The Rachel Incident: Discover 2023's most anticipated summer read – a hilarious, heartfelt story of unexpected love from the bestselling author

‘And I love you, too. When you love someone, you sign up for the whole thing. Even if they’re grumpy or weird or sick or if they’re pregnant, Rachel. It doesn’t matter how many things you have on already. You love the whole person.’

He was a doctor and I was supposed to take what he said seriously; but he was a dentist and my dad so I didn’t

I looked as though I was coping magnificently, and so my friends stopped checking in as much, and then when the real breakdown happened a month later I found myself not just in tears but curiously alone

August was a month so wild that now we only refer to it as one thing: The Gaynaissance

Elephant Feet Productions

Whether the strange looks were real or not, they were real to me, and they affected every choice that came next.

It is amazing to me, now, how convinced I was that my emotional debt to the people who had raised me was paid, simply because I no longer lived with them.

“We’ve all had our hearts broken, and we’ve all had someone cut us some slack because of it.”

I don’t know who I was trying to impress. I did not want a boyfriend; I did want romance. I wanted passion; I did not want to be someone who was known as easy. I was desperate to be touched; I was terrified of being ruined.

I chose English, originally, because I liked to read. But even then what I liked most about reading was that I was good at it.