Jane finds herself falling for Duncan, but then since he has slept with almost every woman in Boyne City is it going to work? She finds herself in uncomfortable situations, seeing Duncans ex's everywhere.

This is a charming sweet story which was very enjoyable.

We have Jane who moves to a small town to teach and she falls for Duncan who is a womaniser and everywhere they go they meet another of his exes.

Jane and Duncan have a few friends who are couples and some of their quirks are quite funny.

It was a very enjoyable read it deals with people coming together to help each other.

A novel that is both bittersweet and laugh our loud funny. Katherine Heiny succeeds in drawing you in to the lives of her characters, making you care deeply about their ups and downs. She's equally brilliant at bringing out the complexities of the many (wanted and unwanted) relationships that feature in the novel.

This wasn’t a bad book just not a memorable one for me . I had seen lots of positive reviews and after having thoroughly enjoyed standard deviation maybe I was just expecting more ..
The blurb says “laugh out loud funny, hilarious “ yet i didn’t find this the case . It’s well written , just a bit dull really . The characters didn’t keep me overly engaged and about half way through I just started to think where is this actually going and it was starting to drag .
It’s an easy read and you get to see the dynamics of small town life in the US , good escapism for a rainy day but didn’t have me rushing to pick it up when I had a spare minute or two .

This really tickled my funny bone. I kept reading hilarious out-of-context one-liners aloud to my husband to account for my spluttering. A cross between Kitchens of the Great Midwest and Olive Kitteridge, it’s a novel built of five extended episodes, crossing nearly two decades in the lives of Jane and Duncan and lovingly portraying the various hangers-on who compose their unusual family constellation. As the book opens in 2002, Jane is the new second grade teacher in town and manages to snare Duncan, a confirmed bachelor who’d slept with nearly every of-age female in Boyne City, Michigan. (I imagined him as Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I.) An accident leaves them feeling responsible for Jimmy, an intellectually disabled man who works in Duncan’s carpentry business, and he joins their household.

Also part of their almost-but-not-quite-family are Duncan’s ex-wife, Aggie, and her husband, Gary, both of whom like things just so. Then there’s Jane’s best friend Frieda, a music teacher who’s never without her trusty mandolin, Jane’s overbearing mother (“it was only possible to feel fond of her mother when she was not actually in her mother’s presence”), and so on. It’s hard to convey the delights of these characters through potted descriptions. They are absolutely themselves: incorrigible and maddening, but wonderful at the same time. Part of the joy of this gentle novel is simply spending time with them all. In a small town, everyone knows everyone and gossip spreads fast; secrets have little chance of staying so. Bad things happen – a tragic death, a betrayal, a case of unrequited love – but there’s a core of love as Heiny explores the everyday of marriage and parenting. A very good-natured book that feels wise and bittersweet.

(My preferred title would be something like Boyne City Love; my preferred cover would depict a typical Midwestern home with a front porch, perhaps at dawn or twilight – not dissimilar to an Anne Tyler cover. As it is, the title and jacket bear no relation to the contents and so don’t serve their purpose of sparking the memory through associations. Literally the only even tangential reference I could find to the title phrase was in a couple of pages close to the end, when Jane gets in a habit of waking early to enjoy summer mornings to herself.)

Jane meets Duncan after only a few days of moving to a small town. She soon realises that he has slept with a lot of women in town, but Jane still falls for him, even though he makes if clear he doesn't want to get marry again.- after being married to Aggie, who he is still very close to.

Through two decades there is a tragic accident, weddings and a heartbreak, but more importantly there Jane's unconventional family and a close circle of friends around Jane who she can lean on anytime she needs support.

I loved this book, a great story of love and hope, At times, I really disliked Duncan as he didn't seem to care, but I saw him mature throughout the story especially in his care for Jimmy.

This book was a slice of life told very tenderly with beautiful writing. It's about relationships, love and more.
Really loved it.

I really loved Heiny's short story collection, and Standard Deviation. Sadly, this one missed the mark for me.

I found the tone a bit mocking and ultimately, couldn't invest enough in the story as a result. I felt like I was being invited to laugh at not with these characters.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Easy to read, dry writing style, very funny at times. Not plot heavy, more an exploration of character. It was an enjoyable Sunday morning type of novel - no fireworks, didn't particularly grab me, but was an enjoyable and quiet way to pass the time.

What a wonderful book. So cleverly and beautifully written with so many characters so deftly and sympathetically drawn. The book provides a devastatingly accurate depiction of small town America and how everyone knows everything about people’s business.

I was drawn in from the opening chapter and the book was a joy to read.

A book that's easy to read and will make you happy and sad in equal measure. It rolls along well and the characters are well drawn. The story works it's way through 17 years, with all the ups and downs you would expect.

In my opinion, this would make a good holiday or beach read.

The novel Early Morning Riser is set in a small town where Jane a school teacher falls in love with the town lothario. - Duncan. Duncan seems to have dated every single lady in the surrounding town but has yet to commit to marrying any of them.
A disastrous event links Jimmy ( a young man with disabilities) to Jane and it's the unfolding of events that quietly absorb the reader's attention. This isn't a huge romantic tale - but one of everyday life where love shows its face in many guises.

This disappointed me slightly. I loved the writing style at the beginning but felt it went on a bit too long and was a little disjointed. I only rooted for one character, unsure if this was meant to be the case.

An odd romance between a teacher and a womanizer, followed by a tragedy. Heiny handles all the emotions brilliantly, giving us extremely likable and relatable characters. I especially loved Jane's mother, who added the necessary breaks in a plot laden with emotions. Duncan gets likable (I promise) as his character develops and what a wonderful character arc. Heiny connects her charat=cters through emotions and tragedies in a way that this plot will keep you engaged and entertained.

Sadly this one just wasn't for me at all. I've seen tons of reviews where people loved the style and found it heartwarming so maybe I'm not the right kind of person for it. I didn't finding myself warming to any of the characters and the pace was much to slow for me. I found myself waiting for something to happen, never quite engaging with it. Disappointed that I didn't connect with it but I'm sure there's an audience for it out there.

Sharp, sly and darkly funny portrait of an extended ‘family’.

Heiny doesn't make her books or characters easy to describe. Which is certainly no bad thing. I love her writing, her insanely batty creations, her slow but fascinating stories that are both sad and hilarious. But I'm still having trouble putting into words exactly what the book is about or who the characters are.

I could let Duncan speak for me though:
"'I'm sorry but how is it possible that you don't remember having sex with me after a Grateful Dead concert in nineteen ninety-four?' Duncan looked up from his plate. 'I went to thirteen Grateful Dead concerts in nineteen ninety-four. Could you be more specific?'"

Jane immediately feels an attraction to Duncan, even though, as she soon discovers, he has slept with almost every adult female in the area, all of whom still seem to remember him. His ex-wife even has him round regularly doing chores. Their relationship is a shared one, with Duncan never committing but always attentive and loving. But Jane finds it hard being with a man whose protege, the childlike Jimmy, is forever on the scene. Whose attractive ex-wife still phones up for help.

The story takes in years of their winding story, and it's such a pleasurable trek alongside a group of varied, memorable and often utterly nuts characters. I loved that Duncan's extended menagerie of acquaintances includes the vulnerable and "simpleminded" Jimmy, who walks in on 'intimate couple' scenes and amicably asks questions about work. My favourite though is Gary, Duncan's ex-wife's new partner. The man who dislikes everything, must be catered for at all times, and is so indubitably unattractive that it's hysterical.

"'You know as well as I do that Gary doesn't like to be alone after dark,' Duncan said, 'He says the toilet whispers.'"

An absolute joy of characterisation and of intertwined lives. There may be frustration and antagonism, but there is also a developing sense of care and family. I loved this. Loved Standard Deviation and its protagonist, but this ensemble piece is mature writing and utterly fantastic storytelling.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

Early Morning Riser is the new novel by Katherine Heiny. I really enjoyed one of her previous novels, Standard Deviation, so was keen to read this one too.

The novel focuses on Jane and her life in Boyne City with an array of other people – her family, friends, and partners. The characters in the book felt authentic and likeable and I wanted to read more about them.

It’s a fairly slow novel – not a huge amount of ‘action’ happens but we learn lots about certain characters and it feels quite realistic – like it reflects real peoples’ lives. There’s definitely a focus on the ordinary, but that doesn’t mean this novel is in any way boring.

There’s plenty of warmth and dry humour in Early Morning Riser. I liked reading about Jane as a younger woman, and her relationships as she grows up. The situation with Jimmy and his mother is both sad and uplifting in the way that Jane rallies around him – and Duncan too. Nothing in this novel is too cliched or feels forced; often I wished the characters would get more of a ‘storybook’ ending but that’s not real life, after all!

I didn’t like this novel as much as Standard Deviation, which I really loved, because I found some parts a little slow/ One part in particular – when Jane is waiting for Duncan to return home from a trip – felt this way as I wanted to know what would happen afterwards. However, I still enjoyed it and would recommend it.

A really nice love story with well-written characters. I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend it.

This is the kind of book that will probably appeal to older female readers. I found the author's style to be too heavy on telling. Within two pages our 'couple' has gotten together and I had no time to warm up to the characters, let alone feel something about their relationship. My mum would probably like this, me, not thanks.

What a gentle, refreshing, funny and beautifully written tale this was. With lengthy glimpses of Jane's life over a period of 17 years as her family increases in size and she begins to understand what is important in life.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Katherine Heiny/4th Estate for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.