REVIEW:

Loved, loved, loved it!

Early Morning Riser is a slim, 336-page book that took me longer than usual to read because I savored every word. Picking it up each night was like sliding into a bed made of clouds and floating on air. Comfortable… and comforting.

The novel is broken into seven parts, each a lengthy glimpse into the life of small-town elementary school teacher Jane in a given year starting in 2002 and ending in 2019. This style allows the author to go into great detail about Jane’s world, thoughts, and relationships over the span of two decades without turning the book into a doorstop.

While there is some tragedy, Early Morning Riser has a fairly low-stakes plot that falls somewhere between drama and uplit. I suppose “dramedy” is the descriptor that fits best. Remember that TV show “Northern Exposure?” It’s a little like that. Quirky characters, real-life situations portrayed in an honest way, and just good old-fashioned exceptional writing.

If you’re a reader that needs a compelling mystery to pull you through the pages of a book, this is probably not a great choice for you. But if you want to spend time in a gentle world at the end of a long day, this is the place.

My thanks goes to Katherine Heiny and 4th Estate / William Collins Books for the gifted advance copy via NetGalley to review. It’s been a pleasure.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

Jane easily falls in love with Duncan: he's charming, good-natured, and handsome. He has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere - at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While she may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she didn't have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, still has Duncan mow her lawn. And his coworker Jimmy comes and goes from Duncan's apartment at the most inopportune times. Jane wonders how the relationship is supposed to work with all these people in it. Not to mention most of the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.

But any notion Jane has of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Now her life is permanently intertwined with Duncan's, Aggie's, and Jimmy's, and she knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But is it possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of her eyes? A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Early Morning Riser is Katherine Heiny's most astonishingly wonderful work to date.