I first heard about Sarah T. Dubbs’s debut novel, Birding with Benefits, in an NPR segment where reporters and producers give short reviews of favorite books on their summer reading lists.  I hadn’t done a book review in this column for awhile, and I hadn’t read much fiction since the Before Times prior to November 2016 because real life feels like fiction now, but the story line sounded fun so I decided to give it a try.

Here, without spoilers, is the basic plot.  Two total strangers, Celeste, a recent divorcee raising a teenage daughter, and John, a nerdy scientist coming off a breakup, are finagled by a mutual friend into pairing up for a prestigious birding contest in Tucson.  Problem is, Celeste is a non-birder who doesn’t know an eagle from a dove, and John is a proficient birder thinking about starting a guiding service.  What could go wrong, right?

With lifelong experience in the birding milieu and an understanding of how “benefits” has come to be used in today’s parlance, I got into the book knowing where Dubbs was probably going, but I was surprised at how quickly she went there and how deeply she dove.  I will share the reason for this, but you’ll have to wait for it until the penultimate paragraph of this review.  First I want to tease you with my impressions of the book.

There are two things I think Dubbs does extremely well.  The first is her use of dialogue.  With some authors dialogue can feel forced, stilted, or obviously just a device to advance the narrative, but here it feels organic.  People really talk like this!  The dialogue sounds natural and carries the plot without the reader realizing it.  The risk is plot twists may come as no surprise, but the reward is that you’re never left wondering what just happened or how we got there.

Secondly, Dubbs is very good at developing her secondary characters, especially Maria, Celeste’s best friend, and Morgan, Celeste’s daughter navigating teenage hormones and an overbearing mother.  Maria is the trusted confidante with whom there are no secrets.  Morgan is every mother’s fondest joy and worst nightmare, and she delivers the most shocking three words of dialogue in the English language!

I have two major issues with the book, one disappointing, the other a bit off-putting.  First, with the word “birding” in the title and the book set in Tucson, the birding capital of Arizona, I expected more about the actual birding contest, maybe Celeste’s journey into birding, or John’s foray into guiding.  The only hard avian information here is Verdins build their nests with the opening toward the prevailing wind for cooling purposes.  Dubbs mentions an Elegant Trogon would elevate their contest score but leaves it at that.  Birding is either just the plot’s through line, or meant as double entrendre.

Secondly, I felt Dubbs is trying too hard, even self-consciously so, to check all the wokeism boxes:  Morgan in a presumably lesbian relationship; a gay couple that is also biracial; adherence to correct pronouns.  Whew, about all she doesn’t manage to work in is DEI.  Coming of age in the culture wars of the sixties, I was woke before that term became a thing.  The people I ran with knew, despite others’ beliefs or outward appearances, that humanity was the thing.  We all bled red and felt the longer we just kept talking about it the longer this thing would take.  Today’s wokeists, and Dubbs, are still talking about it, all these sixty years later.

In closing, let me say that Birding with Benefits is a lot more about the benefits than about the birding.  Where Dubbs goes with this was a lot more surprising to me than any of the plot suspense itself.  That’s because I didn’t read the dust jacket until after I finished the book.  Dubbs labels herself, right there in print, a romance writer.  And here I thought I had my hands on a book about birding!

Nonetheless . . . did I enjoy the book?  Unequivocally!  Will serious birders enjoy the book?  I think so.  Remember, if you see a book list labeled summer reading or a writer labeled romance author, you should probably know it will be a fun, fast read, a page turner if you will.  Supply your own middle-aged-lady-librarian joke here, but I’ve put Sarah Dubbs on my list of people with whom I’d like to have a beer.  Even if you’re a hard core birder, I think you will too.