Charming and Funny: Read our Review of Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Jane easily falls in love with Duncan: he’s charming, good-natured, and handsome. He has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan.

Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhere – at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While she may be able to come to terms with dating the world’s most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she didn’t have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, still has Duncan mow her lawn. And his co-worker Jimmy comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment at the most inopportune times.

Jane wonders how the relationship is supposed to work with all these people in it. Not to mention most of the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices. But any notion Jane has of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash.

Now her life is permanently intertwined with Duncan’s, Aggie’s, and Jimmy’s, and she knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But is it possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of her eyes?

A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Early Morning Riser is Katherine Heiny’s most astonishingly wonderful work to date.

After reading Katherine Heiny’s hilarious debut Standard Deviation, I couldn’t wait for Katherine Heiny’s next book. Early Morning Riser certainly lived up to my expectations with witty prose and hilarious story.

Katherine Heiny delighted readers back in 2018 with her hilarious debut Standard Deviation, a divinely funny novel about the challenges of a good marriage, the heartache of raising children, and the irresistible temptation to wonder about the path not taken. Now she returns with her third book, Early Morning Riser, a big-hearted and boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster and unconventional family, and I have to admit, I just loved this.

The novel follows Jane and her relationship with ‘perfect’ Duncan – and wow was this captivating! The characters were vividly portrayed with depth and nuance, which made them so easy to relate too, and it was a genuine pleasure to follow Jane as she navigates her dramatic, entertaining and down-to-earth life.

Charming, funny, and exquisitely written, Early Morning Riser offers readers a warm and witty look at love, relationships and small-town living. This is yet another superb novel from Katherine Heiny and the perfect weekend read.