If you inhaled The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava like I almost did, you might have missed some hidden gems. Truth be told, I had to force myself slow down and put on my close-reading hat to savor this book. I don’t like missing literary gold nuggets, and it was so clear from the get-go that Danica Nava was going to pack this rom-com with jokes, deeper meaning, nods to pop culture, and ultra satisfying full circle moments.
So in case you missed them and also for posterity and my own future reference, here’s some of my favorite clever moments.
SPOILERS!
(1) The First Kiss is Foreshadowed đź’‹
In Chapter 9, on page 84, Ember, Phoebe, and Danuwoa ride in the elevator after work. Ember looks at Danuwoa and thinks:
What if I was bold and just kissed him in the elevator? That last one had just popped into my head, and my cheeks felt hot. Phoebe was here, for god’s sake, but my romantic imagination couldn’t care less.
Fast forward to Chapter 23, p 213 when Ember and Danuwoa are in Santa Barbara in an elevator on a work trip:
He kissed me. Right there in the elevator of a hotel full of our coworkers, Danuwoa eviscerated my soul.
That’s some cute foreshadowing! They both had a kiss impulse in the elevator. Danuwoa went for it, which was a good and bad thing….ugh Kyle.
(2) You Can Say That Again, Ember!
Look how this “I-Statement” from Ember comes full circle from beginning to end.
I am Ember Lee Cardinal, a sometimes liar, but mostly an overall good person.
Chapter 1, Page 2
Whatever the future held for me with school, work, and my ridiculous family, I knew that I—Ember Lee Cardinal, a sometimes liar but overall good person—would be okay.
Chapter 36, Page 339 (final lines of book)
(3) The Invisible Ink Around the Goldilocks Reference
Ember thrifted a business casual outfit for her job interview, then reflects on her way to the interview:
I was like Goldilocks with a skirt that was a size too tight and blazer two sizes too big.
Chapter 2, Page 10
Thematically, I see a lot of invisible ink in Ember’s offhand comment. Is she feeling subtly connected to the Goldilocks tale, and that’s why she thinks this in this moment?
As the meme below says, Goldilocks is “the first example of white privilege you learn about.” Ember sort of feels like she has snuck her way into this job interview with subversively wielded white privilege. So, maybe subconsciously she’s thinking of Goldilocks sneaking into the bear family’s house as she heads for this shiny office building.
Let me be clear, I do not think Ember is a Goldilocks-figure. Goldilocks, infamously, gets away with everything she does, and Ember decidedly does not. She’s fired in a humiliating way and nearly loses Danuwoa.
While I loathe how all that went down, I do appreciate that Ember got to do some Goldilocks-style damage to nepo baby Kyle’s nice little in-house comforts! She totally wrecks his fraudulent schemes, and he’s fired too.
(4) The Peter Gabriel T-Shirt
Ember’s big romantic gesture at the end of the book involves singing some Peter Gabriel music. I love how Peter Gabriel came up again in this big way. The first time we see a reference to his music is on the only-one-bed night.
“This time, when Danuwoa exited the steamy bathroom, he was wearing a faded Peter Gabriel concert T-shirt.”
Chapter 25, Page 224
Danuwoa is wearing this t-shirt again when Ember tells him the truth.
He stood in the doorway with his gorgeous hair flowing down, wearing his old Peter Gabriel T-shirt…”
Chapter 36, Page 332-333
I have a feeling Peter Gabriel will be playing at their wedding!
(5) Demon Cats: Dumpster Kitty and Patches
At the end of chapter 4, Ember has a run-in with an orange tabby cat who lurks by the bowling alley’s dumpster. That’s where we learn of her extreme cat aversion.
“Fucking demon cat,” I muttered.
Chapter 4, Page 40
Plot twist: Danuwoa is a cat guy! When they reconcile after the third-act breakup, his demon cat is part of their wholesome HEA banter.
I sighed. “I promise I’ll try to love your demon cat.”
Chapter 36, Page 339
More Cat Humor: You know that hilarious moment when Danuwoa accidentally jumps on Ember while she’s sleeping? His cat does that to her too the first time she sleeps over at his place. The scenes definitely mirror in my opinion!
(6) The Meta Bookish Humor
Check out these two bookish nods to the romance genre!
She rolled her head, exaggerating her voice like an audiobook narrator of the dirtiest romance novels.
Chapter 26, Page 243
This second one doubles down on delightful cheekiness. It invokes the famous romance trope “forced proximity,” the crucible of this book. I mean, workplace romances are basically forced proximity romances. Plus, that Santa Barbara work trip! Plus, all the elevator scenes!
“Forced proximity works. I read about it all the time.” She shrugged.
“In romance novels! This is the real world.”
Chapter 35, Page 329
(7) Joanna’s “Hooking Up” Pun
Joanna’s role in the book is the stuff romantic comedy is made of. Knowing full well that her BFF wants to hookup with Danuwoa, this punny innuendo slips out of her mouth in Chapter 9:
“Right now, he is in our living room hooking up the oldest fucking piece of machinery I’ve ever seen—voluntarily. I think he would be down to go out.”
Chapter 9, Page 92
Ten chapters later, Joanna is more direct.
“Prude.” Joanna stuck her tongue out. “You’re just depressed and in a bad mood because you haven’t been laid. Just hook up with Danuwoa already. Put the rest of us out of our misery.”
Chapter 19, Page 174
(8) Smelling the Truth & Dirty Liar Themes
Smell is a huge part of the excellent cringe and slapstick humor in this book. It’s never directly said, but I think Danica Nava is playing with some smelly colloquialisms like “dirty liar” and “truth being under our nose.” On top of that, readers are always poking fun at the musky, pheromone smells in romance genre, e.g., men who are described as smelling like salt and pine. Danica Nava is being a little fun here loading her book up with truly stinky stuff instead of sexy musk man scents.
Examples:
- Danuwoa has a great sense of smell. He also sees right through all of Ember’s white lies. You might say he has “a nose for the truth” or can always “see the truth right under his nose!”
- Ember’s stinky job plays right into the “dirty liar” idea/joke/wordplay. She has the responsibility to plunge the perpetually backed up men’s bathroom toilet at her bowling alley job.
- Ember literally becomes a dirty, stinkin’ liar when she wears Bucky’s super smelly bowling team shirt to act out a lie for Danuwoa in Chapter 4. Then, to top it off, all the time she spends doing her lying shenanigans causes her to neglect her toilet duties while on the job. “Shit! I hadn’t fixed the men’s toilet.” Love the pun there too. (Chapter 4, Page 37)
- Oh, then there’s Ember getting spit up on her after her meet cute with Danuwoa! Danuwoa jokingly sniffs her when she lets her hair down to cover the stinky stain in Chapter 3 on page 20.
- Lastly, all of Embers highly relatable BO checks!
(9) Ember’s Final Truth
The epilogue takes place over Thanksgiving, and the final lines go off with a powerful bang. The final bit of truth according to Ember is:
I loved this big family we were able to find. We chose each other and would always be there for one another. This was what I was most thankful for and would be celebrating today. On the day we Indians saved the pilgrims.
Ember’s lies are front and center in this book, but so are the lies of this country. Ember encounters racist institutions, beliefs and histories, and government policies, which are all built on white supremacist lies and all deeply affect her life as a Native woman.
Ember would have never even needed her white lies to survive economically if our government was an honest one that had reckoned with its historical harms.
Danica Nava’s last lines are poetic and powerful. They point out a disparity. How fucked is it that a 25-year-old can own up to her lies and be ultimately better for it, but her country can’t even get Thanksgiving straight?
While I don’t think it’s possible for the 248-year-old United States government to land a true HEA, it should still be working toward one. We could embrace truth telling and repair, maybe even starting with Thanksgiving.
(10) The Color White Motif
I detailed this one in a previous post. Check it out here in White Lies and The Color White in The Truth According to Ember.
Annotate With Sara 