Author: Katherine Heiny
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication Date: April 13, 2021
Book Description: Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhere–at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away.
While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world’s most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it–never mind four. Five if you count Aggie’s eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.
But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane’s life is permanently intertwined with Duncan’s, Aggie’s, and Jimmy’s, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane’s eyes? A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work to date.
Rating: 5 Stars
Book Review: I literally jumped for joy when I received the ARC for Katherine Heiny ‘s new book, as Standard Deviation is one of my favorite books, and I was not disappointed at all.
When the book opens Jane a 2nd grade teacher meets Duncan and falls in love. You can consider Duncan the town whore, who has slept with the majority of the women in this small Michigan town. Duncan has made it clear he has no interest in getting married, which leads to the demise of their relationship. However Duncan is a good man, who employs Jimmy a developmentally challenged man, and still mows the lawn for his ex wife.
Fast forward a couple of years and Jane is getting married to Luke. The night before their wedding an accident occurs that forces Jane to be the primary caregiver of Jimmy, and causes her to make decisions that changes the course of her life.
This is such a lovely, heartfelt story that shows that you get back in return what you give in life. Heiny does a wonderful job capturing humankind, all the good and the ugly. This book will make you laugh and cry and everything in between. Just when I thought I knew what this book was about, Heiny changed the entire meaning of this story in the last paragraph of this book and it was all the better for that. Run to read this one, it is so worth it.
Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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