Witty, poignant, and perceptive.
Perone delivers a spirited, searching coming-of-age novel about the rude awakening that follows academic success. College valedictorian Mark Jans has spent his life mastering lessons and earning top grades, but graduation leaves him startlingly unprepared for adulthood. Rejecting the safe future his parents envision, he heads to New York City, where his ambitions collide with rejection, homelessness, and Astra, a street-smart punk whose hard-won worldview challenges nearly everything he believes.
The novel draws much of its humor from the gulf between Mark’s academic confidence and practical inexperience. His earnest attempts to break into publishing are especially amusing, while the late-1990s Manhattan setting—with its payphones, clubs, music, and pop-culture references—gives his misadventures a lively period texture. Perone’s conversational prose moves briskly between comedy, romance, and more serious questions about faith and purpose.
Astra gives the story its emotional weight. Tough, irreverent, and guarded, she initially appears to be Mark’s opposite, but Perone gradually reveals the vulnerability beneath her streetwise exterior. Their spirited exchanges about God, morality, love, and survival deepen an attraction built as much on disagreement as chemistry. Neither character remains simply teacher or student; each exposes the other’s blind spots. Perone’s energetic prose complements the pair’s frequent banter, with sharp dialogue bringing their competing worldviews into focus. The episodic narrative shifts smoothly between comic misadventure, romance, and more reflective moments. The novel occasionally presses its philosophical ideas too explicitly. Still, Perone handles the central relationship with warmth and avoids easy answers. A funny, heartfelt exploration of the distance between education and wisdom, and of two young people discovering that adulthood offers no syllabus.
***
Red Penguin Books
Pub date August 4, 2026
ISBN 978-1637778982
Price $19.95 Hardcover, $14.95 Paperback, $9.99 Kindle edition