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A young Black woman contends with New York media culture.

Mickey Hayward’s shiny writing job is not as great as she’d hoped it would be. “Instead of reporting on the goings on of Black life,” Denton-Hurst writes in her engaging debut, Mickey “was making listicles about the best lipsticks for every skin tone.” But when she’s abruptly fired from her position, Mickey is devastated and thrown into a depression that forces her to reconsider every aspect of her life—including her relationship with her girlfriend, Lex. For a break, Mickey takes off for her Maryland hometown, where she reconnects with old friends and tries to decide what to do with herself next. Full of contradictions, Mickey makes for an interesting protagonist—but very few of the other characters seem fully formed. Denton-Hurst’s descriptions of the publishing landscape are witty, as when she observes, “Every editor, writer, and intern believed they had a New York media memoir brewing just beneath the surface,” or when Mickey agonizes over a casual text message to her editor: “ ‘Of course!’ she wrote back, wondering if one exclamation point was enough.” But when Mickey heads for Maryland, the book starts to drag. Denton-Hurst has the novice writer’s habit of overwriting: Every action is engulfed by unnecessary description. For example, “Mickey toed off her sneakers before continuing inside, peeling off her coat and hanging her keys on the small hook in the entry.” The verbiage slows down the action and distracts from Denton-Hurst’s otherwise astute observations about media culture, race, and the experience of a young woman trying to make her way in the world.

An intriguing but imperfect debut.