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The Woman Who Tried to Cancel Mother’s Day It’s Mother’s Day week (Sunday,

It’s Mother’s Day week (Sunday, May 10), which means flowers, brunch reservations, and a guilt-induced rush on greeting cards. But here’s a story I bet you didn’t know. The woman who fought to make Mother’s Day a national holiday spent the rest of her life trying to destroy it.

Her name was Anna Jarvis. In 1908 she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration to honor her own mom. By 1914 it was a federal holiday. By the 1920s, Hallmark had entered the chat, florists were marking up...

The Moment Everything Changes: Honesty in Romance April is almost over, but

April is almost over, but before we move into May, let’s talk about something that happens on April 30 and matters far more than most people realize: National Honesty Day. And yes, there’s a whole day dedicated to this. (Presumably so we can all feel guilty about the little lies we tell ourselves.)

Here’s the thing about honesty, especially in romance: it’s terrifying. It’s the moment a character stops hiding. It’s the instant they admit the thing they’ve been denying for pages, chapters,...

The Miracle of Independent Bookstores This week is a straight-up love

This week is a straight-up love letter to books and the places we find them. World Book Day lands on April 23, Earth Day reminds us to care for our world on April 22, and Independent Bookstore Day hits on April 25. So basically: peak bookish season.

Here’s the thing about independent bookstores that chains will never understand. It’s not the books. It’s the smell. It’s that specific mustiness and paper and hope that hits you the second you walk through the door. It’s the careful hand-lettered...

The Tax Day Audit Nobody Asked For: Your Book Budget Confessions Tax Day is

Tax Day is coming (April 15, in case you’ve been living under a rock), and I’m sure many of you are having the annual panic of gathering receipts and trying to remember which deductions are legal. But I’ve got a different kind of audit on my mind: the one where we all confess how much we actually spent on books this year.

Go ahead, do it. Open your Goodreads, your Amazon history, your bookstore app. Add up those purchases. Now add up the number of books you’ve actually read from that pile. Sit...

National Siblings Day and Literary Brothers April 10 is National Siblings

April 10 is National Siblings Day, and if you’re anything like me, it’s probably an excuse to send your brother a text that says “happy siblings day” and then not hear from him until Christmas. (The one I have is perfect, thank you very much.)

But here’s what got me thinking: readers absolutely eat up a good band-of-brothers romance. There’s something irresistible about the protective older brother, the black sheep who finally gets redeemed, the found-family dynamic where loyalty runs deeper...

April Fool's Day and the Romance of Deception It's April, and that means

It's April, and that means April Fool's Day is right around the corner. Did you know that the origins of April Fool's Day are kind of chaotic? Some say it started in the 16th century when France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, and anyone still following the old calendar became the butt of jokes. Others claim it's even older. Either way, people have been pranking each other for centuries (which is somehow comforting in a weird way).

But here's the thing that gets me as a...