Read the Critic’s Report of To Love Like Venus, provided by Publishers Weekly’s The Booklife Prize. These reports are the initial stage of assessing books for consideration for their annual prizes in Fiction and Non-Fiction. It is a nice assessment of the book.

After writing a book, it takes a different level of either courage or conviction to submit your book for outside eyes to consider. What’s wonderful in doing this, you see different reader and critic’s perspectives in the weight, accomplishments and angles of your book. I was particularly happy to see this effort reaching a reader and emphasized: “Pitsirilos delivers a clinical evaluation of how people use technology and mythology to manage very human emotions like love and grief, refusing to rely on clichés of the evil mother-in-law; instead, the narrative provides a deeply sympathetic look at the internal life of a woman—Claire—who has been submerged in astrophysics as a defense mechanism against a world that robbed her of autonomy.”

My book title and back cover blurbs lean towards the love and sensuality of the novel. This report leans into the speculative/sci-fi elements. This is why you can find the book first squarely in literary fiction, but on library sci-fi shelves, and picking up romance readers who don’t mind the orbit around the musings of modern love. It also makes it trickier to decide the category for prize submission; which is why I always default to literary fiction because literary fiction lends itself to this kind of expansion.

Thank you to the critic’s time, and best of luck to all books considered for The Booklife Prize.