Rebuilding Alexandra Small: A Novel

Then, one Saturday in November, her family staged an intervention, her husband asked for a divorce by iPad, and her boss sacked her before lunch.

Six weeks of rehab later, she's sober, skint and sleeping in her best friend's six-year-old's racing-car bed under a dinosaur duvet. Her mother is telling the WI that the viral video of Allie falling off a bar stool is a Russian deepfake. The divorce settlement wouldn't buy a beach hut.

So when Allie and Izzy find the Beachcomber, the derelict café where they poured tea at sixteen, up for sale, Allie does what she always does: she decides first and works out the money later.

The estate agent is a problem. Tomas is kind, Polish, allergic to drama, and the man she spent an entire AA meeting trying not to stare at. The rules say no relationships in the first year. Allie has never been good at rules.

Funny, sharp and unsentimental about the business of starting again, Rebuilding Alexandra Small is a novel about the version of yourself you put in the press release, the version your friends know, and what it takes to let the two meet.

For readers of Marian Keyes, Mhairi McFarlane and Beth O'Leary.