Epic and Lovely: A Novel

by Mo Daviau

Epic and Lovely is the swan song of Nina Simone Blaine, the daughter of a long-dead 1950s Vegas crooner and a Texas beauty queen forty years his junior. In the wake of her unexpected divorce, Nina returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to spend her final days with The Friends of the Good Thumb, a support group for patients with A12 Fibrillin Deficiency Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects children of much-older fathers, causes several physical deformities, and results in death around the age of forty.

Written as a deathbed letter to the UCLA physician who has tracked Nina and the other Good Thumbs throughout their lives, Nina recounts her final days with the group and with Cole, the charismatic, sadistic fellow A12er with whom she has fallen madly in love, who charms and harms her in equal measures. An unlikely alliance with a tech billionaire, the return of her estranged mother, and the birth of the baby she never thought she’d have force Nina to reckon with the triumphs and mistakes of her life and to fight to leave her child in good hands.

Genres: Fiction

269 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2025

Reviews

[Kitty Stryker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book hit me like a truck. Very few of the characters in it are people I would like in real life, but I felt a lot of empathy for them all the same, and all of their flawed chaotic behavior. Much like Nina’s toxic relationship with Cole, I felt myself sucked in and unable to look away, even when I was a bit horrified. I feel like this is the kind of book that would appeal to people who enjoy true crime, in that it hit that fascination/revulsion button for me- and even while it was much more extreme than my own experiences, I saw my own relationships with toxic men, my own desperation to be seen, and my own eventual freedom from such recognition. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a fun read, but it was an engrossing one.

I received this book in exchange for my honest review!

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

EPIC AND LOVELY is a wondrous phantasmagoria of Southern California, baking, writing, crooning, road trips, cults, parents and daughters, rotten irresistible lovers, disability, death, and living forever in a day. Every sentence and paragraph is gorgeously crafted, and so natural amidst the carnivalesque drama of the plot and characters. It's the kind of novel that many of us have fantasized about writing but didn't write, and a model of how to exist (or not) in multiple modes of emotional and creative space in the very-much now. And yet one of my favorite passages was one of the very concretely relatable ones, of how to THINK about how to write one's own life, when that life has been less than satisfying--and how to find meaning in a world that doesn't care overmuch about your existence:
"They were prose poems about loving yourself. Not an original premise, but that’s what I was feeling back in my twenties, as an accidental pastry chef who had given up her dream of law school, of writing a book, of doing whatever I was thinking of doing before leaving college— not that I’ve ever been ambitious. I was supposed to want a career that left my mark on the world, but the execution of that goal seemed out of reach, and besides, I was going to die at forty, and I liked baking....
"I wrote that as a woman, you must love yourself because the odds are high that no one else will. You will not stagger out of the gates of the Bondurant School without someone, sometime, for some bullshit reason, absolutely fucking with you. Women must love themselves. You know that there is life after mommy and/or daddy and this pretty dream school, that you will get older, you will be judged by the size of your tits and the weight on your ass and not the degrees on your wall or the lines on your resume. Your education will stop mattering, but what will hurt the most is that your heart, your love, your goodness, will also stop mattering. This is life under patriarchy, and everything you learned at school will sit like an undigested biscuit in the pit of your stomach."
And much of the book is about precisely that: the moment of this realization, when you decide that, for the rest of your years on earth, you will make that decision to love yourself, to love your life, and to love the adventure--for good and for bad--of choosing yourself first.

[Kristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her second novel, Daviau gives us the visceral, funny, and unique story of Nina Simone Blaine, a 39-year-old woman who was born with A12 Syndrome (a made-up disease that is slightly Marfan Syndrome-y), caused by the advanced age of her not-particularly-successful Vegas crooner father and her much younger Dallas beauty queen mother. The disease comes with a lot of features including missing fingers on one hand and a likely expiration date of 40 years of age. In addition, Nina had been told that giving birth could kill her and yet here, at the assumed end of her life, she finds herself having just given birth to a daughter she conceived with fellow A12-er, her (post-separation from her stable and milquetoast long time husband) charismatic and abusive late-life lover, Cole. The book is Nina's letter to her long-time doctor at the UCLA Rare Disorders Clinic, Dr. Tabitha Chen, who will also be the adoptive mother of Nina's daughter. If this sounds complicated, it is, but Daviau masterfully turns this into a page-turner that is both hilarious and devastating. Certain set-pieces, particularly relating to Cole, are absolutely brutal, but we never lose the grasp of the characters -- anchored by our flawed but lovable protagonist, Nina. As a person who is deep inside the medical industrial complex and who also has a life-limiting disease, the doctor-patient relationship and the complicated support Nina has from a group of other A12-ers her age, brought together by Dr. Chen, really hit home. If you want a barn burner of a one-of-a-kind literary novel that tears you down and lifts you up, this is the one.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Understanding human nature through exploring paradox is one of my very favorite topics. "Epic and Lovely", the second novel from the brilliant Mo Daviau, is full of paradox, complicated characters, and emotional surprises that illuminate humanity's multifacetedness in ways only great novels can.

There's a moment in Epic and Lovely when a mother calls their child on the phone. The details of that call are different from my personal situation with my parents, but the tone and subtle emotionality was sharply perfect and resonated strongly enough with the darker parts of my history that I had to stop and put the book down. Other novels have hit me close to home before, but this moment blew the dust off of aspects of myself that I don't visit very often, and to me that's profound art.

For most of my read, I didn't know how to feel about the characters. They're all flawed in relatable ways, but not popularly or cool related ways. More like relatable because sometimes life's really hard and there's no getting around it. In the end I loved our heroine for real, because she was fiercely herself in defiance of all expectations, and was imbued with such agency that I think the overall theme of the novel may be about how radical self-actualization can make ripples and echoes in the world around us.

[Chrissy Tolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a precision and humor to this book that grabs you in the first few sentences and never stops. That might be because I started it and literally read it in one sitting, entirely without intending to, over the course of six hours. Categories of people this book will likely resonate with are people who grew up in L.A., people with dead parents, and people navigating a terminal, life-altering illness, but I’m none of those things. It was the sheer honesty of the main character— and the author— that made me sit there and become immediately invested in those identities. “Epic and Lovely” was my favorite novel of 2025, while it’s hard to describe exactly what it’s about, once you’re in it, you’ll know.

[Margy Avery · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best female protagonists / antiheroines in the game is Nina Simone Blaine, who tells her story with perfect acerbic wit and cutting observations. Nina
tells her story as a woman living in an imperfect life in her imperfect body marred by a connective tissue disorder who falls in love with a very imperfect man who breaks her heart as her body’s clock is running out. observations. The only child of a Texas beauty queen and a former Vegas crooner father with decades in age difference - and it is the old man sperm that caused her condition - Nina recounts the past year of her life trying to make sense of her broken heart.

[Gemma Whelan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was reminded of Samuel Beckett’s “They give birth astride of a grave….”
This book is a massive scream from the death bed of a woman who has just given birth. In her last years, Nina Simone Blaine lives life large and dangerous, drawn inexorably towards her abusive and charismatic lover Cole. The book is an epistle addressed to the doctor who has cared for her and her small group of friends who share a genetic disorder that affects children of much older fathers. It’s a huge, throttle wide open exploration of Nina’s short life, her choices, her complex ties with family and friends, and the larger-than-life decisions she makes about her own and her newborn daughter’s life.

[Ava Casazza · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand why this book is loved, but honestly it really didn’t speak to me. At a few moments I even debated not finishing it. The protagonist, Nina, has a sad reality and is able to conceal it with a witty narrative, but overall I couldn’t find a single character likable. I understand that having a toxic partner blinds people, but the book could’ve done a better job at showing some likable parts of Cole. Even with Nina’s reasoning that the two suffer from the same disease, I just couldn’t find one redeemable quality as to why she would ruin her life for him. Wasn’t a fan tbh.

[Ron Turker · Rating 5 out of 5]

An epic ride through trials and tribulations of an "A12-er" and her A12 cohort. A group of early-forty-somethings with "A12 Fibrillin Deficiency syndrome" are closing in on their literal deadline. The age barrier A12-ers just don't break. Daviau explores love everlasting and why sometimes it just can't last. An admittedly flawed set of characters spark just the right mix to keep themselves afloat--until they can't.
A great character study!

[kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishingly relatable exploration of mortality and family trauma via a collection of characters dealing with a rare genetic disorder. This story is not for the faint of heart (with some base, graphic scenes a-la Chuck Palahniuk), but wow does it stay with you.

[Amy Doan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Full review TK

[Rebecca N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a hilarious and clever and beautiful and heartfelt book! Highly recommended.

[Lala · Rating 5 out of 5]

few books have solicited as visceral of a physical reaction as this one did.