On the heels of the breakup of her short-lived marriage, Maggie is searching for the joy in life and will do anything to embrace it. Navigating this first year of single life while also tackling her graduate thesis, she moves forward with the help of friends, but not without disasters along the way.
After seeing this book cover everywhere, I had high hopes it would live up to its popularity, but it just didn't click. The main character is narcissistic, throughly unlikable, and felt whiny throughout the entire book.
Thank you to William Morrow for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Honestly not my favorite, It felt like not my type of book and the humor fell a bit foot. I was u sure where the plot was going most of the time. That being said it was good for what it was

Wow this book was... not good.

This was page after page of one woman whining about how life is unfair now that she asked her husband for a divorce and he agreed. She spends MONTHS harrassing the poor man, who must be so relieved to be rid of her. She is a terrible, selfish friend. She gets involved with random people. She is rude and obnoxious to the people that try to care for her and she literally thinks everything is all about her.

It's not. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be funny (it wasn't) or based on real life... but the whole thing just didn't work. At all.

Really Good, Actually is a chatty novel about Maggie who is accepting that her 608 day marriage has ended and she is living alone. Maggie goes on and on in a stream of consciousness voice about her failures, stresses, and hopes. This novel is ideal for a 20-something audience trying to live with life's ups and downs--most which they bring on themselves.

Unfortunately, I really struggled with this one. I was into it at first, because the main character was relatable with her feelings because her life was not going well. But she just kept getting worse and worse and I found it annoying and frustrating. It lasted for way too much of the book and I don't feel the ending made up for how terrible she was throughout most of the book.

I loved Monica Heisey's first book, I Can't Believe It's Not Better, so I was really excited for this one. It did not disappoint! Very funny and voice-y and a good, quick read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to the free advanced digital copy of this book.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this one early!

I related to this book so, so much! I felt all of her visceral emotions so clearly and it was incredibly cathartic. I get that a lot of people aren't going to like this book simply because Maggie is 'unlikeable', but as an unlikeable person myself, it felt nice to be seen. I will absolutely be reading more by this author!

Thank you for allowing me to read this title early!

I’m excited to see this on shelves and listen to it on audio.

This was such a good book. It was about Maggie, who is selfish, a horrible friend and not a nice person. You are in her head which is very mixed up as she recovers from a divorce. This book made me cringe, laugh, cry, and wince. It felt so real. I love books about imperfect people.

I don't even know where to start. I am tempted to make fun of how bad this book was by using its own title against it, but it's not worth the hassle. This was simply not good.

The protagonist is unlikeable, and not in the "unlikable, but needed, female protagonist" way, she was simply not someone I wanted to keep reading about. I was deceived for a while by the messiness of her life, but it quickly became clear she just sucked. She was just a shitty person and I had no interest in her story.

This book was a riot! I definitely fall under the demographic for this & related to so many parts, more than I thought I would at first. I loved every second of it.

Absolutely hilarious. It was such a delight to see the progression of love lost and the spiral we can fall into described in such detail and with such emotion. A gem!

Maggie realizes she has made nothing but mistakes since she became an adult. Her marriage of less than a year has ended; she alienates all of friends with her narcissistic grief and she is, to be kind, miserable and pathetic. With her insights into young adults Monica Heisey has written a humorous , witty book that verges on treacly. Great fun, either as a reminiscence of those oh so painful breakups or as an empathetic sense of your own life!

The first half of this was funny, with biting, sarcastic wit. I may have laughed out loud in some places. But it took a dark turn. As someone who recently got divorced, I understand what Maggie was going through. It was hard to read about something I’m still so close to, but things went further than I expected and got much worse than I expected. While I can relate to Maggie’s grief, it made me cringe to read about her self-destructive downward spiral and watch her alienate her friends over and over. It was emotionally draining. I felt like the story could have ended sooner without her reaching the absolute rock bottom. As it is, it was very hard to find any redeeming qualities of Maggie’s by the end of the book.

I gave it 3 stars only because the first part was truly funny.

This wasn't as grabbing as I would have liked. I couldn't relate to or even like the protagonist. Other characters were fun, like her friends. But they aren't front and center enough to make up for what protagonist and her ex lack.

This was like reading a trainwreck in the best way possible. You just see how all the decisions ultimately lead to a rock bottom.

I've started this book probably about three times because it is was one of my most anticipated reads of 2023, but even on the third try, I only got about half way through. I really wanted to enjoy this book, but I didn't like the main character at all. This is something that I could look past, but in my opinion, it was also a lot longer of a book than it needed to be. This book has potential, but for me, it dragged.

I was such a fan of Monica Heisey's debut novel that I skipped several restaurant outings to finish it. It's funny, it's generous, it's sharp, and it made me glad that I'll never be in my 20s ever again. Heisey's protagonist Maggie is going through a divorce and handling it badly. She ruminates about plastic surgery, alienates her friends, leaves a truly inappropriate number of voicemails for her ex, rants about capitalism as a cover for her hurt, and is, in general, a lovable nightmare. The slow process of figuring out who you are and what you want after a big break-up has been fodder for so many novels, but Heisey approaches it with honesty and warmth. I liked so much that this story wasn't tied up neatly in a bow—there's no second husband waiting in the wings—but rather, Heisey left it open to the kind of optimistic messy happy endings that most of us get after a bad break-up. We move on. WE reconcile with our past visions of our futures. This book has empathy for Maggie, but she's as much of an anti-hero as she is a hero. When I was reading Really Good, Actually, I kept thinking about Bridget Jones' Diary, and how this book is the much-needed update to that tradition (no more calorie counting diaries in novels dear god). I can't wait for Heisey's next book.

This book, like our literary heroine, is messy and complicated. Going through a divorce at a young age, Maggie finds herself in a tailspin as she tries to make sense of her situation. While she does have a support system, she makes more and more choices that alienate her from her friends and loved ones. I’ll admit that there were parts of this book that were really uncomfortable to read, mostly because her life is realistically messy and she makes a variety of self-sabotaging decisions that make her situation even messier. I absolutely loved the parts where her internal dialogue wavers between feeling like her problems aren’t as big as other people’s “real” problems and understanding that her complicated feelings are just as valid as anyone else’s.

The book was quite bitingly humorous while also having many heartbreaking moments. While I’ve never been in her situation, her character felt relatable and real.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and William Morrow for the advanced copy of this book!