Author:
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: September 29, 2020
Book Description: This warm, wise, highly entertaining twenty-first century love story is about what happens when the person who makes you happiest is someone you never expected
Lucy used to handle her adult romantic life according to the script she’d been handed. She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she’s a nearly-divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn’t exactly looking for love–she’s more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It’s not a match anyone one could have predicted. He’s of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through.
Just Like You is a brilliantly observed, tender, but also brutally funny new novel that gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person–someone you didn’t see coming.
Rating: 4 Stars
Mini-Review: Nick Hornby brings us another delightful and poignant novel that cohesively brings together many topics that we read in the newspaper today.
Lucy is 42 and getting divorced. Joseph is 22 and holds multiple jobs to make ends meat. Lucy and Joseph have an attraction to each other that they eventually decide to take to the next level. Through this book Hornby writes about race issues (Lucy is White, Joseph is Black), the 20 year age difference, and then political issues (Brexit and Trump).
This was written in a very fun story, yet the undertone of this book will leave you with a lot of questions. I highly recommend this as a book to read with friends, because there is so much to unpack. I personally love Hornby and this book did not disappoint.
Obsessed Bookaholic 