Life, Unscheduled

Written by Kristin Rockaway

Narrated by Soneela Nankani

A smart, modern novel about a woman trying to balance her career, her best friend, and falling in love without crashing and burning.

Nicole Palmieri is married to her job. As a user experience designer at Virtuality, an artificial intelligence company in Los Angeles, Nicole is at her desk from sunrise to sunset. She doesn’t have time for a social life (or a love life), but that’s perfectly fine with her. Until her best friend, Parisa Shahin, announces her engagement and asks Nicole to be her maid of honor.

That’s when Nicole decides to meticulously schedule out the next six months of her life—from her project due dates to her dress-fitting appointments to how many hours she plans to sleep each night. If she can stick to her schedule, she’ll balance everything fine. Of course, that’s a really big if. And after she crosses paths with emerging restaurateur Brandon Phelps, Nicole is feeling feelings she hasn’t felt in…well, ever. But scheduling time to fall in love might push even the most meticulous plans into pure chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781713586647

Kristin Rockaway

Kristin Rockaway is a native New Yorker with an insatiable case of wanderlust. After working in the IT industry for far too many years, she traded the city for the surf and chased her dreams out to Southern California, where she spends her days happily writing stories instead of software. When she's not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and son, and planning her next big vacation.

Reviews for Life, Unscheduled

[jenniferrobb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was an Amazon First Reads pick. It's about having to balance work life and social life. Nicole likes schedules. This can be good--it's good to break a big project down into manageable parts with deadlines for each so that the final project can be done on time. This can also not be good--it can be a control-freak tendency. Nicole has given her all to her employer--now, she wants a promotion. She's given a big project as part of that process, but unfortunately it falls in the same time period as her best friend getting married and as she meets a guy from outside work in whom she is interested (and he's interested in her too). I was glad to see in the end that Nicole realizes that in one sense, she's been using work as an excuse to not have a life (or to have to face the life she doesn't have) and also that no matter how much she gives to her employer, it's not going to be appreciated. The novel does end a bit open ended which was a bit unsatisfying--what path does Nicole choose? Does she develop a web page business and stay on and help Brandon, Eric, and Kelsey with the brewpub? Does she get another job that allows her to work remotely? Does she do a bit of both? Does she get her gameroom and does it compare to the one she had at her former employer and does she enjoy the time there as much as she did on the Friday nights they had at the former employer?