“There’s only two times in a restaurant,” Marie learns before her first shift at the Olive Garden, “before and after.” In between, you just white-knuckle it until your last table is cleared. You might say the same thing about the white-knuckle experience of reading Love Me Back. Marie works her way up from the chains to a high-end Dallas steakhouse, with plenty of coke and sex along the way, but Tierce’s fearless debut novel isn’t a success story, or a redemption story, or even a cautionary tale. It’s a story of desire, of survival, of choices made for better or worse, and it’s an intense and convincing (and unflinchingly explicit) immersion in a life in the service trenches.
—Tom Nissley, Phinney Books, Seattle, WA
Shop at Phinney Books for this, their latest featured new book of the week, and so much more, or find it at your closest independent bookstore.