What a witty romp: 37-year-old Lola, our narrator, is about to get married, but she doubts whether Boots is really the man she wants to spend her life with - from this romantic trope, Crosley extrapolates an over-the-top fantastical story in which our protagonist keeps on bumping into former boyfriends. Witnessing the insanity are Lola's former co-workers from "Modern Psychology", a prestigious periodical (so Lola claims; the articles she later mentions seem to have been less-than-reputable) that, amidst the crisis in print journalism, had to be shut down. While Lola is now working for Radio New York, a website compiling arts and culture news and a pet project of a venture capitalist (media criticism! after all, Crosely is a print journalist), her former boss Clive has become some kind of rich alternative psychology guru - does he have anything to do with Lola suddenly meeting a whole string of former lovers?

While the backstory that details the mystery of what's behind our protagonist's maybe-not-ro-random sightings of exes is clearly not meant to be believable and only mildly interesting (although it does dish out some points about The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power and new age hysteria reminiscent of the alternative facts hype gang), the real star of the book are the numerous vignettes in which Lola interacts with her exes and ponders relationships. Lola has dated quite a lot of very different guys, and the backstories, often told in a funny tone (even if they're not funny in themselves) are just a pleasure to read. Lola is an unrealiable narrator, but she is open about her human flaws, which makes her quips and misadventures entertaining.

"Romance may be the world's oldest cult." - the novel states at some point, and yes, Crosley works with familiar ideas, but twists them. "Love leaves a neurological footprint. A search history of the soul." - and this is the more serious core of the text: What does our relationship history say about us in the course of time, and what does it accumulate to?

I had lots of fun reading this book, and I want to see it nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction.