Writers & Lovers: A Novel

by Lily King

Other authorsLily King (Author), Lily King (Author)

Hardcover, 2020

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

Grove Press (2020), Edition: First Edition, 320 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML: Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman. Blindsided by her mother's sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she has been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. Writers & Lovers follows Casey�??a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist�??in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member miss.mesmerized

Casey Peabody has always wanted to be a writer. At 31, she finds herself waiting tables, living in a run-down garage and with several debt collectors on her heels. For six years she has worked on her novel but somehow it does not work out, too high the pressure from real life. When her mother died

a couple of months before, she not only lost her confidant, but constantly feels the big hole this loss left behind in her. Then she meets Oscar, a successful writer and widowed father of two, who seems to be the way out of her misery: a lovely home, stable relationship, two adorable boys, a life without worries. But it does not feel right, especially since there is Silas, too, quite the opposite of Oscar. When Casey is fired from the restaurant and her landlord tells her that the house is to be sold, the anxiety that has accompanied her for years becomes unbearable.

Raise your hand is you never dreamt of writing a novel. Isn’t that what we as avid readers long for? To intrigue others with what is lurking within ourselves and, of course, to be praised and complimented for our artistic capacities. Well, that’s just one side of being a writer, many more authors will actually have to face a life just like Casey: never to know if you can make the ends meet, frustrated because the writing does not move on, the words do not come, taking on any job just to survive and organising the writing around working hours. Lily King has painted quite a realistic picture of a novelist’s situation in “Writers & Lovers”. Yet, that’s by far not all the novel has to offer.

Her protagonist belongs to the generation who struggles to grow-up. They have been promised so much, they were full of energy in their twenties, but now, hitting 30, they have to make a decision: giving up their dreams for a conservative and boring but secure life just like the one their parents lead or going on with a precarious living that feels totally inadequate. No matter how they decide, it could be the wrong choice and the fear of not picking the right thing paralyses them, an overwhelming anxiety takes over control making them incapable of moving on or doing anything at all. They are stuck in a never-ending rat race which covers all areas of their life. Casey is the perfect example of her generation, highly educated, intelligent, good at dealing with people but nevertheless full of doubts about herself and frustrated by the constant setbacks.

I totally adored the novel, it is somehow a coming-of-age at a later age novel. The characters are authentically represented, the emotional states are wonderfully conveyed and thus easy to follow. Even though there is quite some melancholy in it, I did not feel saddened since it also provides a lot of hope just never to give up since all could turn out well in the end.

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LibraryThing member bobbieharv

I was so happy to see that my library had the kindle book available for borrowing, because I've read and loved all of King's books (except for The English Teacher). This was another 5 star. Beautifully written, in a wonderful authentic voice that made it seem like a memoir. Three relationships,

waitressing while trying to write and be with her lovers, and a happy ending that was a little to pat but still - just a wonderful book.

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LibraryThing member nivramkoorb

This is the 2nd book that I read by Lily King. I enjoyed Euphoria and thought this was excellent as well. As the title implies it deals with the process of writing and also dealing with love relationships. Casey Peabody is a 31 year old struggling writer living in Cambridge. She works as a waitress

in a high end Boston restaurant, lives in a one room place, struggles with massive student loan debt, and the deals with the recent sudden death of her mother. King also throws in a troubled upbringing, male relationships, health issues, and dealing with her 6 years of trying to finish her first novel. I found the story engaging from the start. King is an excellent writer and although 1st person narratives can be tricky, this one not only gets into Casey's head but does a good job of letting us get to know the other characters in the book. King did throw some real tough stuff at Casey that I thought was a little over the top but she did a good job of resolving things in a positive way but didn't do it in an easy cliche manner. If you like good writing this book really is a salute to writers and the writing process. At 320 pages it is an easy read and a good way to make it through your shelter in place. I will definitely check out more books by King.

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LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

Casey is having a hard time. She's saddled with student debt, living in a garage and working as a waitress as she tries to write. She's been working on her novel for six years and it's going badly. She's estranged from her father for very good reasons. Also, her mother died suddenly and then the

guy she fell in love with at a writers' colony dumped her. She doesn't see things improving and she's dealing with a lot of anxiety.

So this sounds dreary, doesn't it? Except that Casey also has some good, supportive friends and her own resilience and humor to guide her along as she deals with mourning her mother and negotiating her way through her life. Lily King writes so gorgeously and with such immediacy in Writers and Lovers that I quickly forgot that I don't generally like novels about novelists -- it feels like an exercise in navel-gazing and how many novels about writers are there now? Except King's take is fresh and visceral and fun, while also being heartbreaking and fully committed to showing the precariousness of Casey's makeshift life.

I loved this novel. I loved how King had me inhabiting Casey's life and while that was rarely a comfortable place to be, it was intense. I loved the mocking/loving look at the writing life and at writers and the various ways they can be ridiculous.

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LibraryThing member Hccpsk

Writers & Lovers feels like Lily King reached into my brain, pulled out some of my favorite things, some of my memories, wrapped them all up in her gorgeous prose and presented this amazing gift to me. Casey Peabody is 31, waits tables at a high-end restaurant in Cambridge while trying to finish

the novel she’s been working on for six years. Casey has a lot of problems--debt collectors, a recently broken heart, some physical ailments and she is still grieving her mother’s sudden death the previous year. With all that, somehow King still manages to write a book full of funny and hopeful moments. The story falters at points (the end...ugh), but King’s writing wins the day with such simple yet incredibly thoughtful and emotional moments. (“I don’t write because I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.” Sigh.) Writers & Lovers hit me with a lot of personal connections--Boston, restaurants, books, writing--but kept me with everything it became. A definite TBR for readers of Emma Straub, David Nicholls, Meg Wolitzer, etc.

I received an ARC through Edelweiss+

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LibraryThing member BibliophageOnCoffee

Half the book would be underlined if I were the type of person who reads with a pencil. So many great lines and insights. Now I really want to read Euphoria.

LibraryThing member brangwinn

Here’s a positive about a pandemic. I was able to sit down and read this book in one day. That’s a perfect setting for a book I enjoy. Casey is trying to writer a novel, but she’s stuck living in an “apartment” that used to be a potting shed. She is a waitress in an upscale restaurant

near Harvard University. She’s moved a lot in her 31 years including Spain. Her mother has recently died, and this has thrown her for a loop. She and her mother were very close. She’s basically estranged from her father. And then two romantic interests come into her life and she struggles who is the better choice. I love the descriptions of the people with whom she works at the restaurant. It opened my eyes to the people serving me my food actually have a life beyond me. And then I’m always a sucker for a book with a good ending. She picked the right guy. She’s figured out what really matters in life!

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LibraryThing member jmoncton

I don't like it when artists use their art to expound upon art. For example, movies that are about the film industry. Hollywood gushes over them but for me, some of those inside subtleties are totally lost on me. Like La La Land -- I can't be the only person who left the movie theater wondering

what was the big deal about this film. Similarly, I don't like books that are about authors trying to write a book. It feels a little self-absorbed and the 'woe is me' seems self-pitying. But I found Writers & Lovers to be exceptional. Casey's efforts and sacrifice to create her first novel were tangible. It was painful to see how she struggled for YEARS to eke out a living while trying to write her book. It was heroic and epic, like Frodo carrying that huge burden all the way to Mordor, and I felt her anguish and her set backs and her struggle with the temptation to throw in the towel and take a day job in an office.

Highly, highly recommend this book!

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LibraryThing member sleahey

As you would expect from the title, this novel is about the writing and love life of the main character, Casey, a 31 year old waitress in Boston. She struggles with low pay, overwhelming loan debt, doubt regarding the novel she's writing, and grief over the death of her mother. Her waitressing job

at a high end Boston restaurant both tires her out and gives her relationships. She meets a fellow aspiring author at a book reading and is almost immediately smitten. Then she meets an author whom she has admired when she serves him and his sons at her restaurant, and he courts her. As she navigates the two relationships while still trying to get her book recognized, she grapples with what's actually important to her. Having been a waitress, and having lived in Boston without enough money, the narrative and dialog rang absolutely true. Casey is someone I have known and will look forward to meeting some day.

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LibraryThing member pgchuis

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is the story of Casey, who is living in a converted potting shed, working as a waitress, struggling with student debt, grieving for her mother, and writing a novel. It is beautifully written and I enjoyed every page of it. Casey

was an excellent character - even in her grief and panic attacks she persevered at her job and with her writing - and I enjoyed the passages about her dates with Silas and Oscar. I was afraid it would be one of those novels which ends abruptly with everything up in the air, but the ending was the best bit.

Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member hairball

Unexpectedly wonderful. Everything about the description made it sound like it would be painful, but instead I couldn’t stop reading.

LibraryThing member Narshkite

I did not love King's last book, Euphoria, despite the critics' unanimous genuflection, and I hesitated to read this as a result. Stupid me. I LOVED this beyond all else. I am pretty sure novel of the year just got locked in. Talk about a great match between book and reader. This book is gorgeous.

The writing is spectacular. One of the best first sentences I have read in ages may have been surpassed by one of the best closing lines in memory. I love a happy ending when you know you caught things when the light was just right, and the next moment could be lovely or cataclysmic or maybe just straight up ordinary, where the target of a year of security seems like an overshoot and that target's achievement makes us mostly forget (or maybe just not care) that the next year might be more insecure than what came before.

This is clearly a deeply autobiographical novel. I have read a few of those lately, and most have not knocked my socks off -- those writers should read this. Its just the most flawless celebration of the coming of age of a true romantic.

The concept of success has become so hidebound in the last couple of decades. When, based on his strengths and interests, I encouraged my son away from "practical" majors toward philosophy, economics, art, literature and history people looked at me like I was crazy. What is he going to DO with that, they said. Can he get a high-paying job? I answer (as a career expert working at an elite university) that I don't know if he will. He may well have to spend a little time in squalor first and may decide he is not interested in endless wealth, just in more basic comfort for himself and his family. If he does, it won't kill him. He knows in the long run a living of some sort is essential and he will make one. More importantly, he is going to master critical analysis and recognize beauty and longing and need and love and hate and all the the things that actually matter. After that he can figure out how to make a life and a living that works for him, not one based on other people's values. People think you are crazy or rich enough to be flighty when you say those things. I am neither, but I know that if you believe in yourself and the importance and worth of other people (even the "bad" ones), acknowledge your material wants and needs, and accept that those needs can sometimes be delayed, you can find a wonderful life. I believe in the essentiality of art and literature, I believe people are more empathic and humane when they can stand in front of a painting and recognize that it contains truth more profound than any statement of unassailable fact. I believe in what is essential, true love and insightful humor and intransigent grief and unremitting need and and transformational art. I believe all of those things are more important than being practical, and that worshipping a linear checklist approach to life destroys people's connection to joy. If you have possessions that "spark joy" you don't know what the hell joy is. If you find joy in your work, in playing with children, or in dancing like a madwoman at a concert surrounded by friends you know what you are doing. And I believe if you are not allowed to fail, you never ever get to succeed on your terms. You don't know what success is for you unless you open yourself up to failure and know you are willing to suffer its sting to make something happen. I like messy people. I know grief, anxiety and fear are good things that we need to find a way out of, not simply things to be dulled. This book is a celebration of everything I believe in. I loved every character; Casey, and Oscar (with John and Jasper),and Silas were sympathetic and funny and smart and good, as were the supporting characters, who are barely on the page but still people we come to know because King writes so stupendously well. When I read the last words in this book I said out loud to my empty room "oh my god, that was perfect." What more can I say?

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LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe

Such a wonderful book!

I don’t normally start reviews that way, but I didn’t want to leave you in suspense. Because you might start off this novel about an unsuccessful writer, or possibly an unsuccessful adult, and be thinking that it is that dreaded writer-writing-about-writing novel. Okay, it

is that. But it’s so much more. Casey is in distress. The novel she’s been writing for six years is not yet finished. Her waitressing job that she took to make ends meet is not meeting its ends. The creditors of her student loans are sending threatening letters. And her love life — yes, mostly writers — has been a disaster. Her beloved mother’s death six months earlier has sent her into a complete tailspin. And she just keeps spinning. Of course in the midst of this yuckiness, wouldn’t you know it, she meets not one but two highly desirable guys (okay, they are both writers, but not all writers are assholes … probably) and, somewhat surprisingly, she has finished her novel and sent it off to a raft of literary agents.

What I liked so much about this novel was the very real voice of its protagonist. Life is messy and despite one’s talents (Casey was at one point destined to become a professional golfer — yeah, I know!) there is still what one longs for oneself. Writing is it, for her. Successful or unsuccessful, writing is the place she calls home. I get that. Also her sadness. Because life kinda sucks. Sometimes. And she misses her mom.

Beautifully written. Both moving and thoughtful. I heartily recommend it.

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LibraryThing member cherybear

Thirty-something Casey has lots of debt, works as a waitress, drifts in and out of love affairs, and is trying to finish writing her novel. I felt like I could identify with her. Things seem to wrap up a little too neatly, but it's a good read.

LibraryThing member froxgirl

If you're like me in these terrible times, you’re devouring any morsel of escapism you can find. This novel, situated in Cambridge, provides great rewards for the reader with its humor, grace, and perfectly rendered sentences. Many threads are woven together with great skill - the tedium of

low-level jobs, the wallop of death and the difficulty of continuing on in its aftermath, the balm of children's voices and actions, the highs of romantic obsession, and the search for fulfilling love. Casey, in her thirties, has been working on a novel for years and is in debt and renting a tiny, moldy former potting shed while waitressing at a trendy Harvard Square restaurant. She's missing her mother, her father is awful, and she's recovering from being dumped by the poet she met at a writer's retreat who turned out to be married. It won't get much worse, but can it get any better? There is great joy in finding out.

Quotes: "Muriel took me to the release of a poetry chapbook called Shit and Fuck at a convenience store in Central Square."

"The writing instructor said that every line of dialogue had to have at least two ulterior motives, and I said what if the character just wants to know what time it is. People gasped."

"Between our call and today he talked himself out of me, and now he is coming back around. I think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that's hard to unravel."

"They look older, like something is tugging them to the floor. I wonder if my father knows how much hair is missing from the back of his head."

"I didn't know I expected anything until it wasn't there."

"I thought I was choosing delusional men, but now I understand how boys are raised to think. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny."

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LibraryThing member jillrhudy

"Writers and Lovers" has its title in the right order: the book is primarily about the craft of writing. The torment of writing; the delight of writing. The aversion to writing; the all-consuming desire to write. The guilt of not having written, the need for discipline in order to keep writing. The

abrupt departure of the muse. It’s only fitting that the novel is well written. Some sentences are so finely crafted that they hit the reader like a bolt from the blue.

Young Casey is working as restaurant wait staff in Boston, dealing with bereavement, post-traumatic stress, health scares, heartbreak, and debt. Debt—from student loans, of course—may be causing Casey the most anxiety of all; she calls it her “looming blank specter.” An unfinished novel, six years in progress, is calling to Casey over the din of angry diners and debt collectors. She’s clinging to the impractical dream of life as an artist and always wants to call her mother, forgetting that her mother died months ago. As the novel progresses, she’s torn between two different men, both of whom are also writers.

Readers will root for Casey to reach the next stage of her life, with good career, stable finances, good health, a healthy relationship, or, at the very least, a good, published, profitable novel.

I received an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher and was encouraged to submit an honest review.

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LibraryThing member jphamilton

I just finished this purely masterful novel. The pacing, the sensitivity, the passions of the different characters, the gritty down-and-out quality of it, and the glorious ending lit up my heart. Books that touch me like this novel are exactly why I read, and they’re what I’m constantly

searching for in novels of all forms and style.
It’s a very intelligent book, that’s set in 1997, and centered on writers, some who have found some success, and those who are struggling. Our main character, Casey Peabody, is 31 and rightly feels that life has been cruelly tossing her around for too many years.
While growing up, she had a troubled relationship with her father, who forced her into being a child golf prodigy. After taking on $75,000 in debts to get her M.F.A., she finds herself being constantly hounded by creditors. Her long love relationship ended, and her mother unexpectedly died during a trip in Chile. Casey was suffering, but doing her best to deal with it herself.
To most people Casey is a waitress at Iris, an upscale restaurant on Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Those who are closer to her know that she had been struggling to finish her manuscript, Love and the Revolution, for six years. As the story develops, she is involved with two men: Oscar, an older novelist of some stature, who’s raising two young boys himself; and Silas, a struggling writer much closer to her own age. She has a good relationship with Oscar’s boys, and Oscar is a sweet man who shows her real affection and offers her much in life. With Silas, there is a burning passion, but then he will be out of touch for days.
After a while, she finishes her manuscript—and with great excitement sends it out to publishers—only to start a bitter collection of rejection letters. Eventually she gets an agent and interest in her work starts to grow. Meanwhile, her waitressing career seems to end, she chooses between Oscar and Silas, and finds an interesting teaching job. That’s enough, I’m not going to reveal everything.
Casey’s passion for her writing is intense, and though her progress seemed difficult many times, completing and successfully revising her book is a wild mix of emotions. I loved how King writes about maneuvering the writing/publishing world. Write about writing and bookselling and you’re already halfway there to getting your in so many bookstores.
I love all the side stories and the full cast of characters. There is no tedious misdirection in the book, people appear, situations change, she doubts so much, and love/passion/companionship/lust possess and confuse her... often all at the very same time. King doesn’t combined all these elements using some tricky plot device, they all come at Casey, just in the way life comes at most of the rest of us.
I’ll leave you with author Elizabeth Strout’s spot on review of the book—“Gorgeous.”

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LibraryThing member midwestms

Excellent look at grief and the struggle to maintain the will to create in the face of seemingly constant failure.

LibraryThing member kimkimkim

Every now and then I am fortunate to open the perfect book when I most need it. The interesting thing is that when I originally tried to read “Writers and Lovers” I wasn’t able to get through more than a few pages before being distracted by whatever came into my sight-line. I put it away for

another day and am so glad I tripped over the title again.

Lily King has nailed her protagonist Casey. She is too perfect for the part and I mean perfect in the most sympathetic way. She is battered by the loss of her mother, by a father who wrongs so many yet can’t forgive, the loss of a boyfriend, her time in another country, her landlord, her employers, some of her co-workers and fellow writers. Casey has been working on her book for years, years and more years. And did someone just say “I find it extraordinary that you think you have something to say.”? Does the general public really think that about aspiring writers? Are we really that nasty, that discouraging?

Casey lives in a potting shed, and the imagery brings to mind the dwellings of a poor artist, damp and smelling of rot with a hot plate in the bathroom. She walks the landlord’s dog for a break in the rent for this hovel. She is in debt, she is being chased for payment, she has so many problems, not the least is that she is sad. But she is also the person who want to comfort the sad person and then she thinks how sad must that person be because the reason she has compassion for the sad person is because she must have endured much of the same and then she sees that is a self-repeating cycle. And this concept really slayed me. What perfect imagery: “It’s like when you go into a dressing room with a three-paneled mirror and you line them up just right to see the long narrow hallway of yourselves, diminishing into infinity. It feels like that, like I’m sad for an infinite number of my selves.”

She meets men, fellow writers, men who take an interest, men who compete, men who understand or think they do. They don’t. Casey understands it all but never realizes it. She can dig deep without acknowledging it and all the pith, the essence is hers. She falls for one, chooses the other, can’t close the deal and it all ruptures.

I loved this book. Loved it for the smart language, the brilliant story of a young woman’s struggle to be a writer, real and compelling characters, the locale, the sorrow and the ultimate satisfaction. Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for a copy.

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LibraryThing member akblanchard

As the title implies, Lily King’s Writers and Lovers has two major themes, the writing life and the romantic life of its heroine, Camila ‘Casey’ Peabody. As a thirty-one year old waitress who is troubled by the death of her mother, a sour relationship with her father, and thousands of dollars

worth of student loan debt, Casey finds that only one thing keeps her going, and that’s the novel she’s been working on for the past six years. Will the novel ever get published? Will she ever find a nice apartment in overpriced Cambridge, Massachusetts? And which of her two desirable suitors should she choose? These questions and others form the bulk of the novel, but I found that I was most interested in the observations about writing than in the standard issue romantic-comedy plot points.

This novel has some good moments, but in general I didn’t feel it lived up to its advance billing.

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LibraryThing member novelcommentary

I usually read a few noted reviews of a book after I finish it, but before I do that I just wanted to record how much I enjoyed King's latest novel. Maybe it was because of the current containment mandate, but I ripped through this book in just a few days and loved the emotions it gave me. Casey,

our protagonist, is a bright 31 year old struggling in life for many reasons, college debt, boyfriend heartbreaks, and the loss of her mother. She waitresses in a high end restaurant in Boston and the reader gets a great feel for that life. It reminded me of Sweet bitter in that respect. We hear about Casey's two loves before the present time of the novel and then experience two more boyfriends that are at times competing both in her heart and as chapters in the novel. Both are writers, one is established and fairly famous, the other struggling along like her. Meanwhile through it all we see her stability waver, the bees under her skin, she calls them as she tries to juggle all this while always trying to write the famous American novel. This one about Cuba and a young girls decision about love and the revolution. Casey becomes a compelling character and as we root for her we get more invested in the story. Highly recommend this novel and look forward to exploring Euphoria, her earlier one that I missed.
Some lines:
Nia met a Milton scholar with excellent posture and a trust fund, who handed her novel back after reading fifteen pages, saying first-person female narratives grated on him. She chucked it in the dumpster, married him, and moved to Houston when he got a job at Rice.

I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating. It’s like when you go into a dressing room with a three-paneled mirror and you line them up just right to see the long narrowing hallway of yourselves diminishing into infinity. It feels like that, like I’m sad for an infinite number of my selves.

when I stood on the porch of my cabin the first morning I remembered my mother’s fawn-colored jacket with the white wool cuffs and collar and the smell of her wintergreen Life Savers in the left zip pocket. I heard her say my name, my old name, Camila, that only she called me. I felt the slippery seat in her blue Mustang, cold through my tights.

I told him the things that were coming back to me about my mother when I was little: her lemon smell and her gardening gloves with the rubber bumps and her small square toes that cracked when she walked barefoot. Her tortoiseshell headbands that were salty at the tips if you sucked on them.

My body aches from my throat to my groin. I want him to slide his fingers into my bathing suit and make all the heaviness and misery go away. I feel like a hag in a fairy tale, waiting to be made young and supple again.

The air smells like a cocktail party from the seventies, aftershave and martini onions.

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LibraryThing member maneekuhi

“Writers and Lovers” (WL) by Lily King. Currently has 312 reader reviews and an average rating of 4.2 She’s written about six other books, the most popular was “Euphoria” with 1610 reviews and a 4.0. I find Amazon numbers like those rather interesting and a bit perplexing. 1600 reviews is

quite high for general fiction, and 4.0 is a good rating but no where near a great one so what attracted so many readers to the book yet didn’t garner an enthused rating? Good promotion? Over-hype?

Well, what of WL? A “4” I must admit a bit sheepishly. I’m not going to re-summarize the plot again (read the Amzn description) but an awful lot of is about a 30ish writer scraping by on waitress earnings, and having relationships with unappealing guys. Maybe “unappealing” guys is too harsh, after all one is a successful writer, another gets our Casey’s juices flowing just through incidental physical contact, and a third kind of evaporates early on. The author has two kids and a bit of a prickly personality, the other guy has to get away too often, and so we hear a lot about life as a waitress at a popular neighborhood restaurant and its associated characters. And watching five tables at once, some upstairs, some not, all the customers’ wanting checks at the same time etc etc. Interesting at times but it does go on for a bit too long. And she is writing a book. It’s been six years now.

There are crises that pop now and then and a recent passing that haunts, but Casey finally finishes the book, and this book gets interesting. Very interesting. But not enough to offset the good but not great and occasionally boring first ¾.

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LibraryThing member rglossne

At 31 years old, Casey Peabody is mourning the unexpected death of her mother, and recovering from a bad breakup. She is waiting tables in Harvard Square and working on finishing a novel she's been writing for six years. She is broke, in debt, and living in a moldy room next to a garage owned by a

friend of her brother. In spite of all this, she is determined to hang on to her dream of living a creative life. She falls in love with two very different men, finishes her novel, and must navigate crises in all aspects of her life. I listened to this and loved it.

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LibraryThing member shazjhb

Amazing book. The characters are well defined and true to who they are. Loved that it was set in the late 90’s with so much less technology

LibraryThing member janismack

Casey is at a crossroads in her life and is trying her best to survive. Many events in the last year has upended her world and now she must deal with it. The writers brings you right into to Casey’s world, you feel like Casey sometimes. The author keeps you engaged throughout the whole story.

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