Rating: 3.5 stars

Format: Audiobook

Genre: Romance

The Truth According to Ember is a lighthearted, comforting contemporary romance that follows Ember Cardinal, who “embellishes” her resume to get a corporate accounting job at a tech start-up. There she meets Danuwua, who is a fellow Native and IT guy who works at her new company. As she progresses within the company and gets closer to Danuwa, her lies continue to grow bigger and bigger.

I will always be rooting for a queen to scam her way into a corporate job that pays well. Good for her. Maybe I’m the problem, but I really did not see anything wrong with Ember’s actions throughout the majority book. Of course lying is bad, but baring your soul and telling all your coworkers about your personal life should NOT be a requirement at work. Y’all do not need to know everything about me. I’m here to do my job and go home. Because I felt this way prior to reading this, I had pretty much no moral or ethical qualms with Ember doing what she needed to do to game the system. Especially because she was such a hard worker once she got her job and, as a character, I felt like her motivations, desires, and fears were very clear and understandable. 

The romance developed pretty slowly, which I liked. Ember has understandable reasons to be closed off at first and I loved getting to know her as a character. So much time was spent building her relationships with her friends and family, so by the time that she and Danuwua started getting more involved, I was rooting for her and invested in the high stakes added by their company’s no-dating policy.

I do think the plot and various emotional threads in Ember’s life resolved really quickly at the end, specifically in her relationship with Danuwua and with her brother, Sage. Since there was so much groundwork laid, I was surprised how conveniently things wrapped up. I would’ve liked to see that develop more.

I think that if you’re a fan of rom-coms, this is absolutely worth reading. I loved the Native representation that was woven throughout and I am excited to read more from this author.