Better by Far
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
One of Zibby Mag's Most Anticipated Books Coming Out in 2024 | One of SheNet's Highly Anticipated Books of 2024
A genre-bending story about love and loss, hope and heartbreak, and the healing to be found in life’s little limbos, those in-between spaces where you’re no longer who you were and not yet the person you will be
About her debut, Out of Love, Hazel Hayes said, “The journey from writing horror to writing love stories was a short one. There is nothing more horrific than love.” In her new novel, she sets out to prove it.
This genre-defying, meta-modern novel is unlike anything you have ever read, and yet at its core it is a story we all deeply understand. A story of love and liminality, and the ways in which grief grips us all. Prepare to laugh and cry; Hazel Hayes will break your heart, but then she’ll mend it for you.
Following a breakup, Kate and Finn decide to keep sharing their house until the lease runs out in twelve weeks’ time, alternating week by week so that they are occupying the same space but never at the same time.
Practically, the plan makes sense, but coming back each Sunday to a home where Finn has been and gone feels far too much like living with a ghost. Kate lost her mother at a young age and now this fresh grief dredges unhealed sorrows up to the surface, and soon, Kate finds herself adrift in her own subconscious, trapped in the liminal space between loving someone and letting go.
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In the appealing latest from YouTuber Hayes (Out of Love), an Irish writer deals with heartbreak and the pressure of a deadline while providing support to her friends. After Kate breaks up with Finn, they take turns living in their Dublin apartment. While grieving their rupture, Kate relives the loss of her mother when she was nine. Adding to her emotional turmoil, she faces pressure from her publisher to complete the novel for which she's already received an advance. While procrastinating, she addresses her narration to Finn, in a voice reminiscent of Hayes's YouTube videos: "I'm supposed to be writing a book, but instead I find myself writing to you." In a pair of affecting subplots, Kate helps her best friend Jenna, who's undergoing multiple rounds of IVF to have a baby; and Fran, another friend who struggles with trust issues after his parents disowned him for coming out as trans. Not only does Hayes have a knack for voice-driven narration, she also evokes the sights and sounds of the region ("The sweet, sorrowful sound of an Irish lament drifts down, siren-like, from the bathing shelter above, and we are drawn up towards it—travellers to phantom lights"). This is bursting with feeling.
