Loved One

Most Anticipated Book of the Summer: New York Times Book Review, W Magazine, Real Simple, Oprah Daily, Hollywood Reporter, the Boston Globe, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune “[Loved One] is special . . . full of wildly astute, delectably thorny questions about love and loss and possession.” —Maggie Shipstead, New York Times bestselling author of Great Circle “Shimmers with wit even as it explores deep loss.” —Rachel Khong, New York Times bestselling author of Real Americans From an Emmy Award–winning writer comes a funny, wise, heartbreaking story about a woman journeying into the unknown in the wake of sudden loss When her first-love-turned-close-friend, Gabe, dies unexpectedly at twenty-nine, thirty-year-old Julia is launched into an intercontinental quest to recover his lost possessions. Her journey takes her from Los Angeles to London and into the murky realm of the past. It also sets Julia on a collision course with the last woman he loved, a guarded, self-possessed florist and restaurateur named Elizabeth, who insists on withholding Gabe’s beloved guitar—one of the departed indie rock musician’s dearest belongings—for reasons Julia can’t understand. Both women, it turns out, have something to hide, and soon find themselves engaged in a complex dance of withholding and revelation. An emotional mystery spanning years, continents, and relationship statuses, Loved One introduces Aisha Muharrar as a novelist intimately attuned to the intricacies of love, memory, and ambiguous loss. What happens when we admit that the deepest feelings never die? How do we reconcile various—and sometimes contradictory—truths about those closest to us? An engrossing and profoundly moving coming-of-age story with a powerful love at its heart, Loved One is poised to become an instant classic.
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"[Loved One] is special...full of wildly astute, delectably thorny questions about love and loss and possession." --Maggie Shipstead, author of Great Circle, via Instagram A warm, witty, and wise novel about a woman who goes looking for answers after her first love turned best friend dies unexpectedly, and winds up finding herself When her first love and friend of more than a decade, Gabe, dies suddenly at twenty-nine, thirty-year-old Julia is launched onto an intercontinental quest to recover his lost possessions. Her journey takes her from Los Angeles to London to Barcelona, and into the murky realm of the past, a kaleidoscope that seems to offer more questions than answers about who Gabe really was, and who they were to each other. It also sets Julia on a collision course with the last woman he loved, an effortlessly beautiful and impossibly cool restaurateur named Elizabeth, who insists on withholding Gabe’s beloved guitar—one of the departed indie rock musician’s dearest belongings—for reasons Julia can’t understand. Both women, it turns out, have something to hide. Are Julia and Elizabeth friends, are they competitors, or are they bound by something deeper than their love of the same man? An engrossing, transformative journey and a tender coming-of-age story with a complex and powerful love at its heart, Loved One is poised to become an instant classic. Written with crackling wit and deep compassion, it asks profound, resonant questions about life, love, and loss. What happens when we admit that the deepest feelings never die? And just how little do we know about love—if it is, at the end of the day, all we really have? Full of revelations and emotional twists that keep the pages turning, Loved One is an unforgettable novel that introduces Aisha Muharrar as a novelist deeply attuned to the sense of self and of home we find in our closest relationships.