The protagonist doesn’t have a complete handle on their personal identity. Also, they don’t know who they want to be with. If they belief that they’ve somehow been wronged, will they pursue revenge? And will it be worth the cost? Readers can find this plot played out in many variations. But it can require a sure-handed author (and maybe a collaborator)—whether they’re trying to pull it off as a young-adult queer rom-com, or as an ambitious study of a modern American family preyed upon by cultural and capitalistic temptations.
These are books that will be introduced to readers through upcoming author appearances at Carmichael’s on Frankfort Avenue.
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“Call Your Boyfriend” is written by Olivia A. Cole and Ashley Woodfolk. The former is a Louisville-based writer who’s a proven source for thought-provoking and entertaining books for a variety of age groups. Here the authors offer, in a setting handled breezily but with care, a tale of late-adolescent loyalty and burgeoning sexuality tested by brinkmanship with hearts.
Outsider figure Beau is seething as she nurses emotional wounds. She has confidence in her sapphic identity, but she’s in an age group where underexperienced partners may not know the damage they do as they dally and then dump. (“I’m used to being a secret. Back seat, back room, empty rehearsal hall, dark movie theater. It’s just the way things are.”) But while the local social pecking order firms up in advance of a big prom, Beau sees an opportunity to thoroughly embarrass a social butterfly who used her. The instrument of revenge is Charm—a bright young woman who’s also been gamed, but has an energetic curiosity that might offer Beau more than expected. Hijinx will ensue, of course—along with life lessons along the way. The alternating-voice chapters give off a dazzling show of sharp reference asides, and the background cast is substantial but doesn’t weigh down the romantic roundelay.
Lee Cole, in his sophomore novel “Fulfillment,” is focusing primarily on characters just a decade or so older. Though this is another novel with some sexual entanglements and is also told in alternating voices, here there are also the scars of greater adult responsibility and the workaday world.
“How do we know that we want what we think we want?” is the keynote to a lecture by Joel—a low-level academician who has returned to his boyhood home in Paducah. He has brought his wife in tow, and it’s apparent the marriage (begun, with some impulsivity, during the Covid pandemic) is precarious. Both parties are subject to the thousand cuts of modern cultural intrusions that are part of Joel’s sociological expertise: FOMO exacerbated by online media, distractive clawing from telemarketers and scammers, and family political arguments fueled by Fox TV viewing.
Dissatisfaction reaches a higher simmer through visits from Emmett, Joel’s half-brother. This younger sibling works oppressive shifts at a rigidly regimented Amazon-like warehouse. He’s also writing an autobiographical screenplay that chronicles his thwarted dreams: “This isn’t me, hurling boxes of diapers and Zabar’s coffee onto a conveyor belt. The real me is a document, saved forever.” But he also might imagine a key to salvation in his sister-in-law’s restlessness. Resentments are building toward explosive confrontations.
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These books may seem distinct in literary merit—but the characters in each have genuine and relatable concerns for the stakes that set the plots in motion. Concerns handled quite well enough that there’s reason to hope each book finds the part of the reading populace that will relate.
2720 Frankfort Avenue
www.carmichaelsbookstore.com
Tuesday, June 24 at 7 p.m., Lee Cole appears to promote “Fulfillment”
Monday, June 30 at 7 p.m., Olivia A. Cole and Ashley Woodfolk appear to promote “Call Your Boyfriend”
This article appears in May 23 – Jun 5, 2025.