Really Good, Actually
A Novel
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3.0 • 45 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER | A GLOBE AND MAIL 2023 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Every sentence of Monica Heisey’s writing is a treat. No one makes me laugh like she does.” —Dolly Alderton, New York Times bestselling author of Good Material
An unabashedly honest and hilarious portrait of a life gone slightly off the rails in the wake of a devastating breakup
Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere and her marriage lasted only 608 days (not that she’s counting) . . . but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.
Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 a.m., and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of singledom, intermittently dating and asking tough questions along the way.
Laugh-out-loud funny and painfully relatable, Really Good, Actually is a surprisingly tender and bittersweet anti-romantic comedy that lays bare the uncertainties of modern love and friendship and that thing we like to call “happiness”—and marks the debut of an unforgettable new voice.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
For the heroine of this anti-romantic comedy, getting divorced in your late twenties is tragic, chaotic, and absolutely hilarious. After breaking up with the love of her life less than two years into their marriage, Maggie is determined to bounce back. The only catch is that between exploring her new interests and throwing herself into the dating scene, she’s also making some very questionable decisions. Before long, it looks like Maggie will offend all her closest friends and sabotage her new relationship. Schitt’s Creek writer Monica Heisey’s debut novel is both devastating and seriously funny, with incredibly on-the-nose observations about romance, self-discovery, and modern life. Maggie and her friends are highly relatable, asking the big questions…like why is it so difficult to buy pants? We devoured this hilarious and wonderfully cathartic book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Comedian and TV writer Heisey delivers an appealing debut novel (after the essay collection I Can't Believe It's Not Better) about a 28-year-old stalled PhD candidate left adrift after her divorce. Maggie's former husband, Jon, departs with their cat, and, despite their mutual promises to have a "Good Divorce," Jon is soon incommunicado, and Maggie is surprised by how much she struggles with being alone. She stays up most nights streaming crime shows she terms "British murder television" and is disappointed that she remains "annoyingly committed" to habits such as ordering late-night burgers. Maggie progresses to online dating (the men in Maggie's area of Toronto are "bearded and left-leaning"), and after striking out there, she tries exercise classes and creative writing workshops, but wherever she joins up, she's "wall to wall with the recently dumped." Later, the grief for her marriage morphs into a kind of self-obsessed nihilism that alienates her closest friends and torpedoes a burgeoning relationship with a nice guy. Even in its darkest moments the book is very funny, and Heisey's inspired skewering of urban millennial life hits the mark. Readers will gobble up this Bridget Jones's Diary for the smartphone era.
Customer Reviews
Underwhelming
I kept waiting for her to get it together, face herself. The book felt more about her spiraling than about her journey back to herself. That part felt kinda rushed and then abruptly ended.
Escapist read about an all too relatable character!
Loved the book! I found it hilarious but also poignant when reading about the protagonist’s adventures in today’s dating world.
Struggling
It is taking me forever to finish this book. It is so boring, depressing and whiny! I’m getting to the end but I really want to dump it and move on.