ANDERSON IN BLOOM

Former teen co-stars and lovers face the truth of their Hollywood past in hopes of a future together.

Annie Lacy works at In Bloom, a florist shop in Clayborn, Maine, but she was once Andy Ducharme of the teen comedy The Nikki and Andy Show. She fled Hollywood and her co-star lover, Nikki Colletti, when both her personal and professional lives were in a downward spiral. Now Nikki is writing a memoir and Andy unblocks her phone number long enough to text her a profane message, the first communication they’ve had in years—never expecting Nikki to track her down and show up at the door of In Bloom the next day. Now Andy is torn between barricading her heart against risk or confronting her unresolved feelings for the girl/woman she loved and who seemingly betrayed her for a movie role and the hard-partying life. Nikki wants them to work together to tell their story and, in the process, they both learn what they got wrong about each other. The novel is written in the first person from Andy’s angsty perspective and interspersed with passages about the duo’s teen years. Andy feels like the quintessential hot mess, both emotionally and in the way she yo-yos in her responses to Nikki even as an ostensible adult. Her inner monologue fills in for the minimal plot, with passages veering between avoidance and attachment. Nikki quickly becomes a sympathetic figure, to some extent at the cost of the reader’s affection for Andy—Nikki’s sobriety is signaled very clearly, as is Andy’s obliviousness. They fall into bed and the third act break-up and make-up inevitably follow, with recaps of their therapy sessions serving as the bridge between those moments.

A Sapphic romance that imagines a happy ending for girls who are exploited by show business.