Is She Really Going Out With Him?

Is She Really Going Out with Him? by Sophie Cousens
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date: November 19, 2024
Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit, Vacation Reading

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Because we’re all still recovering from any number of financial upheavals, be it taxes or the stock market I’m sticking with easy reading that pays off. Is She Really Going Out With Him? has a very similar premise to Monday’s book—a single woman at a media company forced out of her professional comfort zone in an effort to save her job. Also, in both cases it involves the world of dating. Here, it’s Anna, a columnist for a local lifestyle magazine who finds herself drawn into a competition with another writer when a new investor deems her writing boring and suggests she be let go.

Anna writes personal observations about local life for Bath Living (the city in England, not the shower alternative). A newly divorced mother of two, she desperately needs her job so when she’s told that Will, the food writer, a dashing man is being given her space to write a man-about-town column in addition to his own, she brashly suggests she can write a dating column as easily as he can, even though the idea is as appealing as chewing ground glass. Her challenge is accepted on a temporary basis until just one of them is chosen. Given that Anna has already tried dating apps and found them a horror she goes for a twist—her children, who know her better than any algorithm, can pick her dates. Unsurprisingly this provides Is She Really Going Out with fun via miscommunications and misadventure. What is a welcome surprise is that it never devolves into silliness.

Two such similar books read so closely one after another could have led to boredom and disappointment, but author Sophie Cousens fills Is She Really Going Out with a number of smart choices and flourishes that make the rom-com formula charming and fresh. Each chapter begins with a hilarious (and sometimes familiar to this reader) list of Anna’s top Google searches for the day, ranging from How many seasons of Outlander are there? to Where to go on a date with someone you hate?.

In the smart choices space is Cousens’ generosity towards all of the characters in the story. By and large, all have nuance, whether it’s through their back story or just their presence on the page. No one feels like filler which is lovely in fiction and not so easily done. I especially loved Anna’s children for coming across so naturally, whether in their humor or more serious moments. It all comes together effortlessly and made the pages fly by. Even better, Cousens has a backlist of other novels so I can turn to her again when I need relaxing reading.

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