I’m way outside the target market for this book. I picked it up because of the praise it received from The Globe (best of 2023), the NYT (not burning a gift link on that) and others. But it wasn’t even on the list of the best things I read this week.

It’s about a kid named Natalie from Temagami, Ontario (I’ve been there!) in her first year at U of T, falling in love with an older woman. Very (very) low-stakes drama ensues.

I was pulled in fairly quickly, but it’s hard to know whether it was the story and characters that did it or the setting. It’s a Toronto book, so I’m predisposed to look for stuff I know, and that carried me through the first half. Fischer effectively captures the awkwardness of being a fish out of water, a transplant from rural Ontario to an urban downtown. Natalie’s social anxiety was surprisingly familiar from my younger days.

The story was light and dialogue-driven, which kept things quick until it became a problem. As I progressed I started skimming more and more. It’s barely 300 pages long, and still felt overstuffed. There was not a thought or feeling from Natalie that wasn’t articulated explicitly, often repeatedly or spanning several paragraphs. We know the names and details of YouTube videos she watches to kill time, and the content from websites she consults for tips on small talk or relationship advice. The chemistry between Natalie and Nora wasn’t convincingly established, so it was increasingly difficult to care about whether the relationship succeeds or not. I spent most of the second half of the book pretty much reading only the dialogue, and don’t think I missed much.

The ‘twist’ (such as it is) is telegraphed on about page 20, but not revealed until way too late in the book, past the point where it mattered.

I think Fischer has a good future as a writer — the dialogue was well-written and the main character was easy to root for. This one wasn’t a bad first effort, but I’ll probably have forgotten it by this time next month.