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Meeting New People
Not yet published
Expected 2 Jun 26From the author of the national bestseller Women’s Hotel, the irresistible and wildly entertaining story of one woman contending with age and friendship—a narrative that reads like an homage to Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.
Sixtysomething, twice-divorced Barbara is at a crossroads. In the midst of her emotional uncertainty, she looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships of her life, in hopes of figuring out how to optimize finding her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend. Barbara is acerbic, opinionated, and wrong about many things, but she also doesn't shy away when she's at fault. The turning point of her predicament comes from Barbara’s choice, in friends, between (too-young) Caitlyn and the (unsuitable) Other Barbara. Will she repeat the exciting mistakes of the past, or will she try a new kind of mistake for a change? She feels like an out-of-season Scrooge who is unexpectedly, and all at once, surprised and entirely transformed by the possibility of joy.
For readers who loved Bobby Finger's The Old Place and Elif Bautmann's Either/Or, Meeting New People will feel like a long-lost companion—Lavery at the height of his storytelling powers. It is an unforgettable novel from one of our most inventive and brilliant writers.
Sixtysomething, twice-divorced Barbara is at a crossroads. In the midst of her emotional uncertainty, she looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships of her life, in hopes of figuring out how to optimize finding her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend. Barbara is acerbic, opinionated, and wrong about many things, but she also doesn't shy away when she's at fault. The turning point of her predicament comes from Barbara’s choice, in friends, between (too-young) Caitlyn and the (unsuitable) Other Barbara. Will she repeat the exciting mistakes of the past, or will she try a new kind of mistake for a change? She feels like an out-of-season Scrooge who is unexpectedly, and all at once, surprised and entirely transformed by the possibility of joy.
For readers who loved Bobby Finger's The Old Place and Elif Bautmann's Either/Or, Meeting New People will feel like a long-lost companion—Lavery at the height of his storytelling powers. It is an unforgettable novel from one of our most inventive and brilliant writers.
288 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication June 2, 2026
About the author
Daniel M. Lavery
22 books977 followersAlso see Mallory Ortberg and Daniel Mallory Ortberg.
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February 18, 2026ARC for review. To be published June 2, 2026.
DNF at 35%.
This was a well-written, good book about the failure of the main character’s female friendships, or at least what I read of it was. I just found it unbearably sad, and perhaps parts of it hit a little too close to home. I wasn’t in the right headspace to finish it at the moment. Definitely no knock on the book.
DNF at 35%.
This was a well-written, good book about the failure of the main character’s female friendships, or at least what I read of it was. I just found it unbearably sad, and perhaps parts of it hit a little too close to home. I wasn’t in the right headspace to finish it at the moment. Definitely no knock on the book.
April 22, 2026
Genre: Contemporary Adult Fiction
For fans of:
Female friendships
Food-centered storytelling
Easy, short read
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway—thank you to the publisher for the ARC.
This was definitely out of my comfort zone (trying new genres this year), and while it didn’t work for me, I can see the appeal for others.
The story follows Barbara after her best friend “breaks up” with her, and it’s mostly about her navigating loneliness and reflecting on her past relationships. I liked the idea, but I struggled with Barbara as a character—she came off very negative and hard to connect with.
There were also a few comments about the queer community that didn’t sit right with me, especially the idea that women can’t be friends with lesbians. That really threw me off.
Overall, I wanted more character growth and development, but it felt pretty minimal.
I’m a little sad this one didn’t land for me, but I’m still glad I tried something different.
For fans of:
Female friendships
Food-centered storytelling
Easy, short read
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway—thank you to the publisher for the ARC.
This was definitely out of my comfort zone (trying new genres this year), and while it didn’t work for me, I can see the appeal for others.
The story follows Barbara after her best friend “breaks up” with her, and it’s mostly about her navigating loneliness and reflecting on her past relationships. I liked the idea, but I struggled with Barbara as a character—she came off very negative and hard to connect with.
There were also a few comments about the queer community that didn’t sit right with me, especially the idea that women can’t be friends with lesbians. That really threw me off.
Overall, I wanted more character growth and development, but it felt pretty minimal.
I’m a little sad this one didn’t land for me, but I’m still glad I tried something different.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
She Would Rather Feed You Than Tell You She Needs You
Daniel M. Lavery’s “Meeting New People” serves up casseroles, grievances, burnt paprika, and one of the sharpest recent novels about friendship, pride, and the social uses of food.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 5th, 2026
A room made ready for more people than one woman can confidently count on – Daniel M. Lavery’s “Meeting New People” distilled into late light, disciplined beauty, and the risky grace of laying extra places anyway.
Barbara Foerster would rather feed you than tell you she needs you. Daniel M. Lavery’s “Meeting New People” knows how costly that instinct can be. When Barbara’s closest friend Susan comes over for dinner, arrives with a handwritten list of complaints, and ends the friendship instead of eating, the scene lands with the dry sting of social humiliation. Susan refuses the meal, walks out in one of Barbara’s shirts, and leaves the apartment smelling of singed paprika. A friend breakup with notes is bad enough. A friend breakup with notes after you have bloiled the spices for goulash is practically liturgical.
At first the novel pretends to be a hunt for Susan’s replacement. Barbara, pushing sixty and newly unmoored, starts auditing the nine best friendships of her life, all broken or shed along the way, as if a sufficiently exact inventory might reveal how to secure a tenth and final one. Susan’s departure seems to set the terms: either Barbara finds the right woman to stand where Susan once stood, or she submits to social shrinkage. Very quickly, though, “Meeting New People” turns into a harsher, stranger, and much more interesting book than its title advertises. It is less interested in finding Barbara one sufficient person than in asking how she is meant to go on arranging a life once no single person can be trusted to hold it upright.
Lavery refuses Barbara the dignity of a contained crisis. He makes her drag the whole mess into the next room. She quarrels with her grown son Ezra over childcare, hotel rooms, antique furniture, and the ordinary insolence of adult children who think their parents can be redesigned to fit a travel schedule. At the upscale Brooklyn market hall where she works, she spars with younger coworkers over Narcan, self-checkout, bathrooms, and the moral jurisdiction of a deli counter. She starts haunting Saint Stephen’s, an Episcopal church that shares a building with a Zen center. She backs into hospice work. She begins, almost against her own habits, to treat her impossible ground-floor neighbor Lorraine like a person. She calls Marc, the widower of an old best friend who cut her off before dying, and manages – miracle of miracles – not to use the conversation as a crowbar into the past. By the time the novel reaches its final movement, Barbara is planning a dinner party whose guest list keeps expanding just as her hope of finding one perfect replacement grows less convincing.
Lavery knows what fiction still likes to underrate: friendship in adult life is not decorative padding around the real plot. It is one of the structures keeping the day from collapsing inward. Barbara’s devastation after Susan leaves is not framed as softer or more embarrassing than divorce. It hurts with the force many novels still reserve for marriage. More to the point, the novel is shrewd about how little public language exists for this kind of loss. Divorce has paperwork. Bereavement has casseroles. A friendship breakup often leaves one person clutching leftovers and the other in possession of the story. Barbara knows this. She also knows – with a braid of vanity, realism, and panic – that getting older makes new intimacy harder to come by and harder to seek without looking as though one is trying to come by it.
Barbara is such a good narrator because Lavery never launders her. She is exacting, class-tuned, funny, often cruel, often right, and almost pathologically alert to bad form. She has theories about dessert personalities, old women in cap sleeves, the vulgarity of self-checkout, the moral weather of athleisure, and the slow death of usable social rituals. She can be monstrous in miniature. She can also be ruthlessly exact. She would curdle into a recital of good lines if Lavery did not understand that style is the shell she keeps polishing while the injury is fresh. Barbara explains because explanation gives her leverage over pain. She categorizes because categories keep abandonment from feeling infinite. She turns to recipes at moments of distress not because cooking distracts her from feeling, but because food is the language in which she can think most fluently.
Everything here depends on the sentence knowing when Barbara is clarifying and when she is armoring. Lavery writes long, tensile, beautifully managed sentences that let her move from anecdote to refinement to analogy to verdict without sounding merely busy. The syntax does not ramble so much as open another drawer. A remark about tablecloths becomes an account of class aspiration. A note on potatoes becomes a theory of temperament. A complaint about texting becomes a small anatomy of modern intimacy. The diction lives among spice tins, sideboards, hems, church handbills, bad countertops, old coats, and better shoes. Barbara is forever telling one thing from another. That habit is both her charm and her trouble.
Food is not décor here. It is Barbara’s domestic logic. She cooks to welcome, to court, to comfort, to remember, to tidy the mind after injury, to put shape around loneliness, to make an evening mean something. If Susan’s refusal bites so hard, it is because she rejects not just dinner but the thing Barbara speaks best. Later, when Barbara sends a green lasagna to Marc and Holly, or brings clafoutis and Dutch baby downstairs to Lorraine, the book shows her trying to reroute that same language away from private grievance and toward social tact. Food in this novel is not atmosphere. It is thought with butter in it.
The room after Susan’s exit – red velvet, cooling dinner, and the peculiar humiliation of having your best language refused.
The structure only looks loose if you mistake drift for design. What begins as a single problem – Susan is gone, therefore someone else must be found – slowly becomes a series of awkward social experiments. Church strips some authority from Barbara’s old scripts. Hospice strips a little more. Lorraine does more than either. Caitlyn, a younger coworker Barbara first imagines as a possible successor to Susan, matters less as a destined friend than as evidence of Barbara’s habitual mistake: she keeps wanting intimacy on terms so precise that ordinary attachment can scarcely survive them. Lavery’s smartest refusal is simply not to reward that fantasy. Caitlyn does not become the answer. Neither does church. Neither does Ezra, Marc, or the other Barbara. What emerges instead is a messier arrangement of loyalties, obligations, appetites, and half-successful acts of tact.
That larger, makeshift circle is where the novel stops performing its intelligence and starts hurting. It earns its authority in scenes no one would call glamorous. Barbara sits with Deborah, a hospice patient too near death for conversation, and learns that presence can matter even when recognition cannot. She begins visiting Nita, an eighty-one-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s, and discovers the odd relief of being useful inside someone else’s mother-daughter quarrel rather than starring in her own. Most beautifully, she undergoes something very close to conversion in her dealings with Lorraine. Lorraine starts as comic blight: suspicious, nosy, forever complaining, dragging behind her a huge miserable dog. Then one rainy night Barbara sees her barefoot and without her false teeth, peering over a yard strewn with broken garbage, and the relation changes all at once. Barbara drops to her knees in the rain, picking up wet coffee grounds, broken glass, soaked dog bags, and old tampons with a kind of relieved gratitude. She is thankful not only that Lorraine is safe, but that she no longer has to act badly toward her.
Barbara in the rain among spilled garbage – the novel’s hinge, where contempt gives way to service and neighborliness arrives looking nothing like virtue.
That is the hinge of the novel. Barbara does not need to become nicer in the vague, cosmetic sense. She needs to become less impossible. Lavery is too intelligent to pretend this happens through insight alone. It happens through repeated, slightly humiliating acts of service: answering Ezra briefly instead of expansively, calling Marc without prying, reading to the dying, walking Lorraine’s dog though she does not even like the creature very much. The book’s boldest idea is that service can outlast perfect mutual understanding. That is not a diminished vision of companionship. It is a sterner one, and a more persuasive one.
The cost of letting Barbara dominate so completely is that other people can sometimes feel overexposed to her weather. Susan remains, by design, partly caught inside Barbara’s account of her. Caitlyn never entirely escapes the pressure of functioning as Barbara’s hoped-for next thing. Even Ezra, whose position is fundamentally legible, reaches us mostly through Barbara’s mix of tenderness, irritation, and hurt pride. The novel thins everyone else a little in order to keep Barbara this fully oxygenated. That is a real cost. There are moments, especially in the middle, when Barbara’s theories arrive faster than new pressure does, and the book risks worrying the same seam – age, standards, grievance, bad manners – before it has quite earned another pass.
Even that circling tells on Barbara. Lonely people repeat themselves. Grieving people do. People trying to control the terms on which they are loved certainly do. What saves the novel from cleverness is that it never mistakes Barbara’s eloquence for immunity. She can explain almost anything except the one thing she most wants explained: why other people tire of her while she is still busy refining the terms of their attachment. In that sense the book has a distant kinship with Sigrid Nunez’s “The Friend,” which also treats companionship as serious business, though Lavery’s world is more upholstered, more exasperated, and much more interested in sauce.
The novel presses on a very contemporary bruise without mistaking itself for a dispatch. Adult friendship now has to do work once distributed across marriage, family, neighborhood, parish, and habit, yet it still has almost none of the rituals that help us survive its failure. It also knows something less discussable: friendliness is not the same as wanted company. Barbara is surrounded by people who are decent, welcoming, and available. That is not enough. What she lacks, and what Lavery keeps anatomizing, is belief in the irreducible value of this person’s attention. That distinction is snobbish, painful, true to experience, and one of the reasons the book keeps humming after it ends.
I’d put “Meeting New People” at 91/100 – 5/5: a genuinely excellent novel, often exhilarating at the sentence level, occasionally a little too enamored of its own best flourishes, and wiser by the end than its title first lets on. Lavery’s best move is not to hand Barbara one dazzling new best friend and call that growth. He gives her something messier, lonelier, and truer: a son she must speak to more carefully, dying strangers who require her presence, an old friend she can reenter tactfully, a neighbor she can no longer afford to despise, and a dinner table that keeps acquiring names, obligations, and plates. The book opens on a woman undone that one person no longer wants the thing she makes best. It leaves her setting more places than she can confidently fill. That turns out to be not defeat but form – a life no longer organized around one crowned intimacy, but around the risk of laying extra places anyway.
Early thumbnail studies testing the table’s angle, the window’s pull, and the burden of empty space – the first search for a composition that could hold hospitality, solitude, and expectation in the same breath.
The faint pencil scaffold beneath the looseness – measured lines establishing the table, chairs, border, and negative space before emotion was allowed to enter by way of paint.
The first wash laying in the novel’s true weather – late light, cool interior shadow, and the first suggestion that this prepared room might be poised between anticipation and aftermath.
Palette studies drawn from the cover’s muted logic – testing wood, linen, peony, shadow, and evening light until the painting’s loneliness could feel composed rather than decorative.
[image error]
Border studies searching for a frame equal to the novel’s rituals of taste and hospitality – plate echoes, molding rhythms, and domestic order pared down until they could hold without fussing.
Handwritten placement studies for title, author, and signature – testing how the lower text could settle into the painting like part of the room rather than an addition laid on top of it.
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Daniel M. Lavery’s “Meeting New People” serves up casseroles, grievances, burnt paprika, and one of the sharpest recent novels about friendship, pride, and the social uses of food.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 5th, 2026
A room made ready for more people than one woman can confidently count on – Daniel M. Lavery’s “Meeting New People” distilled into late light, disciplined beauty, and the risky grace of laying extra places anyway.
Barbara Foerster would rather feed you than tell you she needs you. Daniel M. Lavery’s “Meeting New People” knows how costly that instinct can be. When Barbara’s closest friend Susan comes over for dinner, arrives with a handwritten list of complaints, and ends the friendship instead of eating, the scene lands with the dry sting of social humiliation. Susan refuses the meal, walks out in one of Barbara’s shirts, and leaves the apartment smelling of singed paprika. A friend breakup with notes is bad enough. A friend breakup with notes after you have bloiled the spices for goulash is practically liturgical.
At first the novel pretends to be a hunt for Susan’s replacement. Barbara, pushing sixty and newly unmoored, starts auditing the nine best friendships of her life, all broken or shed along the way, as if a sufficiently exact inventory might reveal how to secure a tenth and final one. Susan’s departure seems to set the terms: either Barbara finds the right woman to stand where Susan once stood, or she submits to social shrinkage. Very quickly, though, “Meeting New People” turns into a harsher, stranger, and much more interesting book than its title advertises. It is less interested in finding Barbara one sufficient person than in asking how she is meant to go on arranging a life once no single person can be trusted to hold it upright.
Lavery refuses Barbara the dignity of a contained crisis. He makes her drag the whole mess into the next room. She quarrels with her grown son Ezra over childcare, hotel rooms, antique furniture, and the ordinary insolence of adult children who think their parents can be redesigned to fit a travel schedule. At the upscale Brooklyn market hall where she works, she spars with younger coworkers over Narcan, self-checkout, bathrooms, and the moral jurisdiction of a deli counter. She starts haunting Saint Stephen’s, an Episcopal church that shares a building with a Zen center. She backs into hospice work. She begins, almost against her own habits, to treat her impossible ground-floor neighbor Lorraine like a person. She calls Marc, the widower of an old best friend who cut her off before dying, and manages – miracle of miracles – not to use the conversation as a crowbar into the past. By the time the novel reaches its final movement, Barbara is planning a dinner party whose guest list keeps expanding just as her hope of finding one perfect replacement grows less convincing.
Lavery knows what fiction still likes to underrate: friendship in adult life is not decorative padding around the real plot. It is one of the structures keeping the day from collapsing inward. Barbara’s devastation after Susan leaves is not framed as softer or more embarrassing than divorce. It hurts with the force many novels still reserve for marriage. More to the point, the novel is shrewd about how little public language exists for this kind of loss. Divorce has paperwork. Bereavement has casseroles. A friendship breakup often leaves one person clutching leftovers and the other in possession of the story. Barbara knows this. She also knows – with a braid of vanity, realism, and panic – that getting older makes new intimacy harder to come by and harder to seek without looking as though one is trying to come by it.
Barbara is such a good narrator because Lavery never launders her. She is exacting, class-tuned, funny, often cruel, often right, and almost pathologically alert to bad form. She has theories about dessert personalities, old women in cap sleeves, the vulgarity of self-checkout, the moral weather of athleisure, and the slow death of usable social rituals. She can be monstrous in miniature. She can also be ruthlessly exact. She would curdle into a recital of good lines if Lavery did not understand that style is the shell she keeps polishing while the injury is fresh. Barbara explains because explanation gives her leverage over pain. She categorizes because categories keep abandonment from feeling infinite. She turns to recipes at moments of distress not because cooking distracts her from feeling, but because food is the language in which she can think most fluently.
Everything here depends on the sentence knowing when Barbara is clarifying and when she is armoring. Lavery writes long, tensile, beautifully managed sentences that let her move from anecdote to refinement to analogy to verdict without sounding merely busy. The syntax does not ramble so much as open another drawer. A remark about tablecloths becomes an account of class aspiration. A note on potatoes becomes a theory of temperament. A complaint about texting becomes a small anatomy of modern intimacy. The diction lives among spice tins, sideboards, hems, church handbills, bad countertops, old coats, and better shoes. Barbara is forever telling one thing from another. That habit is both her charm and her trouble.
Food is not décor here. It is Barbara’s domestic logic. She cooks to welcome, to court, to comfort, to remember, to tidy the mind after injury, to put shape around loneliness, to make an evening mean something. If Susan’s refusal bites so hard, it is because she rejects not just dinner but the thing Barbara speaks best. Later, when Barbara sends a green lasagna to Marc and Holly, or brings clafoutis and Dutch baby downstairs to Lorraine, the book shows her trying to reroute that same language away from private grievance and toward social tact. Food in this novel is not atmosphere. It is thought with butter in it.
The room after Susan’s exit – red velvet, cooling dinner, and the peculiar humiliation of having your best language refused.
The structure only looks loose if you mistake drift for design. What begins as a single problem – Susan is gone, therefore someone else must be found – slowly becomes a series of awkward social experiments. Church strips some authority from Barbara’s old scripts. Hospice strips a little more. Lorraine does more than either. Caitlyn, a younger coworker Barbara first imagines as a possible successor to Susan, matters less as a destined friend than as evidence of Barbara’s habitual mistake: she keeps wanting intimacy on terms so precise that ordinary attachment can scarcely survive them. Lavery’s smartest refusal is simply not to reward that fantasy. Caitlyn does not become the answer. Neither does church. Neither does Ezra, Marc, or the other Barbara. What emerges instead is a messier arrangement of loyalties, obligations, appetites, and half-successful acts of tact.
That larger, makeshift circle is where the novel stops performing its intelligence and starts hurting. It earns its authority in scenes no one would call glamorous. Barbara sits with Deborah, a hospice patient too near death for conversation, and learns that presence can matter even when recognition cannot. She begins visiting Nita, an eighty-one-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s, and discovers the odd relief of being useful inside someone else’s mother-daughter quarrel rather than starring in her own. Most beautifully, she undergoes something very close to conversion in her dealings with Lorraine. Lorraine starts as comic blight: suspicious, nosy, forever complaining, dragging behind her a huge miserable dog. Then one rainy night Barbara sees her barefoot and without her false teeth, peering over a yard strewn with broken garbage, and the relation changes all at once. Barbara drops to her knees in the rain, picking up wet coffee grounds, broken glass, soaked dog bags, and old tampons with a kind of relieved gratitude. She is thankful not only that Lorraine is safe, but that she no longer has to act badly toward her.
Barbara in the rain among spilled garbage – the novel’s hinge, where contempt gives way to service and neighborliness arrives looking nothing like virtue.
That is the hinge of the novel. Barbara does not need to become nicer in the vague, cosmetic sense. She needs to become less impossible. Lavery is too intelligent to pretend this happens through insight alone. It happens through repeated, slightly humiliating acts of service: answering Ezra briefly instead of expansively, calling Marc without prying, reading to the dying, walking Lorraine’s dog though she does not even like the creature very much. The book’s boldest idea is that service can outlast perfect mutual understanding. That is not a diminished vision of companionship. It is a sterner one, and a more persuasive one.
The cost of letting Barbara dominate so completely is that other people can sometimes feel overexposed to her weather. Susan remains, by design, partly caught inside Barbara’s account of her. Caitlyn never entirely escapes the pressure of functioning as Barbara’s hoped-for next thing. Even Ezra, whose position is fundamentally legible, reaches us mostly through Barbara’s mix of tenderness, irritation, and hurt pride. The novel thins everyone else a little in order to keep Barbara this fully oxygenated. That is a real cost. There are moments, especially in the middle, when Barbara’s theories arrive faster than new pressure does, and the book risks worrying the same seam – age, standards, grievance, bad manners – before it has quite earned another pass.
Even that circling tells on Barbara. Lonely people repeat themselves. Grieving people do. People trying to control the terms on which they are loved certainly do. What saves the novel from cleverness is that it never mistakes Barbara’s eloquence for immunity. She can explain almost anything except the one thing she most wants explained: why other people tire of her while she is still busy refining the terms of their attachment. In that sense the book has a distant kinship with Sigrid Nunez’s “The Friend,” which also treats companionship as serious business, though Lavery’s world is more upholstered, more exasperated, and much more interested in sauce.
The novel presses on a very contemporary bruise without mistaking itself for a dispatch. Adult friendship now has to do work once distributed across marriage, family, neighborhood, parish, and habit, yet it still has almost none of the rituals that help us survive its failure. It also knows something less discussable: friendliness is not the same as wanted company. Barbara is surrounded by people who are decent, welcoming, and available. That is not enough. What she lacks, and what Lavery keeps anatomizing, is belief in the irreducible value of this person’s attention. That distinction is snobbish, painful, true to experience, and one of the reasons the book keeps humming after it ends.
I’d put “Meeting New People” at 91/100 – 5/5: a genuinely excellent novel, often exhilarating at the sentence level, occasionally a little too enamored of its own best flourishes, and wiser by the end than its title first lets on. Lavery’s best move is not to hand Barbara one dazzling new best friend and call that growth. He gives her something messier, lonelier, and truer: a son she must speak to more carefully, dying strangers who require her presence, an old friend she can reenter tactfully, a neighbor she can no longer afford to despise, and a dinner table that keeps acquiring names, obligations, and plates. The book opens on a woman undone that one person no longer wants the thing she makes best. It leaves her setting more places than she can confidently fill. That turns out to be not defeat but form – a life no longer organized around one crowned intimacy, but around the risk of laying extra places anyway.
Early thumbnail studies testing the table’s angle, the window’s pull, and the burden of empty space – the first search for a composition that could hold hospitality, solitude, and expectation in the same breath.
The faint pencil scaffold beneath the looseness – measured lines establishing the table, chairs, border, and negative space before emotion was allowed to enter by way of paint.
The first wash laying in the novel’s true weather – late light, cool interior shadow, and the first suggestion that this prepared room might be poised between anticipation and aftermath.
Palette studies drawn from the cover’s muted logic – testing wood, linen, peony, shadow, and evening light until the painting’s loneliness could feel composed rather than decorative.
[image error]
Border studies searching for a frame equal to the novel’s rituals of taste and hospitality – plate echoes, molding rhythms, and domestic order pared down until they could hold without fussing.
Handwritten placement studies for title, author, and signature – testing how the lower text could settle into the painting like part of the room rather than an addition laid on top of it.
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I think this book had a bit of an unfair disadvantage because I read this after reading Night Night Fawn: A Novel which is also a first person narrative from an opinionated older New Yorker named Barbara delivered as a stream of consciousness moving between past and present.
While there are a lot of similarities, these are obviously very different books, but I think having this comparison made what I didn’t enjoy about this book stand out more.
The Barbara in Meeting New People has a lot of strong opinions on everything from food to fashion and how we ought to behave socially. None of these opinions are especially objectionable and it gets quite tedious reading these long winded passages of her mild takes.
The story centers on her best friend dumping her. Barbara has always had a best friend, and the relationship always ends dramatically. We follow her as she reflects on these failures and attempts to forge new connections.
I think the blurb makes this seem like the story is about Barbara’s struggle to choose between two new friends but this doesn’t really match up with the experience of reading it. It’s much more focused on the impact of her friendship ending, her fear of loneliness, and her complicated feelings about getting older.
I think what I was missing from this was some clarity on why exactly Barbara’s relationships kept failing. It gestures towards her issue being her strong opinions and stubbornness, but as I said her opinions are pretty middle of the road and she’s open minded and happy to admit when she’s wrong. By comparison her failed relationships seem unreasonable and one sided with her being left without an explanation or chance to make things right. I thought maybe it would reveal Barbara to be an unreliable narrator which would have been really interesting, but it doesn’t end up going that way.
Instead of her developing as a character, she just learns to move forward and be open to new connections after facing rejection. That’s still a worthwhile story to explore, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying to read as if she had to confront her own shortcomings in a meaningful way.
I will also say if you’re looking for a queer story this might not be a great fit. Apart from the author being queer, the book itself doesn’t have queer characters (though Barbara does have opinions about lesbians!).
Overall this book is technically well written and Barbara as a character felt well developed, but I found it a bit lacking in substance.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.
While there are a lot of similarities, these are obviously very different books, but I think having this comparison made what I didn’t enjoy about this book stand out more.
The Barbara in Meeting New People has a lot of strong opinions on everything from food to fashion and how we ought to behave socially. None of these opinions are especially objectionable and it gets quite tedious reading these long winded passages of her mild takes.
The story centers on her best friend dumping her. Barbara has always had a best friend, and the relationship always ends dramatically. We follow her as she reflects on these failures and attempts to forge new connections.
I think the blurb makes this seem like the story is about Barbara’s struggle to choose between two new friends but this doesn’t really match up with the experience of reading it. It’s much more focused on the impact of her friendship ending, her fear of loneliness, and her complicated feelings about getting older.
I think what I was missing from this was some clarity on why exactly Barbara’s relationships kept failing. It gestures towards her issue being her strong opinions and stubbornness, but as I said her opinions are pretty middle of the road and she’s open minded and happy to admit when she’s wrong. By comparison her failed relationships seem unreasonable and one sided with her being left without an explanation or chance to make things right. I thought maybe it would reveal Barbara to be an unreliable narrator which would have been really interesting, but it doesn’t end up going that way.
Instead of her developing as a character, she just learns to move forward and be open to new connections after facing rejection. That’s still a worthwhile story to explore, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying to read as if she had to confront her own shortcomings in a meaningful way.
I will also say if you’re looking for a queer story this might not be a great fit. Apart from the author being queer, the book itself doesn’t have queer characters (though Barbara does have opinions about lesbians!).
Overall this book is technically well written and Barbara as a character felt well developed, but I found it a bit lacking in substance.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Meeting New People follows a 58-year-old New Yorker named Barbara as she navigates the perils of aging and loneliness. It opens with the unexpected (to her) ending of her friendship with her ninth best friend (that is, the ninth person she considered her best friend throughout her life, not her ninth best-liked—perhaps the loss shouldn't feel so unexpected after losing eight others). The book takes us through about a week of Barbara's life as she resolves to make a new best friend, and then that resolve slowly morphs into becoming a better person. She interacts with coworkers, churchgoers, and her son with whom she also has a troubled (though less easily ended) relationship.
Barbara is mildly unpleasant for most of the book though rarely outright objectionable in her frequent opinionated ramblings. The character will be familiar to fans of Daniel M. Lavery, who has long written about mildly unpleasant people with relatable problems. I wasn't enjoying it too much in the beginning, but it's a short, quickly paced book and Barbara does grow throughout it so she never overstays her welcome. By the end, I was rooting for her.
I picked up this book based on it being listed as an LGBTQIA+ read, but besides one sequence on lesbians (some great people but probably not suitable for a best friend) there's no LGBTQIA+ characters or themes in the book. I suspect it was listed that way on the basis of the author's identity, which feels unfortunately simplistic. Queer people can obviously write non-queer books, and that's what Lavery has done here (unless one believes all friendships between women are inherently queer).
I read most of this book but was lucky enough to get the audiobook towards the end of my reading. The conversational tone of the prose makes this one a natural for an audiobook, and the narrator has a good voice for Barbara. She emotes well, and at times that made me more sympathetic to Barbara than I suspect I would have felt while reading. The one issue I had with the audiobook was that the narrator doesn't do very distinct voices for other characters, so dialogue (which Lavery is so good at!) was sometimes hard to follow, though as there are only short conversations with one other person throughout the book, this wouldn't be a huge problem.
Overall, I would recommend this book for readers comfortable with smaller, slice-of-life stories and an interest in aging, especially as a middle-to-elder woman. I appreciate NetGalley and HarperVia for the opportunity to not just read but listen to this via eARC and ALC.
Barbara is mildly unpleasant for most of the book though rarely outright objectionable in her frequent opinionated ramblings. The character will be familiar to fans of Daniel M. Lavery, who has long written about mildly unpleasant people with relatable problems. I wasn't enjoying it too much in the beginning, but it's a short, quickly paced book and Barbara does grow throughout it so she never overstays her welcome. By the end, I was rooting for her.
I picked up this book based on it being listed as an LGBTQIA+ read, but besides one sequence on lesbians (some great people but probably not suitable for a best friend) there's no LGBTQIA+ characters or themes in the book. I suspect it was listed that way on the basis of the author's identity, which feels unfortunately simplistic. Queer people can obviously write non-queer books, and that's what Lavery has done here (unless one believes all friendships between women are inherently queer).
I read most of this book but was lucky enough to get the audiobook towards the end of my reading. The conversational tone of the prose makes this one a natural for an audiobook, and the narrator has a good voice for Barbara. She emotes well, and at times that made me more sympathetic to Barbara than I suspect I would have felt while reading. The one issue I had with the audiobook was that the narrator doesn't do very distinct voices for other characters, so dialogue (which Lavery is so good at!) was sometimes hard to follow, though as there are only short conversations with one other person throughout the book, this wouldn't be a huge problem.
Overall, I would recommend this book for readers comfortable with smaller, slice-of-life stories and an interest in aging, especially as a middle-to-elder woman. I appreciate NetGalley and HarperVia for the opportunity to not just read but listen to this via eARC and ALC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I requested and received an eARC of
Meeting New People
by Daniel M. Lavery via NetGalley. Fiftysomething, twice-divorced Barbara finds herself at a crossroads. She has lost yet another best friend. As she deals with the grief of another friendship destroyed, she looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships of her life in hopes of figuring out how to go about making a better selection for her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend. Her opinions may be off-putting, and she may express herself in ways that others don't enjoy, but she also doesn't shy away when she's at fault. Her predicament comes to a head when she is presented with a choice between two potential best friends: will it be the too-young Caitlyn or the unsuitable Other Barbara?
In Meeting New People, Lavery crafts a character that is completely unforgettable. Barbara is many things: she's repulsive, she's opinionated, she's sympathetic, she's deeply human, she's flawed, she's hilarious. There were moments when I absolutely couldn't stand her, but they were equally met with moments when I could barely suppress the laughter caused by one of her wry observations. Barbara is able to recognize when she's at fault, but she also possesses a unique talent for conjuring up all the reasons she wasn't really at fault in the first place. She's a very particular, slightly cruel, and exacting narrator who is endlessly fascinating to spend time with, despite somehow also wanting to find the nearest exit.
This is a novel that opens with the end of a friendship, but manages to unravel into so much more. It’s an astute character study that pushes us to consider the complexities of the friendships that we form, and how we hold space for accountability or avoid it altogether. Meeting New People also questions the fallible conveniences of our memories. What’s written on the page is interesting, but I was equally interested in all of the things that were left unsaid in Barbara’s recollections. The narrative makes her undesirable qualities quite apparent, but we never get to fully explore to see the moment of crises that lead to the destructions of her friendship and the constant anger that tempers all of her relationships. Barbara’s defense mechanisms, as constructed by Lavery, are brilliant in their ability to maintain a distance between the reader and her as a narrator, allowing us to nearly fully see her while preserving her vulnerable underbelly.
In Meeting New People, Lavery crafts a character that is completely unforgettable. Barbara is many things: she's repulsive, she's opinionated, she's sympathetic, she's deeply human, she's flawed, she's hilarious. There were moments when I absolutely couldn't stand her, but they were equally met with moments when I could barely suppress the laughter caused by one of her wry observations. Barbara is able to recognize when she's at fault, but she also possesses a unique talent for conjuring up all the reasons she wasn't really at fault in the first place. She's a very particular, slightly cruel, and exacting narrator who is endlessly fascinating to spend time with, despite somehow also wanting to find the nearest exit.
This is a novel that opens with the end of a friendship, but manages to unravel into so much more. It’s an astute character study that pushes us to consider the complexities of the friendships that we form, and how we hold space for accountability or avoid it altogether. Meeting New People also questions the fallible conveniences of our memories. What’s written on the page is interesting, but I was equally interested in all of the things that were left unsaid in Barbara’s recollections. The narrative makes her undesirable qualities quite apparent, but we never get to fully explore to see the moment of crises that lead to the destructions of her friendship and the constant anger that tempers all of her relationships. Barbara’s defense mechanisms, as constructed by Lavery, are brilliant in their ability to maintain a distance between the reader and her as a narrator, allowing us to nearly fully see her while preserving her vulnerable underbelly.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you HarperCollins and NetGalley for the eARC.
I feel that the blurb for this book is a little bit of a misrepresentation. This is advertised as a book where the narrator, sixtysomething twice-divorced Barbara, "looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships of her life, in hopes of figuring out how to optimize finding her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend." Reading this, one might expect a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of each of these nine best friendships, or at least a focused look at each, before exploring what personal flaws Barbara has discovered in herself with each of these lost friends, and setting out to find a tenth friend after addressing these flaws.
The provided book is far from this. Mainly, the presence of that driving force feels absent. Instead, we get an exhausting trip inside of Barbara's mind. It seems as though this was intended as a sort of stream-of-consciousness style a la Virgina Woolf, but instead just reads as individual moments stretched out to reach a word count. Really, it was as if Lavery had come up with twenty different ideas for conveying something in the book, and rather than doing the work of selecting one or two that best fit the narrative, just put them all in back to back, at the expense of a more pleasant, focused reading experience. Another annoying piece of filler came in the elaborate detail placed on food, leaving the impression at times that I was reading a cookbook rather than literary fiction.
Still, there were some good moments to be had here. Earlier on in the story, there is a better display of an eye for metaphor, with food seeming to represent friendship, Barbara's furniture representing comfort, etc. etc. But sadly this focus gets lost somewhere along the way.
Other good moments included the pot luck scene and the break-up with Susan (even if it was beaten to death), as well as the latter scenes with Lorraine. It's also a shame that the ending seemed so lackluster, as if the word count had been reached and so the story was left hanging.
All in all, a book with lots of potential that was doomed by a lack of focus and pounds of fluff.
I feel that the blurb for this book is a little bit of a misrepresentation. This is advertised as a book where the narrator, sixtysomething twice-divorced Barbara, "looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships of her life, in hopes of figuring out how to optimize finding her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend." Reading this, one might expect a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of each of these nine best friendships, or at least a focused look at each, before exploring what personal flaws Barbara has discovered in herself with each of these lost friends, and setting out to find a tenth friend after addressing these flaws.
The provided book is far from this. Mainly, the presence of that driving force feels absent. Instead, we get an exhausting trip inside of Barbara's mind. It seems as though this was intended as a sort of stream-of-consciousness style a la Virgina Woolf, but instead just reads as individual moments stretched out to reach a word count. Really, it was as if Lavery had come up with twenty different ideas for conveying something in the book, and rather than doing the work of selecting one or two that best fit the narrative, just put them all in back to back, at the expense of a more pleasant, focused reading experience. Another annoying piece of filler came in the elaborate detail placed on food, leaving the impression at times that I was reading a cookbook rather than literary fiction.
Still, there were some good moments to be had here. Earlier on in the story, there is a better display of an eye for metaphor, with food seeming to represent friendship, Barbara's furniture representing comfort, etc. etc. But sadly this focus gets lost somewhere along the way.
Other good moments included the pot luck scene and the break-up with Susan (even if it was beaten to death), as well as the latter scenes with Lorraine. It's also a shame that the ending seemed so lackluster, as if the word count had been reached and so the story was left hanging.
All in all, a book with lots of potential that was doomed by a lack of focus and pounds of fluff.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Audio for the ALC of this audiobook!
Are there audiobooks you’ve chosen solely for the narrator?
Enter Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery, narrated by the incomparable Marcia Gay Harden. I think I read the summary? I don’t even remember, because when I saw her name, I instantly hit play.
Barbara is at another crossroads in her life. In her 60s and twice divorced, her best friend breaks up with her. A best friend. The most important relationship to Barbara. As she deals with her grief, she reflects on her nine previous best friends and where things went wrong with each. Faced with three potential new best friends and determined not to make mistakes this time, she might just find some joy in the unexpected.
This book has great character development and a solid arc. It’s the first person pov of Barbara, and we really get deep into all of her thoughts, feelings, and flaws. Through her eyes we also get to know the quirky people in her life, past and present.
This isn’t the type of book I’d pick up normally. I liked Women’s Hotel okay, but it wasn’t the typical book I love. However, I’m glad I gave this one a chance. What I loved most about it is the importance of friendship. As someone who has never centered romantic relationships in her life, I fully believe in the importance and power of friendships as the most meaningful relationships in our lives and decentering the romantic ones sometimes.
It was a pleasant listen. And I blew through it on my long commute to work, household chores, getting ready in the morning, and during my bedtime routine. It’s out in June, so if it sounds like something you’d be into, add it to your summer reading list.
Are there audiobooks you’ve chosen solely for the narrator?
Enter Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery, narrated by the incomparable Marcia Gay Harden. I think I read the summary? I don’t even remember, because when I saw her name, I instantly hit play.
Barbara is at another crossroads in her life. In her 60s and twice divorced, her best friend breaks up with her. A best friend. The most important relationship to Barbara. As she deals with her grief, she reflects on her nine previous best friends and where things went wrong with each. Faced with three potential new best friends and determined not to make mistakes this time, she might just find some joy in the unexpected.
This book has great character development and a solid arc. It’s the first person pov of Barbara, and we really get deep into all of her thoughts, feelings, and flaws. Through her eyes we also get to know the quirky people in her life, past and present.
This isn’t the type of book I’d pick up normally. I liked Women’s Hotel okay, but it wasn’t the typical book I love. However, I’m glad I gave this one a chance. What I loved most about it is the importance of friendship. As someone who has never centered romantic relationships in her life, I fully believe in the importance and power of friendships as the most meaningful relationships in our lives and decentering the romantic ones sometimes.
It was a pleasant listen. And I blew through it on my long commute to work, household chores, getting ready in the morning, and during my bedtime routine. It’s out in June, so if it sounds like something you’d be into, add it to your summer reading list.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers for the opportunity to read this ARC. I will say with some regret that I really did not like this one at all. It was definitely not for me. I enjoy a story from the perspective of someone older, but this one was just poorly done IMO. The MC just kept rambling on and on about the same things over and over again. And not only that, she kept going off topic with way too many details that felt entirely unnecessary. The random recipes throughout also was kinda weird. I get that she worked in a food setting and was really good at her job, but it felt like I was reading one of those pages you go to for a recipe and you have to read the person's life story as well. That's pretty much what this whole book felt like to me. So many run-on sentences as well that just drove me crazy. I wanted to quit so many time, but I kept reading hoping it would get better. I don't feel like the title matches this book for me either. It's more like the remembrance of old relationships and trying to better the ones she currently has rather than actually meeting anyone new. While I didn't enjoy this one, I did however find some of her thoughts to be relatable. "I hope love is happening to other people all the time, and I'm just the one who hasn't figured it out yet." "I want someone who thinks of me without being prompted, someone who always wants to tell me about her day, who would rather complain to me than anybody else." "I'd been so aware of being lonely that it felt like I was going to be physically ill." All three of these quotes are something I have definitely thought to myself before. I can't say I recommend this one, but maybe someone else will read it and love it.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I adored this book! Barbara is not a likeable character. She's very opinioned, wrong about a lot of things, set in her ways and seems a bit rigid. She does admit when she's wrong, well, when she thinks she's wrong and seems to have a hard time looking at something from someone else's perspective. She is on a journey to find a new best friend. On this journey, she remembers her frienships of years past and how they didn't work out. While we only get her side of things, one can imagine that these characteristics she has now, she has had for a lot of her life. As the story goes on and Barbara tries to find more people to spend time with, I think she starts to realize that sometimes, things don't have to be a certain way for them to be good. People start to surprise her, like her fellow deli worker, other Barbara. She realizes that there is more to her than just being older than Barbara and that she works in the same deli. As her horizons broaden, she tries to reconnect with her son, they seem to always be at odds. I think in a lot of ways, they are more similiar than Barbara wants to admit. There are numerous times in this story that made me laugh and there were also numerous times when something she said sparked something inside of me. Having someone that understands you and is there for you, no matter what, is a universal want. This book really resonated with me. It's not a gripping tale to keep you on the edge of your seat, it's an older woman trying to find her way in the world. It's refreshing, honest and Barbara did grow on me as the story went on. I will definately be reccomending this book! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advanced Reader Copy that I so enjoyed!
May 4, 2026
Meeting New People by Daniel Lavery was an interesting character study on an aging woman as she tries to make a new best friend. Barbara is almost 58 and just experienced a friend break-up with her decades-long best friend Susan. In realizing that she has very particular needs in a best friend, Barbara sets out, trying to find who will next fill that role. In this time, she also internally processes all of her past best friends and how those relationships dissipated. In trying to meet new people, she also realizes that she has historically not treated those in her life well, and she decides to change her ways. Randomly dispersed in this story are recipes and anecdotes filled with dry humor.
I have to admit, Barbara is an unlikable character. She is not the type of older woman that a person would strive to be, and yet I related with her so much. Losing a friend is really hard and Barbara took it personally in a way that I have also done. She's judgmental and cynical and nosy, but aren't we all. I think what makes Barbara so unlikable is that we can all see ourselves in her and it is the parts of us that we don't like that are so similar to her.
There were points in which Barbara's personality felt more like a caricature of a middle-aged woman, rather than an actual woman, but it didn't really take anything away from the story, just something that came up for me while listening. Also, the narrator, Marcia Gay Harden, for this was incredible. I thought she performed the story excellently and I will definitely look for other stories she narrates.
Thank you to NetGalley HarperAudio for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.
I have to admit, Barbara is an unlikable character. She is not the type of older woman that a person would strive to be, and yet I related with her so much. Losing a friend is really hard and Barbara took it personally in a way that I have also done. She's judgmental and cynical and nosy, but aren't we all. I think what makes Barbara so unlikable is that we can all see ourselves in her and it is the parts of us that we don't like that are so similar to her.
There were points in which Barbara's personality felt more like a caricature of a middle-aged woman, rather than an actual woman, but it didn't really take anything away from the story, just something that came up for me while listening. Also, the narrator, Marcia Gay Harden, for this was incredible. I thought she performed the story excellently and I will definitely look for other stories she narrates.
Thank you to NetGalley HarperAudio for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
{thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this audiobook!}
This book isn't going to be for everyone, but it is VERY MUCH the book for me. Especially on audio. I laughed throughout the entire thing and am very much obsessed with Barbara. Is she totally infuriating, annoying, self-obsessed, and overall unlikeable?? YES. Is she also completely entertaining, hilarious, and speaking some kernels of truth? Yup. I don't have to necessarily want to be friends with a character in order to enjoy reading about them and Barbara is a true example of that (though I may actually want to try to be friends with her).
Meeting New People is basically one long stream of conscious from Barbara and works incredibly well on audio, especially with narrator Marcia Gay Harden. It starts with her best friend breaking up with her. From here, Barbara goes into many of the other best friends she's lost over the years and her efforts to secure a new best friend. Interspersed with this, we get A LOT of Barbara's thoughts and opinions, many of which are off-putting and some of which.... well, she's not wrong about.
I think as a "foodie" and someone who works in the food world, I had an especially strong connection to this book. Barbara works at the deli counter at a gourmet food hall and loves cooking and has a lot of strong opinions about food. I was especially laughing at her commentary on "dessert people" AKA people who make liking dessert their entire personality.
Anyway, I can see why some won't enjoy this book, but I'm so happy it exists as I loved it and can definitely see myself listening to it or reading it again in the future. I highly recommend it on audio!
This book isn't going to be for everyone, but it is VERY MUCH the book for me. Especially on audio. I laughed throughout the entire thing and am very much obsessed with Barbara. Is she totally infuriating, annoying, self-obsessed, and overall unlikeable?? YES. Is she also completely entertaining, hilarious, and speaking some kernels of truth? Yup. I don't have to necessarily want to be friends with a character in order to enjoy reading about them and Barbara is a true example of that (though I may actually want to try to be friends with her).
Meeting New People is basically one long stream of conscious from Barbara and works incredibly well on audio, especially with narrator Marcia Gay Harden. It starts with her best friend breaking up with her. From here, Barbara goes into many of the other best friends she's lost over the years and her efforts to secure a new best friend. Interspersed with this, we get A LOT of Barbara's thoughts and opinions, many of which are off-putting and some of which.... well, she's not wrong about.
I think as a "foodie" and someone who works in the food world, I had an especially strong connection to this book. Barbara works at the deli counter at a gourmet food hall and loves cooking and has a lot of strong opinions about food. I was especially laughing at her commentary on "dessert people" AKA people who make liking dessert their entire personality.
Anyway, I can see why some won't enjoy this book, but I'm so happy it exists as I loved it and can definitely see myself listening to it or reading it again in the future. I highly recommend it on audio!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
3.5 stars
I've not met many characters whom I'd call insidious in a complimentary way, but Barbara is definitely one of these.
Readers get right into Barbara's every thought, and at first, this takes some acclimation. Barbara has strong feelings about food (everyone should), the value of being in a six-floor walk-up, and the way folks should and should not behave. The paticularly noteworthy aspect about Barbara's feelings is that readers get to know so many of them. We are planted snuggly in that peculiar brain, and we don't leave. Since some of Barbara's opinions are a touch, uh, frustrating, she is not the easiest character to live in. However, she absolutely grew on me as the novel progressed.
This is a close character study, and there's an insight that fans of Lavery's recent _Women's Hotel_ novels will appreciate. It's also charming to spend time with a woman of a certain age, regardless of her challenges. Barbara has a lot to learn, but I was happy to find that I may have learned something from her, too.
A huge bonus for those who opt for the audiobook can be found in the outstanding narration by Marcia Gay Harden. That's how I experienced this novel, and I truly loved the listen.
Lavery has such a characteristic style, and this novel reflects that quite well. I enjoyed this and will - as always - look forward to more from this author.
*Special thanks to NetGalley, HarperVia, and HarperAudio Adult for this arc and alc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I've not met many characters whom I'd call insidious in a complimentary way, but Barbara is definitely one of these.
Readers get right into Barbara's every thought, and at first, this takes some acclimation. Barbara has strong feelings about food (everyone should), the value of being in a six-floor walk-up, and the way folks should and should not behave. The paticularly noteworthy aspect about Barbara's feelings is that readers get to know so many of them. We are planted snuggly in that peculiar brain, and we don't leave. Since some of Barbara's opinions are a touch, uh, frustrating, she is not the easiest character to live in. However, she absolutely grew on me as the novel progressed.
This is a close character study, and there's an insight that fans of Lavery's recent _Women's Hotel_ novels will appreciate. It's also charming to spend time with a woman of a certain age, regardless of her challenges. Barbara has a lot to learn, but I was happy to find that I may have learned something from her, too.
A huge bonus for those who opt for the audiobook can be found in the outstanding narration by Marcia Gay Harden. That's how I experienced this novel, and I truly loved the listen.
Lavery has such a characteristic style, and this novel reflects that quite well. I enjoyed this and will - as always - look forward to more from this author.
*Special thanks to NetGalley, HarperVia, and HarperAudio Adult for this arc and alc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
A lot to unpack here! I really loved this book because it touched on so many points of the star that is Barbara. The author really did an excellent job here in so many ways, as Barbara comes off as somewhat of an asshole early, but to me, at least, as the book went on, she becomes more human to the reader. She knows what she wants, she knows what and whom she likes and doesn't like, and as we learn from the lady herself, that's ok. Until Susan breaks off the friendship, and she decides to examine every best friendship that ended. Susan, we find out, is the 9th "best friend" to exit stage right from Barbara's life. What follows is unflinching and a breath of fresh air as far as novels go. It absolutely made this reader put the book down multiple times last night and think about the close friendships I have had in my past. It also makes me question some of my current friends! 🤔 Patterns of behavior are wild, and the author and character do such a great job of unpacking them, refolding them, and throwing them into the fire pit. As sad as that is, it is often needed. The only thing that made this four instead of five stars is that the blurb makes it sound like we will be getting a comprehensive look at all of Barbara's past friends as she tries to figure shit out, that is not quite the case. But thanks to Daniel Lavery for this book. Well done!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I kind of knew, even before opening the reviews, that maybe not everyone would love this as much as I did.
Because if I’m being honest, I think most of us have at least a trace of a Barbara living in our heads. That hyper-observant, slightly neurotic (narcissistic), constantly narrating and overanalyzing version of other people (ourselves) that we’d prefer not to admit exists.
I finished this in a day. Apparently, I find dysfunction entertaining.
If you’re looking for a moral, a narrator you’d invite to brunch, or a message you can embroider on a pillow, you’ll be disappointed. If you enjoy marinating in someone else’s unfiltered, petty internal monologue, you might actually have a good time.
Honestly, who could possibly resent a spiteful old woman in denial about her own spite? It’s practically a national pastime.
There’s a certain early-2000s acidity here, the kind you’d find in novels where the plot is just a woman’s internal monologue slowly eating itself. Think Jennifer Weiner on a bad day, or Meg Wolitzer if she stopped being literary, or maybe even like an updated Family Happiness, told from one perspective. If that makes sense to you, congratulations. You’re in the club.
thank you so much to netgalley and HarperAudio Adult for the ARC to review!
Because if I’m being honest, I think most of us have at least a trace of a Barbara living in our heads. That hyper-observant, slightly neurotic (narcissistic), constantly narrating and overanalyzing version of other people (ourselves) that we’d prefer not to admit exists.
I finished this in a day. Apparently, I find dysfunction entertaining.
If you’re looking for a moral, a narrator you’d invite to brunch, or a message you can embroider on a pillow, you’ll be disappointed. If you enjoy marinating in someone else’s unfiltered, petty internal monologue, you might actually have a good time.
Honestly, who could possibly resent a spiteful old woman in denial about her own spite? It’s practically a national pastime.
There’s a certain early-2000s acidity here, the kind you’d find in novels where the plot is just a woman’s internal monologue slowly eating itself. Think Jennifer Weiner on a bad day, or Meg Wolitzer if she stopped being literary, or maybe even like an updated Family Happiness, told from one perspective. If that makes sense to you, congratulations. You’re in the club.
thank you so much to netgalley and HarperAudio Adult for the ARC to review!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This is the book for those thoughts we sometimes have, and that we know aren't the most acceptable thing for everyone to know you are having.
Sometimes people are insufferable and lack self-awareness and ‘Meeting New People’ bring us Barbara right at that moment. This lady is observing everyone and she has an opinion on EVERYONE and EVERYTHING, especially on the people that are or have been in her life.
A little personal note on the food recipes..i love to cook and I certainly took notes. The description was so good and so interesting, made me want to get up and cook, it was inspiring.
I was already familiar with Daniel M. Lavery's writing style from reading Women's Hotel, it flows really way and when you realize it, it's done. With this book, it flowed as well as the other, and combined with Marcia Gay Harden's perfect narration, who knew how to deliver the perfect intonation, Barbara became a fun experience, as if I were observing her under the microscope and just rooting for her to do better, please.
Even so, I loved that the ending was on a note of personal growth and Barbra attempting at betting herself and filling her life with better actions and mindset.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for sending me this ALC in exchange for an honest review.
Sometimes people are insufferable and lack self-awareness and ‘Meeting New People’ bring us Barbara right at that moment. This lady is observing everyone and she has an opinion on EVERYONE and EVERYTHING, especially on the people that are or have been in her life.
A little personal note on the food recipes..i love to cook and I certainly took notes. The description was so good and so interesting, made me want to get up and cook, it was inspiring.
I was already familiar with Daniel M. Lavery's writing style from reading Women's Hotel, it flows really way and when you realize it, it's done. With this book, it flowed as well as the other, and combined with Marcia Gay Harden's perfect narration, who knew how to deliver the perfect intonation, Barbara became a fun experience, as if I were observing her under the microscope and just rooting for her to do better, please.
Even so, I loved that the ending was on a note of personal growth and Barbra attempting at betting herself and filling her life with better actions and mindset.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for sending me this ALC in exchange for an honest review.
May 18, 2026
This was such an unusual read. It’s definitely a book that you need to read at the right time, and in the right mindset/mood. Reading it was like sitting with someone, just listening to her story, along for her journey of self discovery.
It’s a perfect read for just wanting to hear a story, experience a perspective, and for when you can’t handle any huge plot twists or stressful unexpected events. It’s definitely not a book for everyone, but for the right sort of person in the right phase of life, it’s just right.
I admit that part of my draw to the book was having a friendship abruptly end after 18 years with no warning, so I heavily identified with the main character. I also found so many of her one liners and witty observations to be charming and relatable.
I don’t think Barbara and I would get along in real life, but connecting with this character through this story felt vulnerable and true; a glimpse into what life looks like 20 years down the road.
Read if: you like a good story, want to feel like you’re listening to someone sort through their shit and become a new version of themselves while remaining unmistakably human, like a quirky story, are a fan of Fredrik Backman.
Don’t read if: you need huge plot twists or excitement to stay engaged.
It’s a perfect read for just wanting to hear a story, experience a perspective, and for when you can’t handle any huge plot twists or stressful unexpected events. It’s definitely not a book for everyone, but for the right sort of person in the right phase of life, it’s just right.
I admit that part of my draw to the book was having a friendship abruptly end after 18 years with no warning, so I heavily identified with the main character. I also found so many of her one liners and witty observations to be charming and relatable.
I don’t think Barbara and I would get along in real life, but connecting with this character through this story felt vulnerable and true; a glimpse into what life looks like 20 years down the road.
Read if: you like a good story, want to feel like you’re listening to someone sort through their shit and become a new version of themselves while remaining unmistakably human, like a quirky story, are a fan of Fredrik Backman.
Don’t read if: you need huge plot twists or excitement to stay engaged.
Review of advance copy received from Shelf Awareness Pro
Meeting New People follows Barbara, a 58-year-old, twice-divorced woman reeling from a painful and abrupt breakup with her best friend, Susan. Their friendship ends just before a beautifuly prepared dinner by Barbara, when Susan gives Barbara a list of grievances. It left Barbara hurt and defensive.
At first, Barbara is unlikeable. The novel immerses the reader into her stream of consciousness, revealing her sharp, often snobbish judgments about others alongside reflections on her failed marriages, fractured friendships, and distant relationship with her son. It's no wonder why she can't keep friends or husbands. Her perspective is often uncomfortable and also darkly compelling.
Barbara decides to find a new best friend; she has a list of what she wants of this new friend. What begins as a search for companionship evolves into a journey of self-examination. Through her interactions and missteps, she gradually gains insight into her own behavior and the patterns that have shaped her life. Barbara begins to reframe how she sees both herself and those around her. She discovers that meaningful connection starts with her own self-awareness.
At first, Barbara is unlikeable. The novel immerses the reader into her stream of consciousness, revealing her sharp, often snobbish judgments about others alongside reflections on her failed marriages, fractured friendships, and distant relationship with her son. It's no wonder why she can't keep friends or husbands. Her perspective is often uncomfortable and also darkly compelling.
Barbara decides to find a new best friend; she has a list of what she wants of this new friend. What begins as a search for companionship evolves into a journey of self-examination. Through her interactions and missteps, she gradually gains insight into her own behavior and the patterns that have shaped her life. Barbara begins to reframe how she sees both herself and those around her. She discovers that meaningful connection starts with her own self-awareness.
May 17, 2026
Barbara’s best friend just broke up with her. As a sixty something woman she can’t fathom this late in life departure of ways and begins to reflect on her life and friendships and the task at hand, finding a new best friend.
Barbara is a pill, she is the epitome of privileged boomer energy and yet I found her character’s brutal honesty and off base opinions rather hilarious and refreshing at times. Barbara seems so set in her ways yet there are these surprises of joyfulness and discovery that sing. She is rather unlikeable a curmudgeon with the self awareness that only hits when it suits and yet we all know a Barbara and this makes her character study so fun to unwind.
Lavery is clever, the way he explores the notions of loss for those still here, how friendship is often overshadowed by grief or the dissolution of romantic relationships and yet we see how complex it is to navigate and move through. I appreciated the story for its candour and ability to probe at the language of platonic connection. This is a divisive book not everyone will enjoy Barbara’s brand of opinionated, but I sure did.
Barbara is a pill, she is the epitome of privileged boomer energy and yet I found her character’s brutal honesty and off base opinions rather hilarious and refreshing at times. Barbara seems so set in her ways yet there are these surprises of joyfulness and discovery that sing. She is rather unlikeable a curmudgeon with the self awareness that only hits when it suits and yet we all know a Barbara and this makes her character study so fun to unwind.
Lavery is clever, the way he explores the notions of loss for those still here, how friendship is often overshadowed by grief or the dissolution of romantic relationships and yet we see how complex it is to navigate and move through. I appreciated the story for its candour and ability to probe at the language of platonic connection. This is a divisive book not everyone will enjoy Barbara’s brand of opinionated, but I sure did.
Review of advance copy received from Shelf Awareness Pro
Barbara is upset when her best friend spends hours breaking up with her. When she realizes that she has lost nine best friends in her lifetime, she sets about correcting herself enough to hold onto a best friend in her old age.
This book is mostly a stream of consciousness from Barbara. This narrative alternates from tedious to vaguely interesting, to what is this doing in the story. As the story goes on the reader begins to realize that Barbara is a very selective narrator with a very selective memory. Even her details of the people speaking to her in the moment are given in such a way that makes you realize there is more to the story than Barbara wants you to know. It gave an interesting flavor to an otherwise bland plot.
The book picks up a little toward the end, as Barbara begins to make a conscious effort to become part of her community as she searches for that elusive best friend. By the end I was sort of charmed by her, although I definitely do not want to be her best friend. I did love reading about her recipes and cooking techniques.
This book is mostly a stream of consciousness from Barbara. This narrative alternates from tedious to vaguely interesting, to what is this doing in the story. As the story goes on the reader begins to realize that Barbara is a very selective narrator with a very selective memory. Even her details of the people speaking to her in the moment are given in such a way that makes you realize there is more to the story than Barbara wants you to know. It gave an interesting flavor to an otherwise bland plot.
The book picks up a little toward the end, as Barbara begins to make a conscious effort to become part of her community as she searches for that elusive best friend. By the end I was sort of charmed by her, although I definitely do not want to be her best friend. I did love reading about her recipes and cooking techniques.
Review of advance copy received from Goodreads Giveaways
Thankyou to #GoodreadsGiveaway for the opportunity to read this ARC.
Barbara Foerster is in her sixties, divorced twice with one son Ezra and a eighteen month old granddaughter Scottie. She loves her job and enjoys taking the bus to work in the deli at the Wyckoff Market Hall.
Her best friend Susan decided their friendship must come to an end and now over the years she has lost nine of the best friendships of her life. Even though Barbara has lot of friends, she is trying to figuring out how to optimize finding her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend. She knows she's doing something wrong but can't imagine what it is. Barbara is sometimes harsh, critical, sarcastic, judgemental, opinionated, and wrong about many things, but she also doesn't shy away when she's at fault.
The turning point of her predicament comes from Barbara's choices and in her friends, as she tries not to repeat the mistakes of the past as she tries to transform into a better person.
Barbara Foerster is in her sixties, divorced twice with one son Ezra and a eighteen month old granddaughter Scottie. She loves her job and enjoys taking the bus to work in the deli at the Wyckoff Market Hall.
Her best friend Susan decided their friendship must come to an end and now over the years she has lost nine of the best friendships of her life. Even though Barbara has lot of friends, she is trying to figuring out how to optimize finding her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend. She knows she's doing something wrong but can't imagine what it is. Barbara is sometimes harsh, critical, sarcastic, judgemental, opinionated, and wrong about many things, but she also doesn't shy away when she's at fault.
The turning point of her predicament comes from Barbara's choices and in her friends, as she tries not to repeat the mistakes of the past as she tries to transform into a better person.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Meeting New People by Daniel M Lavery. Thanks to @harpervia for the gifted copy ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Barbara has been divorced twice but she’s also broken up with by nine best friends in her life. She looks back upon them as she tried to find a new best friend.
This one had some pretty funny moments and a dry sense of humor, but you definitely have to be okay with inner dialogue because that’s pretty much all that it is. Barbara is an interesting character so you won’t be bored, but know the style of the book. I liked how it showed, and discussed, the difficulty of making new friends after your kids are grown.
“Women are really incredible. I don’t mean that it’s fun to lose a man’s affection, because of course it isn’t. But there’s nothing in the world as immovable as a woman who’s finished with you.”
Read if you like:
-Older curmudgeon characters
-One point of view narratives
-Inner dialogue
-Books about friendship
Meeting New People comes out 6/2.
Barbara has been divorced twice but she’s also broken up with by nine best friends in her life. She looks back upon them as she tried to find a new best friend.
This one had some pretty funny moments and a dry sense of humor, but you definitely have to be okay with inner dialogue because that’s pretty much all that it is. Barbara is an interesting character so you won’t be bored, but know the style of the book. I liked how it showed, and discussed, the difficulty of making new friends after your kids are grown.
“Women are really incredible. I don’t mean that it’s fun to lose a man’s affection, because of course it isn’t. But there’s nothing in the world as immovable as a woman who’s finished with you.”
Read if you like:
-Older curmudgeon characters
-One point of view narratives
-Inner dialogue
-Books about friendship
Meeting New People comes out 6/2.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
What do you want in a best friend and how do you keep a best friend are questions asked in this novel exploring friendship.
Barbara Foester is 58, twice-divorced and has a rocky relationship with her son. She’s a bit of a curmudgeon in a way, so she’s shocked when her current best friend, Susan Montgomery dumps list of her faults during a breakup session. Fit Barbara a best friend is a must. So she starts to analyze her past relationships and comes to realize she may be what Susan was saying about her. So Barbara starts to widen her circle to look for friends.
This is a character- driven novel. It’s a witty and wry exploration of self and friendship. What does one have to offer to be a friend? Why does one self-sabotage friendship? The author, a man, dies a creditable job with his female narrator as well. Barbara isn’t the most likable of characters but she’s realistic in her acerbic way.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and HarperVia for granting me access to this ARC.
Barbara Foester is 58, twice-divorced and has a rocky relationship with her son. She’s a bit of a curmudgeon in a way, so she’s shocked when her current best friend, Susan Montgomery dumps list of her faults during a breakup session. Fit Barbara a best friend is a must. So she starts to analyze her past relationships and comes to realize she may be what Susan was saying about her. So Barbara starts to widen her circle to look for friends.
This is a character- driven novel. It’s a witty and wry exploration of self and friendship. What does one have to offer to be a friend? Why does one self-sabotage friendship? The author, a man, dies a creditable job with his female narrator as well. Barbara isn’t the most likable of characters but she’s realistic in her acerbic way.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and HarperVia for granting me access to this ARC.
April 17, 2026
I received an ARC copy of this book from The Garden Wall Bookstore. I loved the premise of exploring past failed friendships, and a protagonist in her sixties is a rare gem, but I didn’t think the story did Barbara justice. I don’t believe there is any woman in her sixties with such a bland perspective. I was ready for an interior story, but there was very little driving force to move the story along, and Barbara’s inner monologue felt like I was being talked at for hours. There were many tangents with seemingly no purpose, and I kept waiting to find meaning behind all her quirks but never really did.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This made me so hungry! The food descriptions had me salivating and taking notes.
I absolutely loved the narrator's voice for this story, it was the perfect one for the character and it really made me feel like I was listening to an old friend.
I liked the book overall, but unfortunately, I was never really emotionally invested in the main character. She didn't bore me but I never was fully engaged in her quest either. I think she didn't show enough emotion for me to really root for her.
But I still had a good time and I enjoyed listening to her thoughts.
Thank you HarperAudio for this ARC!
I absolutely loved the narrator's voice for this story, it was the perfect one for the character and it really made me feel like I was listening to an old friend.
I liked the book overall, but unfortunately, I was never really emotionally invested in the main character. She didn't bore me but I never was fully engaged in her quest either. I think she didn't show enough emotion for me to really root for her.
But I still had a good time and I enjoyed listening to her thoughts.
Thank you HarperAudio for this ARC!
April 8, 2026
I do love a good "charming curmudgeon encounters the need for personal change" story. I've been a fan of Daniel Lavery's writing since The Toast (RIP) and his trademark humor, emotional intelligence, and finely-tuned ear for dialogue (and sense of what people really mean) are all on display here. Our narrator was a delight to be exasperated with - I will say that she got really close to being *too* curmudgeonly for me to finish the book, but I'm glad I did. The narrative arc made it absolutely worth it. Who among us would not seem like a curmudgeon, a weirdo, a person woefully confined to their own bubble in someone else's eyes? We all have our weird little ways and, sometimes, miraculously, we are able to find human connection nonetheless. Thank you HarperVia for the ARC!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
this book was just at the right time for me. I,too, have lost some friendships and find it somewhat hard to find new friends. I have relocated multiple times across the country at the behest of my exhusband and his job. now in my seventies, there are no mother groups with little kids to blend into my world. found that where I live now, not a lot of people moved from their hometown. The Barbara in the story must forge a different direction for friends. and perhaps be less caustic with conversations with her son.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I was wanting to like this book so badly after reading the synopsis, but I found it was far from what I thought it was going to be.
Barbara, to put it plainly, just kind of sucks? I get the friendship breakup but my God, it felt like nails on a chalkboard. And then the worst part. It also related heavily with me. So now because of this book, I get to second guess who I am as a person!
The narrating was top notch though. I will give it that.
Either way, thank you NetGalley for the early access!
Barbara, to put it plainly, just kind of sucks? I get the friendship breakup but my God, it felt like nails on a chalkboard. And then the worst part. It also related heavily with me. So now because of this book, I get to second guess who I am as a person!
The narrating was top notch though. I will give it that.
Either way, thank you NetGalley for the early access!
Review of advance copy
I got an ARC from Shelf awareness.com. This is a strange novel. Barbara had a friend of many years drop her and feels that she must go out and find a new bestie. This is a painstakingly long process. Over the first half of the novel she spends basically analyzing her situation. There are many, many pages with long paragraphs with no dialogue. Only about two thirds of the way into the novel does she actually change some of her off putting behaviors and actually go out and meet someone. The first half is pretty slow.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery is a sharp, character-driven novel that offers plenty of the author's trademark wit, though it occasionally gets bogged down by its own structure.
Barbara can be deeply unlikable, self-absorbed, and exasperating to spend 288 pages with.
This is a clever and deeply human look at the effects of isolation and connection. It is well worth a read for fans of character-focused literary fiction, but the repetitive narrative loops keep it from being a 5 star read for me.
Barbara can be deeply unlikable, self-absorbed, and exasperating to spend 288 pages with.
This is a clever and deeply human look at the effects of isolation and connection. It is well worth a read for fans of character-focused literary fiction, but the repetitive narrative loops keep it from being a 5 star read for me.
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