PublishedText Publishing, April 2025 |
ISBN9781923058255 |
FormatSoftcover, 368 pages |
Dimensions0.1cm × 0.1cm × 0.1cm |
'Consider Yourself Kissed is a love story like no other- charming, warm, heartfelt and funny but with a truly razor-like authenticity. I absolutely loved every moment and didn't want it to end!' Liane Moriarty
Mother, writer, worker, sister, friend, citizen, daughter, (sort of) wife. If she could be one, perhaps she could manage. Trying to be all, she found she was none.
Coralie has grown up in Australia but needs to escape some ghosts. At twenty-nine, adrift in London, she meets witty, sexy, generous Adam-and his charming four-year-old daughter. Falling in love is fun, romantic and stabilising. And then?
Coralie yearns for children of her own, and to become a writer. Gradually, with Adam, she builds the home she's longed for.
But her trips back to Australia change her perspective. Ten years on, she realises something important is missing- herself. When she reaches breaking point, the results surprise everyone.
In this unforgettable story about what 'happily ever after' might truly mean, Jessica Stanley writes about life as we live it, and reveals how our intimate dramas can get tangled up with the public events of our times.
An honest, entertaining and intelligent portrait of a woman in love, Consider Yourself Kissed will capture your heart.
PRAISE-
'An unforgettable literary love story. This is a deeply appealing and winning novel.' Meg Wolitzer
'Fabulous...It's clever, joyful, familiar and awkward, and so funny.' Nina Stibbe, author Reasons to Be Cheerful
'I'm annoyed I didn't write this book myself. Combines rom-com breeziness with sharp political observation, plus one of the best depictions of stepmother-hood I've ever read.' Madeleine Gray, author of Green Dot
'Consider Yourself Kissed is ringingly original and just absurdly good. Jessica Stanley captures all the tenderness and brutality of young motherhood without dulling either, and the relationships and writing are so bracingly, deliciously fresh that I wish there were a fresher word than fresh. And that the book were 1000 pages longer. Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things
'Jessica Stanley's principal subject is romance, which she renders-in all its mess and glory-masterfully. But the real delight in Consider Yourself Kissed is how the novel confidently thinks about love more broadly- the feeling we can have for family, for work, for art and books and our homes and our friends, for the very world around us. It is an exhilarating read, a marvel of a book.' Rumaan Alam, National Book Award finalist and NYT bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and Entitlement
'Sweet and tender.' Pandora Sykes, author of How Do We Know We're Doing it Right?
'Utterly brilliant-so astonishingly clever, but with a core of love. It's generous, it's hopeful, it's one of the very best grown-up love stories I have ever read. And wears its smartness so lightly, but it captures the strangeness of the past few years perfectly. I could not have adored it more.' Daisy Buchanan, author of How to Be a Grown-up
'Consider Yourself Kissed is a tender, layered novel and one of the sharpest portrayals of marriage and motherhood I've ever read. It's also warm and clever and funny. I completely inhaled it. As with all my favourite novels, I wished I could read it forever.' Alice Robinson, author of If You Go
'Jessica Stanley captures all the quiet ecstasy and devastation of being a lover, a mother, a woman in the world, and wondering what is left over for yourself. In Coralie's endless labour to do everything right and try to write, I felt achingly seen. I want to hand this gorgeous book to every mum I know with a hug.' Clare Fletcher, author of Love Match
'Consider Yourself Kissed is an incisive story about the complicated task of loving and being loved. There's so much in this smart book - about class and identity, family and work. Stanley's idiosyncratic characters are the heartbeat of this novel. I could see them, full-bodied, jumping out of the page, interesting and strange and, by the end, I missed them all.' Erin Riley, author of A Real Piece of Work
'I absolutely raced through this novel which I found so smart, funny and true to life. One of those books you'll want to give all your friends once you've finished.' Claire Powell, author of At the Table
'The platonic ideal of reading experiences!...So funny, so smart and deliciously well observed! A real treat.' Lizzy Stewart, author of Alison
'Beautifully written, wise, funny, moving. Deftly fuses the personal and the political. A proper grown-up love story.' Beth Torrey, author of Saving Missy
'Oh, how I loved and empathised with Coralie! Consider Yourself Kissed is funny, tender, authentic and incredibly moving.' Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things
