When I started writing The Mutual Appreciation Society, it was a love story. But it's a sort of anti-love story that ends up a love story. Let me explain.
Nicole, my narrator, is 43, widowed, and convinced she's running out of time to find love after loss. She downloads the apps. She goes on the dates. She writes a newspaper column comparing Regency-era courtship to Hinge, because she believes — as I once did — that the problem is mostly strategy. If she can just find the right system, the right profile, the right opener, she'll find her Mr. Darcy. Maybe it's just a numbers game.
What she finds instead is a series of men who are technically present and emotionally absent. Men who match, message, meet — and then disappear. Men who say they want connection and behave like they've never been taught what that means.
Any of this sound familiar, ladies?
She's not wrong to notice this. And she's not alone.
A few years ago, I read Christine Emba's Washington Post piece on masculinity in crisis. And I read it again and again.
Her argument, put simply: we've dismantled old scripts for manhood without offering men new ones. The result is confused men who lack the language and the structure to pursue intimacy with any real intention. Dating apps simply expose the problem.
Because what Nicole experiences — and what I hear so many women in their 30s and 40s describe — isn't really about bad guys. It's a symptom of larger structural collapse. The Regency-era courtship rituals Nicole romanticizes were rigid and patriarchal, yes. She admits it up front. But they also created a sense of accountability around community. A guy had to declare his intentions. He had to be vetted. He had to show up or not at all.
The apps offer volume and limitless options, no accountability or community. All of this, as it turns out, is the enemy of intention.
Here's what I didn't expect when I wrote this book: the men aren't the villains.
The scammer who targets Nicole early in the story is — he's predatory and deliberate. (This is all based on true stories, by the way.) But the others? The ones who match and ghost, who show up and back off, who write beautiful texts and then go quiet — they're not cruel. They're lost and without a script on how to navigate this cultural moment.
And women are left holding the cost of that confusion.
Nicole's answer to all of this is the thing that makes the ending feel true rather than convenient — and I'd rather you discover it than have me describe it here.
The book launches May 5 — my birthday, which matters to the story in ways I won't spoil here. If you're in Nashville, there's a signing at Serendipity 12 South from 5 to 6 p.m. If you're not, it'll be on Amazon and here on the website.
And Christine, if you ever read this: thank you. Your work helped me understand what I was actually writing about.
The Mutual Appreciation Society is available now for pre-order.