Love in the Times of Covid

She called him a cheat. He sent her a numbered defence. Neither of them saw the rest coming.

March 2020. Nell Ashworth is a Manchester teaching assistant with a dead sourdough starter, a flat above a launderette, and a firm belief that she's "a lot". Theo Lund is a Bristol insurance assessor who plans for every possible disaster, and whose top lip sweats when he's nervous. Around Nell, that's always.
 

When a stranger called Theo_L plays QUIXOTIC against her on a word-game app, Nell accuses him of cheating. His reply is long, numbered and very sincere. By May, they're talking every night at nine. By the summer, they're in love with someone they've never stood next to.
 

Then the world opens up, and they meet in Birmingham. It's a catastrophe: masks, perspex screens, a stranger who definitely isn't Theo, and one very unfortunate crisp.
 

A year later they try again, with a week in the Seychelles, separate villas and no plan. Unfortunately, her best friend (a divorce lawyer) and his best mate (a fitness coach who shouts NO EXCUSES at himself) are coming too. And paradise is about to go into lockdown…
 

Love in the Times of Covid is a warm, funny, closed-door British romcom about falling for someone's words, and then learning to love the whole, messy, real person.