Early Morning Riser

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Pub Date 15 Apr 2021 | Archive Date 31 Dec 2021
4th Estate, Fourth Estate

Description

A wise, bighearted, boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family from the celebrated author of Standard Deviation.

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. But any notion Jane has of love and marriage changes with one tragic accident. 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.

A wise, bighearted, boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family from the celebrated author of Standard Deviation.

Jane easily falls in love with Duncan: he's charming...


Advance Praise

‘Very, very funny, but so tender, so beautiful. I loved all the characters, I cared deeply’ Marian Keyes

‘Glorious. I love how it evokes the rhythm of life in all its joy and ordinariness and chaos’ Nina Stibbe

‘Warm, witty, touching – and frequently hilarious’ David Nicholls

‘Charming and tender, an offbeat and original gem’ Pandora Sykes

‘Heaven. Everything I have ever craved in a novel’ Daisy Buchannan

‘Very, very funny, but so tender, so beautiful. I loved all the characters, I cared deeply’ Marian Keyes

‘Glorious. I love how it evokes the rhythm of life in all its joy and ordinariness and chaos’ ...


Available Editions

EDITION Ebook
ISBN 9780008395117
PRICE £5.49 (GBP)
PAGES 304

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NetGalley Shelf App (EPUB)
Send to Kindle (EPUB)

Average rating from 220 members


Featured Reviews

This was a dramatic and engaging love story, posing uneasy questions about our boundaries and the choices we are willing to make in the name of love.

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A fabulous read a book that drew me in from the first pages.Characters that come alive a story of love a story that made me laugh a story that was emotional.Second book I’ve read by this author and five stars is not enough.#netgalley#4thestatebooks

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Ah, i loved the authors previous book, standard deviation, so much that I was overjoyed to see a new novel from her.
Early morning Riser is the story of Jane, a primary school teacher who has moved to a small US town where everyone knows everyone. And every woman in the town, or so it seems, has been involved with her new boyfriend, Duncan.
The story of Jane and Duncan’s relationship, of the relationship with Duncan’s Ex wife and her new husband, of Duncan’s work colleague Jimmy, of Janes teacher friends.
Funny, bittersweet, and very tenderly told. I liked this a lot. Easy to read and hard to put down. The ideal combination! Jane will be everyone’s new heroine.

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This book is wonderful. I found the start a little slow but by halfway I couldn’t put it down. The characters are expertly formed, the phrasing is exquisite. When I started, I thought I had a standard turbulent love-life tale from the perspective of a female protagonist but it develops into so much more. It’s told with great fondness. It’s not heartwarming in the tired book blurb sense - my heart genuinely feels warm. Recommend highly.

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When Jane moves to small-town Boyne City to teach in the local primary school, she quickly falls for handsome, laid-back Duncan, but soon finds out that he has slept with almost every woman in the area and sees himself as someone that women stay with for a while before moving on to someone more permanent. Unfortunately most of them are still part of his life, particularly his bossy ex-wife Aggie. Jane, seeing no future for the relationship, ends it, but a tragic car accident changes her perspective on things and her life takes a turn she would not have predicted, or indeed chosen. This book was a joy to read and the characters delightful (if sometimes irritating) company. It reminded me of a lighter, more humourous version of my favourite author, Anne Tyler, and I can’t give higher praise than that. Heiny excels at portraying the frustrations and pleasures of living in a small community, where all the residents know each other’s business and have an opinion on it, but care for each other in times of need. The characters are quirky but believable, from sweet man-child Jimmy through Jane’s insensitive but vulnerable mother to Aggie’s vacuous husband with all his strange routines and food aversions. The children in Jane’s class are amusingly and accurately depicted, with the trip to a farm a particular highlight. Sorrow and struggle are very much part of the story, but the overall effect is a reminder that life might not turn out as planned and hoped for, but happiness and love can be found in the most unlikely situations and when you least expect it. Wonderful!

Thanks to Netgalley for the ebook proof in exchange for an honest review.

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Early Morning Riser follows Jane over the course of 17 years as she falls in and out of love with Duncan, the village Romeo. A tragic accident throws Jane's life off course and nothing will be the same. We follow all the ups and downs of everyday life.

I can't even put my finger on why I enjoyed this so much other than saying, this is truly heartwarming. The plot felt genuine and the characters realistic. I am now Jane's number one fan, what a woman!

Plot wise this might not be the most action packed but I still couldn't put it down. If you love character focused books, I definitely recommend this one.

This will have you laughing one minutes and crying the next but it's worth the ride!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and 4th Estate for providing me with a copy to review.

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