Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive

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Meredith Turrets is the author of Just Want You Here.

Meredith's writing and interviews have appeared in publications

including Vanity Fair, LbBC.com, Electric Literature, the Paris Review Daily, and Bessel,

where she was a founding editor. She graduated from Tufts University and attended the Yale Writers' Workshop.

She lives in Connecticut. Welcome, Meredith. Thanks so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about

Just Want You Here. Congratulations. Thank you. It's still a little surreal.

Tell listeners what your book is about. I'll put your book really fast. Right out of the gate.

So I think of it kind of as a second chance coming of age story. It's about a girl named Ari. She's 28, has been engaged for a

couple of years to her high school sweetheart. They've been together for a decade and the book

opens with him breaking up with her. And she is left without a compass. She has no idea what to do.

So she kind of blows up her life moves to Boston

and quickly gets in an affair with her new boss and then he she gets very closely

entwined with his wife and so the story is sort of about finding yourself trying to do as

little harm as possible and you know know, looking at desire and love

and kind of what we, what we do to, you know, find ourselves in that.

Love it. And we have the same editor with Carmen Johnson, who I love.

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