Why we’re excited
A monthly variety night in a rent-controlled apartment has kept a circle of artists together for almost twenty years, long after the big breaks failed to arrive. One of them voices a cartoon daisy. Another was a comedy wunderkind who never quite arrived. Then a run of harmless texts between a young director and an older member of the group starts to look less harmless, and the whole fragile arrangement wobbles.
Monica Heisey came to fiction from comedy writing, and her debut, Really Good, Actually, won a wide readership by being very funny about a very sad divorce. This second novel suits anyone quietly renegotiating with a younger self.
On our most-anticipated list since 2 November 2026. See all the most anticipated books →
What to know about Small Pond
We have reviewed one of Monica Heisey’s books so far: Really Good, Actually, which we gave 3.5 out of 5.
Already reviewed from this month’s other list: The Summer I Turned Pretty: Graphic Novel.
From the publisher
From the bestselling author of Really Good, Actually, a wickedly funny, wise, and tender novel about modern love, artistic ambition, and what happens when our plans for greatness fall through.
In a bohemian enclave of a small city, where rents are rising and dreams are quietly downsizing, Carolina still holds court in her rent-controlled apartment, home for nearly two decades to Noble Failure, a beloved, chaotic monthly performance night where artists come to perform, commiserate, fall in love, and insist their big break is right around the corner.
It goes without saying that they’re all insufferable. They are also, mostly, excellent company. There’s Sophie, a young TV director hustling her way up the ladder; Owen, her renaissance-man boyfriend, forever pursuing his next genius project but currently voicing a daisy on a children’s television show; and Will, once a wunderkind comedy writer, now privately wrestling with the gap between who he was going to be and who he’s become.
They aren’t unhappy, exactly. Their lives are more or less where they imagined they’d be when they were young, starry-eyed, and falling into bed together. So why does it not feel . . . complete? When Sophie starts texting Will—innocent jokes, small asides—she tells herself it means nothing. But what began as nothing is feeling dangerously close to something. Then the one who escaped for the spotlight of L.A. announces she’s returning for Noble Failure’s anniversary show—and suddenly everyone is reconsidering where they’ve landed. The future they’ve been putting off is no longer theoretical.
Small Pond is a whip-smart, comic reckoning with love, friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves about success. Warm, sharply observed, and alive to the absurdity of trying to make a life and a living out of your dreams, it’s a love story in the largest to creative ambition, to the people we choose, and to the strangely sustaining act of trying, and failing, again and again, in public.
Description supplied by the publisher.
We haven’t read Small Pond yet. When our review goes up, it will replace this page.
