The acclaimed bestselling author of Sandwich is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn’t go as planned.

If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry—and relate.)

Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who’s back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky’s widowed father, has moved in.

It all couldn’t be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them—and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won’t affect them at all.

With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people—no matter how much you love them—are not always exactly who you want them to be.

I’m fully a Catherine Newman stan at this point. We All Want Impossible Things hit me hard, and when Rocky showed up in Sandwich, I felt like I’d met my new best friend. I loved the character’s voice, her humor, and her anxious spiral of a brain. So when I heard this book would continue Rocky’s story, I was all in.

While I didn’t love this one quite as much as Sandwich, I still connected with it on a pretty deep level. Rocky is a very specific kind of relatable. She’s in a midlife hypochondriac spiral where every ache, rash, and lab result sends you down a doom-filled internet rabbit hole. When I hit fifty, it felt like everything started breaking down at once. Gallbladder gone. Joints complaining. Weight loss suddenly a mythical concept. Every elevated lab had me Googling possible causes and making me fear rare diseases I’d never heard of. So yeah… Rocky’s slow-motion panic as doctors poke, prod, and test her for a weird rash? I felt that in my bones.

Rocky is still anxious, messy, worried, loving, and self-aware enough to know she’s spiraling yet unable to stop. That’s part of what makes her such a compelling character. Newman writes her with humor and tenderness, letting us laugh at her catastrophizing one minute and ache for her the next. This book leans into that slice-of-life vibe Newman is so good at—capturing the tiny moments that make up a family’s daily rhythm and turning them into something quietly meaningful.

The actual plot is deceptively simple. Rocky becomes obsessed with a local accident that barely involves their family and starts spiraling over the possibility that her medical concerns are something serious. It’s that feeling of staring at a tiny thing and suddenly seeing it as a huge, looming problem. Newman handles that internal unraveling with humor but also with empathy. Rocky’s worry never feels like a punchline. Instead, it feels human.

The whole gang is back: her husband Nick, who is patient and steady; Willa, back home after college; Jamie, now working in New York; and Rocky’s widowed father who has moved in with the family. Each of them feels like a real person you’d run into at the local grocery store. Newman is brilliant at writing the kind of characters who feel warm and flawed and three-dimensional in just a few strokes.

One thing I love about Catherine Newman’s books is their length. They’re short, but somehow still fully fleshed out. You can read them in an afternoon, but you walk away feeling like you lived a whole life with these people. Nothing feels rushed or skimmed, and nothing drags. She hits that perfect sweet spot of giving you enough while leaving space for the reader to breathe. It’s a rare balance.

Newman also has that gift of sounding conversational while delivering lines that quietly knock the wind out of you. She blends humor and emotion in a way that feels effortless. One moment you’re laughing, the next you’re hit by a line that makes you pause because it hits so close to home.

This is a thoughtful, funny, sometimes bittersweet look at family, aging, worry, and the strange things we fixate on when everything feels just slightly off-kilter. It’s tender without being sentimental, and funny without being flippant. If you loved Sandwich, you’ll appreciate seeing Rocky and her family two years later, just living their wonderfully normal, messy lives. And if you like stories that feel like a snapshot of your own internal chaos—especially that midlife “what is happening to my body?” moment—this book will hit the mark.

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