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Enjoyed this contemporary romance novel with an existential, dark humor point of view. Good dialogue. Queer messiness. I wonder what the main character was looking for and if she will ever find it.

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Work Nights’ publisher describes it as “Big Swiss” meets “The Devil Wears Prada.” Not having read either, I can’t comment on the former, but having watched the latter, I’m not convinced it’s a great comp.

Sure, both are set in the offices of high-profile, NYC-based publications, but in TDWP, the Vogue setting is inextricably linked to the story (key plot points are driven by it, as are the actions of the protagonist and others, all of whom live in terror of the magazine’s editor). The same isn’t true of Work Nights, where the protagonist is a planner in the ad sales department of “The Paper” (a thinly disguised New York Times, where Peplin once worked). Here, the setting is simply a backdrop, a place where our disaffected heroine can go and be disaffected somewhere other than her dumpy Brooklyn apartment and the dumpy Brooklyn dives she frequents while making a series of bad life decisions.

Basically, it’s about ad sales the same way The Office was about selling paper.

This isn’t a complaint (I wasn’t exactly waiting for a juicy, BTS takedown of the NYT’s ad department, and suspect I’m not alone in this).

I mention it because I’ve seen others compare this one to Sally Rooney, and with 20-something Jane’s messy relationships and sharp observations of the world around her, that feels far more apt to me. It’s definitely got Conversations with Friends and Normal People vibes (minus the latter’s heavier themes, which Peplin replaces with humour. “…I paced around the apartment and called my mother. ‘We’re setting up my new Fitbit,’ she said. ‘Can I call you back?’ ‘I have important news’ ‘Can it wait? Doug and I want to start counting our steps.’ I had the impulse to hang up and never talk to her again.”).

I think Rooney fans will appreciate Work Nights while waiting for whatever she follows up the excellent Intermezzo with.

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Unfortunately this did not really work for me. The structure and pacing were so bizarre and did not make for a smooth reading experience. The main events occur in backend of the book, and I do think these issues could have been alleviated with more thorough editing. The writing started out a little uninspiring but picked up around half-way through, where were grow to understand the characters and their dynamics better. However, Jane and Madeline, particularly, read as rather insipid and grating, and had few redeeming qualities. Jane is so uninteresting and I felt as if I could not understand her motivations at all. She's the main character and yet I could not understand why we were reading from her perspective. Characters like Laurel and Addy was more palatable but I could not route for Addy and Jane in any way. Jane experienced no growth or positive introspection, and there seems to be no through-line carrying the narrative, and I could not discern the point of the novel, nor what I was meant to take away from it. I kept reading as this author does has potential and her prose is readable, however I could not find myself properly immersed in the plot. There were also too many characters.

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4 stars. This was such an enjoyable break from my reality lol. This reminded me of big Swiss mixed with hbo max Girls. Lots of dry humor. A very character driven book if you don’t like that, idk if this one is for you. Messy lesbian vibes. This made me actually giggle out loud. As always, thank you to the publisher for the earc.

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I really liked that this did disaffected millennial malaise without being Gross or overly depressing

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This was a fun little read and made me laugh but I didn’t love it. I just didn’t feel like it was doing anything new but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless.

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An easy read, but not really a fun one. I enjoy unlikeable narrators when they’re multifaceted, but Jane was just rude and boring. There were too many characters to keep track of that offered little to the story.

The Devil Wears Prada is one of my favorite movies and Triple Sec was a five-star read for me, and these were said to be mixed in Work Nights, but I didn’t see much of either of them in this book.



Thank you Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

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https://chireviewofbooks.com/2025/06/19/work-nights-erica-peplin/

“Why do you do this job?” my old boss asked. “The answer can’t be about a paycheck or groceries or because you need a job.” We then took turns peddling mission-driven drivel about our meaningful jobs. The only reasons I could honestly give were the ones she said I couldn’t. So, I lied. At the end of the meeting, she reminded us to be grateful for the important work we do. She was trying to help team morale. Morale stayed the same—bad.

That meeting—and many like it—were top of mind as I read Erica Peplin’s deeply millennial debut novel Work Nights. The novel follows Jane, a twenty-something ad planner at a legacy newspaper in New York City. The events of the novel occur over seven months, each section one month in Jane’s life as she works in “an office where people coughed and the printer was always broken,” the perfect way to describe the classic corporate American workplace.

Jane harbors a workplace crush on the apparently straight intern, Madeline, who is “the only thing that made going to the office remotely worthwhile.” Soon, through her group of friends who throw “Gay Shabbat” dinners, she meets Addy, an intense, serial monogamist musician, who is ready to settle down and commit. It sells this novel short to say it’s about a love triangle. What endeared me most to this story was not the messy, queer love triangle, but how the mess fit into the frank and eerily familiar depiction of what it means to be a corporate, millennial woman.

Through Jane, Peplin captures the cognitive dissonance of professional women. In her first month, after watching her coworkers leave thank you notes for their boss in gratitude for a dinner he threw for himself, Jane muses, “Nobody made me be a professional woman. It was a pressure I put on myself…And yet so much of my life happened inside the office that I knew it was changing me—stunting my thoughts and calcifying certain lonely habits.” Her ability to name how bad this job is for her doesn’t stop Jane from working late on someone else’s project or taking credit for a coworker’s plan. When she is complimented for that same plan, she “felt a momentary sensation of power,” and thinks, “It was a privilege to work in an office to have an address, a salary, a keyboard, and a title.” She recognizes the toxicity of the office, but that doesn’t stop her from leaning into it.

When my boss told me to be grateful for the work that was burning me out, I still kept chasing Inbox Zero like it would save me. I briefly felt saved when someone told me I was doing a good job. And then, I refreshed my inbox. This cycle is the curse of many corporate millennials—the knowledge that work shouldn’t be ruling our lives, but letting it anyway. We know, as Jane puts it, that “this gradual manipulation, this convoluted meritocracy, would slowly colonize my life until one day I’d wake up a middle-aged woman with a crick in her neck, complaining about her kid’s college loans and the ever-present threat of a layoff,” but we keep grinding, caught up in the vicious cycle. Our nine-to-five rules our time, personalities, and future, so we try to escape however we can.

Which brings us back to the love triangle—Jane’s escape. Madeline is young and flighty, dragging Jane along to clubs and jetting off to London or Berlin. Their relationship—if you can call it that—has shifting expectations and unclear rules. She is young and free from responsibility, a way for Jane to try to chase her youth instead of accepting that she is a “gainfully employed adult.” Addy, on the other hand, is ready to settle down. Though she is a touring musician, she offers the apparent stability of partnership. Jane says to Addy at one point, “Someday when I’m seventy-two…I’ll remember this room and you next to me in it.” It’s one of the only times she thinks of her future outside of the confines of work.

As is often the case in a love triangle, Jane tries to have her cake and eat it too, keeping up a texting relationship with Madeline, who’s living in Berlin, and having a toothbrush at Addy’s place in New York. Madeline and Addy offer a way to chase both a carefree past and a stable future, because the present of her day job is making her miserable. For me, the point was never who she would choose, or even if either of them would want to be chosen in the end. The point is that the specter of work hangs over everything, even after you have clocked out for the night.

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i found this clever and funny and complicated. i never tired of our hard-to-like protagonist's internal monologue or even her string of mistakes — i found her relatable and sympathetic, as i found the depiction of being alive and capitalism and the pressure to settle down. this was great!

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Work Nights is a character-led story of female desire and obsession with self-deprecating depression while struggling to find where you belong. Erica Peplin's writing was so immersive that it was as if I were following along with Jane.

There was such an accurate portrayal of the lies we tell ourselves when we feel inadequate and the fears we hold so closely. The mundanity of day-to-day is what creates our lives. We spend our time waiting in the form of working to gain time to truly feel like we are living. The proximity of our coworkers truly does begin and foster friendships, and sometimes it isn't realized until someone is replaced. The relationships and bonds we have with the ones we love are all we have in the end.

Despite the love present, depression still has a way of consuming and swallowing you whole. It keeps you at a distance and steals everything from you. It drags you down and puts you in a numb state, and affects the ones around you, but your brain doesn't allow you to see past the depression.

"There was no security in life. We were born fragile and searching, and we spent the rest of our lives that way."

I am rating this book 3.5 stars but rounding up to 4 stars! I would recommend this book to readers who have enjoyed Acts of Desperation or Housemates.

Thank you to Erica Peplin and Gallery Books for accepting my early access request to this book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review!

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This was an entertaining read that I finished in a few hours.
A well written story that kept me hooked from the very beginning.
The characters draw you in and keeps you flipping the pages.
I really enjoyed the writing style. I found myself hooked, turning the pages.

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3.5 stars

A big big thank you to Gallery Books, NetGalley, and Sapphlit for the e-ARC! And a happy happy release day to Erica Pelin's Work Nights!

Jane works at New York City's most acclaimed newspaper, but her day-to-day routine is less than ideal. The only thing that makes work bearable is the paper's beautiful intern, Madeline. Despite Madeline's flaky nature, Jane manages to work her way into her life. In an attempt to pull her from a doomed relationship, Jane's roommate keeps dragging her to various outings where she meets a musician named Addy. Torn between the two, Jane has trouble keeping up with her lies that threaten to cause everything to collapse.

I'm not much of a fiction reader so this book was a welcome change from my usual reads. That being said, this wasn't necessarily my cup of tea.

The characters felt realistically flawed and the dialogue was fun and sharp. The scenes at the newspaper had some funny moments with the various office workers, and it was interesting to see how Jane's life and acquaintances differed in and out of the workplace. We as the reader got to see a lot of different parts of her life and I think that helped shape our vision of her by seeing it as opposed to her just telling us. Her interactions with both Madeline and Addy demonstrate a lot about how she views relationships. Plus the time we spend with her colleagues demonstrates her lack of love for her work and the lackluster environment in the fashion department.

With all that being said, I do wish there had been a more conclusive ending. It doesn't seem that Jane has a moment where she decides to try and change her behavior, and I was left wondering what it was all for and where she would go from here. I'll probably give the genre another shot, but this one just wasn't for me.

However, if you're a fan of literary fiction that's got the vibes of Sally Rooney and The Devil Wears Prada, this might be for you!

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Received an ARC of this book through my book club and loved it. It's so funny but becomes emotionally charged as you read. I do wish it was a fairytale ending but I'm not surprised that it's not.
The writing reminds me of a wittier Emily Austin book maybe?
Just very lesbian and very real.

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Jane Grabowski forces herself to the office every day just to see Madeline, the beautiful intern. Madeline doesn’t believe in labels. When Jane meets Addy, a romantic musician, she gets caught between them.

This one started very strong for me but didn’t quite finish as strong. I know a lot of readers loved it and I definitely see the appeal. It’s witty and funny, and true to life; especially the office antics and social life. For some reason I had a hard time keep in the characters straight but maybe it was my mood at the time.

“Our laughter was loud and maniacal, but that was one good thing about being heartsick. It made us giddy enough to think that being miserable was the same as being alive.”

Work Nights comes out 6/17.

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I featured Work Nights in my June 2025 new releases video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q31xhbo1tE, and though I have not read it yet, I am so excited to and expect 5 stars! I will update here when I post a follow up review or vlog.

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This book definitely reads like a lit fic. It’s much more character driven than plot driven…. but also there’s not really much character development either?

I have a hard time with books about nothing, so I didn’t love it, but if you enjoy a day-in-the-life of a queer late 20s living in NYC and doing corporate, this is an interesting view!

The book was well written, and the pacing was consistent. I also enjoyed the length.

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I enjoyed this one a lot. It was a bit rambling at time but fit the story and the characters. If you are looking for a lot of action rather than internal monologue, this one might not be for you but, for me, it was just right. The ending was absolutely perfect, too.

Work Nights comes out next week on June 17, 2025, and you can purchase HERE!

I WAS A LONELY PIECE OF GARBAGE AND ALL I WANTED WAS TO BE touched.

Not in a gross way. I just wanted someone to touch my arms, my hands, and other places like that. I started wearing shortsleeved shirts on the train, hoping someone would bump into me. It happened eventually with an old woman. She didn't move her arm, so I didn't move mine, and for the next three or four stops, we sat like that with our arms touching. It was nice. Her skin was soft and warm, and when she got up with her plastic bags and cane, I wanted to follow her. I thought I could help her up the steps, walk her home, make soup.

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Thank you to NetGalley & Gallery Books for the ARC!
This was a quick and funny read. Dark humor. Chaos. Queerness. Exploring your 20s. I’m here for all of it!

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I did not like any character in this book. This book was somehow miserable yet the funniest book I’ve read in a while.. I’m talking deep belly laughs. This author really captured and weird people can be.. I loved it!

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reading this sitting in my little office cube really hit

I ate through this, reading most of it in one day once I actually got into it

Jane is kind of awful in the way that she acts on most of her thoughts (but not so irredeemable and crazy that I was not able to sympathize with her) and experiencing her life in my current mental space was so freeing in some ways. I was just along for the ride as she dealt with a lot of the stuff I have been feeling as a queer twenty-something trying to figure out my place in the world.

I also LOVED the narration and the way that time is not easily discerned. I love this style in general, but I think the overall vibe of the story really works with it and Peplin crafted it so well.

10/10 would recommend

thank you to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster, and Sapph-Lit for providing me with a free and advanced e-copy in exchange for an honest review!

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