6 Books with a Novel Approach to Dating

Animal Instinct

In Shearn’s delightful and hilarious latest (after Dear Edna Sloane), a recently divorced app developer and mother of three navigates online dating during the early months of Covid-19. Unwilling to remain stuck inside her spare Brooklyn apartment, Rachel meets men and women for take-out drinks in parks and breaks pandemic protocols by going home with them, awakening her dormant sexual desire in the process. She dubs her small group of regular dalliances “the team,” and relates to the reader a series of wry and cutting observations about traditional marriage (“I’ve gone from being his best friend to becoming a butler / sex worker / armchair!”). Shearn transcends typical divorce novel tropes as Rachel begins work on a chatbot called Frankie that will ultimately become an amalgam of “the team,” possessing all the desirable qualities of the people she dates with none of the downside or hassle of human relationships. Eventually, the bot teaches Rachel unexpected lessons about self-forgiveness and the rewards of embracing one’s imperfections, leading her to connect with someone IRL. This scintillating story of reinvention will excite Shearn’s fans and win new ones. Agent: Julie Stevenson, Massie & McQuilkin Literary. (Mar.)

First-Time Caller

Borison (Business Casual) enchants in this delightful contemporary that pairs a burned-out radio host and a luckless-in-love single mother. Mechanic Lucie Stone’s precocious 12-year-old, Maya, decides that her mother is lonely and calls Baltimore radio host Aiden Valentine’s dating advice show, Heartstrings, hoping to find her a date. After Maya passes the phone to a blindsided Lucie, she and Aiden have a frank on-air discussion about love that immediately goes viral, leading to a radio cohosting gig for Lucie. Soon, half of the eastern seaboard is rooting for Lucie to find her happily ever after, with many of the show’s callers trying to set her up. After a few disastrous dates, however, Lucie begins to understand that the love she seeks may be right in front of her. Lucie and Aiden are perfectly imperfect together and will have eager readers rooting for their romance. Quirky supporting characters—especially Lucie’s dramatic ex-husband, Grayson, and his new husband, Mateo—add depth, while Borison’s skillful plotting keeps the pages flying. This first-rate tale will resonate with true romantics. (Feb.)

Life Drawing

The exhilarating latest entry in Hernandez’s sprawling Locas saga, first serialized in Love and Rockets, meditates on old regrets and new beginnings. Tonta, a teenager with a chaotic family life who hops “from trash house to trash house,” signs up for an art class. There, she meets—and immediately fights with—the older Maggie, who eventually becomes her sounding board and “crazy aunt.” At middle age, bisexual Maggie lives with a kind man but still carries a torch for her estranged best friend, Hopey. Tonta’s romantic dramas with her geeky friends are simpler, yet similar; while Tonta cuddles with her new girlfriend, Maggie fumes over Hopey rejecting a reconciliation to hook up with a “low-budget trash version of me.” Hernandez has built his characters’ Southern California town into a richly detailed milieu. Layers added in this volume include the subculture of indie comics fandom (Tonta cosplays as Cheetah Torpeda, a superhero who exists elsewhere in the Love and Rockets universe), a lake monster, and a wedding crowded with familiar characters past and present. Hernandez’s jaw-droppingly clean line and mastery of the subtly caricatured human form make the most mundane moments vibrate with life. Longtime fans will be moved by the weight of the older generation’s relationships, but the focus on a younger generation of characters makes this an excellent starting point for newcomers. It’s not to be missed. (Feb.)

Liquid

Rahmani puts a satirical spin on the rom-com with her incisive if predictable debut novel. In 2019 Los Angeles, the unnamed narrator, a queer daughter of immigrants from Iran and India, is two years out of graduate school, struggling to land a tenure-track job in the humanities, and striking out at romance. Still, a friend tells her that she’s “better off than the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel,” thanks to her independence. The narrator decides to take a social science approach to dating: she’ll go on 100 first dates over the course of the summer and take copious notes, with the goal of securing a marriage proposal. What follows is a whirlwind homage to the classic “ridiculous first date” trope: a man takes the narrator to his parents’ house, a woman needs a green card, a married man fails to tell her about his open marriage, and so on. The novel abruptly shifts tone after the narrator learns her father has had a heart attack, prompting her to visit him in Tehran. Rahmani’s attempt to straddle the line between satire, literary fiction, and rom-com doesn’t quite land, though there’s plenty of sharp cultural criticism, particularly on dating and adulthood. Fans of Elif Batuman ought to take note. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)

Paradise Logic

In Kemp’s energetic debut, a young woman embarks on a quest to become the “best girlfriend of all time.” Reality Kahn, a 23-year-old from Upstate New York with a “come-hither attitude,” lives in Brooklyn with two roommates. To reach her goal, she must first extricate herself from a situationship with a weed dealer. She then becomes an enthusiastic reader of Girlfriend Weekly, a magazine that advises her to seek attention from men with “boyish charm and searing intellects.” She soon meets “sad-eyed” graduate student Ariel, who grudgingly agrees to become her boyfriend in exchange for the right to demand sexual favors from her, often in the cramped apartment he shares with several college friends that doubles as a music venue. Kemp blends a realistic punk rock battle of the sexes with bizarro interludes, as Reality joins a trial for a drug called ZZZZvx ULTRA, which causes her to speak and act submissively to maintain Ariel’s approval. The plot is a bit thin, but the inventive conceit yields plenty of humor and incisive commentary. This funhouse portrait of the Brooklyn dating scene feels all too real. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)

What Is Wrong with You?

In this hilarious farce from Rudnick (Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style), a destination wedding goes extravagantly awry. Tech billionaire Trone Meston is set to marry his flight attendant fiancé, Linda Kleinschmidt, on Artemis Island, a private retreat he owns off the coast of Maine. Among the guests are Linda’s bodybuilder ex-husband, Sean Manginaro, a former TV star who was “bodysurfing an ocean of nubile, pre-lubed, equally libidinous women” before he met Linda, and who misses the stability she provided. Also invited is Isabelle McNally, a sensitivity reader for a publishing company owned by Trone. She’s followed to the island by literary wunderkind Tremble Woodspill, whose editor, Rob Barnett, lost his job after rejecting notes from Isabelle on Tremble’s novel. Other interlopers include Rob’s friend Paolo, who’s attempting to evade a stalker he met on a gay dating app. As the weekend progresses, the subplots intersect in delightful fashion. Sean grows convinced Linda wants him back, Isabelle tries to get Trone for herself, and Tremble attempts to persuade Isabelle to help Rob get rehired. It’s all carried along by Rudnick’s delicious wit and keen eye for detail (“It’s Ralph Lauren Prairie meets Embassy Suites in Akron,” Paolo says of the lobby in Alchemy Hall, the island’s estate and conference center). Readers will relish this comedy of errors. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)