JUST WANT YOU HERE

A young woman’s broken engagement upends her life.

Turits’ engrossing debut novel follows Ari Bishop, a 28-year-old New Yorker, whose life is thrown into chaos when her fiance, Morgan, ends their relationship after 10 years. The breakup also irreparably changes Ari and Morgan’s relationships with their longtime best friends, another couple named Summer and Luke, as they all look toward different futures than they’d imagined. Sifting through the rubble of her relationship, Ari flees New York for Boston, where she lands a job as the executive assistant to Wells Cahill, a tech CEO. Forty, British, and a married father, Wells sees the promise in Ari that she is unable to see herself. Almost immediately, they start an affair, the beginning of which feels too quick and not fleshed out enough. With Ari’s fresh start seemingly snuffed out before it could begin, Summer becomes increasingly distraught as she realizes that Ari isn’t going to end the relationship. Turits does a great job of providing a multidimensional look at how consuming, confusing, and irrational affairs can be. As Summer and Luke’s wedding approaches, Ari finds herself more deeply and shamefully enmeshed in the lives of Wells; his accomplished wife, Leah; and their toddler son, Rowan. Their newly formed nucleus slowly becomes a black hole that threatens to swallow them all. Ari—whose choices are messy and inconceivable at times—seems unable to see beyond her own wants and needs until it’s too late. Turits deftly explores the ways that grief, trauma, and secrets can manifest in ways big and small. Unfortunately, the novel’s climax comes too close to the end, and there isn’t enough space to explore the fallout.

A fresh, if sometimes frustrating, take on the traditional affair novel.