You know that feeling when you read a book by a new-to-you author, and you enjoy the book so much you feel a sense of relief knowing the author has written other books that are just waiting for you to read them?

That’s how I feel after reading Rachel Lynn Solomon’s Weather Girl. 

I had heard good things about this novel and had purchased it on one of my #22in22 bookstore visits. (If you’re not familiar with the #22in22 initiative, you can click here to learn more about it.)

While the novel could be described as a feel-good rom-com, it’s really so much more. It’s a peek into the life of a television meteorologist, and it’s a depiction of a woman with depression. And it’s even more than that. 

Here are just a few of the passages I have marked:

“There’s something especially lovely about an overcast day. Clouds dipped in ink, the sky ready to crack open. The air turning crisp and sweet. It’s magic, the way the world seems to pause for a few moments right before a downpour, and I can never get enough of that heady anticipation — this sense that something extraordinary is about to happen.”

“‘You’re not naive. You want to believe the best about people… you want to see the good.’
I like the way he says it. That optimism, both false and genuine, has been weaponized against me before, but not now. And maybe this makes me doomed to be a sunshine person for the rest of my days, but so be it. I’ll be seventy-eight and sunny, a cool breeze and a place in the shade.”

When the male character speaks of his daughter, it is with the same awe that I think of my son: 

“‘She surprises me all the time, and she makes me laugh, and she’s this whole person with fears and ambitions and likes and dislikes, all completely different from mine. She’s so f – – – ing funny, and she’s smart, and it’s just … kind of amazing.’”

“Both of us fall quiet, basking in this world and this moment and the sheer magic of finding that person who gets you the way no one else does.”

“Before we leave, Alex waits in line to grab a few dozen donuts for his fourth-grade class. ‘Guilt donuts,’ he explains. ‘It’s state testing week.’”  (This sounds so much like the things I used to do with my students. Snacks each day of state testing, a celebration when testing was done.)

And a joke from the book that I couldn’t resist sharing with you:

“‘Did you hear about the meteorologist who broke her arms and legs?’ one of the camera guys calls to me as I position myself in front of the green screen. ‘She had to wear four casts.’”