Thank you Random House Canada for the gifted copy in return for my honest review!

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The Adult is a quietly mesmerizing debut about Natalie, who is moving away from her small hometown in Northern Ontario to go to University in Toronto. It perfectly captured the insecurity and self-doubt that many people feel as teens that is only deepened as you try to navigate new adulthood. Reading this book felt like looking in a mirror because not only did I relate to so many of Natalie’s struggles with things like making friends and inability to speak how she really felt rather than putting on this easy going, more acceptable mask of who she was, and her self doubt and overthinking in her head, but I also grew up in a small town in (not as northern) Ontario. Because of her lack of confidence and self-doubt that is shown in her thoughts and interactions, it’s no surprise when she falls into a relationship with an older woman who seems to have so much control of her own life and provides an almost maternal figure to Natalie. This relationship is the crux of the book, and reading about through Natalie’s point of view is really interesting, she has so much admiration for the woman, Nora, and she doesn’t seem to have any flaws because of this. However, Natalie is only eighteen and Nora’s age is a question that’s never asked (mid 30s?). The Adult is a quiet, queer coming of age story with beautiful prose and a character that I think many people will see themselves in. This ones for the sad girls, the lonely girls, the girls that are still trying to figure out who they are and what they’re doing with their life, the “to make up for the fact that it’s me” girls, the Sally Rooney girls, the girls that wanted to be a Sally Rooney girl but thought her protagonist were too annoying, the girls who give and give and give and ask for nothing in return because they don’t want to be seen as asking too much or taking up to much space, the girls who overthink every little interaction before it happens and miss out on the chance to actually say what they were gonna say. This book is for you. (girls being a gender neutral term)