To Be Determined is right in my wheelhouse—literary fiction that's more interested in interiority than plot, with a protagonist who's smart and self-aware and still making questionable decisions anyway.

Mallory's voice is the engine here. She's funny, honest, and refreshingly unfiltered about her sexual frustrations, her need for validation, and the low-grade terror of being twenty-four and feeling like everyone else got a roadmap you somehow missed. The open marriage dynamic with Max and his wife adds tension and complication, but the real story is Mallory's reckoning with her own desires and the pressure to conform to a life trajectory that doesn't fit her.

Molly Bingham writes with precision and wit, and the observational humor keeps things buoyant even as the existential dread simmers underneath. The Sally Rooney and Lily King comps are well-earned—this has that same intimate, slightly claustrophobic quality of being inside a narrator's head while they overthink their way through life.

For readers who love character-driven literary fiction about young women at odds with societal expectations, this is a strong, engaging read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.