BOOK REVIEW: Katie Yee's Latest Sparkles with Dark Wit ⭐⭐⭐

"Maggie sparkles with a dark wit that shows life’s most brutal moments are often its most absurd"

Katie Yee’s latest, Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar, feels like cracking open someone else’s diary, only this time, the narrator is the kind of sharp, funny, slightly jaded friend you’d want to drink with. Where Stone Yard Devotional was dry and almost painfully humorless, Maggie sparkles with the kind of dark wit that comes from realizing life’s most brutal moments are often also its most absurd.

The premise isn’t exactly a laugh riot: over the course of a year, the narrator’s husband has an affair, files for divorce, and she’s diagnosed with breast cancer. And yet, her voice is so unsentimental and slyly observant that you find yourself chuckling between the gut punches.

This is a slim book, more a long confessional than a novel, but I enjoyed every page, mostly because I felt like the narrator and I could swap war stories over lunch. If you’ve ever wanted to spend a few hours inside the mind of a woman who can face disaster with both clarity and caustic humor, Maggie is your next read. #netgalley #MaggieYee #simonandschuster. For more book reviews, follow me on Good Reads, Storygraph, or Substack. -- Jenie Dahlmann