This blog is called Covers to Covers, and those who have been around since it’s inception in 2015 know that it was founded on the principle that I do judge books by their covers - and it’s a strategy that’s served me well. One thing I don’t find myself doing very often is judging books by their titles. But when I saw a post about a book called Really Good, Actually, on my explore page, I must admit: I decided I wanted it before I knew what it was about. After a few false starts (the first two bookstores I checked didn’t have it), I found it at Shakespeare & Co. and walked out with it before I’d even read the synopsis (though I did see that it was blurbed by Stephanie Danler, Dolly Alderton, and a few more authors whose books I’d read and loved).

It wasn’t until I started it that I discovered it was about a twenty-nine year old divorcée named Maggie, reckoning with the fact that, despite years of partnership prior to the big day, it took less than two years for her marriage to ‘fail.’ Just some light reading as I approach my own wedding month!

The thing is: it actually IS light reading. Really Good, Actually is whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny. The plot is hardly the point (in fact, it’s not a particularly plot-driven novel, so don’t expect shocking twists or a tidy ending); the point is that, while this may not be a memoir, it’s a bang-on depiction of millennial life. Heisey is effective as the “voice of a generation,” telegraphing our collective ennui and innate defensiveness without taking it too seriously. In fact, Heisey’s ability to poke fun at what our generation has become is what makes this book so funny. We are navel-gazing and exhausting at the worst of the times, and Heisey explores those tendencies with a light touch and a deft hand. There’s no expository dialogue (though there are countless witty one-liners and lol-inducing exchanges), simply hilarious (if confronting) scenes that play out on the page exactly as they might in real life; Maggie reading the newspaper with her dad, waiting to find something they disagree on so she can challenge his antiquated views, only to realize they agree on almost everything; Maggie at a bar with friends, getting increasingly frustrated because she’s not being funny and knows it, but also because she thinks her friends should be laughing at her anyways. Honestly, it was the perfect pre-wedding read. Not as some sort of “cautionary tale,” but because it captures the good, the bad, and the nuanced aspects of friendships and relationships in a way that made me appreciate mine even more.

I know I haven’t done the most thorough job recapping this book, but that’s because I didn’t love it for the plot - I loved it because it felt like a funny snapshot of a very particular moment in time - it was Really Good, Actually.