Everything's Fine
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
'Wow I loved this book. One of the smartest books I've read this year and also completely addictive. I can't say enough good things about it' Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Daisy Jones and the Six
What have you got to lose when you fall in love?
When Jess first meets Josh at their Ivy League college she dislikes him immediately: an entitled guy in chinos, ready to take over the world. Meanwhile Jess is almost always the only Black woman in their class. And Josh can't accept that life might be easier for him because he's white.
After graduating, Jess and Josh end up working together in the same investment bank. As they lunch, spar and pick each other's brains, Jess begins to see Josh in a different light, and it seems their connection might be deeper than Jess could ever have imagined.
As their tempestuous friendship turns into an electrifying romance that shocks them both, Jess begins to question who she is and what she's really willing to compromise for love.
Everything's Fine is an utterly original and deeply moving take on an age-old question from a dazzling new voice: what have you got to lose when you fall in love?
PRAISE FOR EVERYTHING'S FINE
'A stunning debut' Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss
'A mash-up of Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid, Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld and Assembly by Natasha Brown . . . warm, funny and romantic but also sharp and full of nuance. It asks a fundamental question: can you love someone who doesn't see the world in the same way as you do?' Elizabeth Day, author of How to Fail
'A subtle, ironic, wise state-of-the-nation novel, sharp enough to draw blood, hidden inside a moving, intimate, sincere and very real love story - or vice versa. Either way, it's a wonderful book by a fantastic, already-formed new talent' Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity
'A whip smart, sexy, biting love story about how what unites us does not always overcome what divides us. I wholeheartedly recommend this excellent novel' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
'Original, confident, hilarious' Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
'A brilliantly observed novel about what it means to lose yourself as a young woman. So funny but also incredibly true' Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina
'An extraordinarily brave debut that's painfully real-but plain funny as hell, too' Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of The Other Black Girl
'An assured debut that provides an honest look into the fraught terrain of a mixed-race, mixed-politics romance... Rabess is at her best when she is shining a light on the subtle mores that exclude Black women from conventions of desirability.' Guardian
'The ending of 'Everything's Fine' is one of the best I've read in years.' Angela Lashbrook, The New York Times
'A love affair that turns inferno.... You'll be riveted.' People Magazine
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rabess delivers a breezy yet unsettling debut about a liberal Black financial analyst who falls in love with a white Republican coworker. It's the middle of the Obama years and Jess Jones, newly hired at Goldman Sachs, runs into Josh Hillyer, an old college classmate with whom she used to argue over politics. To her surprise, they slowly become friends despite his conservative views as he mentors her and helps her navigate office politics as the only Black woman in the firm. Eventually, Josh leaves Goldman to work at a big-time trader's AI-powered firm, and he brings Jess along with him. Sparks inevitably fly between Jess and Josh as they try to work out their drastically different outlooks and backgrounds. Secrets are revealed, Jess gets in trouble with the boss, and everything comes to a head as the 2016 election approaches, building to a conclusion that lands as either shallowly romantic or an incendiary critique of capitalism, depending on the reader's interpretation. Rabess's humor is on-point, and the chemistry between the leads is electric; each scene involving them is fraught with a double-edged sword—after they hook up, Josh starts talking dirty and Jess responds, "Way to ruin the moment, you creepy loser," before they have sex again. This is sure to spark conversation.
Customer Reviews
Nothing new to see here
The author is African-American, and previously worked as a data scientist at Google, and an associate at Goldman Sachs. This is her first novel.
Jess is a twenty-something math graduate from the hallowed Crimson of Cambridge, MA (Harvard) who joins the Giant Vampire Squid (Goldman) as an entry level analyst. She is the only black person on the floor. There aren’t a lot of chicks either. A white male classmate who finished six months earlier than her at college has already made a name for himself as a Squid-let, or as that Squid-ling, to watch. Did I mention he’s a Republican. Cute, though.
Yada, yada. Everyone gives our gal a hard time but she proves her metaphoric metal, or thinks she has. Until she gets fired, and can’t afford all the nice stuff she’d just got used to, and hooks up with you know who, and falls in lurrvve. Ditto him with her. She moves into his place. Yada, yada. She takes a job as data journalist at a feminist magazine, exposes corporate and other graft, then her old man dies in Idaho and he’s all she had left because he Mom died when she was too young to remember her and….You get the idea.
The writing is crisp, the pacing good. The characters and the mixed-race romance are tried and true genre cliches updated for the TikTok generation, and did not improve my understanding of contemporary race relations in identity politics central, aka NYC.