Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell

Cherry (Cherish) is on the cusp of divorce and doesn’t know what comes next. When Russ Sutton, an old friend, re-enters her life, she isn’t sure how to navigate his reappearance while also handling the day to day responsibilities of her job, her dog, and the end of her marriage as her husband, Tom, becomes famous. Rainbow Rowell’s Cherry Baby is a hilarious and poignant look at how hard it is to get love right, even when it comes to loving yourself.

When they first married, Cherry believed she and Tom would be together forever. She encouraged his comic strip, Thursday, and didn’t totally hate the inclusion of a character, meant to represent her, named “Baby.” Trouble began when she noticed cracks in the fictional couple’s relationship, in the strip, and she disliked the way people spoke to her about the character. As an overweight woman, Cherry didn’t love being reduced to a cartoon fat girl anymore than she loved grappling with her eldest sister’s 100 pound weight loss on GLP-1 drugs that seemed to be a betrayal of who they were in the world. Big women with big personalities who come from big women with big personalities.

As Cherry worked through all of this, Russ complicated things by arriving at her lowest moment. His attention was like the sun, but it came with the same strings she remembered from their younger years. Then Tom came back from California, ostensibly to divvy up their things as they near divorce and to help care for his/their dog. But if that’s all that was happening, why was his presence causing Cherry so much angst?

I’ve been through a divorce and found my true love on the other side; I’m not going to tell you how this one ends, but I will say I loved every second of this book.