Everyone told me this book was about a divorced guy navigating dating apps and his disappearing ex-wife. And okay, yes, technically. But sitting in my garage at 10:47 PM with a lukewarm cup of tea, I realized about halfway through that this book had pulled a bait-and-switch on me - and I was completely fine with it.
I picked this up expecting something in my wheelhouse: sharp, funny, maybe a little sad, easy to follow after being interrupted seventeen times by someone needing a snack. What I got was... more complicated than that. Which is fine! I can do complicated. I just want you to know going in that this is not a comfort read. This is a 'stare at the ceiling afterward' read.
Toby Is Not Who You Think He Is (And Neither Is Rachel)
So the setup: Toby Fleishman, newly separated, is having his best summer in years - hospital job, dating apps, finally feeling like himself again - when his ex-wife Rachel just... drops their kids off and vanishes. No call, no text, nothing. And Toby gets to tell us all about what a nightmare she was. Ambitious, cold, always working, never present.
Here's the thing. Brodesser-Akner lets Toby narrate for a long, long time. Long enough that you start nodding along, building your mental case against Rachel. And then the book's actual narrator - Libby, Toby's college friend who's been quietly telling us this whole story - steps forward and basically says: wait. Hold on. You've only been hearing one side.
The pivot to Libby's perspective, and eventually to Rachel's, hit me somewhere specific. Because I spent four years in corporate marketing before Sophie was born, and I recognized something in Rachel's exhaustion that Toby couldn't see - the particular kind of invisible labor that happens when you're the one holding everything together and everyone assumes you're fine because you haven't fallen apart yet. I wasn't expecting to feel defensive of a character I'd spent hours being told to dislike. That's good writing.
Allyson Ryan handles this tonal shift really well, actually. The sections where Libby is clearly editorializing - adding her own dry commentary on Toby's selective memory - have a different energy than the early chapters. There's a sardonic edge to her delivery when she's voicing Libby's growing impatience with the story she's been asked to tell. It's subtle, but once you notice it, you can't unhear it.
The Pause Problem (Real Talk)
Okay. Fourteen hours and thirty-seven minutes. I need to be honest with you.
This book does not survive 47 pauses gracefully. It's not that the plot is confusing - it's that the emotional momentum matters. There's a rhythm to Brodesser-Akner's sentences, this long, winding, accumulating style where she'll spend three paragraphs building to a single devastating observation about marriage or ambition or what we owe each other. If Sophie wakes up mid-paragraph and I come back twenty minutes later, I've lost the thread.
I ended up doing most of my listening in two longer sessions - one during a rare two-hour nap stretch (historic) and one very long garage sit. This is not a school-drop-off book. Twenty-five minutes is not enough time to get anywhere meaningful. You need at least 45-minute chunks to let it breathe. On the complete opposite end of that spectrum, Summerhouse is one I've been saving for exactly those fragmented school-run windows — shorter, lighter, the kind of thing that doesn't punish you for losing your place.
Also: this book is not going to give you a tidy ending. I want to be upfront about that. If you need resolution and a clear villain and someone to root for without qualification, this will frustrate you. The ending is honest rather than satisfying, which is sometimes what you need and sometimes really isn't.
Who This Is Actually For
If you've ever felt like you were working twice as hard as everyone around you and still somehow being the difficult one - this book is going to feel uncomfortably personal. If you've ever had a version of the 'but I do so much' argument with a partner and walked away feeling like neither of you was entirely wrong - same.
If you're looking for something funny and light to fold laundry to, skip this one. The humor is real - Brodesser-Akner is genuinely sharp and Allyson Ryan delivers the sardonic one-liners with exactly the right amount of tired bite - but it's the kind of funny that sits next to something painful, not instead of it.
My book club would have a field day with this (if I ever have time for book club again). The kind of book where everyone has a completely different read on who the real problem was, and nobody's entirely wrong.
Made me think about my own marriage in ways I wasn't entirely prepared for on a Tuesday night. Worth it though.
