Loved One
A Novel
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of 2025 by NPR
“[A] funny, heartwrenching novel.” —People
“A genuine pleasure to read.” —Vogue
“Full of wildly astute, delectably thorny questions about love and loss and possession.” —Maggie Shipstead, New York Times bestselling author of Great Circle
From an Emmy Award–winning writer comes a funny, wise, heartbreaking story about a woman journeying into the unknown in the wake of sudden loss
When her first-love-turned-close-friend, Gabe, dies unexpectedly at twenty-nine, thirty-year-old Julia is launched into an intercontinental quest to recover his lost possessions. Her journey takes her from Los Angeles to London and into the murky realm of the past. It also sets Julia on a collision course with the last woman he loved, a guarded, self-possessed florist and restaurateur named Elizabeth, who insists on withholding Gabe’s beloved guitar—one of the departed indie rock musician’s dearest belongings—for reasons Julia can’t understand. Both women, it turns out, have something to hide, and soon find themselves engaged in a complex dance of withholding and revelation.
An emotional mystery spanning years, continents, and relationship statuses, Loved One introduces Aisha Muharrar as a novelist intimately attuned to the intricacies of love, memory, and ambiguous loss. What happens when we admit that the deepest feelings never die? How do we reconcile various—and sometimes contradictory—truths about those closest to us? An engrossing and profoundly moving coming-of-age story with a powerful love at its heart, Loved One is poised to become an instant classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this witty debut from Parks and Recreation writer Muharrar, a woman deals with her complex feelings for an old friend after his sudden death. The story begins in San Francisco, where Julia Hendricks, 30, gives the eulogy for Gabe Wolf-Martel, 29, a musician who died from a fall in a hotel bathroom. In flashbacks, Julia and Gabe meet in Barcelona the summer after graduating from high school and briefly date before he goes off to indie rock stardom. Four years later, they run into each other in Los Angeles, where she is going to law school, and she takes comfort from his bad style ("a prayer for the rejected: Oh if you be noble and true, may you be blessed with running into the boy who dumped you after he's had a terrible haircut"). Wishing to better understand Gabe and her feelings for him after his death, she travels to London to visit his most recent ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth, a London restaurant owner. Muharrar endears with her candid portrayal of Elizabeth's and Julia's messy emotions, and with her gimlet-eyed depiction of the ever-longing and ever-spurned Julia. This brims with insights into the blurry boundaries between love and friendship.
