When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous 1990s boyband, and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them for thirty years.
Newly divorced and with an empty nest, Annie is on board as a lark to appease her sister. Once a diehard fan of the band as a teen, her tastes have matured, and she feels out of place amid the sea of bedazzled, air-brushed t-shirts bearing the singers’ faces. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing before her, something is unlocked. “Maybe that was nostalgia after all, the music a direct vein to her childhood, the least complicated part of her life. A short cut to happiness.” Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the music of her youth, and the thousands of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she befriends one of the band members—not just a celebrity but someone also in need of a friend—she feels like anything is possible. But a lot can go wrong on a ship ruled by hormones and hope, frustration and fantasy.
Packed with wisdom, heart, and laugh-out-loud reflections on fame, youth, nostalgia, marriage, and middle age, Emma Straub delivers a richly textured, uplifting story about the magic of revisiting youthful feelings, and the even greater magic of starting anew.
Emma Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of six books for adults: the novels This Time Tomorrow, All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and her work has been published in more than 20 languages. Emma and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.
Anne Helen Petersen writes the newsletter Culture Study, is the author of four books, and is finishing her fifth on the millennial “friendship dip.” She lives on Lummi Island, off the coast of Washington, with her partner and her dogs.
