I Didn’t Know I Needed This: The New Rules for Flirting, Feeling, and Finding Yourself

TikTokker Rallo debuts with a witty guide to modern dating that bills itself as less “Dear Abby” and more “like your audacious older sister sitting on your bed with a handle of tequila and a box of tissues and a bottle of lube” and dispensing candid “if you like him, just tell him” advice. Mining her own dating history, from a painful on-and-off college relationship with a man who told her, “via a Google Doc, that I was the best sex he ever had,” to the “Bumble boyfriend” who “proved I could love again,” Rallo breaks down each stage of dating. She recalls “get[ting] to know who I was as though I were a stranger” after moving to New York City for grad school and counsels readers to “treat yourself right first.... The rest of it will all fall into place.” Elsewhere, she reviews a string of breakups and recommends spending enough time processing heartbreak and remembering “you can get to the other side, because all around the world, every single day, people do.” Despite a somewhat slippery structure—numerous romantic trials bleed into one another, along with bits of motivation and the occasional dating rule (“The most attractive thing you can be is confident. GO THRIVE”)—Rallo’s assured voice and solid counsel carries this through. Those able to see the humor in heartache will be gratified. (Dec.)