A Gorgeous Excitement: A Novel

In this “absorbing, astute novel” ( Town & Country, Must Read Books of Winter 2025) one young woman’s summer of infinite possibility takes a turn she never saw coming. A CRIMEREADS MOST ANTICIPATED CRIME BOOK OF 2025 “I haven’t felt this kind of excitement reading a story set in the ’80s since I first discovered Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, and Bret Easton Ellis.”—Margarita Montimore, bestselling author of Oona Out of Order There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother’s depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible — when her mother isn’t lying in bed for days, she’s lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan’s, the Upper East Side bar...