Really Good, Actually: A Novel

By Monica Heisey

“Hilarious, heart-warming, wise.” — Paula Hawkins

A hilarious and painfully relatable debut novel about one woman’s messy search for joy and meaning in the wake of an unexpected breakup, from comedian, essayist, and award-winning screenwriter Monica Heisey

Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.

Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.

Laugh-out-loud funny and filled with sharp observations, Really Good, Actually is a tender and bittersweet comedy that lays bare the uncertainties of modern love, friendship, and our search for that thing we like to call “happiness”. This is a remarkable debut from an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781443467094

Monica Heisey

Monica Heisey is a comedian and writer from Toronto. She has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, The Guardian, Glamour, New York magazine, VICE, and more. She won four Canadian Screen Awards for her work on Baroness von Sketch Show, and has written on shows like Schitt’s Creek, and Workin’ Moms, among others. She currently lives in London, UK. This is her first novel.

Reviews for Really Good, Actually

[geauxgetlit · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Being a very recent divorcee, I thought that this book would be something I could relate to and understand in a deeper way; however, it made me cringe. The book was basically one woman’s neurotic word vomit at how she was too young to be getting divorced at 29/30! She had many friends and they just stood back and watched this happen and never thought she needed serious intervention. I don’t know, but it was wayyy over the top especially since it went on for almost a year! This was the entire book and that’s it!

I listened to the audiobook and I think that was the only thing that helped propel me to finish. Julia Whelen was the narrator and she is my favorite. I gave it 2.5 stars for the audio portion. It would have been a dnf if not.

[sublunarie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I saw this book in B&N, and saw her sad, manic face on the cover I instantly thought "I can relate". I didn't pick it up right away, but 45 minutes later when I was about to check out, I went back and grabbed her.It was like going to a pet shelter. I didn't choose her. She chose me. I loved every second reading this book. I wish it would have never ended. But that's kinda selfish because that would doom Maggie to a lifetime of being miserable and never finding happiness. (But I still kind wish...). I laughed out loud so much. Literally LOL-ing. I never ACTUALLY LOL. LOL is a state of mind, not an actual thing people do. Unless, it turns out, you're reading this book.I posted on my IG stories that I was reading this book and Monica Heisey shared it and I felt manic about it in the same way I feel like Maggie would have. Is that what the kids call "meta"?

[shazjhb · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Terrible book. A bad romance and just horrible story line. Boring and stupid people.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Holds a decent claim to sit beside Heartburn and Bridget Jones in the canon. It never quite breaks through to the sort of Serious Look at Modern Love territory of Catherine Lacey or Lauren Oyler, but then again their books aren't nearly as funny as this. The Harry Styles cameo will live long in the memory.

[jnmegan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Monica Heisey ventures into novel territory, with a switch from comedy screenwriting to penning a contemporary fiction. The Schitt’s Creek writer does not leave behind her sense of the absurd and the human foibles that make characters both relatable and exaggeratedly bizarre. Maggie is a young woman in crisis, and she is not handling it very well. Unmoored by the dissolution of her short marriage, she is forced to grapple with her dashed life expectations and a restart for which she is unprepared. The plot generally tails Maggie as she realizes her gaps in knowledge about adult life and the dependencies that she had been able to ignore as part of a couple. She flounders in her unwished-for freedom, her attempts at independence providing many moments of zany adventures and awkward interactions. Her well-meaning friends also relentlessly bombard the poor woman with unsolicited advice and platitudes—spinning her more toward chaos than self-sufficiency. Through narrative and interspersed emails, lists, and conversation summaries, Heisey avoids succumbing to the obvious tropes of the genre. Like the tv scripts she has written, Really Good, Actually is funny and irreverent, at times even crass and cringe-worthy. Readers who appreciate kooky heroines and parodies of romantic comedy will find this debut a delightful diversion.Thanks to the author and William Morrow for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.