“I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.” I picked this one on a whim as part of my March box from @bookofthemonth. I didn’t know much about it beyond the synopsis but I ended up loving it.

Casey Peabody is an aspiring writer in a dead-end job she hates, reeling from the recent death of her mother and feeling alone in the world. She struggles to keep her life together and pursue her dream of finishing her first novel. As the title suggests, a variety of writers and lovers––sometimes both––float through her world. More than anything the book is a meditation on what it means to be a young, single woman about to lose hope in her dreams.

King’s writing is beautiful, full of excellent meditations on society’s expectations of men and women and the craft of writing.The way in which she describes Casey’s panic attacks were particularly poignant. This was a book I couldn’t stop marking quotations in, and one I think I will revise again. Easily in contention for a favorite book of the year and King is added to my list of authors with an extensive backlist I hope to explore.