Your enjoyment of New Adult will depend on how funny you find the lead character and how compelling you find his predicament. While I liked Nolan. and enjoyed his plight and watching how he solved it, I had one single issue with this romantic comedy about a comedian – he is not a very funny comedian.
Nolan Baker is an ambitious stand-up comic whose life feels like it’s in stasis at the ripe old age of twenty-three. He’s ready to change his lifestyle and give up comedy for good when the reminder life is passing him by smacks him in the face in the form of his sister CeeCee’s wedding. CeeCee tries to convince him to take a corporate job, and Nolan is resistant – but it’s starting to sound like his only viable option, especially because he’s given himself a deadline of thirty to make it.
Then Nolan is surprised by a sudden career advancement. But after he wows a crowd that includes his boss with a set he performx as a replacement act, his personal life ends up in shambles. To take the gig he was forced to miss CeeCee’s wedding – and to stand up his best friend, roommate, and long-time crush, Drew Techler, who had agreed to attend the wedding as his date. Since everyone in his life now hates him, Nolan wishes he could skip to the ‘good part’ of his life while holding a set of magic healing crystals gifted to him. He goes to bed… and wakes up in a much nicer place seven years later. The stones have projected him into the future, where he’s a very successful comedian – and no one in his previous life will speak to him. Nolan quickly learns the grass isn’t greener on the other side and tries to make amends with everyone, but can he win back Drew’s esteem?
New Adult is tropey and light-hearted, but its plot is filled with characters that grate. Nolan is annoyingly selfish, but his family and friends have no sense of understanding when it comes to his career, and even less respect for it. The book sets up, for instance, how he and CeeCee are not that close, and yet it’s a sort of disastrous karmatic mistake that he chooses not to come to her wedding? My side was Team No One for much of the book.
Also I yearn for a time travel novel to have the guts to suggest that maybe making a bold move instead of sinking into the mire and morass of what you have is a good idea. Then again, Nolan’s stand-up act – what little we get of it – isn’t very funny.
But the romance really works. Drew and Nolan have wonderful chemistry, and I loved the way Janovsky catches the contemporary flavor of life lived in a big, bustling city and all of its modern inconveniences. The romance is so good that New Adult lands a B, in spite of my qualms about its lead character.
Grade: B
Book Type: Contemporary Romance|New Adult
Sensuality: Subtle
Publication Date: 08/2023
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