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New York is Losing Hope
118 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 28, 2026
Very fun Novella. I love Nan Campbell
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Broccoli, BMWs, and the Dubious Wisdom of Failing Your Road Test for Love
Nan Campbell’s “New York is Losing Hope” is a quick, knowing sapphic romantic comedy about learning to drive, learning to stay, and discovering that neither task follows the route you planned.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 4th, 2026
Do you know a city because you have lived in it for decades, or because you have stopped noticing the routes by which you move through it? Nan Campbell’s “New York is Losing Hope” opens with Hope Mason prosecuting her hometown from memory: rent, rats, subway indignities, vanished businesses, dating fatigue, the suspicion that everybody else’s life has advanced while hers has contracted to work, television, family, and habit. Nearly thirty-five, she has settled on a cure large enough to sound decisive: Los Angeles. There is one practical hitch. Hope, born and raised in a city where a driver’s license can remain theoretical well into adulthood, cannot drive. So she hires Val Caceres to teach her. The title’s joke is obvious enough – New York may literally lose Hope – but Campbell earns a better reversal by asking when Hope herself stopped expecting the city to contain surprise.
Escape has the clean geometry of a plan. Hope has an Airbnb, a January departure date, a remote job portable enough to survive the continent, and a California assembled from sunshine, possibility, and the television of her youth. What she does not have is a vivid account of what happens once she lands. A distant city has one enormous advantage over a familiar one: it has not had time to disappoint you. Los Angeles becomes the address to which Hope forwards several unrelated grievances – romantic frustration, professional inertia, compromised independence, a social world thinned since the pandemic. She is right that something must change. She is less reliable about what. Val gets there first, asking whether Hope is moving toward a life or only away from this one.
Most romances built on instruction eventually have to invent excuses to keep teacher and student together. Campbell has no such problem. Every lesson supplies the next encounter and the next threshold. Hope moves from refusing the driver’s seat to entering traffic, changing lanes, crossing bridges, merging onto highways, parallel parking, and finally facing the road test. Meanwhile flirtation becomes disclosure, a Broadway outing becomes a date, gelato becomes an excuse to linger, and the back seat of an absurdly expensive BMW becomes less useful for admiring upholstery than its designers may have intended. January keeps coming closer. The better Val becomes at teaching Hope how to leave, the more Hope’s life in New York begins to expand.
Even the car keeps changing jobs. It begins as a chamber of horrors, becomes a classroom, then a confessional, then a place of flirtation, then a machine for enlarging Hope’s physical world. Campbell hides much of this neatness inside a joke. During Hope’s first successful drive, Val tells her to loosen up like the broccoli Hope’s mother used to cook into vegetable surrender. “Broccoli” becomes a calming mantra and, by Christmas, a matching pair of enamel pins. The gag is deliberately silly. Its charm comes from repetition with memory attached: what first steadies Hope’s hands eventually names something private between the women. Campbell rarely stops a scene to announce that an object has become tender; she lets recurrence do the work.
The prose runs on Hope’s appetite for converting discomfort into commentary. Her first-person sentences are quick, colloquial, culturally specific, fond of an aside and quicker still with a punch line. New York gives her excellent raw material, and Hope complains with the fluency of someone whose irritation is one of her forms of belonging. Campbell writes for velocity rather than ornament; she is more interested in how Hope talks herself around a feeling than in decorating the room where she has it. That speed occasionally exacts a price. Hope’s mind can be so busy performing a reaction that the reaction itself has to wait for an opening, and readers allergic to quippy narration may occasionally want to confiscate her microphone. Still, the habit has a purpose. She jokes most feverishly around what she cannot yet say without one.
Reduced to its least theatrical truth, Hope is lonely. Her confrontation with her parents is more revealing than the first kiss because it strips away the convenient nouns. Friends have moved or paired off. Work has become a holding pattern. Living beneath her parents after a punishing rent increase has made financial sense while muddying the borders of adulthood. The family life she expected by thirty-five has not materialized. Then Hope finally says the thing rats, rents, apps, and weather cannot explain. The sadness is not that she has nobody at all; she has loving parents, colleagues, history. It is that the shape of her days no longer resembles the life she hoped those days were building toward. Loneliness does not invalidate her complaints about New York; it changes their scale. So does the birthday she has turned into a private deadline. Thirty-five is not old, but Hope has made it the age by which the adulthood she pictured should already have arrived. Campbell is sharp on the embarrassing possibility that dissatisfaction can be genuine while its diagnosis is wrong.
If Val were simply the grounded woman waiting for Hope to become sensible, the book would flatten immediately. She is not. A former traveling nurse, Val spent the pandemic in a Dallas ICU until death, institutional pressure, and emotional depletion made nursing unbearable. Back in New York, she has slipped into helping her father recover from knee surgery and taking on more of his driving school. Her stuckness is quieter than Hope’s but not less real. Hope tries to manufacture change at continental scale; Val lets duty fill whatever space opens in front of her. When Val admits that life seems to be happening to her instead of being made by her, the women stop looking like opposites and start looking like two people with different preferred evasions. Hope can confuse movement with agency. Val can confuse endurance with choice.
Place is the quieter formal trick. Val does not persuade Hope to love New York. She moves her. Hope begins as a lifelong pedestrian and subway rider whose familiarity has hardened into verdict. Val puts her behind a windshield, through unfamiliar streets, over bridges, and finally outside Manhattan. “The Lion King,” dismissed in advance as tourist bait, unexpectedly breaks Hope open because it confronts her with an experience she could have had for years and never bothered to meet. Forty-second Street looks different from the Port Authority roof. Manhattan looks different from New Jersey. At the climax, the skyline is across the river in Queens. Campbell keeps changing the angle until Hope’s certainty begins to look less like knowledge than habit. The city has not transformed. Her route through it has.
A short book like this cannot afford idle scenes. The rainy drive across the George Washington Bridge is simultaneously a new level of vehicular difficulty, proof that Hope can do what once terrified her, an altered view of home, a meal shared outside the city, and the occasion for Val’s most substantial disclosure about nursing. That density is one reason the eleven chapters move so cleanly. The January departure date supplies a second gauge beside the odometer: every gain in competence brings Hope closer to the trip she has planned, and every gain in intimacy makes that trip harder to imagine. The story never has to tell us that Hope is changing when it can put her in a situation she could not have handled fifty pages earlier and let her drive through it.
Predictable is not the same as inert. A romance called “New York is Losing Hope,” about Hope planning to leave New York while falling for her driving instructor, is hardly engaged in espionage. Campbell gets her pleasure from reversals in use. Driving begins as the prerequisite for escape and ends as evidence that escape is optional. New York begins as the accused and winds up neither acquitted nor convicted, simply restored to the category of a place where a life might still be made. Even Hope’s perfectionism flips. The woman irritated by mediocre marks becomes willing to perform abominably on the one test she has spent the book preparing to pass. Campbell does not conceal the destination; she makes the familiar road acquire a different destination by the time Hope reaches it.
At the road test, the book’s design clicks and strains at once. Hope imagines Val eventually sharing New York with another woman, and what hurts is not a montage of candlelight and bridges. The imaginary rival gets the restaurants and shows, yes, but also slush, subway delays, rats, closures, smells, and all the grubby inconveniences Hope has been using as evidence for the prosecution. Hope finally understands that she has been looking for a place smooth enough to guarantee happiness when what she wants is someone with whom friction can be lived. She then deliberately sabotages the test. As romantic comedy, the gesture is wonderfully shameless. As adult decision-making, it is deranged. She could pass and cancel her flight afterward. Campbell chooses theatrical symmetry over administrative efficiency, and the joke nearly earns the paperwork. What saves the scene is timing: Hope fails only after becoming capable of passing. Had she stayed frightened, the same action would read as retreat.
Doubt arrives with the bill. Has Hope clarified her desire, or has the novella merely swapped one rescue fantasy for another? Her unhappiness exceeds singledom. She is bored by work, cut off from old friendships, uneasy about dependence on her parents, and hungry for a larger daily life. Val cannot repair those things by being lovable. Campbell knows this and has Hope admit that staying will not fix her job or every other problem. The concession prevents the finale from making the correct girlfriend sound like a municipal service capable of repairing career, friendship, housing, and morale in one appointment. But it comes late. The book ends before we see whether Hope can turn romantic recognition into social, professional, or practical change. A relationship can alter a life. It cannot, by itself, supply all the missing rooms.
If the ending tilts, its geography explains why. Los Angeles never becomes dense enough to compete with New York. It is weather, screen memory, dating possibility, an Airbnb, and the useful innocence of a place where Hope has not yet failed. New York contains parents, work, Val, restaurants, theaters, family property, vanished businesses, humiliations, history. Hope is nominally choosing between cities, but Campbell has given only one of them weight. The imbalance is psychologically plausible because California is projection, but it also makes the choice easier. Had Los Angeles contained one concrete future Hope genuinely wanted – a job, a community, even a specific ambition impossible to pursue at home – staying would have cost more and meant more. The novella’s best insight about fantasy also supplies one of its conveniences.
More troublesome is Val’s unfinished question. Her backstory carries enough pressure for a larger book: pandemic trauma, uncertainty about returning to nursing, devotion to a father whose needs are becoming a career path, and the expectation that she may inherit a family business she never quite chose. Campbell gives her enough contradiction to keep her from becoming Hope’s therapeutic reward, but not enough room to let her decide what she wants after helping Hope decide. We know why Val cannot simply move west. We know less clearly what she hopes to move toward in New York. The woman who teaches mobility remains, in one important sense, parked.
In the company of other sapphic romantic comedies, Campbell’s use of place is what distinguishes her most. Casey McQuiston’s “One Last Stop” gives New York a broader queer-social history; Amy Spalding’s “For Her Consideration” spends more time on the work of re-entering a life one has withdrawn from. Karmen Lee’s “The Relationship Mechanic” offers the closest mechanical rhyme, with cars, limited time, and the question of staying. Campbell’s variation is slyer than the premise first appears. Hope is not stranded. She becomes more mobile than she has ever been, and that competence makes her planned departure less necessary rather than more. The car does not deliver her to a different city. It gives her enough range to discover that the one she knows may still contain unfamiliar ground.
The pandemic is over in the book’s calendar but not in either woman’s life. Hope’s social world has thinned; remote work has severed employment from geography; housing pressure has pushed her physically closer to family just as she wants greater independence. Val has left the ICU but not what the ICU did to her. Campbell keeps these facts where they are most persuasive, inside the women’s circumstances rather than above them as a grand explanation. They help account for why two people in their thirties might look up and discover that the lives they expected to inhabit have gone missing without either quite noticing when. Hope answers that discovery with a continent-sized correction. Val answers it by letting obligation fill the vacancy. Their romance begins where those two responses stop working.
Rated 82/100, or 4/5 stars, “New York is Losing Hope” is a strong romantic novella whose best work happens when premise, route, city, joke, and character all bear on the same problem. Campbell’s prose has speed and personality, though it sometimes keeps joking after a feeling has earned silence. Her construction is cleaner than her psychology, and the resolution asks a very new relationship to shoulder more of Hope’s stalled life than it can entirely carry. Yet the book is funniest when Hope’s certainty outruns her competence, and most affecting when competence finally outruns certainty. Its pleasure comes from watching a bright, slightly neurotic woman discover that changing direction and changing her mind are not opposites.
On the last pages, Hope promises to take the driving test again and this time actually try to pass. That promise rescues the finale from its own joke. Without it, falling in love could look suspiciously like a prettier reason to remain a passenger. Instead, Hope keeps the skill and changes its use. At the beginning, a license matters because it will let her leave New York. By the end, leaving no longer has to prove that she is brave. Campbell’s happiest insight is not that Hope finds a woman worth staying for. It is that she learns how to go first, and only then discovers that staying need not mean she never could.
Nan Campbell’s “New York is Losing Hope” is a quick, knowing sapphic romantic comedy about learning to drive, learning to stay, and discovering that neither task follows the route you planned.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 4th, 2026
Do you know a city because you have lived in it for decades, or because you have stopped noticing the routes by which you move through it? Nan Campbell’s “New York is Losing Hope” opens with Hope Mason prosecuting her hometown from memory: rent, rats, subway indignities, vanished businesses, dating fatigue, the suspicion that everybody else’s life has advanced while hers has contracted to work, television, family, and habit. Nearly thirty-five, she has settled on a cure large enough to sound decisive: Los Angeles. There is one practical hitch. Hope, born and raised in a city where a driver’s license can remain theoretical well into adulthood, cannot drive. So she hires Val Caceres to teach her. The title’s joke is obvious enough – New York may literally lose Hope – but Campbell earns a better reversal by asking when Hope herself stopped expecting the city to contain surprise.
Escape has the clean geometry of a plan. Hope has an Airbnb, a January departure date, a remote job portable enough to survive the continent, and a California assembled from sunshine, possibility, and the television of her youth. What she does not have is a vivid account of what happens once she lands. A distant city has one enormous advantage over a familiar one: it has not had time to disappoint you. Los Angeles becomes the address to which Hope forwards several unrelated grievances – romantic frustration, professional inertia, compromised independence, a social world thinned since the pandemic. She is right that something must change. She is less reliable about what. Val gets there first, asking whether Hope is moving toward a life or only away from this one.
Most romances built on instruction eventually have to invent excuses to keep teacher and student together. Campbell has no such problem. Every lesson supplies the next encounter and the next threshold. Hope moves from refusing the driver’s seat to entering traffic, changing lanes, crossing bridges, merging onto highways, parallel parking, and finally facing the road test. Meanwhile flirtation becomes disclosure, a Broadway outing becomes a date, gelato becomes an excuse to linger, and the back seat of an absurdly expensive BMW becomes less useful for admiring upholstery than its designers may have intended. January keeps coming closer. The better Val becomes at teaching Hope how to leave, the more Hope’s life in New York begins to expand.
Even the car keeps changing jobs. It begins as a chamber of horrors, becomes a classroom, then a confessional, then a place of flirtation, then a machine for enlarging Hope’s physical world. Campbell hides much of this neatness inside a joke. During Hope’s first successful drive, Val tells her to loosen up like the broccoli Hope’s mother used to cook into vegetable surrender. “Broccoli” becomes a calming mantra and, by Christmas, a matching pair of enamel pins. The gag is deliberately silly. Its charm comes from repetition with memory attached: what first steadies Hope’s hands eventually names something private between the women. Campbell rarely stops a scene to announce that an object has become tender; she lets recurrence do the work.
The prose runs on Hope’s appetite for converting discomfort into commentary. Her first-person sentences are quick, colloquial, culturally specific, fond of an aside and quicker still with a punch line. New York gives her excellent raw material, and Hope complains with the fluency of someone whose irritation is one of her forms of belonging. Campbell writes for velocity rather than ornament; she is more interested in how Hope talks herself around a feeling than in decorating the room where she has it. That speed occasionally exacts a price. Hope’s mind can be so busy performing a reaction that the reaction itself has to wait for an opening, and readers allergic to quippy narration may occasionally want to confiscate her microphone. Still, the habit has a purpose. She jokes most feverishly around what she cannot yet say without one.
Reduced to its least theatrical truth, Hope is lonely. Her confrontation with her parents is more revealing than the first kiss because it strips away the convenient nouns. Friends have moved or paired off. Work has become a holding pattern. Living beneath her parents after a punishing rent increase has made financial sense while muddying the borders of adulthood. The family life she expected by thirty-five has not materialized. Then Hope finally says the thing rats, rents, apps, and weather cannot explain. The sadness is not that she has nobody at all; she has loving parents, colleagues, history. It is that the shape of her days no longer resembles the life she hoped those days were building toward. Loneliness does not invalidate her complaints about New York; it changes their scale. So does the birthday she has turned into a private deadline. Thirty-five is not old, but Hope has made it the age by which the adulthood she pictured should already have arrived. Campbell is sharp on the embarrassing possibility that dissatisfaction can be genuine while its diagnosis is wrong.
If Val were simply the grounded woman waiting for Hope to become sensible, the book would flatten immediately. She is not. A former traveling nurse, Val spent the pandemic in a Dallas ICU until death, institutional pressure, and emotional depletion made nursing unbearable. Back in New York, she has slipped into helping her father recover from knee surgery and taking on more of his driving school. Her stuckness is quieter than Hope’s but not less real. Hope tries to manufacture change at continental scale; Val lets duty fill whatever space opens in front of her. When Val admits that life seems to be happening to her instead of being made by her, the women stop looking like opposites and start looking like two people with different preferred evasions. Hope can confuse movement with agency. Val can confuse endurance with choice.
Place is the quieter formal trick. Val does not persuade Hope to love New York. She moves her. Hope begins as a lifelong pedestrian and subway rider whose familiarity has hardened into verdict. Val puts her behind a windshield, through unfamiliar streets, over bridges, and finally outside Manhattan. “The Lion King,” dismissed in advance as tourist bait, unexpectedly breaks Hope open because it confronts her with an experience she could have had for years and never bothered to meet. Forty-second Street looks different from the Port Authority roof. Manhattan looks different from New Jersey. At the climax, the skyline is across the river in Queens. Campbell keeps changing the angle until Hope’s certainty begins to look less like knowledge than habit. The city has not transformed. Her route through it has.
A short book like this cannot afford idle scenes. The rainy drive across the George Washington Bridge is simultaneously a new level of vehicular difficulty, proof that Hope can do what once terrified her, an altered view of home, a meal shared outside the city, and the occasion for Val’s most substantial disclosure about nursing. That density is one reason the eleven chapters move so cleanly. The January departure date supplies a second gauge beside the odometer: every gain in competence brings Hope closer to the trip she has planned, and every gain in intimacy makes that trip harder to imagine. The story never has to tell us that Hope is changing when it can put her in a situation she could not have handled fifty pages earlier and let her drive through it.
Predictable is not the same as inert. A romance called “New York is Losing Hope,” about Hope planning to leave New York while falling for her driving instructor, is hardly engaged in espionage. Campbell gets her pleasure from reversals in use. Driving begins as the prerequisite for escape and ends as evidence that escape is optional. New York begins as the accused and winds up neither acquitted nor convicted, simply restored to the category of a place where a life might still be made. Even Hope’s perfectionism flips. The woman irritated by mediocre marks becomes willing to perform abominably on the one test she has spent the book preparing to pass. Campbell does not conceal the destination; she makes the familiar road acquire a different destination by the time Hope reaches it.
At the road test, the book’s design clicks and strains at once. Hope imagines Val eventually sharing New York with another woman, and what hurts is not a montage of candlelight and bridges. The imaginary rival gets the restaurants and shows, yes, but also slush, subway delays, rats, closures, smells, and all the grubby inconveniences Hope has been using as evidence for the prosecution. Hope finally understands that she has been looking for a place smooth enough to guarantee happiness when what she wants is someone with whom friction can be lived. She then deliberately sabotages the test. As romantic comedy, the gesture is wonderfully shameless. As adult decision-making, it is deranged. She could pass and cancel her flight afterward. Campbell chooses theatrical symmetry over administrative efficiency, and the joke nearly earns the paperwork. What saves the scene is timing: Hope fails only after becoming capable of passing. Had she stayed frightened, the same action would read as retreat.
Doubt arrives with the bill. Has Hope clarified her desire, or has the novella merely swapped one rescue fantasy for another? Her unhappiness exceeds singledom. She is bored by work, cut off from old friendships, uneasy about dependence on her parents, and hungry for a larger daily life. Val cannot repair those things by being lovable. Campbell knows this and has Hope admit that staying will not fix her job or every other problem. The concession prevents the finale from making the correct girlfriend sound like a municipal service capable of repairing career, friendship, housing, and morale in one appointment. But it comes late. The book ends before we see whether Hope can turn romantic recognition into social, professional, or practical change. A relationship can alter a life. It cannot, by itself, supply all the missing rooms.
If the ending tilts, its geography explains why. Los Angeles never becomes dense enough to compete with New York. It is weather, screen memory, dating possibility, an Airbnb, and the useful innocence of a place where Hope has not yet failed. New York contains parents, work, Val, restaurants, theaters, family property, vanished businesses, humiliations, history. Hope is nominally choosing between cities, but Campbell has given only one of them weight. The imbalance is psychologically plausible because California is projection, but it also makes the choice easier. Had Los Angeles contained one concrete future Hope genuinely wanted – a job, a community, even a specific ambition impossible to pursue at home – staying would have cost more and meant more. The novella’s best insight about fantasy also supplies one of its conveniences.
More troublesome is Val’s unfinished question. Her backstory carries enough pressure for a larger book: pandemic trauma, uncertainty about returning to nursing, devotion to a father whose needs are becoming a career path, and the expectation that she may inherit a family business she never quite chose. Campbell gives her enough contradiction to keep her from becoming Hope’s therapeutic reward, but not enough room to let her decide what she wants after helping Hope decide. We know why Val cannot simply move west. We know less clearly what she hopes to move toward in New York. The woman who teaches mobility remains, in one important sense, parked.
In the company of other sapphic romantic comedies, Campbell’s use of place is what distinguishes her most. Casey McQuiston’s “One Last Stop” gives New York a broader queer-social history; Amy Spalding’s “For Her Consideration” spends more time on the work of re-entering a life one has withdrawn from. Karmen Lee’s “The Relationship Mechanic” offers the closest mechanical rhyme, with cars, limited time, and the question of staying. Campbell’s variation is slyer than the premise first appears. Hope is not stranded. She becomes more mobile than she has ever been, and that competence makes her planned departure less necessary rather than more. The car does not deliver her to a different city. It gives her enough range to discover that the one she knows may still contain unfamiliar ground.
The pandemic is over in the book’s calendar but not in either woman’s life. Hope’s social world has thinned; remote work has severed employment from geography; housing pressure has pushed her physically closer to family just as she wants greater independence. Val has left the ICU but not what the ICU did to her. Campbell keeps these facts where they are most persuasive, inside the women’s circumstances rather than above them as a grand explanation. They help account for why two people in their thirties might look up and discover that the lives they expected to inhabit have gone missing without either quite noticing when. Hope answers that discovery with a continent-sized correction. Val answers it by letting obligation fill the vacancy. Their romance begins where those two responses stop working.
Rated 82/100, or 4/5 stars, “New York is Losing Hope” is a strong romantic novella whose best work happens when premise, route, city, joke, and character all bear on the same problem. Campbell’s prose has speed and personality, though it sometimes keeps joking after a feeling has earned silence. Her construction is cleaner than her psychology, and the resolution asks a very new relationship to shoulder more of Hope’s stalled life than it can entirely carry. Yet the book is funniest when Hope’s certainty outruns her competence, and most affecting when competence finally outruns certainty. Its pleasure comes from watching a bright, slightly neurotic woman discover that changing direction and changing her mind are not opposites.
On the last pages, Hope promises to take the driving test again and this time actually try to pass. That promise rescues the finale from its own joke. Without it, falling in love could look suspiciously like a prettier reason to remain a passenger. Instead, Hope keeps the skill and changes its use. At the beginning, a license matters because it will let her leave New York. By the end, leaving no longer has to prove that she is brave. Campbell’s happiest insight is not that Hope finds a woman worth staying for. It is that she learns how to go first, and only then discovers that staying need not mean she never could.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This novella was lighthearted and witty; it captivated me from the start and was entertaining throughout.
It centers on a 24-year-old New Yorker who wants to break free and change her life. Hope decided to leave New York behind because things simply weren't working out for her there—she hadn't met a woman in ages, and while her job was fine, she could do it from anywhere.
So, off to Los Angeles: sunshine, cool people, and new women... that’s the dream.
But she has to learn to drive—and she never even learned to ride a bike. Her tall, hot driving instructor appears very early in the story. Val is handsome and exactly Hope’s type.
Val seems to be queer too—or at least the gaydar is pinging loudly, and the two of them really hit it off.
But the story is a slow burn; their banter, initially just funny and ironic, gradually turns flirty.
I really loved that!
I find myself hoping that Hope will make the right decision in the end—and not run anyone over 😜
At times, however, it also delves deeper, touching on life experience and personal struggles.
Many thanks to Nan Campbell, Bold Strokes Books, and NetGalley for this lovely story and the ARC!
It centers on a 24-year-old New Yorker who wants to break free and change her life. Hope decided to leave New York behind because things simply weren't working out for her there—she hadn't met a woman in ages, and while her job was fine, she could do it from anywhere.
So, off to Los Angeles: sunshine, cool people, and new women... that’s the dream.
But she has to learn to drive—and she never even learned to ride a bike. Her tall, hot driving instructor appears very early in the story. Val is handsome and exactly Hope’s type.
Val seems to be queer too—or at least the gaydar is pinging loudly, and the two of them really hit it off.
But the story is a slow burn; their banter, initially just funny and ironic, gradually turns flirty.
I really loved that!
I find myself hoping that Hope will make the right decision in the end—and not run anyone over 😜
At times, however, it also delves deeper, touching on life experience and personal struggles.
Many thanks to Nan Campbell, Bold Strokes Books, and NetGalley for this lovely story and the ARC!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Originally published in Hot Hires, a collection of short stories by three Bold Strokes Books contemporary romance authors, Nan Campbell’s New York Is Losing Hope demonstrates just how much a writer can accomplish within a limited narrative space. Despite its brevity, the novella has surprising depth and substance. Campbell makes the most of its compact form, giving the characters, setting, and developing relationship enough dimension to make the story feel considerably larger than its page count.
The premise provides Campbell with a clever external conflict, but it is the emotional implications of that conflict that give the story its resonance. Hope isn’t simply learning to drive. She is preparing to leave behind a place that has shaped her identity and move toward a future she has already imagined for herself. Meeting Val introduces an element she hadn’t anticipated, forcing her to consider whether the future she has planned is necessarily the future she wants.
Campbell handles this tension with impressive economy. In a longer novel, characterization can unfold gradually through multiple subplots and extended scenes. Here, every interaction has to do more work. Campbell accomplishes this by giving Hope and Val enough individual personality, vulnerability, and emotional texture to make their attraction convincing without overextending the narrative. They are immediately appealing, but they aren’t merely charming romantic archetypes. Their connection develops through an accumulation of small moments, allowing attraction to evolve naturally into something more emotionally consequential.
That restraint is particularly important because the romance could easily have felt too compressed. Instead, Campbell recognizes that a convincing relationship isn’t necessarily created by the number of pages devoted to it. It is created through specificity. The details of how two people interact, respond to one another, reveal themselves, and gradually become important to each other can carry considerable narrative weight. Campbell trusts those moments rather than overloading the story with unnecessary complications.
She also understands the value of the world surrounding her protagonists. The secondary characters aren’t simply functional additions to the cast. They provide contrast and texture, expanding our understanding of Hope and Val while giving the novella a sense of community that might otherwise be difficult to establish within such a compact narrative.
Most impressive, however, is Campbell’s treatment of New York City. The city is more than a backdrop against which Hope’s story unfolds. It becomes part of the emotional architecture of the novella. Hope’s attachment to New York gives her impending departure weight, while the prospect of Los Angeles represents reinvention and possibility. The resulting tension mirrors the romantic conflict: Hope must decide whether moving forward necessarily means leaving something important behind.
This is where Campbell’s storytelling becomes particularly effective. The external plot remains uncomplicated, but the emotional questions beneath it are not. What constitutes home? How much of our future should be determined by the plans we make for ourselves? And what happens when another person unexpectedly becomes part of a future we thought we had already mapped out?
Campbell doesn’t attempt to answer these questions with unnecessary drama. Instead, she allows them to emerge organically from Hope’s circumstances and her relationship with Val. That understated approach suits the novella’s tone. New York Is Losing Hope is warm and charming, but its appeal isn’t dependent on sweetness alone. Its pleasures come from the precision with which Campbell constructs her small narrative world.
Final remarks…
Ultimately, New York Is Losing Hope succeeds because Campbell understands the discipline required by short fiction. Rather than trying to compress a sprawling romance into a smaller format, she pares the story down to what matters: two compelling women, an evolving attraction, an emotionally meaningful obstacle, and a setting that contributes to the story’s thematic resonance. The result is a romance that feels complete without being overstuffed or emotionally shallow. Campbell achieves this by leaving enough space for the reader’s imagination to carry Hope and Val’s story beyond the ending. Perhaps that is the novella’s most telling accomplishment. Readers can finish New York Is Losing Hope satisfied with Hope and Val’s story while still wishing there were more of it to read.
Strengths…
Fully realized, likable main characters
Natural and emotionally convincing romance
Impressive narrative economy
Setting that contributes to the story’s themes
Secondary characters that add depth and texture
The premise provides Campbell with a clever external conflict, but it is the emotional implications of that conflict that give the story its resonance. Hope isn’t simply learning to drive. She is preparing to leave behind a place that has shaped her identity and move toward a future she has already imagined for herself. Meeting Val introduces an element she hadn’t anticipated, forcing her to consider whether the future she has planned is necessarily the future she wants.
Campbell handles this tension with impressive economy. In a longer novel, characterization can unfold gradually through multiple subplots and extended scenes. Here, every interaction has to do more work. Campbell accomplishes this by giving Hope and Val enough individual personality, vulnerability, and emotional texture to make their attraction convincing without overextending the narrative. They are immediately appealing, but they aren’t merely charming romantic archetypes. Their connection develops through an accumulation of small moments, allowing attraction to evolve naturally into something more emotionally consequential.
That restraint is particularly important because the romance could easily have felt too compressed. Instead, Campbell recognizes that a convincing relationship isn’t necessarily created by the number of pages devoted to it. It is created through specificity. The details of how two people interact, respond to one another, reveal themselves, and gradually become important to each other can carry considerable narrative weight. Campbell trusts those moments rather than overloading the story with unnecessary complications.
She also understands the value of the world surrounding her protagonists. The secondary characters aren’t simply functional additions to the cast. They provide contrast and texture, expanding our understanding of Hope and Val while giving the novella a sense of community that might otherwise be difficult to establish within such a compact narrative.
Most impressive, however, is Campbell’s treatment of New York City. The city is more than a backdrop against which Hope’s story unfolds. It becomes part of the emotional architecture of the novella. Hope’s attachment to New York gives her impending departure weight, while the prospect of Los Angeles represents reinvention and possibility. The resulting tension mirrors the romantic conflict: Hope must decide whether moving forward necessarily means leaving something important behind.
This is where Campbell’s storytelling becomes particularly effective. The external plot remains uncomplicated, but the emotional questions beneath it are not. What constitutes home? How much of our future should be determined by the plans we make for ourselves? And what happens when another person unexpectedly becomes part of a future we thought we had already mapped out?
Campbell doesn’t attempt to answer these questions with unnecessary drama. Instead, she allows them to emerge organically from Hope’s circumstances and her relationship with Val. That understated approach suits the novella’s tone. New York Is Losing Hope is warm and charming, but its appeal isn’t dependent on sweetness alone. Its pleasures come from the precision with which Campbell constructs her small narrative world.
Final remarks…
Ultimately, New York Is Losing Hope succeeds because Campbell understands the discipline required by short fiction. Rather than trying to compress a sprawling romance into a smaller format, she pares the story down to what matters: two compelling women, an evolving attraction, an emotionally meaningful obstacle, and a setting that contributes to the story’s thematic resonance. The result is a romance that feels complete without being overstuffed or emotionally shallow. Campbell achieves this by leaving enough space for the reader’s imagination to carry Hope and Val’s story beyond the ending. Perhaps that is the novella’s most telling accomplishment. Readers can finish New York Is Losing Hope satisfied with Hope and Val’s story while still wishing there were more of it to read.
Strengths…
Fully realized, likable main characters
Natural and emotionally convincing romance
Impressive narrative economy
Setting that contributes to the story’s themes
Secondary characters that add depth and texture
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Four and a half stars, but only because I wanted more. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
New York Is Losing Hope is a novella, but the depth of emotion and character development packed into it is outstanding!
Hope and Val, with wit, sarcasm, pop-culture references, and a rapid-fire pace that’s as New York as egg creams and black-and-white cookies, are trying to figure out what comes next. Hope believes happiness is waiting for her in California, while Val wrestles with her past and responsibilities as she figures out what she wants for her future. Their story touches on independence, interdependence, acceptance, and that special talent close families have for loving you while making you want to scream into a pillow.
I love how the story shows that a place can remain the same while the way we see it changes. Hope’s relationship with New York, captured in all its chaotic, wonderful glory, evolves as she realizes what she truly wants. The diversity, food, theater, impossible parking, good smells and ewww ones, crowded streets, and breathtaking skylines all become part of the journey. It has a lovely Wizard of Oz quality, reminding us that what we’re searching for may be closer than we realize.
If I had a wish, it would be for more of Val’s backstory and a glimpse of what comes next. But that’s the wish of a reader invested in these women, and I recognize a novella leaves less room to explore every thread.
Beautifully written, witty, and heartfelt, New York Is Losing Hope shows that finding your future may begin with seeing what you already have through fresh eyes, with love and hope.
#NanCampbell, #BoldStrokeBooks, #NewYorkIsLosingHope, #HotHires, #Books, #BookReview, #SapphicBooks, #SapphicBookReview, #IHeartSapphic, #LGBTQbooks, #SapphicRomance, #WLWlovestories, #WLW, #SapphicFiction, #QueerRomance, WLWfiction, #LisaB_ReviewsBooks, #ARC, #AdvanceReaderCopy, #NetGalley, #Amazon, #BookBub, #Goodreads, #bookstagram, #BookTok, #TikTok
New York Is Losing Hope is a novella, but the depth of emotion and character development packed into it is outstanding!
Hope and Val, with wit, sarcasm, pop-culture references, and a rapid-fire pace that’s as New York as egg creams and black-and-white cookies, are trying to figure out what comes next. Hope believes happiness is waiting for her in California, while Val wrestles with her past and responsibilities as she figures out what she wants for her future. Their story touches on independence, interdependence, acceptance, and that special talent close families have for loving you while making you want to scream into a pillow.
I love how the story shows that a place can remain the same while the way we see it changes. Hope’s relationship with New York, captured in all its chaotic, wonderful glory, evolves as she realizes what she truly wants. The diversity, food, theater, impossible parking, good smells and ewww ones, crowded streets, and breathtaking skylines all become part of the journey. It has a lovely Wizard of Oz quality, reminding us that what we’re searching for may be closer than we realize.
If I had a wish, it would be for more of Val’s backstory and a glimpse of what comes next. But that’s the wish of a reader invested in these women, and I recognize a novella leaves less room to explore every thread.
Beautifully written, witty, and heartfelt, New York Is Losing Hope shows that finding your future may begin with seeing what you already have through fresh eyes, with love and hope.
#NanCampbell, #BoldStrokeBooks, #NewYorkIsLosingHope, #HotHires, #Books, #BookReview, #SapphicBooks, #SapphicBookReview, #IHeartSapphic, #LGBTQbooks, #SapphicRomance, #WLWlovestories, #WLW, #SapphicFiction, #QueerRomance, WLWfiction, #LisaB_ReviewsBooks, #ARC, #AdvanceReaderCopy, #NetGalley, #Amazon, #BookBub, #Goodreads, #bookstagram, #BookTok, #TikTok
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to Bold Strokes Books for providing me with a digital ARC via NetGalley to read and post an honest review.
Rounded up from 3.75 stars.
Hope is not just the name of the title character, but an emotion that I felt while reading New York is Losing Hope by Nan Campbell.
This is a match up I hadn't known I needed, student/driving instructor, and no it is not icky - she just never needed to know learn to drive living in NYC.
Hope herself has lost a little of her zest for life and thinks her best way of is by leaving the city she grew up in. She has seen it change, especially since COVID, and what had enthralled her, now annoys her. So, she's going to LA, but before she can go, she needs to learn how to drive. Enter Val, her hot driving instructor, and a former nurse who needed a change after working in the ICU.
I was impressed with the depth provided for Hope and would have liked a bit more for Val and I just think that was because I found her the more intriguing character so wanted to be able to dig in a little further.
Both characters know they are working with an expiry date in place, and I found how the author worked around this date with a twist, a little intrigue, and some fun was well done.
The backdrop of NYC for the story, especially the driving which I can't even imagine what it would be like, was nice, it felt like the city itself was another character.
This novella was originally released in 2024 and there are a few things that haven't held up, for example I chaffed at the mention of Tesla cars which have become a much more political topic than they were when the book would have originally been written.
Overall, this was a low angst, low spice, sweet story about finding Hope in all its forms.
Rounded up from 3.75 stars.
Hope is not just the name of the title character, but an emotion that I felt while reading New York is Losing Hope by Nan Campbell.
This is a match up I hadn't known I needed, student/driving instructor, and no it is not icky - she just never needed to know learn to drive living in NYC.
Hope herself has lost a little of her zest for life and thinks her best way of is by leaving the city she grew up in. She has seen it change, especially since COVID, and what had enthralled her, now annoys her. So, she's going to LA, but before she can go, she needs to learn how to drive. Enter Val, her hot driving instructor, and a former nurse who needed a change after working in the ICU.
I was impressed with the depth provided for Hope and would have liked a bit more for Val and I just think that was because I found her the more intriguing character so wanted to be able to dig in a little further.
Both characters know they are working with an expiry date in place, and I found how the author worked around this date with a twist, a little intrigue, and some fun was well done.
The backdrop of NYC for the story, especially the driving which I can't even imagine what it would be like, was nice, it felt like the city itself was another character.
This novella was originally released in 2024 and there are a few things that haven't held up, for example I chaffed at the mention of Tesla cars which have become a much more political topic than they were when the book would have originally been written.
Overall, this was a low angst, low spice, sweet story about finding Hope in all its forms.
September 17, 2026
New York Is Losing Hope was cute, silly, and exactly the right length for the story it wanted to tell.
I really enjoyed the dynamic between Hope and Val. The driving-instructor setup was different and fun, and it gave them a natural reason to spend time together while Hope was preparing for the major life change she thought she wanted.
What I appreciated most, though, was Hope's realization that she wasn't necessarily running toward something by planning a move across the country. She was mostly running away from a life she wasn't satisfied with and crossing her fingers that everything would somehow be different once she got somewhere else. I liked watching her begin to separate wanting genuine change from simply wanting an escape.
New York itself was another highlight. The setting felt like an actual part of the story rather than a city name slapped onto the background. Between the driving lessons and Hope's complicated relationship with leaving, the book genuinely made me feel like I was in New York.
This is a short read, but I think that's one of its strengths. There was enough time for the relationship and Hope's personal journey to develop without stretching either beyond what the story could support. Cute, funny, romantic, and refreshingly uncomplicated.
Sometimes a novella knows exactly how much story it has to tell, and this one did.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of New York Is Losing Hope in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
I really enjoyed the dynamic between Hope and Val. The driving-instructor setup was different and fun, and it gave them a natural reason to spend time together while Hope was preparing for the major life change she thought she wanted.
What I appreciated most, though, was Hope's realization that she wasn't necessarily running toward something by planning a move across the country. She was mostly running away from a life she wasn't satisfied with and crossing her fingers that everything would somehow be different once she got somewhere else. I liked watching her begin to separate wanting genuine change from simply wanting an escape.
New York itself was another highlight. The setting felt like an actual part of the story rather than a city name slapped onto the background. Between the driving lessons and Hope's complicated relationship with leaving, the book genuinely made me feel like I was in New York.
This is a short read, but I think that's one of its strengths. There was enough time for the relationship and Hope's personal journey to develop without stretching either beyond what the story could support. Cute, funny, romantic, and refreshingly uncomplicated.
Sometimes a novella knows exactly how much story it has to tell, and this one did.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of New York Is Losing Hope in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Hope is a 32 year old, Upper East Side New Yorker, who decides she needs to shake up her life. She plans to relocate to LA and hires a driving instructor to learn to drive in her destination. Val was a traveling nurse who is now helping out with her father’s diving instruction business.
I read this previously when it was one of three novellas included in “Hot Hires” (June 2024). It is now getting a new printing on its own. I love Nan Campbell’s writing style. With only 118 pages she is able to create complete characters. Getting to know each other is accomplished easily with conversations during lessons. I also like how she included changes brought about by the pandemic and how it still impacts our lives.
Parts of this I read as a love letter to NYC with its theater and food. I also thought Campbell was channeling my mother in writing Hope's mom. The thing that made me laugh out loud, is that when I went on my first date with my spouse, I wasn’t sure if it was a date or an outing. I literally have used the line “if it walks like a date and talks like a date” when describing it to friends at the time and in the decades since. To see this in a story tickled my funny bone.
I enjoyed revisiting this story. It is easy to recommend and will hold me over until there is a new novel from the author. Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the eARC and I am leaving an honest review.
I read this previously when it was one of three novellas included in “Hot Hires” (June 2024). It is now getting a new printing on its own. I love Nan Campbell’s writing style. With only 118 pages she is able to create complete characters. Getting to know each other is accomplished easily with conversations during lessons. I also like how she included changes brought about by the pandemic and how it still impacts our lives.
Parts of this I read as a love letter to NYC with its theater and food. I also thought Campbell was channeling my mother in writing Hope's mom. The thing that made me laugh out loud, is that when I went on my first date with my spouse, I wasn’t sure if it was a date or an outing. I literally have used the line “if it walks like a date and talks like a date” when describing it to friends at the time and in the decades since. To see this in a story tickled my funny bone.
I enjoyed revisiting this story. It is easy to recommend and will hold me over until there is a new novel from the author. Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the eARC and I am leaving an honest review.
September 17, 2026
I enjoyed the driving journey!
Upon reading the title ‘New York is Losing Hope’, what would you infer from the title and cover itself? Personally, I thought hope was leaving New York 'cause I didn’t realize that Hope is a character in this excellent novella. I still laugh at myself over inferring the wrong thing about the title.
Hope decides that she needs to leave New York for, as they say, ‘greener pastures’. She hires a company to teach her how to drive since that’s how everyone gets around. What Hope doesn’t expect is the way she meets her driving instructor for the first time. Val notices how uncomfortable Hope is and decides on the spot to change up Hope’s first lesson. As Hope’s lessons progress, Val asks if Hope would see a show with her. This starts a lively discussion that opens Hope’s eyes to things that she was taking for granted. I love how Val gave Hope a different way to look at her life and what would change with her leaving.
So, the day dawns with Hope going for her driver’s license and what happens completely surprised me! It didn’t go how I thought it would. I was left going ‘What, why?’ I finished reading and loved the answer. When I started reading about Hope’s journey to learn how to drive, I had no indication that the story would change my mind about how it could end. Whoops, my mind got changed and I absolutely love how it went. Yes I’d have loved if it’d been a longer story, but I enjoyed the amazing journey I went on!
Upon reading the title ‘New York is Losing Hope’, what would you infer from the title and cover itself? Personally, I thought hope was leaving New York 'cause I didn’t realize that Hope is a character in this excellent novella. I still laugh at myself over inferring the wrong thing about the title.
Hope decides that she needs to leave New York for, as they say, ‘greener pastures’. She hires a company to teach her how to drive since that’s how everyone gets around. What Hope doesn’t expect is the way she meets her driving instructor for the first time. Val notices how uncomfortable Hope is and decides on the spot to change up Hope’s first lesson. As Hope’s lessons progress, Val asks if Hope would see a show with her. This starts a lively discussion that opens Hope’s eyes to things that she was taking for granted. I love how Val gave Hope a different way to look at her life and what would change with her leaving.
So, the day dawns with Hope going for her driver’s license and what happens completely surprised me! It didn’t go how I thought it would. I was left going ‘What, why?’ I finished reading and loved the answer. When I started reading about Hope’s journey to learn how to drive, I had no indication that the story would change my mind about how it could end. Whoops, my mind got changed and I absolutely love how it went. Yes I’d have loved if it’d been a longer story, but I enjoyed the amazing journey I went on!
September 17, 2026
I had such a fun time reading New York Is Losing Hope by Nan Campbell!
Hope has decided she needs a fresh start and plans to leave New York for Los Angeles. The only problem is that she needs to learn how to drive first. That’s how she ends up with Val as her driving instructor, and I really enjoyed watching these two get to know each other. What starts out as driving lessons slowly turns into friendship, chemistry, and something neither of them quite expected.
I especially enjoyed the driving lessons. They gave the story some fun moments, and I liked how Val encouraged Hope to look at her life and her plans a little differently. Their connection felt natural, and I found myself rooting for them as the story went along.
I will say that the ending left me wanting more—and not necessarily in a good way. Things moved so quickly at the end that I actually caught myself thinking, “Wait…we're done already?” After getting invested in Hope and Val, I wanted more time to see everything play out. I know it’s a novella, but the ending still felt too abrupt for me.
Even with that, I really enjoyed the journey. The story surprised me, the romance was sweet, and I liked where Hope ultimately ended up. I just wish I could have spent a little more time with these two
Hope has decided she needs a fresh start and plans to leave New York for Los Angeles. The only problem is that she needs to learn how to drive first. That’s how she ends up with Val as her driving instructor, and I really enjoyed watching these two get to know each other. What starts out as driving lessons slowly turns into friendship, chemistry, and something neither of them quite expected.
I especially enjoyed the driving lessons. They gave the story some fun moments, and I liked how Val encouraged Hope to look at her life and her plans a little differently. Their connection felt natural, and I found myself rooting for them as the story went along.
I will say that the ending left me wanting more—and not necessarily in a good way. Things moved so quickly at the end that I actually caught myself thinking, “Wait…we're done already?” After getting invested in Hope and Val, I wanted more time to see everything play out. I know it’s a novella, but the ending still felt too abrupt for me.
Even with that, I really enjoyed the journey. The story surprised me, the romance was sweet, and I liked where Hope ultimately ended up. I just wish I could have spent a little more time with these two
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Novellas can sometimes feel too superficial and all you dream about is to get more backstory of the MCs. With this novella I got most of what I wanted regarding the character understanding as well as their growing relationship despite it being a short novella, so I was very content with my read.
Hope is thirty-five years old and has lived all her life in New York City. She feels she needs a fresh start to get what she is searching for, fulfilment in her career, a productive life, a girlfriend, a partner, a wife. Family. She has decided that Los Angeles is where she needs to go, a new dating pool, and to be able to move there, she needs to learn how to drive.
In comes the driving instructor Val that ends up being so much more very soon, Val that decided to change her life completely after working as a nurse during Covid. It takes some time for Hope to realize that they are dating besides her taking driving lessons. Val is reluctant though since Hope plans to leave and she wants something real in her life and no longer just casual. Is this a thing to enjoy for now or can it be something more?
I received a free ARC via NetGalley and leave an honest review voluntarily.
Hope is thirty-five years old and has lived all her life in New York City. She feels she needs a fresh start to get what she is searching for, fulfilment in her career, a productive life, a girlfriend, a partner, a wife. Family. She has decided that Los Angeles is where she needs to go, a new dating pool, and to be able to move there, she needs to learn how to drive.
In comes the driving instructor Val that ends up being so much more very soon, Val that decided to change her life completely after working as a nurse during Covid. It takes some time for Hope to realize that they are dating besides her taking driving lessons. Val is reluctant though since Hope plans to leave and she wants something real in her life and no longer just casual. Is this a thing to enjoy for now or can it be something more?
I received a free ARC via NetGalley and leave an honest review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Hoping for Hope
Not only was New York Losing Hope, but I was also feeling like Hope was never going to see what was right in front of her, even when the answer to her life's dreams unexpectedly stepped into her path. Her constant focus and push to prepare for her life changing direction were causing tunnel vision, and time was running out.
The author managed to create a delightful story with authentic New Yorkers, while our disgruntled MC created so much angst in the hopes of change as the answer to everything. You could even hear the voice of New York as the city, characters, and happenings all came alive.
Nan Campbell filled this sneaky little love story with surprises and such depth that I felt like I knew these people and understood their concerns and hopes. It kept me on the edge of my seat as I kept hoping for Hope. And it left me satisfied.
I definitely recommend that you enjoy reading New York is Losing Hope for yourself.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Not only was New York Losing Hope, but I was also feeling like Hope was never going to see what was right in front of her, even when the answer to her life's dreams unexpectedly stepped into her path. Her constant focus and push to prepare for her life changing direction were causing tunnel vision, and time was running out.
The author managed to create a delightful story with authentic New Yorkers, while our disgruntled MC created so much angst in the hopes of change as the answer to everything. You could even hear the voice of New York as the city, characters, and happenings all came alive.
Nan Campbell filled this sneaky little love story with surprises and such depth that I felt like I knew these people and understood their concerns and hopes. It kept me on the edge of my seat as I kept hoping for Hope. And it left me satisfied.
I definitely recommend that you enjoy reading New York is Losing Hope for yourself.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Lovely quick read from a wonderful author! Thank you to NetGalley, Bold Stokes Books, Inc and the author for an advance review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Hope is in need of a change and has decided to relocate to LA. One thing she needs to do is get her driver’s license since living in NYC she hasn’t needed it.
Val is a traveling nurse back home to help her dad and his business. As the driving instructor, she is a bit taken aback when her charge is an adult and not the teen she was expecting.
Through different destinations and learning to in’s and outs of driving, both women grow closer. While neither can deny their chemistry, starting something with an expiration date isn’t really what either wants.
As they continue to get to know one another, is it worth it to make the most of the time they have? Or remain professional? I mean you probably know where the story is going ;). It is a lovely little journey and definitely worth the quick read!
Recommend!
Hope is in need of a change and has decided to relocate to LA. One thing she needs to do is get her driver’s license since living in NYC she hasn’t needed it.
Val is a traveling nurse back home to help her dad and his business. As the driving instructor, she is a bit taken aback when her charge is an adult and not the teen she was expecting.
Through different destinations and learning to in’s and outs of driving, both women grow closer. While neither can deny their chemistry, starting something with an expiration date isn’t really what either wants.
As they continue to get to know one another, is it worth it to make the most of the time they have? Or remain professional? I mean you probably know where the story is going ;). It is a lovely little journey and definitely worth the quick read!
Recommend!
September 20, 2026
Hope Mason is leaving New York behind for Los Angeles as she approaches thirty-five, still single and determined to start fresh. There's just one catch: she's terrified of driving, so she hires instructor Val Caceres to teach her.
The writing style and characters are, as always, beautifully constructed, but this book didn't quite have the magic of the author's other work for me. It's still good, just held to a high bar set by her previous books. Hope's choice to move and start over is brave — she wants something and goes for it despite her fears. In Val, she finds the perfect counterpart: someone with enough life experience to complement her. I would have loved more depth, though — Hope's relationship with her parents, Val's family, and the connection between Hope and Val outside of the car. That likely would have meant a longer story rather than a short one, but it's what kept this from reaching the heights of the author's best work.
I voluntarily wrote this review after receiving a free copy of the book.
The writing style and characters are, as always, beautifully constructed, but this book didn't quite have the magic of the author's other work for me. It's still good, just held to a high bar set by her previous books. Hope's choice to move and start over is brave — she wants something and goes for it despite her fears. In Val, she finds the perfect counterpart: someone with enough life experience to complement her. I would have loved more depth, though — Hope's relationship with her parents, Val's family, and the connection between Hope and Val outside of the car. That likely would have meant a longer story rather than a short one, but it's what kept this from reaching the heights of the author's best work.
I voluntarily wrote this review after receiving a free copy of the book.
September 8, 2026
In Nan Campbell's New York is Losing Hope, Hope Mason leaves NYC for an LA fresh start, only to be paralyzed by a severe driving phobia. Her unexpected path to overcoming this fear and finding herself begins with Val Caceres, her enigmatic driving instructor. What starts as lessons quickly blossoms into a palpable slow-burn sapphic romance crafted through witty exchanges and raw vulnerability. Campbell delves into themes of personal reinvention and courage, showcasing how Val becomes Hope's guide through both literal and metaphorical roadblocks. This emotionally rich, low-angst narrative beautifully blends humor with heartfelt tenderness. A truly compelling read for those who cherish evolving characters and stories of love blossoming amid profound transformation.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily
October 8, 2026
New York Is Losing Hope is the newest work by Nan Campbell, and its biggest fault is that it is a novella that really could use a little more room to breathe. There is enough conflict between the two main characters and enough family drama that I feel like it could have easily used an extra one to two hundred pages to really build a world I could get lost in.
That's not to say the novella isn't enjoyable; it is. But Hope and Val are easily interesting enough to carry it further, and honestly I feel like got ripped off a bit by the book being speed-ran when it could have gone at a more leisurely pace. So here's my request to the author: expand it to novel-form (I do not expect her to do this, butg on the off-chance she ever did, I would definitely be reading it right away).
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
That's not to say the novella isn't enjoyable; it is. But Hope and Val are easily interesting enough to carry it further, and honestly I feel like got ripped off a bit by the book being speed-ran when it could have gone at a more leisurely pace. So here's my request to the author: expand it to novel-form (I do not expect her to do this, butg on the off-chance she ever did, I would definitely be reading it right away).
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I always love Nan Campbell's works and this short novel is just as great as I expected! The sapphic romance story is very unique, between two New Yorkers in their thirties, a driving instructor and her student. Living in Miami my whole life, I can't imagine how can a person surviving without a car and I don't know anyone who doesn't have a driver license. The author's intimate knowledge of NYC showed all through the book, including very funny and convincing New Yorker attitude and complains about the Big Apple! The romance is heartwarming, and I love that their is no angst and the love between two smart and independent women feels natural and very endearing. Appreciate her sense of humor too! A true page turner that is so well written and addictive that I finished in one go!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This is a novella about the characters of Hope and Val and their first few months together. Hope wants to move away from her life and parents in NYC and go to Los Angeles to start anew. Before she can leave, she needs to learn how to drive, and Val is her driving instructor.
The story is primarily from Hope's point of view, but her interactions with Val give the reader enough information to learn about both characters. I liked how Hope's driving anxieties made the lessons relatable, especially in the busy city of NYC. And the developing friendship and chemistry between her and Val was believable and fun to read.
Overall a fun read with a happy ending!
Thank you to Bold Strokes Books for the opportunity to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.
The story is primarily from Hope's point of view, but her interactions with Val give the reader enough information to learn about both characters. I liked how Hope's driving anxieties made the lessons relatable, especially in the busy city of NYC. And the developing friendship and chemistry between her and Val was believable and fun to read.
Overall a fun read with a happy ending!
Thank you to Bold Strokes Books for the opportunity to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I found it difficult to relate to part of the story because being able to drive is commonplace for me, so Hope’s feelings of getting behind the wheel and driving into traffic were foreign to me and the one tedious thing about the book. But I thought it was a great idea for two women in their thirties to have 40hrs worth of driving lessons aka dates and especially how with every lesson they got to learn a little more about each other. The writing was good and had me fully invested throughout the story which was a plus. This novella was an easy, enjoyable read which I managed to finish in just a few hours.
Thank you to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.
Thank you to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Clever title. Some good lines. One of the things I liked was that this relationship seemed to have an expiration date and it was referenced regularly by the mains. The last few in the gonna be long distance genre, didn’t mention it….. The reiterating makes seem like a barrier.
The luxury car scene….. at a work event just made me uncomfortable……. It was strictly PG so it wasn’t really the content….. I maybe just have a different work event line. Having said that, the relocation barrier was again brought up and a great line used to make it not matter.
This is a short story and it wasn’t stretched out so pacing didn’t stutter. I don’t feel it was underdeveloped nor do I feel I wanted more.
The luxury car scene….. at a work event just made me uncomfortable……. It was strictly PG so it wasn’t really the content….. I maybe just have a different work event line. Having said that, the relocation barrier was again brought up and a great line used to make it not matter.
This is a short story and it wasn’t stretched out so pacing didn’t stutter. I don’t feel it was underdeveloped nor do I feel I wanted more.
September 30, 2026
I really enjoyed this novella from Nan Campbell. It had great humour from the outset. Hope feels she needs to leave New York to hopefully find the love of her life and has it all planned. She just needs to get her drivers licence before leaving for Los Angeles. Coming from a family of non drivers it feel like a big ask. However, along comes Val who is helping her Dad out by standing in as a driving instructor for the time being. Hope is reluctant to take the wheel but with Vals patience and time Hope starts to make progress. During the lessons the two of them find themselves liking each other more than planned. But it has an end date. Once Hope passes her test she is leaving town......
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
With most novellas, I want more. But that tends to be wanting more out of the relationship or the chemistry. I just want more of their story because I loved them so much. The author was able to establish their chemistry right away.
It was refreshing to see their relationship bloom so organically. It was a realistic way two people in their thirties could meet and fall in love and I love that aspect of it. It’s so relatable. The ending felt a little rushed though.
With most novellas, I want more. But that tends to be wanting more out of the relationship or the chemistry. I just want more of their story because I loved them so much. The author was able to establish their chemistry right away.
It was refreshing to see their relationship bloom so organically. It was a realistic way two people in their thirties could meet and fall in love and I love that aspect of it. It’s so relatable. The ending felt a little rushed though.
September 30, 2026
I genuinely loved this novella! It was short, sweet, and hilarious! I laughed out loud several times. The characters were all quirky and endearing and the story itself was unique and interesting. I thought Val and Hope were perfectly matched and I was glad that they both had their own issues to work through. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking for a quick, funny read. Nan Campbell never misses in my opinion. Thanks so much to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Novellas are usually short and sweet stories where you wish there was more. The author did a great job of building the relationship and chemistry. It was great to see the relationship bloom realistically. It was very relatable and put a smile on my face. The ending wasn't quite as satisfying and felt rushed.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
October 14, 2026
A sweet quick, easy read. Just what I wanted.
I enjoyed this book because it was a nice easy read with a sweet fluffy storyline. The next time I want a nice comfort read I will look for other novellas by Nan Campbell.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for this lovely heart warming read.
I enjoyed this book because it was a nice easy read with a sweet fluffy storyline. The next time I want a nice comfort read I will look for other novellas by Nan Campbell.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for this lovely heart warming read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this novella
A short read that is amusing and keeps you reading right to the end
Nan Campbell knows how to right a captivating read no matter the length of the storyline
Can’t wait to read the next book from this Author
A short read that is amusing and keeps you reading right to the end
Nan Campbell knows how to right a captivating read no matter the length of the storyline
Can’t wait to read the next book from this Author
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