Check out my strategy for annotating Danica Nava’s 340-page workplace rom-com.
The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava is a great book for annotating, especially if you’re a new annotater looking to practice or hone an annotation style. I think this book is incredibly satisfying to annotate because it contains several through-lines and motifs that are easy to spot and interpret.
But First, A Synopsis
This rom-com stars two under-30 Native American love interests, Ember and Danuwoa. Ember, a 25-yr-old aspiring accountant, is trying to make it in a new job in Oklahoma City. Things get complicated for her (in work and love) when few white lies spin out of control, becoming impossible for her to maintain.
Tropes include workplace romance, only one bed, meet cute, and forbidden romance.
Try Out My Annotation Strategy by Using My Annotation (or Tab) Key
Tab keys are crib sheets for your annotation ideas. I annotated 5 things in this book by assigning a unique tab color to each topic. To keep track of what I intended each color to mean, I created a tab key on the title page. It’s basically a two column list with “column A” being the actual tabs and “column B” as the meaning, handwritten out next to the tabs.
Purple Tabs
I used this color to track another color: the color white, which repeats throughout the book and is closely related to Ember’s character arc. Read more about themes surrounding that color here in my blog post “White Lies and The Color White in Danica Nava’s The Truth According to Ember.“
Green Tabs
I used green tabs to mark —can you guess?—the color green! This is Danuwoa’s signature color. He drives a green truck and rolls a strike with a green bowling ball.
Green is also the color of Ember’s beaded lizard key chain, a meaningful object in her life that her BFF Joanna made. The keychain gets a formal introduction on page one (so you know it’s important!) and, on top of that, it appears in the love interests’ meet cute scene.
Orange Tabs
Orange is my humor color on this read. Danica Nava really nailed the puns in this book and, in general, wrote a rom-com that does not skimp on the genre’s classical jokes. I enjoyed marking the puns the most, but I also put oranges tabs on slapstick humor, dramatic irony, cringe comedy (something Nava excels at too), and lovely moments of meta humor.
Blue Tabs
Blue was reserved for full circle moments because I LOVE when a seemingly innocuous detail from an early scene pops up again later in a pivotal way. A great example from The Truth According to Ember is Danuwoa’s deep admiration for Peter Gabriel’s music and, in contrast, Ember’s lackluster knowledge of it. I won’t say anything more because it gets into spoiler territory, but throw a blue tab down on any Peter Gabriel mentions as you read—trust me, ok? 😍
Another detail I track with my blue “full circle” tabs: cats!
Pink Tabs
Lastly, my pink tabs marked the theme of luck. Luck is directly mentioned a few times, but there are plenty of scenes that rely on good or back luck; e.g., the meet cute, the day Ember needs roadside assistance, the only-one-bed night, and a terribly inopportune elevator run-in with Kyle.
Bonus Annotation: Music
I always mark music in my books, and I don’t put it in my tab key anymore or use tabs. Instead, I draw a treble clef 🎼 in the margin next to the line where a band, song, or musical themes are mentioned. Danica Nava references quite a few 80s-90s pop songs in the story, from Stevie Nicks to Cyndi Lauper. Music is a fun detail to mark, especially if you’re into making playlists.
Annotate With Sara 