(courtesy Secret Garden Press)
The idea that you can reinvent yourself if you just find the right inciting incident is a seductive one.
It defies the idea that who we are at any one point in time is the only person we will ever be, and encourages us to dream big and wide and to stare down those voices in our head that have long since thrown in the towel, accepting without a fight that we will be no bigger or more successful or happy than we are right now.
One person who has long been caught in that self-defeating loop is Quincy “the Quitter” Carmichael, the youngest child in a family of massive over-achievers whose upbringing was one of hot-house competitive pursuits, driven by a successful father whose PR/marketing company strives for excellence in all things, a reflection of the intensely exhausting drive for perfection instilled in the family.
But as New York, New Year, New You by Rachael Bloome kicks off its compelling story of renewal, reawakening and, of course, love, Quincy finds herself racing, over three months, a decade’s worth of her unfulfilled “Christmas Commitments”, which are her family’s incredibly ambitious equivalent of New Year’s Resolutions.
The goal? At first, it’s simply to land a dream position at her family’s company, in competition, it should be noted, with her siblings Matt and Veronica who are nasty, unfeeling pieces of work, but as time goes on, Quincy comes to realise that it matters more to her that she has changed.
She scoots closer, her green eyes sparkling, and murmurs in a conspiratorial tone, ‘Go on a date with Ethan Delaney.’
The location for Quincy’s race to complete a long series of unrealised goals from learning to play a musical instrument, cooking French cuisine and running a marathon is good old New York City, an urban setting which doesn’t take “no” for an answer and which practically demands you deliver on your stated goals or die trying.
Fortunately for Quincy, who is apt to quit long before she comes close to even beginning to expire in pursuit of her goals, she is rooming with her childhood friend Brynn, a super successful accountant who is due her own reckoning with a life consumed by work and very little in the way of chilling or relaxing.
Once staunchly close friends, they have drifted apart in recent years but reunited in the city to which Brynn has long been urging Quincy to relocate, they largely find their rhythm again, realising as they do so that their friendship matters far more than either of them gave it credit for in their adult years.
Helping matters along is the fact that Brynn’s sweet, hunky, tech-savvy older brother Ethan is temporarily living with her, and naturally, he has long held a candle for his sister’s bestie and is delighted to have her close by.
But whatever sparks might be flying between them, and yes, New York, New Year, New You is at heart a romcom of the festive variety, what stands in the way of these long-denied lovebirds falling in love is some deeply-buried but still traumatically resonant romantic pain that Quincy carries with her after a past love broke her heart in two, right in the middle of Central Park.
(courtesy official author site)
It’s quite clear from the word go that New York, New Year, New You is going to follow a well-established pattern of seasonal healing, renewal and future reawakening.
But it’s the way in which Bloom makes this happen that makes this novel such a delightfully fulfilling read.
For a start, New York, New Year, New You playfully bristles with Ephron-level dialogue, the kind of sparky, jaunty, witty language that we all miss we could use on a regular basis, full of intelligence, savvy insights and flirty, jaunty banter.
Reading any of the conversations in the book, especially between Quincy and Ethan, a joy and a delight, words bouncing between them like poetically-guided balls in a sport of your choosing and landing with grace, fun and a sense of ill-disguised intent.
But those words might feel empty and hollow were it now for the attention Bloome applies to character building, with every single one of the main characters give the kind of real, ongoing, raw humanity that makes you relate to them in a way that keeps you wholly invested in the story.
While some of the supporting characters such as Quincy’s aforementioned siblings, or her parents, are rather more cardboard cutout-ish, with transitions that don’t always feel authentic, Ethan, Brynn and Quincy are the real deal and bring the story alive in some very honest, emotionally rich ways.
And as I surrender to his touch, I’m al ost able to block out the haunting whisper in the back of my mind. The one that says, If you promise him forever, you’ll only break his heart.
What also gives New York, New Year, New You an edge in the very crowded festive romcom genre is the way in which it balances fun, chaotic moments, rife with embarrassment and visually slapstick-y energy, with scenes where some very dark past pain comes into play.
It takes real skill for any story, let alone a romcom, to contain serious and comedically light and romantically whimsical multitudes but Bloome manages it with aplomb with New York, New Year, New You never once left feeling like its crunching its narrative or thematic gears on the way to its inevitably happy ending.
The book moves seamlessly from heartfelt to hilarious to warmheartedly engaging, rewarding you with a story which has you laughing at the witty repartee between Ethan and Quincy, happy that she and Brynn are back to being close friends again – though, this being a romcom, there are some sizeable bumps in the friendship road to be navigated – and feeling deeply for characters who have been through a lot and who have responded to the resulting existential PTSD with the kind of coping mechanisms that do more harm than good when it comes to adult relationships.
But fear not, for New York, New Year, New You is a book about pain being overcome and hope being restored, and the clearing of Quincy’s logjam of a life is ultimately richly funny, deeply satisfying and joyously enriching, powering along with the jaunty air of a romcom but well and truly rooted in the real things of life which stand no chance when Quincy realises why she has always quit in the past and why she no longer wants or needs to do that going forward.