Really Good, Actually: The must-read major Sunday Times bestselling debut novel of 2023

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Some of these reasons will be familiar to most longtime couples—“Or because he forgot our anniversary once”—while others seem quite specific to this couple—“Or because he kept insisting we go vegan, then sneaking pizzas into the apartment while I slept. This was also the year of her first television job, as a member of the writing room for the sketch comedy series Baroness von Sketch Show (CBC/IFC). It was a long time ago, but I do remember doing some pretty crazy shit, so I had a decent amount of compassion for Maggie.

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey | Waterstones

Fans of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Queenieor shows like HBO's Girlswill want to give it a read.Her voice is so fresh and funny and true, it feels like you've never heard it before, yet so familiar that you will follow it anywhere. I suspect the material would have worked better in short essay-style pieces: as a novel this feels laboured and lacks dynamic forward movement. This novel is wildly funny andcompulsively readable, the kind of book you immediately share with your best friend.

Really Good, Actually: The funny, relatable No. 2 Sunday Really Good, Actually: The funny, relatable No. 2 Sunday

A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.Monica Heisey isn’t just interested in the romantic side of divorce, but in how our identities collapse and the freefall that accompanies it. A prime example of how a storyteller's voice can pull you right in and keep you clinging to every sentence. While the story comes down clearly on the side of all-encompassing love, Mallery has struck a careful balance: There is just enough sex to be spicy, just enough swearing to be naughty, and just enough heartbreak to avoid being cloying.

Really Good, Actually: The must-read major Sunday Times

The other issue I had is that the writing style involved a lot of telling and not showing, which sometimes works for me but not so much here. it was a great insight into what people really go through in cleaving their life from someone else's. If Bridget Jones had a long-lost Canadian niece, it would be Monica Heisey's utterly lovable hot-mess of a young divorcee, Maggie. Or because we went to Paris and had an argument instead of falling more in love or at least rimming each other.A meticulous portrayal of self-destructive behaviour that is both painfully accurate and mordantly funny . 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 single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.

Really Good, Actually – HarperCollins Publishers UK

It had been so inconsistent: one day tiptoeing around each other, speaking in the stilted tones of new colleagues on a work retreat, then slipping into old habits and kissing goodbye, eating off each other’s plates, fucking. Monica Heisey was born in Toronto at the very end of the 1980s and has spent most of her adult life in London, after moving there in 2010 to pursue an MA in early modern literature.An impromptu celebration on the beach at sunset with champagne becomes a weekly touchpoint to their lives as they learn more about each other and themselves.