Nothing Serious - by Emily J Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

"A scintillating debut about a disillusioned tech executive who goes into an obsessive spiral when her best friend and longtime crush's first online fling turns up dead"--

Book Synopsis

"Nothing Serious is an unflinching and incisive look at modern dating, womanhood, friendship, and obsession. Smith's unforgettable voice, wit, and cultural precision will make you crave her take on all contemporary quandaries." -- Courtney Preiss, USA Today bestselling author of Welcome Home, Caroline Kline

A scintillating debut about a disillusioned tech executive who goes into an obsessive spiral when her best friend---and longtime crush--is implicated in a woman's death.

Edie Walker's life is not going as planned. At thirty-five, she feels stuck: in her career, in her love life, and in her tiny San Francisco studio apartment. It doesn't help that her best friend, Peter Masterson, is basically the über successful male version of her--and she's hopelessly, unrequitedly in love with him. But when Peter breaks up with his girlfriend of seven years, Edie thinks her life might finally be turning around. He'll discover how toxic dating app culture is and realize that Edie has been right for him all along.

Except Peter almost immediately lands a date with Anaya Thomas, a gorgeous, whip-smart professor and writer of feminist literature who even Edie--reared in the culture of tech bros--is smitten by. Unlike the women Peter has dated before, Anaya is like an alternate reality version of Edie--one with shampoo commercial hair and a meaningful career, who definitely doesn't spend her weekends scrolling social media alone in her apartment. It's only a matter of time before Peter falls head over heels for this woman; Edie herself is infatuated--maybe even a little obsessed--after one meeting.

Then, Anaya is found dead in her apartment. Right after a date with Peter.

Driven by her near-fanatic love of Anaya's work and a desperate need to prove Peter's innocence, Edie begins searching for clues to what really happened that night. As her fixation on the investigation grows, so do her doubts in Peter. When the truth finally comes to light, Edie must decide where her loyalties lie, who deserves justice--and who deserves to be punished.

Provocative, tense, and compulsively readable, Nothing Serious is a shrewdly observed, astonishingly heartfelt debut combining a darkly funny takedown of online dating with an honest examination of the challenges women face every day--but don't dare discuss--from a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction.

Review Quotes

"Smith's brisk debut, bolstered by absorbing storylines and a vividly depicted cast, achieves the improbable: It explores the often disheartening experience of living in a world built by Silicon Valley yet still manages to be thoroughly enjoyable....Edie's pain is recounted in powerful detail; her feminist awakening is complex and fitful; her friendships with women are nourishing; and her professional experiences are ludicrous and maddening.... Nothing Serious figures to win plenty of readers in its protagonist's millennial cohort [but]... speaks to a broader sense of frustration, one felt by lots of people whose lives have been colonized by their devices." - San Francisco Chronicle on Nothing Serious
"Debut author Emily J. Smith, a tech professional herself, leans on her expertise, delivering cutting cultural observations about modern dating, the tech industry, opportunities for women, and more."? - Audible Blog
"This fun read starts off as a rom-com and then takes a turn to a murder mystery." - Katie Couric Media
"Nothing Serious pairs obsession with online dating in an explosive story that threatens to break the bonds of friendship." - Novels Alive
"Nothing Serious is a delightful debut that weaves the everyday indignations of a single 30-something woman into an engaging tale of self-discovery and suspense. With hauntingly real characters and Smith's sharp prose, Nothing Serious left me gripped to the very end. Its questions around technology, accountability, and modern womanhood pull you in and leave you thinking long after the last page." - Jo Piazza, internationally bestselling author of The Sicilian
"Sharp, funny, engrossing and deeply felt, Emily Smith's Nothing Serious seduces with its yearning in a world that so often feels as if it has no space for yearning, compels and entrances with its questions and its mysteries, and satisfies with its humor and its honesty." - Lynn Steger-Strong, author of Flight
"Nothing Serious is a pulsing page-turner of a mystery, and a wise and clear-eyed critique of the enigmatic and inequitable worlds of dating and tech. Emily J. Smith's endearing, obsessive, and utterly relatable protagonist, Edie Walker, engages us from page one in her quest for the truth about a fair-weather friend-crush, a feminist icon, and, ultimately, herself. With wit, honesty, and great insight, Emily J. Smith brilliantly captures single womanhood in one's thirties--and all of the undue challenges and pressures that accompany it--in this smart, gripping, hilarious, and vitally serious debut." - Jessie Chaffee, author of Florence in Ecstasy
"A smart, nearly sociologically-drawn story about the kind of thirty-something woman we all know and maybe once were: intelligent, ambitious, adrift. Smith's protagonist is a woman eking out her own idea of selfhood in the tech goldrush of mid-2010's San Francisco where online dating, feminism, fertility and family collide. NOTHING SERIOUS is many things-- funny, propulsive, thoughtful-- but above all, it is a whodunit snapping into a who-am-I: a satisfying story of a woman coming to be." - Hyeseung Song, author of Docile
"Nothing Serious takes an anthropologist's eye to digital dating and real-life friendship and explores those battlefields with a weary and tender heart. Funny, sharp, and tragic; a brilliant and unforgettable debut about public and private selves in the digital age, wrapped in a (maybe!) murder mystery. Emily J. Smith is an enormous talent, and I am now a devoted fan." - Katie Gutierrez, bestselling author of More Than You'll Ever Know