A Novel Obsession
A Novel
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick, and a BuzzFeed and New York Post "Best Book of 2022"
"If you’ve ever felt tempted to ‘keep tabs on’ a partner’s ex on Instagram and then found yourself down a rabbit hole of their vacation posts from three years ago, this debut novel—which follows a 24-year-old New Yorker named Naomi who becomes obsessed with her boyfriend’s former girlfriend—is for you."—Vogue, “Best New Beach Reads”
Twenty-four-year-old New York bookseller Naomi Ackerman is desperate to write a novel, but struggles to find a story to tell. When, after countless disastrous dates, she meets Caleb—a perfectly nice guy with a Welsh accent and a unique patience for all her quirks—she thinks she's finally stumbled onto a time-honored subject: love. Then Caleb's ex-girlfriend, Rosemary, enters the scene.
Upon learning that Rosemary is not safely tucked away in Caleb’s homeland overseas, but in fact lives in New York and also works in the literary world, Naomi is threatened and intrigued in equal measure. If they both fell for the same man, what else might they have in common? The more Naomi learns about Rosemary, the more her curiosity consumes her. Before she knows it, her casual Instagram stalking morphs into a friendship under false pretenses—and becomes the subject of her nascent novel.
As her lies and half-truths spiral out of control, and fact and fiction become increasingly difficult to untangle, Naomi must decide what—and who—she’s willing to sacrifice to write the perfect ending.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Barasch's addictive if uninspired debut, a 24-year-old New York City bookseller becomes fixated on her boyfriend's ex. Naomi Ackerman starts investigating Rosemary Pierce online, which quickly turns into physical stalking. Naomi follows Rosemary, a book editor, around the city and starts casual conversations with her, without letting on to Caleb, a reticent Welsh mathematician. During a launch party at Naomi's shop for a book Rosemary edited, the two women exchange numbers and become fast friends. Naomi, a wannabe novelist, writes about their encounters in order to take control of her "narrative" with Caleb and to create a world in which she wins Caleb and is "braver, bolder, more reckless." As she tests the limits of her relationships with both Caleb and Rosemary, she imagines herself to be more "adventurous" than Rosemary, as when, for instance, she initiates sex with Caleb in the hallway of her apartment building. At times, Naomi comes across as a parody of a self-absorbed writer, which makes this story of wish fulfillment read like satire without the skewering, and Barasch adds a trauma plot that explains Naomi's behavior but feels hackneyed. Still, she does a fine job building tension between the two women. This isn't the finest example of the people-behaving-badly story, but it should just do the trick for those into such tales.
