Welcome to Your Life by Bethany Rutter
Bethany Rutter's Welcome to Your Life is a breezy, sweet and deeply funny look at the grim merry-go-round of modern dating
Serena Mills has had a revelation. She's with the wrong person, and needs to do something about it immediately. The downside is that this is the morning of her wedding. Fleeing to a Harvester off the M25, it’s time to leave behind the comfort she’d settled with for years.
The world of dating awaits, looking to hit a target of one a week for the next year. It’s a merry-go-round of dodgy matches, and tales for friends over wine, that’s just really funny, filthy and joyful, whether hitting it off with someone at a wedding, or awkwardly ignoring Malcolm in the middle, the ultimate third wheel in an Uber Pool.
Welcome to Your Life questions real happiness vs what you think you are owed, holding happiness at arms’ length in an act of self-preservation on an unforgiving internet. Instead, the revelation is not one of who to be with, but how to be with herself – that she is deserving, her body is a wonder, someone would be lucky to have her, whether that’s a one-off post-theatre shag or a longer-term deal; frankly, she’s fantastic.
And she is fantastic. The whole book is. The horror of dating apps is nothing new, but there’s a breeziness to Rutter’s writing, a sweetness to her characters, a deeply funny flair that grips from the off. It’s a book brimming with joy and laughter; inhale it with ease.
HarperCollins, out now, £14.99