this time, Christopher and Mat “had never gotten any professional help in dealing with such a profound trauma,” missing out on pivotal life experiences and genuine friendships while haunted by the canoe accident, held hostage by the aftermath of the worst day of their lives. In the sweetly optimistic end, their world has opened up—a hard-earned fresh start for Christopher and Mat, a chance to get to know each other again, and learn how to live without the weight of grief. I would love a follow-up to Christopher and Mat’s story where we see how the next stage of their lives works out. I’d pick up the sequel in a heartbeat!
The post Bitter Honey by Yona Katz appeared first on Independent Book Review.