Meet one of the most unforgettable new protagonists in fiction: Phoebe Berman. She has one month to lose her virginity before she turns thirty--if her own anxiety doesn’t slow her down. A charmingly authentic and heartwarming debut novel from podcaster and comedian Brooke Averick. Is it possible to find true love when going on a date makes you want to throw up? Phoebe Berman fears the one thing she wants the most: love, and everything that comes along with it. Thanks to an extremely unfortunate first kiss attempt, crippling intimacy anxiety has plagued her since she was a teen. With just a month to go before she turns thirty, Phoebe is still a virgin. Phoebe has so much going for her: a dream teaching job, a supportive and hilarious group of best friends, and all the romance novels a girl could want at her fingertips--but she can’t help but beat herself up over the one thing she can’t quite seem to figure out. Determined to change this, she drafts up the ultimate "Guide to Losing My Virginity" checklist with the hope of finally getting laid. Suddenly, she goes from a relatively boring (basically non-existent) dating life to juggling three romantic prospects at once. There''s the gorgeous new fourth grade teacher at her school, a former high school classmate that resurfaces through Words with Friends, and there will always be her roommate, who might just be the best friends-to-lovers situation of her dreams. Phoebe’s love life quickly takes a turn in a way she never anticipated. But between the love “square” she’s gotten herself into and the stomachaches and cold sweats that surface whenever she gears up for a potential date, things are complicated. And Phoebe doesn’t do complicated.

Autorentext
Brooke Averick

Klappentext

**INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Meet Phoebe Berman: despite being a hopeless romantic, she’s about to be a thirty-year-old virgin. With one month before her milestone birthday, she’s determined to finally lose it . . . if her own anxiety doesn’t slow her down. The can’t-miss debut novel from podcaster and comedian Brooke Averick.

“I laughed (a lot), I cried (more than expected), I swooned (the perfect amount), and I looked into the metaphorical camera, wondering if this book was actually about me.”—Lyla Sage, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Soul Searching and the Rebel Blue Ranch series
**
Is it possible to find true love when going on a date makes you want to throw up?

Phoebe Berman fears the one thing she wants the most: love. Thanks to an extremely unfortunate first kiss attempt, crippling intimacy anxiety has plagued her since she was a teen.

Phoebe has so much going for her: a dream teaching job, a supportive and hilarious group of best friends, and all the romance novels a girl could want at her fingertips—but she can’t help but beat herself up over the one thing she can’t quite seem to figure out. Determined to change this, she drafts up the ultimate “Guide to Losing My Virginity” checklist with the hope of finally getting laid.

Suddenly, she goes from a relatively boring (basically non-existent) dating life to juggling three romantic prospects at once. There’s the gorgeous new fourth grade teacher at her school, a former high school classmate that resurfaces through Words with Friends, and there will always be her roommate, who might just be the best friends-to-lovers situation of her dreams.

Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It is a brutally honest and completely relatable story for anyone who’s ever felt stuck between coming of age and coming apart.

Leseprobe
1

Monday

(Thirty Days Until Thirty)

“You know if you keep saying you’re going to kill yourself, I’ll have to conduct a formal risk assessment, right?”

I’ve been making a conscious effort to stop, but sometimes the words just slip out. I put my hands out in front of me, an admission of guilt.

“I know, I really am trying to quit. I just can’t think of another way to communicate how dire the situation has become.”

After my four years of therapy with Sandy, she’s gotten pretty good at figuring out how to talk me off a ledge. Make one of your lists, Phoebe. Practice your deep breathing, Phoebe. Hold an ice cube in your palm until it melts, Phoebe.

But not this time. This time, there aren’t enough ice cubes in the world.

I take a deep breath, inhaling the ashy remnants of the sage that Sandy used to cleanse the room before our session, and hand her the letter I received this morning.

“Read it and weep,” I tell her, sinking back into the floral upholstery of the couch. When I saw the beat-up edges of the envelope addressed to me in my own teenage handwriting, I knew exactly what was inside.

And I wanted to light it on fire.

Sandy’s mismatched gold and silver bangles jingle as she unfolds the letter, a single piece of lined paper with a torn left edge. I close my eyes, conjuring up the image of the Twilight-themed notebook I ripped the page out of all those years ago. It was from the Moleskine of a Killer collection, and the iridescent cover would sparkle when it was exposed to direct sunlight. It has, unfortunately, been discontinued.

It doesn’t take Sandy very long to read the letter. It’s only two sentences, after all.

“What am I looking at here, Phoebe?” she asks.

I take the letter back from her, mesmerized again by the seven words scribbled across the page. My handwriting was more girlish back then, much rounder and loopier, but it’s undeniably mine. The paper has yellowed and wrinkled with age, but the message written in bold black Sharpie is as prominent as ever:

Lose your virginity. That’s all I ask.

—PB

“This was a letter I wrote to my future self when I was eighteen,” I start to explain. “It was our final assignment for twelfth-grade English before graduation: to write a list of goals we hoped to accomplish by the time we turn thirty. We stuffed them into envelopes, wrote our names on them, and handed them in to our teacher, who promised they would make it to us by our thirtieth birthdays.”

Sandys nods slowly.

“That was the only thing I wrote.”

I had started to panic when I realized I would be the only one of my friends heading into college a virgin. Not because eighteen felt like it was too old to be a virgin, but because I was still the same exact girl who’d thrown up on Lucas Johnson. Very little had changed since that moment. I had finally stomached my first kiss, but only because it was during a game of spin the bottle and I had no time to panic before Joshua Cohen’s chapped lips were on mine. I tried kissing a few more boys, boys I liked more than Joshua, but every time I got close, I would run away the second I felt my palms start to sweat. I spent my entire adolescence caught up in fantasies of romance and boyfriends, but when it came to real life, eighteen was the age when I started to think that maybe it would never actually happen for me.

And that’s why when Mrs. Friedman gave us that assignment, I had only one thing on my mind. Lose your virginity.

I never forgot about the letter, but I became hopeful that it wouldn’t find its way to me. Maybe if it never arrived, I could pretend it never existed. Except, despite a decade passing and close to three thousand miles between us, it showed up at my dining room table exactly thirty days before my thirtieth birthday.

I fold the letter in half and tuck it back in my pocket, needing it out of my sight.

Sandy begins to offer her thoughts, but I interject.

“One month, Sandy.…