Wants and Needs

by Roxy Dunn

A novel about coming of age when you thought you already had: a story about commitment and independence, about starting all over again, and finding different ways to love along the way

Independence seems to be drifting away from Misty. Just months ago, she was living with her fiancé and planning their life together. Now she’s single, back in her childhood bedroom, on crutches from knee surgery, and relying on her mother to help her with the smallest of tasks. This isn’t how thirty-two was meant to look.

When Misty turns to dating apps, she's immediately intrigued by charismatic, handsome Christopher – so intrigued that she doesn't even notice the acronym 'ENM' on his profile. By the time she discovers that it stands for 'Ethical Non-Monogamy' – and that the man with whom she feels such undeniable, dizzying chemistry, is in a long-term open relationship – she decides to give things a go.

And so Misty makes a pact with herself to date Christopher for the next six weeks while his partner is away. It’s all part of her plan: she wants to learn to become less attached, and to prepare herself for her next ‘real’ relationship. But is what she wants really what she needs?

Genres: Contemporary, Fiction, Coming Of Age

304 pages, Paperback

Published February 10, 2026

About the author

Roxy Dunn is an author, scriptwriter and voiceover artist. Her debut novel As Young as This (published by Penguin UK) was a Best Book of 2024 in The Independent, Harper’s Bazaar, Stylist, Cosmopolitan, and Sunday Times Style. Her second novel, Wants and Needs (published by Penguin UK, Penguin Random House Canada, and Bastei Luebbe Germany) was listed as a Best Book of 2026 by The Independent, The Mirror, ELLE, and Country & Townhouse. Her scripts have been optioned and developed by several TV/Film production companies and her pilot Useless Millennials was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Reviews

[Selma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4⭐️

Thank you Random House Canada for the free copy💌

I really, really enjoyed this read. We meet Misty right at a turning point in her life, and getting to know her felt both fun and deeply thought-provoking. Her wants, fears, and inner dialogue feel so real ….. like you’re inside the mind of someone you could genuinely know.

As someone navigating life in my 30s too, I connected with her so much…the dating apps, the dating confusion, the “what do I actually want vs. what do I think I want?” spiral 😭📱💔 The attachment to romantic connections, the overthinking, as well as the way she finds beauty and nostalgia in ordinary moments… all of it felt painfully relatable in the best way.

The way Misty thinks throughout this book gives an accurate portrayal of every day people and the thoughts that may come through our minds, experiences we live and how we perceive the world. W find her entering into an ethical non-monogamous relationship that she isn’t really sure is good for her but still continues to do so with how much she feels for him. She continues to go back and fourth on if this is good for her or not.

Some moments were genuinely funny too - especially her “scheduled therapy sessions in her head” for herself (even though she very clearly needs a real therapist). She battles this inner voice of what is really needed in her life compared to what she is wanting.

✨ Overall, such a meaningful, enjoyable read.
I loved getting to know Misty, and I especially loved how her story is told through her friendships….it made her feel even more layered and real. The supporting characters added so much depth to her world.

Beautifully written. Thought-provoking. Relatable.
Highly recommend!

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Penguin Canada & Libro fm for the arc/alc 🫶🏼💘

“Wants and Needs” follows Misty, who has recently gone through a breakup with her late fiance, and is trying to find her place in life. This is a coming of age story at its core, watching Misty’s relationships, romantic, friendly, and familial, develop. She ends up i involved in an open relationship and we see her navigating this throught the book.

While I did have a good time with this one, I was left unsatisfied at the end and I am not sure for what particular reason. I would be open to reading this author again though & I am so buzzed about my first ever physical arc!!

I also really enjoyed listening to this one because the narrator was british!

[Nathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,75 ⭐️ ein wirklich interessantes Buch über eine junge Frau die sich selbst findet und einen kleinen Teil dieser Reise in einer nicht monogamen Beziehung verbringt! Schöner Schreibstil, spannendes Thema, nur habe ich keine große Verbindung zu der Protagonistin aufgebaut, daher die Bewertung. Würde es aber dennoch empfehlen - sind auch unter 300 Seiten!

[Morgan Sims · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️ Another strong read here and an interesting introduction to ethical non-monogamy. This gem was funny, steamy, and has an abundance of girl power (yay)

[Poppy Dawe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A recommendation from the gorgeous morg, who probably read this through a more empathetic lens than I ever could lol.

This was an easy but well written read, and I really enjoyed the coming of age vibes and the character growth towards the later stages.

BUT… the main character’s decision-making skills were practically non-existent, so I spent at least half the book cringing. At times, I couldn’t fully enjoy the story because I found her so irritating so it made it hard to sympathise with her. The ‘sexy’ scenes didn’t work for me either. The male love interest massively gave me the ick so these scenes made me uncomfortable haha

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do unfortunately have to dock some points for multiple voice-inside-head characters

also big megan costa shoutout in the acknowledgements you love to see it

[gasbolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh ow, oh wow.
I’m a child of divorce. I don’t believe there is anything ethical about non-monogamy (don’t bother proving me wrong). I grew up with a struggling single mum and a mostly physically absent father, and this book had me holding back tears at (so, so, so) many of its fleeting but poignant moments as I devoured my way through it.
I had a feeling right away that this wasn’t going to be simply about ENM. Wants & Needs is a beautifully modern coming of age story of almost mid-thirties raisin lover Misty, and it sets off in the middle of her fiancé breaking up with her, leading her back to living with her mum in Brighton.
“It’s oddly gripping, and well, quietly devastating” is, among all of my several highlighted quotes, maybe the best way to describe this, even though it describes a different book inside this one. Misty doesn’t know much about anything she wants, other than getting others to take care of her needs, as she saunters aimlessly through her life, trying to write and publish a book and failing, because she keeps worrying about what other people might want to read.
It’s very easy to hear Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag at some points, especially the bits where she’s “going to therapy” and refusing to fall into the cliche of talking about her mother/their relationship/how she feels about her, but very much in an original voice kind of way. A way that had me enthralled and devastated all at once.
I’m going to be thinking about this book for a very long time. I might even get it for my mum.
“We humans are such funny contradictory things with all our massive little wants.”

Thank you to Netgalley and Fig Tree for the book, and to Roxy Dunn for all the repeated gut punching feelings I got from this. Goddamn. Ow.

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC from NetGalley

I wasn’t sure what I thought of this book but ultimately ended up enjoying it. I don’t think I’ve read any books with plots around ethical non monogamy (Not to be confused with NME magazine) and I found it really interesting.

I also enjoyed the exploration of the relationship between the MC and their mother.

I will always love a book in which the main character is flawed, frank and complicated but ultimately likeable. I will keep an eye out for more by this author!

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about Wants and Needs by Roxy Dunn. The book explores complicated relationships and the ways people often confuse desire with what’s actually good for them, which is a theme I usually enjoy in character-driven stories.

The writing is reflective and observant, especially when it comes to the small emotional details between characters. Dunn captures the awkwardness and tension that can exist in relationships pretty well. One thing I did really enjoy was Misty’s inner monologue, it was unexpectedly funny and added some lightness to the story. Her thoughts often felt the most natural and entertaining parts of the book.

That said, the story moved a bit slower than I expected, and I sometimes struggled to stay fully invested in the characters/ long chapters with the side characters. While the emotional themes were strong, I found myself wanting a little more momentum in the plot.

Overall, it’s a decent read with some insightful observations about relationships and self-awareness. I just really wish the main character made better decisions for herself sooner and maybe a little less abruptly at the end there 😅 

[Elsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lectura para mi club del libro de este mes.

Not my cup of tea.

La protagonista me ha resultado infantil y dependiente, en cuanto al interés romántico me ha parecido un tipo indecisivo y desaborido. Un punto positivo a que la protagonista tiene buenos amigos y su tienen interacciones que nada tienen que ver con el protagonista. Me han gustado especialmente Erika y su madre. Ojalá la autora se hubiese centrado más en esas relaciones.

He subido una estrella más a mi puntuación después de la charla literaria que me ha aportado otros puntos de vista.

[thebookybird · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 refreshing and funny

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️ - really enjoyed this!

[Julia Kochert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh ow, oh wow

[Gabrielle Anagnostopoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful from start to finish. Wants and Needs has a main character in Misty that is immediately endearing to the reader. She was so fully fleshed out I forgot sometimes I was reading about a fictional character and not a real 32 year old woman.

I expected to be spending most of this book reading about her relationship with the main love interest Christopher, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much her cast of friends stole the show. You were almost learning about Misty in the way she was reflected through all her relationships which I really
enjoyed. AND I loved the development of her relationship with her mother.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Wants & Needs, we follow Misty on a belated coming of age journey as she comes to learn what she really wants from her relationships with partners, friends and family. After an abrupt end to her 8 year relationship, Misty’s world is rocked and the stability she thought she had is gone in an instant. Misty then meets Christopher through Hinge, but is initially wary when she finds that the ‘ENM’ in his bio stands for ‘ethical non-monogamy.’ Throughout the course of the novel, we see Misty grappling with her wants and needs regarding Christopher. Can they ever truly align?

Dunn’s writing finds the perfect balance between tragedy and comedy. I did not expect to laugh out loud as many times as I did at Misty’s dry wit and her mother’s curious habits, and then to turn the page and be hit with the hard truth of both of their struggles. Throughout the book, I often felt the same way as I did watching Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, or reading Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. Dunn is also a screenwriter, and she really does play to her strengths when it comes to witty and pithy dialogue.

I did think that Misty and her friends had an unrealistic number of casual-but-also-extremely-profound conversations, but the truths, maxims, conclusions, etc (basically all of the meaty philosophical stuff) I found to be really well written and astute observations on what it means to be human and to love in the present day.

I actually enjoyed seeing Misty’s relationship with her mother develop more than her fling with Christopher, which on the whole frustrated me more than anything else.

Christopher didn’t feel very fleshed out for a character with so much presence in the book. Even as we learned more about the parameters of his open relationship and his own wants and concerns, Christopher still seemed like a vessel for Misty to use to learn more about herself and grow as a person. I guess that makes Christopher into a sort of male version of the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ archetype. A manic pixie dream boy?

I found Misty childish and needy, and although Dunn does go into how her upbringing might have played into this, I was left wanting more regarding both Misty’s childhood and her mother’s own experience growing up, which readers are led to believe formed her tough exterior without us really being shown how or why. I did like the whole motif of Misty’s own personal internal therapist, though.

Overall, I think that the writing of this book is perfect. I really enjoyed Dunn’s style and look forward to seeing it more in future works. This book just needed a lot more character depth for me outside of Misty herself, but I would still definitely recommend to fans of Dolly Alderton, Sally Rooney, and books about women who are still trying to figure themselves out.

Thank you to Roxy Dunn and Penguin Fig Tree for the opportunity to read and review this ARC copy!

[Melissa (honeybee.reads) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wants & Needs is a book I was extremely curious about, the subject matter and the way the story would be approached. Unfortunately, for me right from the start I felt off about it, I wanted to push through and continue, because I truly had an open mind about it. I just felt the tone was off, the relationship felt off and the open relationship also. I have a friend that is in an open relationship and it just is in no way like this. I felt the book was making it feel like the MMC was cheating on his wife entirely. It made me feel a little uncomfortable. It was advertised as a humorous story but honestly it didn't come off as funny at all. Some things I felt awkward reading others were so cringeworthy.

The FMC Misty was not relatable to me, I didn't feel she was mature and knew what she wanted out of life. I didn't feel her growth or her affection for Christopher and vice versa. For me they just both felt like highly confused individuals and I don't think the purpose of the book was truly reflected, for me it came off as something entirely different. I felt it had potential to be a great story but the main goal was missed entirely for me.

Overall, this just did not work for me. It is unfortunately not a book I will be recommending, it makes me sad but too many things just really threw me off and made me uncomfortable.

✨️ Thank you to @randomhouseca & Roxy Dunn for my gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Mathilde’s Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reflective? Absolutely. Illuminating? Not quite. Misty struggles with the fear of being alone and with determining whether the life she imagined for herself, marriage and kids, is built on her true wants and needs. She questions whether she could accept only ever getting pieces of the person she loved, and whether she wanted him enough to set aside what she believed she needed. Her big moment of realization felt a little sudden to me, given that every deciding factor had been staring her in the face since the beginning. Being inside her head felt genuine and real, even if it was scattered and a little frustrating at times.

Non-monogamy is something I’ve never really understood and I think I was hoping this story would shed some light on why it works for some. Instead, it mainly reaffirmed my own beliefs, which is that people who seek this do so because they aren’t completely fulfilled within their current relationship. To each their own, this is just my opinion. My final takeaway is that I’m all for questioning our own boundaries, but not because a situation you don’t want forces you to.

Thank you to Random House Canada for the ARC!

[Cariad Fiddy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Struggling to want to finished. It’s mortifying. At first Mistry makes sense as a character that has no idea how to date after a 7 year relationship. Rentering the dating world at 31 probably is a shock to the system but making her so clueless and childlike was painful to read. I don’t think she’s autistic but nobody acts, speaks or thinks like this. Chris wouldn’t not take her home. Unhinged and socially incontinent. Also, shame on Dunn for her unrealistic depiction of sex for the majority of women across the world. Feels like a man wrote this.

[Bobuan · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all tend to avoid facing our fear and deny the existence of our own flaws. Having a fully honest and vulnerable conversation with your inner self can be the hardest thing to do sometimes especially when the stakes are high. This book is not a biblical guide about how to navigate through your deepest private thoughts, but it has done the job serving as a reminder for readers to fight against this human instinct of being in denial!

[kasey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book felt deeply real. It captures the feeling of being lost and lonely while also not knowing what you are searching for. The inner thoughts felt raw and honest in a way that made me feel strangely seen. I related to the characters more than I expected and often caught myself recognizing my own intrusive thoughts on the page.



I loved how the book explored the tension between living in the present and planning for the future. It shows how what you want now may not be what you want later and how confusing that realization can be. The story is filled with moments that are genuinely beautiful and genuinely funny. I found myself laughing out loud while still feeling emotionally grounded in the characters.



This book was just released and I already know that it’s going to be a hit! If you love weird girl-messy-real life books, you’re going to love this one! It perfectly encapsulates being a young woman. Thank you so much Random House Canada for the ARC!

[Lucy Skeet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh I loved this one, Roxy has done it again. Full review to come soon on Instagram, thanks so much to Fig Tree for my copy!

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the way this author writes about love - she asks so many confronting questions of it that even I can’t avoid thinking about them after I’ve shut the book.

[Caero · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
I breezed through this, despite the storyline unfolding in a different way than I expected.

[Sara Virasami · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to connect with this book, but just needed it to be over...

[Alexandra Van Cammeren · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frustrating characters!! Not satisfied with the ending

[Susie Calvert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story follows Misty, a woman standing at a sudden, shaky crossroads after the collapse of a long-term relationship. Having spent the majority of her life folded into the comfort of a relationship Misty has reached adulthood without ever really learning how to be independent. She moves through her days with a sort of aimless saunter, waiting for others to identify and meet her needs because she hasn't yet figured out how to do it herself.
This paralysis extends to her professional life; Misty is a writer who can’t seem to finish or publish anything, primarily because she is too busy trying to anticipate what an imaginary audience wants rather than writing what she actually knows. In the midst of this identity crisis, she accidentally dives into the deep end of modern dating when she swipes right on a man, completely oblivious to the fact that the "ENM" on his profile stands for Ethical Non-Monogamy.
At several points, I found myself drawing parallels to the TV show character Fleabag, particularly in the way Misty conducts internal dialogues with a "therapist." There is a brilliant, stubborn resistance in her voice as she refuses to fall into the cliché of blaming her mother or dissecting their relationship, even when the influence of that bond is clearly affecting every choice she makes. Yet, despite the familiar stylistic comparison, Roxy Dunn maintains a completely original voice that kept me intrigued and bemused by Misty's decisions.
Ultimately, Wants and Needs is a poignant, witty exploration of exactly what the title suggests: the messy, often contradictory gap between what we think we want and what we actually need. It is a "coming-of-age" story for the adult who realised they forgot to grow up while they were busy being cared for.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for the ARC.

[Aidan Kiely · Rating 3 out of 5]

I turned to this book for light relief after a particularly heavy read, and it did provide that. As an exploration of ethical non-monogamy, Roxy Dunn does a good job of keeping her book light-hearted whilst engaging seriously with the subject. Emotions, dilemmas, complications, uncertainties, advantages and drawbacks are explored with depth and sensitivity. This book doesn’t preach a message; it also avoids sliding into saccharine romance or gratuitous sex. Roxy Dunn does genuinely explore the issue with nuance, taste, and a refusal to be simplistic. Yet she does this whilst keeping the book entertaining and on the right side of being too deep.

What lets this book down, put simply, is that the main characters are unconvincing and dull. Misty, as a struggling writer, is a bourgeois cliché. We learn nothing of her writing whatsoever, that is until the end when, with narcissistic predictability, she writes a book about her own experiences. Rather than exploring her as an imaginative producer of fiction, we are instead treated to tedious internal dialogues between her internal critical voice and her, and between her and an imaginary therapist. This woman, apparently, somehow goes from being so touchingly naïve that she doesn’t know what ENM is, to having casual sex and going to open house sex parties. Then in the next breath, she’s having a panic attack over reversing a car. It simply doesn’t add up.
The other protagonist, Christopher, is no better. Supposedly mysterious and a tad avoidant, he is in reality just boring. His backstory, apparently intended to explain his two-fingers attitude to convention, is so uninteresting that as I write this review, I’ve already completely forgotten it. His partner Sara is barely involved in the story, apparently ethically non-monogamous herself yet taking a peculiar hostility to Misty that is never fully explained.

So why read this book? Because despite the main characters being real failures, the supporting cast hold the story up. Some characters are introduced and never explored, not least Sara, Christopher’s primary partner. Another is Dan, a friend with whom Misty stays during visits to Christopher, whose marriage problems are brought up in one scene and feature no further. Misty’s best friend Erica is one of the two characters that make the book. Blunt, direct, gloriously irreverent and unapologetic about a complex personal life that involves a wife, a past lover and two twins (naturally in a French chateau), no one is above her sharp wit. Erica is that crazy friend who will always give it to you straight and somehow make you laugh even when not intending to. The other star of the show is Misty’s mother, a retired GP who tricks Misty’s father into getting her pregnant, then raising Misty herself. Her withering putdowns actually caused me to laugh out loud,made even more delightful by Dunn herself in the self-narrated audiobook.

So is this a memorable plot? Not remotely. Are the main characters ones you’ll always remember? Again, not at all. With that said, this book only took me a couple of days to get through and for that amount of time, I’ll settle for modestly entertaining and a few smiles. On that score, it delivered.

[Lilly Hannelore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve had ‘as young as this’ sit on my shelf for quite some time (since, like so many other readers, i buy more books than i read), so when i saw an opportunity to pick up ‘wants and needs’, I didn’t hesitate. In this novel, we follow Misty, fresh out of a long-term relationship and with significant daddy and mummy issues, navigating her newly single life. And more or less immediately falling into an ethically non-monogamous arrangement with Christopher.

I’m going to be honest: I do not enjoy ENM, why-choose romances or anything of the sort. This made me in many ways all the more intrigued to read this and find out what maybe I have to gain from that experience. Ultimately, I think this book is great exploration of (as the title says) what we think we want, what we actually need and in how far we might not actually know what we want and need. It’s a coming of age story. I’ve read a couple of other reviews, any many see to comment on Misty’s immaturity. And I disagree, actually. She might seem immature for her age, and it is frustrating to read about her burrowing herself into a relationship she clearly doesn’t want and that she’s clearly only in because she’s terrified of being alone, but I think that’s a depressingly accurate description of many people. Misty just got out of a very long relationship, she spent most of her life in intimate relationships (including the one with her mother) where she was being cared for and didn’t really have to be independent. When you do that, it doesn’t really matter how old you are, you’re still kind of sheltered. And it’s only natural human instinct to try and throw yourself into the next best thing because it is the quicker solution than figuring out what you need first. This does make for a novel with a mildly to severely frustrating man character. If you cannot cope with that, this is not the book for you. But if you’re open to flawed, frustrating, deeply human narration, this might be the book for you. Roxy Dunn has a very sharp, witty and honestly funny writing style in this. It’s very direct and unashamed. ‘Wants and needs’ isn’t entirely unlike other books i’ve read, and so it wasn’t particularly enlightening but it was gripping nonetheless. But Misty should really get a real therapist.

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book.

[Annette Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wants and Needs by Roxy Dunn is a character driven coming of age story, even if the character in question is a little older than one would expect of books in this genre. Misty is just out of an eight year relationship, recovering from surgery on her knee and trying to figure out her career as a yet unpublished author. She is messy and confused and heartbroken and was such an easy character to relate to and I was with her every step of her journey, Determined to get back out there she joins a dating app and matches with Christopher without realising that he and his partner practice ethical non monogamy. Though it is out of her comfort zone Misty decides to try it out and along the way does a lot of growing up and learning about herself and her boundaries.
There is such a wonderful humorous tone throughout the book but at the same time the author shows a lot of insight and understanding of human nature and I though the way she explored wants vs needs and how people will sometimes think they want something only to find out when they get it that it does not meet their needs really interesting and well done. Seeing Misty make certain choices might have been frustrating as the book unfolded but I had faith that she would figure things out in the end and that faith was rewarded. I wish that a little more time had been spent on Misty's relationship with her mother, there were some interesting avenues that could have been explored more fully but I do understand that that was not the intended focus of the book.
If you want a book that makes you look at ordinary life through a fresh lens this might be the book for you.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.