Humor Me

May 15, 2024
With a smart if confused young woman as her contemporary Meg Ryan, Shook turns a lighthearted rom-com into a complicated exploration of romantic love--and, more importantly, friendship--among today's 20-somethings. Like the author, 25-year-old narrator Presley Fry has an androgynous name and moved from Georgia to New York after college graduation. She works as a talent-booking assistant for a popular late-night TV show, having landed the job through a connection--Susan Clark, her mother's childhood best friend, who's now married to a network executive. Presley lives with her best friend, Isabelle, in the East Village, which she prefers to the bougie West Village. Having survived a difficult childhood, she uses the art of witty deflection to avoid discussing uncomfortable emotions like ambivalence about her alcoholic mother, who died 18 months ago, or her attraction to a work friend. That unacknowledged attraction between smart, "plain and unnoticeable" girl and sensitive boy sets up the familiar rom-com structure, but Presley's explanation as to why she loves Sleepless in Seattle--because her idol Nora Ephron wanted to make not merely a romantic movie but a movie about romantic movies--seems to express the author's true intentions. Through her characters, Shook susses out romantic love in the Gen Z era: While Isabelle searches for girlfriends on Hinge, Presley prefers what she calls "business casual" with men she meets on Tinder. Male misconduct within the ambiguities of daily interaction (with shoutouts to Harvey Weinstein-level transgressors) serves as context for the plot. But other issues dominate: Presley's intense love affair with Manhattan itself, her passionate professional ambitions, her struggle to face her imperfect mother's role in her life. Most important here are the relationships between friends. Presley finds herself in an awkward but increasingly sweet cross-generational friendship with Susan even after Susan's high-profile husband is outed for sexual misbehavior. And Presley puts her commitments to Isabelle before everything, even a man she may love. Charming, optimistic escapism with a more serious undertone of feminist solidarity.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 20, 2024
A grieving 20-something woman struggles to work her way up the ranks of a late-night comedy show at the height of the #MeToo movement in Shook’s endearing sophomore effort (after If We’re Being Honest). Presley Fry, an assistant talent booker, enjoys chatting with her work crush Adam about romantic comedy tropes and the city’s stand-up scene, even though he often talks about other women. Though Presley has a toehold in her dream career, she makes minimum wage and has little prospect of a promotion or raise. She got the job through her late mother’s friend Susan Clark, whose husband, Tom, is an executive at the network. After Susan’s life is upended by allegations that Tom sexually harassed his colleagues, she reaches out to Presley with an invitation to dinner, and the two women begin an unlikely friendship. Some of the plot turns are predictable, but readers will find it easy to root for Presley as she tires of being in the friend zone with Adam and pounds the pavement in search of a comedian whose rising star she might hitch her wagon to. This charms. Agent: Andrianna deLone, CAA.

July 1, 2024
Working as an assistant on a late-night comedy show isn't all laughs, but for 25-year-old Presley, the chance to put an up-and-comer on the five-minute Friday night stand-up slot is golden. Presley has several areas of her life she'd rather keep private, including her mother's recent death and a friendship with a colleague that's teetering on the brink of something more. A chance encounter with her mother's old friend Susan, though, risks blowing it all wide open. Susan's husband, who helped Presley land her job, has been found out for an affair and other bad behavior during the peak of the #MeToo movement. As Presley reluctantly accepts Susan's invitations to shopping trips and dinners, she grapples with her grief over her mother and begins to imagine something more than texting with her colleague. With a romance-averse best friend plus her all-encompassing love of New York, Presley is brimming with both possibilities and burdens. This novel is a masterful, grounded exploration of the consequences of bad behavior and who ultimately pays.

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