A smart and funny coming-of-divorce novel, a story of self-reckoning with a likable heroine to root for . 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). A tender yet sharp novel that tells the heartbreaking and hilarious tales of a young woman going through a divorce. Heisey’s adroit control of her narrative and wickedly funny turns of phrase mean Maggie can become monstrous as she flails from one disastrous choice to the next, but remains heartbreakingly relatable . Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there" sex-wise.

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

The idea of Jon writing breakup songs in some dark sublet filled me with equal parts deep despair and incredible relief—despair, to think that I had caused him such pain he’d been driven to experimental songwriting; relief, that I wouldn’t have to listen to it. After six years of date nights and pet ownership and learning how to make a carbonara there was simply nothing else to do. Or because we fell in love too young, and how could our actual lives compare to the idea we’d had of what our lives could be when we were barely twenty and our bodies were almost impossibly firm? Jon said, “What do you think, Maggie,” and I said “Yeah, okay”; and so we got married, because everyone else was, and because nothing being particularly wrong felt, at the time, like everything was right.And it also had so much compassion for the protagonist even as she made mistakes and generally had compassion for heartbroken people everywhere. Had Maggie been written as a one-dimensional character , it would have been a fluffy, mindless read.

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey | CBC Books Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey | CBC Books

Freshly divorced Maggie is open to trying and doing new things, including dating, journalling, working out and standing up for herself. I went through a major break up at that age, and it wrecks you, like any break up does, but the fact that your 30th birthday is around the corner adds a very specific sort of stress for women, even if you have spent most of your adult life railing against ageist stereotypes. You know how every book about a young woman is described as “darkly funny” and then it’s actually only depressing? Certainly, you are not supposed to be twenty-eight years old and actively planning a birthday party with the dress code “Jimmy Buffett sluts.

Reading like a millennial Nora Ephron, everyone will fall in love with the messy and relatable heroine.

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This may have been more appealing if Maggie wasn’t kind of a self-indulgent, immature and selfish person. and even had exciting, slutty freshman years before realizing sometime in the first semester of second year that not only did we get along great, we were also deliriously horny for each other. Hear Monica open up about navigating divorce at a young age, and how she found humour in heartbreak. Eventually we moved in together—we’d been dating the right amount of time and neither of us could afford to live alone. It makes Really Good, Actually a smart and funny coming-of-divorce novel, a story of self-reckoning with a likable heroine to root for.

Time to gobble up this Bridget Jones's Diary-for-the-smartphone-era that is perfect for fans of Schitt's Creek and Fleabag. She has written for television shows like Schitt’s Creek, Workin’ Moms, Baroness von Sketch Show, and more. She has a twin sister and a younger sister; her father was a lawyer and her mother was a public servant. Not going to lie, I do enjoy reading books about young white women spiralling, behaving badly and trying to figure it out.