FF Friday: Set the Stage, by Karis Walsh
Set the Stage
is an adorable fluffy romance between Emilie, an aspiring actress who just got cast at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland and Arden (yep), a gardener working at the Ashland park. It's full of very accurate details about theatre (and seems very accurate about OSF in particular, at least as far as the layout of their theatres is concerned) and plants, and has a hilarious running joke about how every business in town attempts to get in on the theatre tourist business by slapping on random Shakespeare references.
In fact, this novel distinctly resembles a sort of FF Zoe Chant, minus the shifters. But it has lots of loving details of a setting, cozy togetherness, good food, shared activities, instant attraction, constant sexual awareness/tension between the characters, and a general air of comfort reading. It also has a lot of quirky details and problems that one encounters in real life but rarely in fiction, like the genuinely sweet boss at Emilie's crappy fast-food job, a geocaching date, and the horrible dilemma of what to say to your crush when you go see the play she's in and she's just not very good in the role.
It's a very charming book and I am now seriously considering a visit to the OSF. I was last there in high school and it was very formative. They have a super fun-looking play up this year about Shakespeare's buddies trying to reconstruct Hamlet from memory after his death. (i.e., the First Folio.)
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2202971.html. Comment here or there.
is an adorable fluffy romance between Emilie, an aspiring actress who just got cast at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland and Arden (yep), a gardener working at the Ashland park. It's full of very accurate details about theatre (and seems very accurate about OSF in particular, at least as far as the layout of their theatres is concerned) and plants, and has a hilarious running joke about how every business in town attempts to get in on the theatre tourist business by slapping on random Shakespeare references.
In fact, this novel distinctly resembles a sort of FF Zoe Chant, minus the shifters. But it has lots of loving details of a setting, cozy togetherness, good food, shared activities, instant attraction, constant sexual awareness/tension between the characters, and a general air of comfort reading. It also has a lot of quirky details and problems that one encounters in real life but rarely in fiction, like the genuinely sweet boss at Emilie's crappy fast-food job, a geocaching date, and the horrible dilemma of what to say to your crush when you go see the play she's in and she's just not very good in the role.
It's a very charming book and I am now seriously considering a visit to the OSF. I was last there in high school and it was very formative. They have a super fun-looking play up this year about Shakespeare's buddies trying to reconstruct Hamlet from memory after his death. (i.e., the First Folio.)
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2202971.html. Comment here or there.