From the beloved author of Half of What You Hear,
a perceptive and poignant novel about a woman discovering that her expertise
can only get her so far in matters of the heart.
Charlotte McGanley knows happiness.
Just ask anyone who's read Perfect Happiness, her bestselling book
about how she, a busy mother and professor, used her no-nonsense positive
psychology research to brighten her own life. She always pictured her career
beginning and ending in the halls of academia, but now she's become a bit of a
self-help guru. No one is more surprised by this than Charlotte herself, who
has secretly never been more miserable.
Though her husband of
many years, Jason, is her partner in all things, she finds more gratification
most evenings in a glass (or three) of Chardonnay or another scroll through her
Instagram feed. Meanwhile, their daughter, Birdie, is feeling the pressure of
being her high school's star tennis player, keeping up her GPA, and having her
first boyfriend-and Charlotte, despite all her expertise, has no idea how to
help her.
As Charlotte preaches
the gospel of happiness to her undergraduate students, audiences across the
country, and her own online followers, she's faced with some tough questions: What
is happiness when the family you've nurtured starts to fall apart in front of
your eyes? When your daughter seems determined to self-destruct? When the man
you thought you'd spend the rest of your life with-and took for granted because
of it-gets fed up? When all of the tools that you push to your loyal followers just
don't seem to work?
In this bittersweet
family love story, Kristyn Kusek Lewis explores how easy it is to lose
connection with the people closest to us, and what happens when we try to find
our way back.
“Lewis writes engagingly and empathically, and the supporting cast of relatable characters will keep readers absorbed as Charlotte works toward a new kind of happiness.”
