Nell and Eve have been friends since high school in Sydney, Australia, but it is a friendship marked by envy and betrayals. This darkly humorous novel weaves back and forth between two timelines, one that starts in their high school days in 2006, and the other in 2024, when Nell has left Eve and the young daughter they are raising together as platonic co-parents. Like Eve, we don’t at first understand Nell’s sudden disappearance, but as the two timelines converge over the course of the story, we learn more about each character’s motivations, their difficult relationships with their own parents, and the often toxic but still compelling relationship they have with each other.
Eve is also queer, and we see her move from the homophobia-laden atmosphere of high school into the freeing world of Sydney’s queer community, where her chosen family continues to form. Author Madeleine Gray casts a knowing but wry eye on the ins and outs of queer family creation and raising, including tensions about who is the “real” mom, interacting with childfree queer friends, and dealing with questions from a child’s peers about how their family was created. While many of those moments will resonate with a wide swath of queer parents, this is far from the usual uplifting tale of a queer romantic couple finding their way into parenthood.
That makes the story all the more entertaining and occasionally poignant as it explores what it means to be a family, to love and be loved, and how people and our love are often messy, flawed, and scarred. For readers who enjoy seeing imperfect people live imperfect lives and yet just maybe stumble towards something worth keeping, however, this is a highly recommended read.
