Natalie Sue's warmhearted follow-up to I Hope This Finds You Well similarly focuses on the life of a sharp-witted, lonely female narrator living in Calgary. In You'll Love It Here, Mona, an Iranian Canadian in her early 30s, is placed on leave from her marketing manager job after a client rubs salt into the open psychological wound caused by her difficult, recently deceased father, who struggled with alcoholism.
Mona's subsequent one-night bender sets off a chain of events that fuels this well-paced romp of a novel. She makes an impression on a cute Persian guy, Sami, and his father, Abu, whose family owns and operates the diner next door to where she lives. And after an incident--which may or may not be Mona's fault--leaves her landlady, Irene, temporarily incapacitated, she volunteers to serve as the aging building's superintendent. However, Mona doesn't just volunteer out of a sense of guilt--she makes a deal with Irene's niece, Lana, a realtor who's angling to sell the building, to help get the place ready to list. In exchange, Lana will set Mona up with a shiny apartment in one of the many new high rises in the gentrifying neighborhood. But the more time Mona spends in her own 16-unit building, finally meeting the neighbors she's avoided for years but tagged with nicknames such as Old White Perv and Fancy Widow, the stronger her attachment to the people and place--and Sami--grows. This puts her in the ultimate pickle when her scheme with Lana succeeds. Luckily, it's a joy to watch Mona untangle her mess and grow into herself. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator