Love Buzz by Neely Tubati Alexander

In this spectacularly enjoyable and serendipitous adventure, a chance romantic encounter during a wild night at a Mardi Gras bachelorette party sends strait-laced Serena Khan’s carefully constructed life into chaos.

A wretched maid of honor. A hangover from hell. Raucous Mardi Gras crowds. There isn’t much Serena Khan is enjoying about this four-day New Orleans destination bachelorette party for her semi-estranged cousin, the bride-to-be.

UNTIL sparks fly with a handsome stranger, who—like her—is also from Seattle, at the ladies’ last stop of the evening, a Bourbon Street bar. After their conversation is cut short, Serena is overwhelmed by the desire to find the charming man with the brooding eyebrows, but her list of clues is pretty short:

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His name is Julian

He lives on Chamber Hill

He works at a tech company

He loves Lil Wayne and Nirvana

The need to find him is, for Serena, both irresistible and totally irrational. In a few short weeks, her college alumni magazine is featuring her in a “Life at Thirty” feature, cementing her as a success story. She will have officially achieved the safe, stable life her late mother insisted upon. Julian is not part of the plan.

As she combs Seattle for her New Orleans flame, stripping away the perfectly curated life that would have made her mother proud, Serena must decide if the pursuit of real passion is worth it, and fast, before she destroys the life she always thought she wanted.

In a sharply funny, thoughtful, and romantic debut combining the wistfulness of Rebecca Serle with the witty sizzle of Emily Henry, Neely Tubati Alexander prompts us all to ask if the life we’re living is a life worth loving.

Why I Picked It Up

I discovered Neely Tubati Alexander through In a Not So Perfect World and loved her voice and detail; I continued through her other releases accordingly.

About the Book

What I need people to understand about this book is that it’s more about a chance encounter being a catalyst to a coming-of-age rather than a love story proper. Both are fabulous, but I could see genre expectation (and titling) leading to a case of reader expectation mismatching to the experience.

Now, I enjoyed the direction that Tubati Alexander took the book in. Basically: Serena meets a boy (man) at a bachelorette party in New Orleans that’s gone slightly off the rails. They’re flirty, and she suddenly feels the Earth moving beneath her feet, etc. etc. She spends days then obsessing over needing to find him again.

The main character spends a lot of time obsessing over this man she meets, but it’s nearly all mental. He’s on-page in person for maybe five pages of the total book. (Which, I don’t believe is a spoiler. I just can see the wrong readers for sure picking this one up and being bummed it’s not a romance-romance.)

The obsession will not land for everyone either. My register for instalove (“this is my soulmate, about whom I know absolutely zero detail”) is inherently pretty low, but I can suspend reality for the right plot. While the romantic aspects were not for me, that’s why I still enjoyed Love Buzz—because the romance itself, proportionally, is actually not very much of the book.

Essentially, Serena’s realization that this man makes her feel alive, vivid, witty, etc. makes her realize how unhappy she is in other areas of life. One good night in NOLA means she realized the rest of her life was just…lukewarm.

What I love about Neely Tubati-Alexander is that her justification and characterization is always nuanced and thoughtful in regards to character fears. The types of existential moments that her main characters poke at in their internal monologue make absolute sense, and refreshingly illuminate some of the fears and worries rattling around during various scenarios. Like: this book is mostly about Serena being afraid of turning thirty, and having more to show for it, and whether or not she needs to be prioritizing the same sense of stability that her down-on-her-luck mother (who’s since passed away) instilled in her so deeply.

Love Buzz deals with unraveling your wiring and anxieties when they’re rooted in what you’re raised on, and that feels universal. (On that note, I was somewhat fascinated by—having checked this out from the library—the ways in which traditional publishers are now adding subtitles to their books within Amazon search. I don’t particularly like it, because it feels too on-the-nose for this to be called “Messy Thirties” or whatever, but as a creative strategist, I notice details like this.)

From Amazon (which you shouldn't be buying from anyway.)

Certain quotes and feelings really struck me within the context of the book, and Neely Tubati Alexander's woven a really stunning portrait of some of the murkiness of deciding whether your initial instincts after graduating into the real world were the correct ones.

“Then, I started meeting people like Sutton and Carson. Their lives are full of pleasure and pursuit. Sometimes I wish I'd never met them, or people like them.”

“'You sure?' he asks. I take a deep breath in annoyance. It's one of my pet peeves about Danny. Whenever I say something, he asks me if I'm sure, which makes me unsure.”

“Clarence and I often refer to Danny as two different people. College Danny and then just Danny, representing the man I got back together with eleven months ago. Somehow, splitting him into two makes it easier to separate the hurt and complication of why we ended back then.”

Characters & Romance

Serena could be somewhat impulsive, but in the same vein, she did deserve a pendulum swing by now, even if losing a lot of her footing all at once was maybe not the most logically sound move. That’s also something I noted from Tubati Alexander’s Courtroom Drama, her newest Jury Duty-inspired release: the actions and consequences don’t always seem to match, which could be jarring. There’s rolling with spontaneity and drama and you-only-live-once, and then there’s being…frankly…a little purposefully ignorant. I did like Serena though, and I empathized a lot with her questioning what exactly she wants at this point in time now that she doesn’t entirely like her job.

As for the romance: if you’ve heard the term limerence, that’s exactly what this love story is, but the book also helpfully pokes fun at that too. Serena admits that she doesn’t actually know this man, but her focus on him does start to weigh down the plot some because she feels pretty serious about needing to track him down.

Sure, chemistry is real. Chemistry with a stranger at the bar is real. Call me a cynic, but if you cannot come up with any single details other than Julian, hot, and works in tech—girl. He may be the love of your life, but you also do not know him. Or know a thing about him. Or know anything about why you like him! But alas, I reveal myself here as a good ol’ fashioned “I actually have to know you as a person” person. I really can't stomach "instalove" plots.

I loved that the plot did admit that sometimes the catalyst you need is a random, chance encounter to realize you need to turn your life around and confront some questions you’ve been burying. (In fact, part of the book is the quirky friendship struck up with the old woman next to her on the flight.) The book repeatedly notes that it’s not Julian who’s made the changes in Serena’s life; he might have started it, but she decided on each one and is rolling with the punches. It’s a late-twenties coming-of-age constructed around the idea of someone which, oh boy, is always a major fascination of mine. (When can you actually decide you know someone? Probably after, at bare minimum, flirting with them once at the bar for a five-minute conversation. But I digress.)

Some of her secondary relationships, like that with her ex and her cousin, felt a tad under-explored but I respected how they were depicted as complicated and ultimately stayed that way, even if I wasn’t fully sure what was going on within Serena’s web. Which brings me to my next point—

Voice & Tone

I will note too that, since I’ve read her later books then doubled back to this one, I can tell where her author voice has developed some more. There’s more telling in Love Buzz, and I prefer the more textural narration of her later books—but I enjoy the humor and charm of her particular voice, so she’s an author I really like, especially leading into the summertime.

For points like my note on secondary characterization above, I think I maybe would have understood those relationships more if they’d been depicted in more detail rather than simply alluded to in internal narration. Still, Tubati Alexander nails those weird, secondary feelings, so I’d rather her go for that than keep the relationships all cookie-cutter. I respect bigger swings, and they never felt flat—only occasionally a bit confusing.

If you’re a person who suffers from—as the Gen Zers would say—exposure to “cringe,” there are multiple parts of this book that will have you flinching. I respect it, actually, that Tubati Alexander is unafraid to embarrass Serena. Part of her crisis: girlfriend is suffering, and trying to figure it out.

You have to suspend reality quite a bit, but the overall experience reads almost satirical or goofy in a way that reminds me of The Consequence of Loving Colton by Rachel van Dyken or Save the Date by Morgan Matson. It’s punchy, colorful, and a little awkward, but that fits with the arc of the storyline.

Overall Thoughts

In a Not So Perfect World is still my favorite of the bunch. Love Buzz and Courtroom Drama actually struck me as being more similar to each other than different, mostly because of the way the hook and the actual reading experience ended up not being quite as overlapped as I would have expected. Her later books I think feel much more seamless, but Love Buzz lays the groundwork of her voice and style.

Even when over-the-top, Neely Tubati Alexander nails some of the pain points and tender moments in some of the real, mundane, confusing aspects of being twenty-something and trying to decide where life goes.

There are mistakes, you never know if you’re doing it right, and it’s not so much that massive, cinematic moments are happening so much as one choice leads to another leads to another, and backtracking is part of the deal. While that sounds rather sappy written out, I appreciate the nonlinearity juxtaposed with the vividness of her voice, and that’s for sure one of the author’s strengths. I’ll for sure read her next book.

If you've read it, let's book club for a minute.

• D doing a break-up post on Instagram. What!
• I respect her doing an “I have a boyfriend” reveal as a twist, but it reminded me some of the book Evernight by Claudia Gray. Nowadays, in first-person narration, I’m really not sure whether I think any narrator can get away withholding information like that from the reader until page 50, and actions like that remind me that it’s a narrative device, which takes me out of the story some. Like: an abrupt reveal like that, given the POV, reminds me that I am reading a book. This might be a me problem, however, and—as noted—I think Tubati Alexander’s bag of tricks and narrative voice are smoother in her other books. An author who definitely hits her stride!
• Odette showing up at her doorstep was difficult for me to suspend reality for. Certain aspects like that—her being able to find Serena, but Julian and her not being able to find each other whatsoever—were a little silly.
• Did not love the random POV break to Julian’s chapter. The plot wouldn’t have worked without it, but it still felt out-of-place.

For fans of:

Happy Place by Emily Henry; Every Summer After by Carley Fortune; Heart the Lover by Lily King; etc.