Ten Year Affair

by Erin Somers

“The best book about adultery since Madame Bovary.” —Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection

A hilariously acerbic sliding doors novel about a chance meeting between two young parents, both happily married (just not to each other) that sparks a will-they-won’t-they romance—perfect for fans of Big Swiss and Acts of Service.

When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are happily married young parents with two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet their connection grows stronger, and as their lives continue to intertwine, the romantic tension between them becomes all-consuming—until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings. In the other, they resist.

As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora’s life—her depressing marketing job, her daughter’s new fascination with the afterlife, her husband’s obsession with podcasts about the history of rope—gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.

The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the roads not taken, that ultimately do we really want our fantasies to come true?

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Audiobook, Adult, Book Club

Unknown Binding

First published October 21, 2025

About the author

Erin Somers is the author of STAY UP WITH HUGO BEST, forthcoming from Scribner in April 2019.

Reviews

[Brady Lockerby · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 // okay i loved this book. i don’t know if it’ll be for everyone, but as a fan of lit fic i ate it up! it made me laugh out loud so many times with some of the best dry humor ive ever read. cora meets sam at a baby class and from there we follow 2 timelines: 1. a fantasy of cora and sam starting an affair and 2. reality where the lines start to blue for the characters and for us as readers

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

always reading lit fic about women blowing up their lives.

https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...

i enjoyed every second of reading this book, which is extra impressive because it's exclusively about the kind of subject matter that makes me have my shoulders at my ears in a cringe so intense i procrastinate continuing.

this was clever and smart and compulsively readable — whenever i wasn't reading it, i wanted to be, and i flew through it. the writing is funny and sharp and the characters are reprehensible and still somehow likable and while the things that happened in this book should have been unforgivable i forgave them again and again and kept reading.

sometimes it has a surprising lack of interiority, focusing on the things people do and the molds that they're in and the things that are expected of them rather than how they feel about any of it, and the timeline moves in confusing fits and starts, but at a certain point even those things added to its unique appeal for me.

i missed reading it right away!

bottom line: i liked it from the very first page.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Emily May · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a cliche, but wild and enjoyable because it was happening to them, this mythic thing they’d heard about, this thing in quote: “an affair.”

I don't know how to put this other than to say that The Ten Year Affair felt a bit pointless. The blurb describes it as both "hilarious" and "emotionally-charged", neither of which came across for me, and it wasn't long before I lost sight of what I was reading for.

The premise appealed to me as I love character studies about dissatisfied women and complex relationships. Then add to that the exploration of parallel timelines— the fantasy where Cora and Sam have an affair, and the reality where they get on with their boring lives —and I thought it had the potential to be really interesting.

Unfortunately— and this is my big rub with it —the characters are flat and lifeless. This isn't great in any book, but in what is primarily a character study it's unforgivable. Cora's entire personality is desiring Sam. That's it. Everyone was unknowable to me, and my only feeling toward them was a kind of dull dislike. Cora, Sam, Eliot, the kids whose names I have already forgotten... I was given the impression that the characters themselves did not matter here for they were just tools by which the author delivered the central theme/message.

And said message is already laid out for us pretty much in full by the blurb. It asks: ultimately do we really want our fantasies to come true? It can't just be me who can infer the answer from that question. This makes it fairly obvious how things will resolve.

I understood the message. The false flare of passion in the affair, the fantasy, juxtaposed with the mundanity of real life. Yet the delivery of it all was passionless— boring characters, whose interactions even in the drama of the affair read clinical and detached. Cora's narration of this wild fantasy goes like Sam tells me to spread my legs. I come. I come again. I didn't save actual quotes, but you get the idea. I'm hardly caught up in the mad desire of it all.

I don't think Erin Somers is for me. Though with a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a blurb from another brilliant writer (Tony Tulathimutte), I guess this is a me problem.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those novels that should have been a short story. Fun fact: this was a short story originally! And it should have stayed that way, unfortunately.

There is only one interesting thing here, the gimmick of the parallel universes of cheating or not-cheating. One is Cora's actual life and the other is what she imagines if she'd made the opposite choice. And this is a nice little gimmick because, of course, the fantasy is always the one that is exciting and the real life is always less dramatic, more mundane. But this point is made quite early on. It gets only one little twist partway through, which was perfectly nice, but doesn't deserve a novel. Would have been a nice punchy story, but we simply did not need all these pages.

This was, to be honest, a hate read for me. I picked it up feeling optimistic because Big Swiss and Acts of Service are two of my favorite books of the last few years and I was so happy to hear those comps. But the big blurb--"the best book about adultery since Madame Bovary"--feels like a joke. Is it a joke? Is it actually serious? I don't know, but as my optimism curdled, that blurb is what turned this into a hate read. This??? I kept thinking, this is your best novel in the last 100 years about adultery??? It's just boring. It's a boring book with boring characters. Cora is deeply uninteresting. Sam is also uninteresting. He is, apparently, kind of hot, so at least there's that so we can understand the attraction. And Cora's husband seems pretty terrible so you can't really blame her. But I still don't really know anything about who Cora is. It seems like you could insert basically any blank millennial in there. She doesn't seem to care about anything or do anything or want anything, besides Sam.

The parenting in this book also made me feel like I was losing my mind. Cora and her husband Eliot don't seem to like their kids and they certainly don't seem to parent them. They talk in front of them without considering that what they're saying isn't appropriate for the kids to hear. They ignore the kids. They placate the kids. The kids are very much the kids of novels where they are able to "go play" whenever we need things to happen amongst the adults but then they create problems whenever the plot needs a push or a few characters need to be put in an uncomfortable situation. I was at least gratified that their kids turn out even more annoying than their parents, serves you right, Cora.

At the end of the day, it isn't even a good novel. Not to mention a good adultery novel. Cora and Eliot seem to think they have these really difficult lives but actually they have things pretty good. They don't have any real problems, but they have the kind of fake problems that books like this have. Like oh no, poor Cora and Eliot, your house is old. But they own a house! They have jobs, they have appropriate parental leave, they have childcare and health insurance, they have community around them that is available when needed, and friends who will watch their kids. Is the point that they have these great lives and can't see them because their lives are passionless? Or are their lives supposed to be bad and dismal? I honestly could not tell you. I can tell that Somers wanted to be funny here, but it never worked for me. Her previous novel I didn't find funny, either. So I think it's official that I won't be reading any more of her work.

[Kail Lowry · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/4 stars

[Amanda Pence · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was hard to get through. This is what I felt like I was reading.

I like salad. The lettuce is green. The grass is so green. I do not like green.

That’s how every sentence went.

[Val ⚓️ Shameless Handmaiden ⚓️ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 Stars

I was so intrigued by the premise and absolutely loved this cover. I love books about messy people doing messy things for messy reasons. But the actuality is that the blurb was basically the book itself. And nothing more than surface level fodder is employed to fully flesh out the question posited: “…do we really want our fantasies to come true?

This book was rudderless and many of the characters - namely the children - felt like mere props. Cora is described by both others and herself as being interesting and witty. Someone people are drawn to. And there is some witty dialogue on her part. sure; but her character is otherwise flat and seemingly without personality. Her ennui pointless and unearned.

And the ending was lackluster to boot. Too bad too, cause there were spikes of greatness so close to breaking through. While this didn’t hit for me, I would be willing to try something else by this author as I did see potential. The threads just didn’t quite come together on this one.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I made it lmao.

I did not dig the writing style at all. It drove me nuts, immediately: “He had a toothpick stuck to his lower lip. His mouth was sexy; the toothpick was not. He offered one to Cora. She took it so she could touch his hand. It tasted like cinnamon. Of all available affectations, this one was openly oral, wholly about his lips and tongue, either keeping them busy or drawing attention to them.”

Yeah, no. But I kept on reading & my dislike became a bit of an obsession. Unhealthy behavior, I know, but sometimes it be like that. Despite this book doing some interesting things from time to time, its biggest crime was forgetting to include compelling characters. Cora and Sam were not it.

The biggest reason I picked this up had to do with (author crush) Tony Tulathimutte’s blurb calling this “the best book about adultery since Madame Bovary.” Uhm, Tony, let’s calm down a bit, yeah?

This one wasn’t for me & let’s leave it as that.

[Celine · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Over and over, you had to commit to the task of living. You had to insist on resilience, spring back from defeat.”

A book about an affair, in which the physicality is almost not the point. Fresh, tense, and addictive. I couldn’t put it down!

Cora and Sam, both married, meet at a baby group in the small town they’ve recently moved to. Their connection is immediate, sparking a Sliding Doors-esque narrative, in which the fantasy of an affair is a reprieve from the life they’re building with their spouses. But will they actually go for it?

What unfolds is the story of both a fantasy and reality, over the course of ten years. We watch the two go through so much of what life has to offer, their families weaving together as the years pass.

This is for anyone who is or has been in a committed partnership, and knows that alongside all of the beauty of committing your life to someone- the humor, intimacy and joy, there is also boredom, pain, and compromise. It’s a package deal.

I thought this was so funny, honest and incredibly vulnerable. It wasn’t what I expected going in, but I loved that it surprised me.

[Elizabeth Tuttle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Move over, Annie Ernaux. We have a new affair author in town.

The Ten Year Affair is, of course, about an affair. But few pages are dedicated to the affair itself. Most of the book is the yearning and fantasizing before the affair, presenting a dueling timeline in which our protagonist distracts herself from the banality of everyday life by fantasizing about her neighbor. These aren't the typical one-and-done fantasies where an illicit attraction is used purely as onanstic fodder. Instead, Cora builds a progressive, years-long fantasy where each time she indulges in her daydreams about Sam, their relationship in the fantasy world has grown and progressed.

In addition to telling an evocative story about the power of our imagination as it relates to our identity and relationships, Somers also captures bourgeois millennial masculinity astoundingly well. Cora appreciates that her partner is an equal, but finds a primal lacking in his respect for her inner life. The depictions of a small Hudson Valley town are apt and the writing is full of wit and insight.

I loved every second of this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the e-arc.

[Amee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right off the bat I can tell you this book won’t be liked by everyone, as the title says, there is cheating involved. Our narrator, Cora isn’t always well liked and many of her decisions are selfish and short sighted. After having her last baby she joins an infant and mother group where she meets Sam, the only father in the group. The connection is instant and slowly lines begin to blur a little bit more at a time. There were some very funny situations they get themselves into, especially when Sam and Cora decide to become “couple friends” to keep them from taking that first step to more. At first I liked Sam more than Cora’s husband and Sam’s wife drank too much and was too into her job, but as time progressed, I saw more cracks in Sam and Cora as individuals and not so much their spouse's. The “Sliding Doors’ description is subjective and without giving anything away, I got the comparisons being made. Life is monotonous and sometimes it’s in a good way and other times, it’s bad. Day dreaming, reading novels, watching tv…taking yourself out of the monotony can make time pass easier, but just don’t forget the grass isn’t always greener at the neighbors house.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC, as always I’m leaving my review voluntarily.

[Lisa (NY)]

I am giving up after 3 hours on audio. Witty writing but hollow.

[Brooke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don’t piss me off. Garbage book, horrendous sentence structure, and no character growth.

[Mary Keane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it

[Alecia (aleciareadsitall) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you simonbooks for this gifted copy to read and give an honest review. #simonbooksbuddy

I am in awe of this book. It somehow manages to be funny, insightful, and deeply moving all within this messy story of a “ten year affair.” I LOVED the sliding glass door aspect and the way that things sometimes felt a little muddled and confusing as the timelines converged and separated. For all intents and purposes, Cora should be an unlikeable character, but I felt so deeply for her and the way that it’s so easy for people to lose themselves in the aftermath of what you imagine to be the perfect life.

The tension and build up in the book was great, and my heart broke for the way in which you know deep in your heart that Cora and Sam are not meant to be together, but it doesn’t matter. Some part of you understands their connection and devotion to one another and the way that the other person offers something that is missing.

This book won’t be for everybody but I think it does a brilliant job demonstrating the complexities of human relationships and how people are not inherently good or bad but make decisions that can sometimes be good or bad. I thought it was brilliantly written and hysterical and I’ll definitely be recommending this one.

[jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down, this is one of the funniest books I've ever read, probably because it's so unforgivingly savage about just how weird it is to be thrown together with a random group of adults based solely on the fact that you all have kids the same age.

The Ten Year Affair is a mostly fantastical look at what happens between Cora and Sam after a chance meeting at a baby group. In one timeline, they give in to their undeniable chemistry and embark on an ill-advised affair, and in another, they remain (mostly) platonic friends. Honestly, It's a clever literary trick that felt fresh and kept me enthralled.

Luckily, this isn't a standard marriage-in-trouble book, but rather a comical meditation on what many modern, long-term monogamist heterosexual relationships look like at their best and their worst. All of the side characters resemble people you know and mostly wish you didn't, while the main characters are flawed, but always relatable.

Highly highly recommend this one!

Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Deanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this book as one of my October selections through BOTM. I enjoy reading books that explore “forbidden” topics, and since this one centers on adultery, the premise sounded intriguing.

I expected it to be engaging in the way My Dark Vanessa or All Fours were, as those novels also deal with controversial or taboo themes. Unfortunately, The Ten Year Affair just didn’t deliver. I read it cover to cover in one day, hoping it would eventually get better, but it never did. It felt like an absolute drag, and by the end, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the entire story felt pointless.

Another thing I didn’t enjoy was the narration style. The book switched between present day and the main character’s imagination of what she wanted to happen, often referring to it as “a different timeline.” The shifts weren’t always clear, so I kept getting confused about what was real and what was just imagined.

I also found out through another comment (though I haven’t confirmed it myself) that The Ten Year Affair was originally based on a short story Erin Somers wrote. Honestly, it should have stayed that way. The story was stretched far too long for what it was trying to say.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

god this was so good

[Nicole Stelzer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can’t believe I even finished this. I’m sure someone will enjoy it but I hated every single second of it. It always felt too distant and I couldn’t care about a single character. It was cold and maybe I missed the point but I disliked it a lot.

[Evelyn Bella (there WILL be spoilers) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An objectively self-aware woman blowing up her marriage seemingly just for laughs. To be fair, I laughed a lot.

Somehow my favorite running bit was everything about 'Broccoli Mom', who starts potty training her son from birth(which involves holding him over a potty until he inevitably goes, irrespective of how long that takes - spoiler alert, sometimes it takes very long) but 'it only takes about a year and then you never have to worry about it again. Saves a lot of time changing diapers over the years'.

And Sam going, 'But how much of that year have you spent holding him over a potty?'

Also, her son preemptively can't eat peanuts. Or anything that contains allergens. Because 'why take that risk, you know?'

💀

Said son is also called Hobby(?). And goes to school in a ✨meadow🌟.

[Papillon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this novel. All my thoughts and opinions are my own.

Real rating: 1.5 stars.

Admittedly, the book cover did the heavy lifting in piquing my interest. The synopsis did the rest. But, the story dropped the ball and shattered it.

Yes, this is a book about a(n eventual) affair, but it’s extremely sexual in moments that it has no reason to be. Exhibit A: (“Good morning. I have a hangover.” He put a palm on her breast.) …Why? Exhibit B: (In the other world, Jules would be incandescently mad and her anger would contain an edge of sex.) What???

Considering they met at a Mommy (& Daddy) & Me class, I was a bit surprised at how they treat their respective children as an afterthought. Cora and Sam will have entire, extremely inappropriate conversations in the presence of those little ears. And when they suddenly remember that they are indeed parents, they’ll shoo their kids away and tell them to go play. I genuinely believe they hate their children.

Casual drug use in any form of media will never be something I enjoy or can even be apathetic towards, so that alone marked points off for me.

The…quirky humor and dialogue felt painfully millennial. And Caucasian. It’s what I imagine watching an episode of Friends would be like.

Also, there’s just the sheer fact that absolutely none of the characters are (1) remotely interesting and (2) likable. This book is not long at all, but it reads like a 900-page novel. There’s so much mindless dialogue that add nothing to the plot. The constant “in real life” and “in my affair” feels so lazy, I’m genuinely disappointed. Daydreaming about cheating on your husband for ten-years is objectively insane.

Cora and Sam have such “woe is me” attitudes about their lives, but objectively they have really great lives. Her biggest problem is the fact that there’s a mushroom growing in her old house that she owns. She just wants to cheat on her husband. Which—I /guess/.

This might be someone’s cup of tea. But for me, no amount of sugar would make this sweet.

All I know is this: whoever illustrated this book cover needs to be paid a hefty fee.

[Ann Benner · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 ⭐️
A weird book.
Weird good, weird bad, weird weird.
Packed full of dry humor, the book is unique and worth reading but won’t hit the top 10 for me by any means.

[Em T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up. Thanks NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.

There are two types of books I love. Some, I want to devour at the fastest pace possible—staying up way too late because I need to know what happens next. Others, like The Ten Year Affair, I want to savor slowly, letting them wrap around me like a favorite sweater. This is definitely the latter, and I'm not mad about it.

Erin Somers has written something that made me want to text all my friends immediately. Her prose is sharp and funny and devastating, often in the same sentence. She gets the particular exhaustion of modern marriage, the way you can live entire fantasy lives while loading the dishwasher. Cora, our protagonist, exists in multiple timelines simultaneously, and Somers captures this perfectly:

During the hour-long drama that she watched with Eliot, she was blowing Sam in the backseat of his car. While she was running out to pick up milk, she was running out to pick up milk so she could meet him in the dairy aisle of ShopRite and have him furtively put his hand up her skirt for thirty seconds before heading home.

It's this doubling that makes the book feel so achingly real. Anyone who's ever felt trapped in the mundane while yearning for something else will recognize themselves here.

Here's the thing: I could not have cared less about the actual affair, but I was completely obsessed with Cora and her world. If messy women are having a literary moment (and they are), this is how you do it right. Cora is infuriating and relatable in equal measure, and Somers never asks us to like her or excuse her behavior. She just lets her exist in all her contradictory glory.

There's this moment where Cora reflects on always being praised for her "great personality":

You have a great personality. You know that?" Her whole life, people had railed on about her personality. Such a smart girl—woman! Such a smart woman. And funny. It got worse (better) as she got older. Kind, empathetic, a good parent. That was nice, right? That was what you wanted. But couldn't this one man objectify her?

This hit me like a truck. The burden of being the "good" woman, the one everyone thinks is so smart and funny, when sometimes you just want someone to want you for something more basic and immediate.

Somers absolutely nails the small indignities of domestic life in ways that made me laugh and then feel personally attacked. Like when she describes how long it would take Cora to work up the energy to call a clown:

It would take Cora hours to work up the energy to call a clown. She'd have to block out a whole day for it. It would involve confronting the choices she'd made in life up until that point, the entire chain of events that had led to calling a clown.

Like, girl, same. These moments are where the novel becomes something bigger than its premise—a meditation on how we end up where we are and how even the smallest tasks can feel like confrontations with our entire existence.

The marriage between Cora and Eliot is handled with such careful attention to both of their struggles. As someone who's dealt with mental health challenges, I appreciated how thoughtfully Somers approaches Eliot's depression and its impact on their relationship. Where this could have been a fantasy about grand passion and transformation (I'm looking at you Anaïs Nin and Annie Ernaux), Somers gives us something more honest: the mundane reality of how affairs actually function. Not as earth-shattering romance but as another kind of routine, another way of getting through the day.

The Hudson Valley setting was chef's kiss perfect. As someone who's spent plenty of time in these towns, Somers captures the social dynamics with laser precision:

You had friends and saw them for dinner. One party hosted and the other brought wine. You discussed current events while the kids watched a movie in a distant room. At the end of the night, you lay in bed talking about the other couple.

It's so specific and so universal at the same time. You know exactly these people and exactly these dinner parties.

Near the end, Cora has what Somers calls a "radical thought: to reside in a single timeline. To do only what she was doing and not a second activity as well. To respect the laws of time and space." Presence itself is revolutionary. It's not about the affair ending or beginning, but about the possibility of just... being where you are.

Consider me officially an Erin Somers stan. This is the kind of debut that makes you want to corner strangers at bookstores and insist they read it immediately. Smart, funny, devastating, and completely addictive. I'm already counting down the days until her next book.

[cyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The notes in my reading app for this book state in part, "literary good not good good," and truly that just about sums it up for me, ha. If you enjoy fancy, character-driven literary stories, you'll love this. If you read more for escape like me, you may not relish the story as much. The characters are annoying and difficult to like. The story is billed as a "sliding doors" type--in one world, young mom Cora stays faithful to her husband; in the other, she has an affair with Sam, a dad at her parents group.

It's not so simple, though, as sometimes the world with the affair is just in Cora's head; sometimes it's an actual affair. It's all very artistic, with intersecting and deviating timelines, but in practice it's also confusing. The book does a good job of capturing the tedious nature of marriage and motherhood, as well as how complex and difficult both can be. How sometimes a mother may just want to escape--into anything.

This is in no way a bad book. It's often well-written, and it explores marriage and motherhood in interesting ways. It just wasn't my exact taste, nor the escape I desired.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written with some lovely insight, this account of mutual attraction is told as if in two timeframes, sliding doors, one side being will they? the other, they do. Ramifications on both sides. Unusual treatment of a mundane subject.

[Angie Miale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cora and Sam meet at a baby class; there is an instant connection as they both hate the same mom. They begin having an affair that lasts ten years. At the same time, they don’t, and Cora stays faithful to her husband Eliot. And so this narrative intertwines two scenarios.

I was expecting this to be like The Names, where each chapter described each scenario and they were all cohesive stories. But this is different, the narrative switches within the paragraph at times, showing the reader what was happening. This definitely is confusing, but also creative. They aren’t that different, no butterfly effect here. I was so invested in Cora and Sam’s romance, although it was destined to end badly.

Who among us hasn’t looked back and wondered what could have been?

For fans of;
Sally Rooney, Claire Lombardo
Sliding Doors- metaverse type stories
Unlikable characters
Messy everyday life

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the ARC. Book to be published 10/20/25.

[Courtney N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ten years is a long time to have an affair. So of course I had to pick it up and get the tea.

I’m giving this a 3.5 rounded up! ⭐️

Something I value about contemporary stories above most other aspects is honesty. This has it in abundance, ironically so (since this is called The Ten Year Affair). This was such an honest, raw, and realistic story that dives into the psyche of people who are stuck rotating between what they want and what they have. I can’t promise this book will be for everyone, but there will be plenty of people that will read this, relate and take plenty away from it.

This was one of those books where there isn’t a perfect character and there isn’t a clear party or person to root for. All of the character characters are flawed and almost equally so. What you want to happen for these characters calls into question what you value above all. Your sanity? Your happiness? Your loyalty? Your obligations? The way you’re treated?

I really enjoyed reading through this book and being able to reflect on my own life while also being hilariously entertained by Cora and the rest of the cast. It was witty, quick, modern and had a unique format.

The few things I didn’t like were that the book did get a bit monotonous in the middle, the dual timelines sometimes made the narrative unclear and I did want to feel a bit deeper for the characters by the end but I didn’t get there all the way.

Overall, if you love to explore the aspects of marriage, parenting, fidelity/infidelity, relationship dynamics, this is for you!

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naturally, it’s about an affair, because what’s more millennial than emotional complexity and confusion underlined by a persistent “what if”? Yet, the book isn’t really interested in the affair itself, not really. That part is practically a footnote. The real focus is on the long, slow burn of wanting: the protracted prelude where Cora, our protagonist, survives the gray hum of domestic life by mentally staging a decades-long romantic epic with her neighbor, Sam.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill sordid kind of daydream. Cora’s fantasies aren’t cheap thrills, they’re serialized drama. Every time she checks out of her real life, she checks back into a parallel universe where their relationship has evolved: year by imagined year, complete with conflict, tenderness, and the kind of intimacy that feels earned. It’s less erotica, more emotional fan fiction with better lighting.

There’s something powerfully millennial about the whole thing: this insistence on crafting an inner world rich enough to survive the disappointments of the real one. Cora doesn’t just want her charming neighbor. She wants the version of herself that exists when she’s with him in her mind: braver, freer, not folding laundry in yesterday’s leggings. Because when the world hands you monotony, you build a myth— and millennial women? We’re excellent mythmakers. Dry humor, simmering rage, and all.

[Justine · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75⭐️ The premise intrigued me, though I think we all know where this is going from the blurb. Unfortunately, the execution fell flat. For a character study, this didn’t really deliver on that front.