The Ten Year Affair - by Erin Somers (Hardcover)

About the Book

A "sliding-doors novel about a chance meeting between two young parents, both happily married (just not to each other) that sparks a will-they-won't-they romance--[meant] for fans of Big Swiss and Acts of Service"--

Book Synopsis

"The best book about adultery since Madame Bovary." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection

A hilariously acerbic sliding doors novel about a chance meeting between two young parents, both happily married (just not to each other) that sparks a will-they-won't-they romance--perfect for fans of Big Swiss and Acts of Service.

When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are happily married young parents with two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet their connection grows stronger, and as their lives continue to intertwine, the romantic tension between them becomes all-consuming--until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings. In the other, they resist.

As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora's life--her depressing marketing job, her daughter's new fascination with the afterlife, her husband's obsession with podcasts about the history of rope--gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.

The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the roads not taken, that ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true?

Review Quotes

A New Yorker, ELLE, and Esquire Best Book of the Year
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Most Anticipated Book from The New York Times and The Washington Post, Bustle, LitHub, Orion, W Magazine and Our Culture

"Erin Somers depicts current cultural attitudes toward cheating with wit and acumen...[she] is a wonderfully wry chronicler of millennial folkways...The Ten Year Affair handles twists with unfailing intelligence, capturing the sincere but confusingly improvised mores of marriage today."--The Wall Street Journal

"Grabbed me by the neck on the very first page and didn't let go. It's also the funniest novel I've read in years...The novel's will-they-or-won't-they-for-real tension generates a surprising amount of suspense, combining a searing adultery drama with a satirical thriller about millennial boredom, privilege, and disillusionment."--Esquire, "Best Books of 2025"

"Intoxicating."--The New Yorker

"The funniest book about infidelity you'll read all year...No one evokes the absurdity of everyday life like Somers...It's easy to imagine her wry, sharp, and deeply humane take becoming a classic in due time."--Elle

"One of the best marriage novels of the decade...Not only is the novel keenly observed and brisk in its pacing, it's consistently and outrageously hilarious."--Defector

"Propulsive and witty, but also sexy, deep, and sad."--New York Mag

"There's nothing particularly wrong with Cora's marriage to Eliot, but when she meets a sexy dad named Sam at a baby group in their Hudson Valley town, infidelity suddenly seems tempting. Will they or won't they? Somers's engaging novel lets readers have it both ways."--People

"Expect a deft exploration of suburban malaise, the pressures of marriage and motherhood, and the blurry line between fantasy and reality in what's been called 'the funniest book about infidelity you'll read all year.'"--theSkimm

"Somers's crisp writing makes for a humane, frequently funny and very readable novel that captures something not just about how we live now, but about choices, compromises, sacrifice, being a parent, getting older."--Adelle Waldman, New York Times Book Review

"This is the kind of book that comes out when a sharp observer of human nature puts her mind to questioning what sorts of structures truly undergird the lives we choose to live . . . By the end of The Ten Year Affair, we have a rich exploration of what a decent life might be."--Chicago Tribune

"Two young parents meet-cute at a Hudson Valley baby group. Unfortunately, they're both married to other people. What comes next is not in fact a 10-year affair, but something trickier -- a dual story line in which Somers explores ideas of monogamy, motherhood and modern living in the vein of Miranda July's All Fours or Julia May Jonas's Vladimir."--The New York Times

"Completely exhilarating. The everyday, but glittering so darkly."--Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich

"My favorite book of the year came out this autumn--Erin Somers's The Ten Year Affair--and I wouldn't be surprised if your own favorite read of 2025 awaits you on this list as well."--The Millions (Great Fall 2025 Book Preview)

"It's hard to stop reading, and Somers has many tricks up her sleeve."--Vulture

"Somers explores the fantasy and reality of an affair simultaneously in a masterful sophomore novel that is as scathingly critical of millennial malaise as it is empathetic. At its heart, this book believes in love. To get a primer, you can read Somers' original short story that the novel expands upon. You'll be grateful to have a few hundred pages more."--Bustle

"Somers (Stay Up With Hugo Best) is one of the funniest and sharpest writers working today."--The Orange County Register

"Devastatingly funny and spares no one...There are sequences of dialogue in here that are Ephron-esque in their concision, dark humor...I thought it was terrific." --Jeff O'Neal, Book Riot

"It's a beautiful book about selfhood amidst dependency. About how boring it can feel to get what you want. And about what love really means: the weight of it, the choosing of it."--LitHub

"Somers balances the witty takes with profound introspection on the nature of commitment and longing, guaranteeing there will soon be countless readers "currently loving" The Ten Year Affair."--Shelf Awareness

"Funny, sexy, depressing, and realistic . . . . Somers' observational style and deadpan comedy make Cora's mess both relatable and unenviable as she navigates the subtle madness of marital commitment, the alienation of motherhood, and the absurdity of life in general."--Booklist

"Somers' approach to the affair is twice-refreshing--her masterful weaving of the imaginary with the real manages to juggle the banality of fantasy with scenes that are sexy or subversive...Somers' cool, intricate ode to millennial malaise satirizes the roles her generation tried--and failed--to outgrow."--Kirkus

"Somers offers a wry and ingenious tale of marital infidelity...A sardonic view into the pressures of marriage and motherhood and the ambient temptation of adultery...Readers will find this hard to put down."--Publishers Weekly (starred)

"The Ten Year Affair isn't just the best book about adultery since Madame Bovary; it's also a funny and deeply true novel about the role of the imagination in human existence, those banal longterm daydreams that compete with your life while helping you cope with it. Erin Somers's wit is as cool, caustic, and dry as liquid nitrogen, and her dangerous talent is on full display in this excellent book."--Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection

"The Ten Year Affair is a hilarious and acutely observed account of early middle life. Somers writes with warmth, wit, and shimmering insight about the failings and strivings of decent people who wake up and find that life isn't quite working out. No other writer at work today is as alert to the comedy of everyday life and to the extraordinary realms of feeling that lie behind that comedy. I never wanted this novel to end. I loved every moment. Somers has written a classic of our era."--Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans and Filthy Animals

"A compulsively readable, surprising, and wholly satisfying story of the way we long, now. Told with inexhaustible wit, Somers's novel is packed full of observations and flights of imagination so perfect in their particulars that their accumulation becomes luminous."--Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir

"Smart, sharp, and incredibly funny, Erin Somers' The Ten Year Affair explores the slippery complicated space of fidelity, parenthood, and marriage. How do we continue to choose to love the people we have chosen, to not feel trapped inside those choices? Where and what are we reaching for when we reach outside them, and what is it that makes both staying and leaving so thrilling and so terrifying in equal parts? I loved this book for its deftness, humor, and its remarkable acuity."--Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight

About the Author

Erin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, New York magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories, and many other publications. She has been the recipient of an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Center for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a 2020 finalist for a National Magazine Award. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her family.