I was between books and read the first chapter of a couple. This one spoke to me more. It opens with a twenty something British Cleo meeting forty something American Frank after they have both left the same party in New York. It was their flirtation and playful interaction that drew me in and convinced me to choose this as my next read. From their first meeting you think you are being set up for a love story, but what you get is not quite a love story.

What follows are shifts in time and different points of view from the couple, Frank’s sister Zoe, Cleo’s friend Quentin, and Eleanor, a colleague of Frank’s.

This is my second novel by Coco Mellors and it is just as digestible as the other book of hers that I read, Blue Sisters. I feel that where we got more depth from her characters in that book, we did not get it here, particularly from many of the supporting characters. None of them were especially likeable, except perhaps Eleanor and, toward the end, Frank. Quentin felt like a caricature, and I felt that Mellors reinforced gay and femme stereotypes through his character, leaning into the familiar trope of the hopeless spiral into addiction, complete with a mysterious fate and little sense of resolution. Quentin even has a full chapter that felt largely unnecessary.

What was unusual was the way Eleanor’s chapters were written. They consist of short paragraphs made up of small bursts of thought rather than fully developed scenes like the others. In some ways this helped the novel move more quickly, but her storyline also carried more warmth and substance than the ostentatious tone of the others, which felt refreshing.

It was not an unpleasant read, and I was invested in seeing how Cleo and Frank’s relationship developed. However, I did not find anything especially profound in the novel, despite the sense that Mellors was aiming for that depth, and at times it edged toward pretentiousness. I would like to see how Mellors handles a narrative centred on more grounded struggles, rather than once again focusing on the upper circles whose conflicts revolve around drink and cocaine in her future work.

⭐️⭐️⭐️