Good Company

by Kate Christensen

From the brilliant Kate Christensen, winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for The Great Man, comes a compelling, searing, funny novel about women, sex, power, and self-reckoning.

Ever since her father broke her heart when she was nine, Julia Heimdahl has tried to be good company for bad men: a jovial drinking companion, an easygoing, witty non-complainer, one of the boys. Now a literary novelist in late middle age and late mid-career, she is at a moment of crisis, although she doesn’t know it yet.

The novel takes place over the course of a weekend-long book festival at Baldwin College, which happens to be Julia’s alma mater, where she has come to promote her recently published memoir. She’s been placed on a panel with a fellow memoirist named Ellis Blackwell, a man so outrageously flirtatious and fawningly flattering, Julia is almost too disarmed to recognize how dangerous he is.

Interweaving excerpts from Julia's memoir with her encounters with important people from her past—the woman she was in love with in college, her old New York mentor, her male editor, her literary nemesis, a former graduate student—Good Company examines what it really means to be “good company" as Julia faces her demons and comes to terms with what she really wants from sex, life, and work.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Adult

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2026

About the author

KATE CHRISTENSEN is the author of eleven novels, most recently The Arizona Triangle (as Sydney Graves) and Good Company. She has also published two food-centric memoirs. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. She lives in northern New Mexico with her husband and their two dogs.

Reviews

[Lindsay]

Due to her issues with her father abandoning her when she was young, Julia has always been good support for awful men. She is headed to her alma mater, Baldwin College, for a weekend long book festival where she is on a panel discussing her recent memoir. She is joined by a fellow writer, Ellis Blackwell, who recently wrote a memoir as well. He is incredibly flirtatious and flattering of Julia - distracting her from how dangerous he actually is.

The ending of the book was satisfying, but the work getting there was way too tedious. I personally did not enjoy how the story was interweaved with excerpt's from Julia's memoir along with what was going on in real time - I feel like as time went on the excerpts that were pulled had less and less relevance to what was going on while earlier in the book they matched better with the real time chapters. I just found Julia to be such a wet rag a lot of the time, which I understand is mainly due to her family trauma, but damn girl you seriously made some insane choices in your life and in my opinion are annoying as hell (she has severe internalized misogny). In no way am I saying this is a bad book, it's just not the book for me.

Thanks Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Why did I read? well I thought this was more going to be a story about a woman reflecting on her wild times in college, so clearly I misread the synospis lol. Would I read again? No

[Julie]

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway contest in exchange for an honest review. This is the first book I have read by this author and definitely the last.

Julia Heimdahl is on her way to an extended weekend long book festival at Baldwin College, her alma mater, because she is on a panel discussing her recent memoir.

It becomes quite clear that her father abusing her mother and abandoning her as a child has led to her making poor decisions as an adult and blaming this on her crappy childhood.

On the plus side, I did think the writing is absolutely beautiful but alternating chapters between her present life and her autobiography disrupted the flow of the story.

Unfortunately, this book definitely was not my cup of tea.

[Emma Sweet]

I struggled to get through this one. I am pathologically unable to DNF a book, so got through this. I’m a liberal feminist and share a worldview similar to the narrator, but there’s a generational gap. But something about the tone felt very self-serving and off in a way that’s hard to articulate. Maybe I missed an ironic point, but the narrator came across as narcissistic while describing others in her life of being narcissists. That POV is a struggle for me

[Olivia]

Thank you Harper books for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review . I was intrigued by this book but it really wasn’t what I was expecting . Julia, a woman who’s father abandoned her as a child went through life making poor choices because of that and pretty much blamed her family and childhood on her bad behavior as an adult which was kinda annoying. I think this novel had beautiful writing but the back and fourth from her present life to excerpts in her memoir weren’t always relevant and was just all over the place. This was not a bad book but wasn’t the book for me

[Taryn]

Dnf @ page 6

[Leslee Hale]

DNF. I read most of it, but nothing was happening.

[Heather]

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for the ARC.

📖 **Summary**

Julia Heimdahl has spent much of her life trying to be the kind of woman who is easy to like, easy to be around, and easy to overlook. Returning to her alma mater for a weekend book festival, Julia finds herself reflecting on her past, her relationships, her career, and the choices that have shaped her life. As old wounds, friendships, loves, and regrets resurface, she is forced to confront who she really is and what she truly wants moving forward.

💭 **Review**

This was such an interesting reading experience for me because it felt very different from the books I typically pick up. It isn't driven by shocking twists, high stakes suspense, or fast paced action. Instead, it quietly invites readers into Julia's life and asks them to sit with her memories, mistakes, relationships, and self discoveries.

What immediately stood out to me was the writing style. The structure blends present day events with excerpts from Julia's memoir, creating a layered reading experience that slowly reveals who she is and how she became the person we meet at the beginning of the novel. At first it took me a little time to settle into the rhythm, but once I did, I found myself completely invested.

Julia is not a perfect character, and honestly, that is what made her feel so real. She is funny, flawed, vulnerable, self aware at times and completely blind at others. Watching her reflect on decades of choices, relationships, and disappointments felt authentic and surprisingly emotional.

One of my favorite aspects of the novel was the friendships. So often stories focus entirely on romance, but this book gives equal weight to friendship, mentorship, and the complicated connections we carry with us throughout our lives. The relationships felt messy, genuine, and recognizable. They reminded me that the people who shape us are not always romantic partners.

I also appreciated how the story explored aging, identity, ambition, and the expectations women often place on themselves. Julia's journey is deeply personal, but many of her struggles felt universal. There were several moments where I found myself nodding along because her thoughts and insecurities felt so relatable.

The book is sharp, insightful, and often surprisingly funny. There is an honesty woven throughout the narrative that made me feel as though Julia was sitting across from me sharing her life story over coffee. I loved that the novel wasn't afraid to examine uncomfortable truths while still maintaining warmth and humor.

This is definitely the type of book that grows stronger the more time you spend with it. It isn't trying to rush readers from one dramatic moment to the next. Instead, it slowly unfolds, allowing the characters and themes to take center stage.

By the end, I found myself appreciating the journey far more than I expected. It is thoughtful, reflective, and filled with observations about life, friendship, love, and self acceptance that stayed with me long after I finished.

❓ **Would I Recommend?**

Absolutely. If you enjoy character driven literary fiction, memoir style storytelling, complex relationships, and stories about self discovery, this is a rewarding and thoughtful read. Readers looking for action may find it slower paced, but those who enjoy rich character work and emotional depth will find plenty to appreciate here.

[friday reads]

4/5⭐ - This novel grew on me the longer I sat with it, and I think its strongest element is the literary themes and social topics it touches on in impactful ways.

(Thank you Harper Books for the ARC, all thoughts are my own).

Good Company follows Julia, a middle aged writer who just published an unapologetic memoir about her dysfunctional childhood, confusing teenagehood, wild college years and the subsequent dissolution of her marriage. The story is split between Julia's current day attending a weekend book festival on her former college campus and actual excerpts of Julia’s memoir where we learn about her backstory and interpersonal relationships.

I felt so many topics relating to womanhood were explored with immense veracity and depth, such as: internalized misogyny, rape culture, sexuality and power, desire, toxic parents that you despise yet yearn for their attention, and the conditioning girls go through at a young age to compete with eachother and make excuses for mens bad behavior.

Particularly when it came to the times we saw Julia’s early childhood and navigating the relationship with her distant hateful father and her mentally ill mother resonated deeply.

I will say I found myself the least interested in the memoir excerpts as the story went on as they began to feel less and less relevant compared to Julia’s current day revelations and growth. I also felt the pacing was inconsistent at times.

Overall though I enjoyed myself and found it decently thought provoking and relatable!

[Julie]

Julia is visiting her alma mater for a book festival. A moderately successful novelist, she is promoting her recently released memoir, the basis of which is her tendency to foster toxic relationships. Abandoned by her father as a child and pitted against her two sisters by her demanding mother, Julia has some demons in her past. The weekend of the festival, she meets fellow writer and panelist Ellis Blackwell, and she is almost disarmed by his flattery and flirtation. Almost.

I enjoyed the alternating chapters of book festival narrative and memoir excerpts. Beware: Julia has a lot of trauma to unpack. But she writes like Pat Conroy, which I loved. She’s eloquent and angry and justified. I don’t think every reader will appreciate Julia’s blunt candor, but I definitely connected to her on so many levels. Besides the liberal arts education and English degree, there were the darker concerns (daddy issues, substance abuse, self-sabotage) that were relatable. It was a well-crafted novel with some heavy themes, but also very complex characters. Julia felt like a kindred spirit and I really enjoyed the experience.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher.

[Glen Helfand]

Fiction about memoir. There's something auto going here. Good Company concerns an author named Julia who in middle age has penned a memoir and extends the This is Your Life moment into the present, at a writing conference that so happens to be hosted by her alma mater. And so there she has interactions with people from her past, instructive and discomfiting. There are chapters from the 'memoir' alternating with the experience of the conference, an strategy to build out the character, who one seems a lot like the actual author.

I came across Kate Christensen's work in a review copy years ago and was impressed. I've followed her work even if her work has veered into more conventional territory. This book, while set in literary circles, has a mainstream feel in the writing-- some characters seem written by convention, descriptions a bit on the stereotypical side-- the snooty, manipulative Southern writer, Julia's hot younger boyfriend, her female author rivals. It's a feminist-leaning narrative in which the narrator is steeped in her own flaws, knowing. Though I couldn't tell if the memoir within the novel was meant to be good or problematic. Yet for those of us interested in memoirs, it raises some mildly interesting questions about the intentions and veracity of the form.

[Taliena]

This is a book about nothing, and unfortunately not in a way that worked for me. There is very little actual plot, and most of the book is spent inside the main character’s head while she psychoanalyzes herself, her childhood, and nearly every relationship she has ever had.

I usually have no problem with literary fiction that is more interested in people than plot, but the writing here felt pretentious rather than sophisticated. There is a difference between elevated prose and writing that feels like it wants to make sure you know how smart the author is, and this landed firmly in the second category for me. The vocabulary, the constant introspection, and the main character’s very curated life history all started to feel like a lot.

She has seemingly lived everywhere, done everything, known everyone, and developed an opinion about all of it. By the end, I felt less like I had gotten an intimate look at someone’s life and more like I had spent hours listening to someone explain themselves to me. There were moments I found interesting, but overall this one just did not work for me.

[Billi]

𝓡𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 3/5 ⭐️

Good Company by Kate Christensen

I do not read a ton of literary fiction so this felt different for me! I enjoyed that it was not something I would generally pick up on my own! I did enjoy the story for the most part but some of it just did not quite resonate with me and I didn’t really enjoy the main character much. I liked her relationship with her boyfriend and how open and honest they were with each other.

Thank you to Harper for the gifted physical copy of this book!

I did have a little bit of a hard time with the writing style.

[Patrycja]

Unfortunately, Good Company just wasn’t the right fit for me. While I can appreciate Kate Christensen’s honest writing, I struggled to connect with the material.

The constant shifting between personal memoir and the present-day narrative felt disjointed and interrupted the flow. Additionally, the heavy focus on existential soul-searching and intimacy didn’t resonate with me, as the explicit focus on sex didn’t add much value for my reading experience.

I went into it expecting a different kind of story, which likely contributed to my disconnect.

I won this book in GoddReads Giveaway.

[Ilyssa Wesche]

Man I loved this. I loved everything about it, including/especially the memoir within a book construct which really helped us understand Julia’s motivations and character.

I probably also liked it so much because I see myself in Julia, in that the more I have to work for love, the more I want it. Nothing too easy or sincere for me, thanks, I’m sure I don’t deserve it.

Finally I loved that this was as much about friendships as it was relationships.

[Elizabeth Jones]

Great prose style but I didn't care much for the narrative structure of alternating past and present. The protagonist, a middle aged woman, also seems to feel that men her age are hopeless misogynists and abusers, which I haven't found to be true. I also found her too shallow and judgmental towards other women.

[Nicole Steele]

Thank you to Goodreads for this book for me to win during this giveaway. As I was reading this book, I had a hard time following what was all happening. In addition, some of the things that were happening in this book made me wanna DNF it several times yet I kept reading in hopes that this book would’ve got better.

[Keila (speedreadstagram)]

Sometimes you just don’t connect with a writing style, and that was the case here. I found it crude and just not something I enjoyed.


Thank you to the publisher for this review copy. All thoughts are my own.

[Megan]

I went in blind to this and that was a terrible mistake. I have zero patience for people who let their upbringing be an excuse for poor behavior. You are a grown adult. Make better choices. Zero stars. Do not recommend.

[MB]

I received an ARC from a Goodreads giveaway and am providing my honest review of the book.
I was unsure what to expect from this author. I was pleasantly surprised by the book’s content.

[Donna M]

I respected and admired this book but did not really like it. It places Julia’s memoir within her current life as she is doing a panel on her memoir at her old college.

[Danielle.]

Told partially as a memoir and partially at a literary event promoting her memoir, Julia details all of the ways that men can harm you, both professionally and personally.

[Ms. Brown]

Incisive. Revealing. Scathing. Compassionate. Brilliant.
No notes.