This book is funny and heartfelt—readers will root for all three of these women as they shake themselves off and start asking what might actually make them happy.

This is readable and relatable, it is not a romance, and you have to be able to relate to these women for the book to work for you. Struggling to make ends meet, they decide to rent their extra bedroom to Theo, who charms Joy with his salt-and-pepper hair and adoration of their one-eyed cat.They rented a three-bedroom in the trendy part of town with the hope that they’d keep the spare bedroom as a guest room.

Jana Casale is the author of How to Fall Out of Love Madly and The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky. I was sitting at about 2 stars until about the last 10-15% of the book which I enjoyed so much that it bumped my rating up to 3. I will leave you with this quote about Joy’s aunt that really stood out to me: “I thought she was a victim of watching a baby being dropped, but really. I'm too lazy to go through the entire book to find the exact quote, but I remember the book saying something like "there are very few good men in the world which is why so many women settle for less than their worth.I’m sure Casale’s hope with this book was to bring attention to double standards and the image issues women deal with every day, but all I can think is that if I had read this book at ten, I would have had a hundred new things to criticize in myself by the end. Joy, at one point, considers quitting her job because she feels like she needs to care for her male roommate who, you guessed it, she's in love with. Achingly funny, startlingly intimate, viciously familiar, How to Fall Out of Love Madly says every quiet part of being a woman out loud. Casale did an incredible job of putting words to emotions and thoughts I’ve never known how to express. Whelp, this salt and pepper haired man does something for Joy because soon enough, she falls head over heels for him.

The ones who decide that they’ve had enough of the men around them getting away with inappropriate touches or comments. The other thing that didn't really work for me was Celine, the third character, who has a lot less time on the page and whose whole purpose is supposed to be to show us that a woman who looks Instagram-perfect can also not be happy. Besides that, the birth control did help with her cramps, which had been so violent that she’d once thrown up from the pain.Meanwhile, Theo's girlfriend Celine has been told all her life she is stunning but doesn’t really believe it. The characters and the issues they face are very real, their stories are relatable, and they all grow a lot by the end of the novel. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling.

edit: i've seen a lot of reviews for this book say "look up trigger warnings" but no one has actually bothered to list out the trigger warnings so.

Knowing that my experiences in life can happen to other people and that we all react in different ways and we’re just straight up not having a good time. Annie is baffled by Joy's senseless devotion to Theo, but she's consumed by her own obsessions: she can't stop parsing her commitment-phobic boyfriend's texts in an exhausting mission to maintain his approval. All having their respective faults and insecurities—this book took relatable discomfort and ran with it.