Like Happiness

(Paperback)

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Description

A 'deeply felt and achingly intimate' (Annie Lord) debut novel about the complexities of gender, power, race and fame for readers of Sheena Patel's I'm A Fan and Madeleine Grey's Green Dot

I made up my mind to meet you. Your book had cast a spell on me the previous night. What better way to stay spellbound than to orbit the magician

You write your favourite author a fan letter and he writes back. An intoxicating, undefinable, all consuming relationship ensues. Ten years later, a slew of allegations emerge that will shatter the story you have told yourself, leaving behind a blank page for something new...

Like Happiness is a headfirst dive into a young woman's destructive obsession with a legendary writer. Razor-sharp, delectably witty, and told with blistering emotional honesty, this electric debut novel reckons with the stories we choose to believe, about the past, our relationships and above all about ourselves.

'An epic unravelling of every love story, reclaimed as something sharp, seething, unsettling, and true' T KIRA MADDEN

'A stunning swirl of a coming-of-age novel about power, manipulation, and complicity' MEGAN GIDDINGS

'Accomplishes a profound emotional electrocution that will leave you floating lighter for days' XOCHITL GONZALEZ

'A moving portrait of the vulnerabilities of young womanhood' TODAY.COM

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NetGalley reviewers love Like Happiness:

'Beautifully written and unputdownable... I would read this over and over again'

'I simply love this book'

'My jaw was on the floor... I'd recommend it for fans of My Dark Vanessa'

Reviews

'Deeply felt and achingly intimate, I couldnt put it down. I feel like it scoured something deep inside of me' - Annie Lord, author of Notes on Heartbreak

'An epic unraveling of every love story trope, reclaimed as something sharp, seething, unsettling, and true. Yes, this has page flipping plot momentum, but its also a whip smart critique of race in America, art making in the age of neoliberal feminism, and the crushing humor of trying to exist as a quiet person with big wants' - T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

'Seamlessly alternating between these two timelines, Villarreal-Moura writes with stunning emotional clarity about sexual identity, art and marginalization, and the ways control can masquerade as love' - Bustle, Best New Books 2024

'A beautiful work of fiction that dwells in the gray areas between celebrity and fan, victim and victimizer, absolution and blame' - NPR

'Like Happiness is a deft and touching coming of age story that resists easy answers to very thorny questions-about sexual consent and power, about fame and persona, about making and loving art' - Rumaan Alam, bestselling author of Leave the World Behind

Author Bio

URSULA VILLARREAL-MOURA is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling, selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press Fiction Contest Winner. A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories in 2015.