Star Shipped is Cat Sebastian’s first contemporary romance, and I’m pleased to report that it’s every bit as good as her modern (1960s) historicals – many of which are on my keeper shelf. It’s warm, funny, engrossing and utterly charming, featuring complex, engaging but flawed characters whose foibles make them so human and relatable, in a beautifully developed character-driven romance that had me alternately snorting with laughter, giggling and kicking my feet, and feeling all the feels.

Thirty-four-year-old Simon Devereaux plays one of the leads in the reasonably successful TV show Out There, a sci-fi show featuting a group of fractious outcasts and weirdos learning to function as a family, [and] coming together to save one another. He’s been on the show for seven seasons, and has decided that it’s time for him to move on; when shooting wraps, he’s heading to New York to take up a theatre role and embark on the next stage of his career. Throughout all of those seasons, Simon has shared most of his screen time with Charlie Blake, former star of a reality TV show about restoring old cars (but which Simon suspects was really just an excuse for Charlie to take his shirt off on camera) and who has, in Simon’s opinion, brought down the tone of the show. (Which he knows is snobbish, but… well.) Charlie is, Simon thinks, everything he is not – likeable, charming, cheerful, sociable – and while their on-screen chemistry is potent (and has, of course, launched a thousand ships!) off-screen, they don’t get along and Simon actively avoids Charlie whenever he can.

Simon is keeping his decision to leave very close to his chest – partly because he doesn’t want to face the prospect of having to say goodbye a hundred times, but mainly because he doesn’t want to notice that people are glad to see him go. But then the rumour mill starts churning up some old stories about the show Simon worked on previously, talking about a toxic atmosphere, feuding actors and drama queen-like behaviour, and Simon walking off set without offering any further explanation or context. Simon quite rightly worries about the implication of his being difficult or impossible to work with, and that it could lead to people saying he was fired from Out There or that he flounced out. He needs to do some damage control, and when Charlie points out that the gossip about their not getting along on set doesn’t look good for either of them, they agree to try to counter it by being seen together a few times outside of work before Simon leaves town.

As with those modern historicals I mentioned earlier, Star Shipped is light on plot and big on vibes; a kind of slice-of-life/idiots-realising-they’re-in-love combo full of yearning, care-taking and affection, and some of the best banter I’ve read in a long time. And the characterisation is just… *chef’s kiss*. Simon is prickly and snarky and unsociable – he knows he’s not well-liked and actually believes he’s simply unlikeable, but as the story progresses, we realise that he’s deliberately choosing to keep people at arm’s length because he doesn’t want to give them the chance to push him away once they get to know him. He has an anxiety disorder and mild OCD (Simon’s well aware that his brain is three unreliable narrators stacked in a trench coat) and believes that the things he needs to help him function in a neurotypical world make him too difficult for anyone to want to deal with; he’s constantly battling with himself because while he doesn’t feel others should have to go out of their way to make things easier for him, he’s tired of feeling like he can’t just ‘be’, exactly as he is.

And with Charlie, Simon doesn’t need to be anyone he isn’t. Charlie just quietly and matter-of-factly accepts Simon for exactly who he is, making little accommodations and changes to help make things better while giving as good as he gets in the snark stakes. Simon realises that he’s known Charlie’s non-stop good humour is an act all along, that big, brash, gorgeous Charlie with the jokes and the teasing and the button-pushing is dealing with some very specific shit, too, and I absolutely loved the moment where Simon steps up and sticks up for Charlie like nobody else ever has. Simon may be up in his head a lot of the time, but he quickly learns to recognise when Charlie needs to be able to be up in his head about stuff – and that he’s willing to be the steady one so Charlie can do what he needs to do to process it is just… adorable.

The story is told entirely from Simon’s point of view, but Cat Sebastian does an absolutely fantastic job of showing Charlie to us through Simon’s eyes, so I never felt as though I was missing out by not getting his perspective on things. It’s obvious to the reader from the get-go that Simon and Charlie’s constant bickering is metaphorical pig-tail-pulling on both their parts, and I loved watching Simon coming to admit to himself that Charlie really is hot and nice and kind and not as much as a himbo as he’d previously thought. The slow reveal that these two, despite their seven years of bickering, actually know each other; that regardless of whether they like each other or not, those years spent in close proximity have actually engendered an intimacy that is translating into connection and attraction – is brilliantly done.

It may seem, at first, that Simon and Charlie are really bad at communicating. And they are – in a way – But. In the attempt to maintain plausible deniability in case the other isn’t on the same page, they rarely say what they mean and instead, find convoluted ways of saying what they want without actually saying it – and yet they both completely get where the other is coming from. The book’s first sex scene is a superb example of this; they’re absolutely into it and each other, and they want to make it good for one another, but the kind of open communication needed to express that just isn’t their thing.

(Charlie) “… how do you like it?”

“I told you, very vanilla. Just. Nice.”

“Nice. Why the fuck are you being shy all of a sudden? Just tell me where, in an ideal world, my dick is in all of this… I literally do not know because you’re being such a weirdo.”

Simon is fundamentally incapable of answering any of this in a sane way. “I mean, I could fuck you. Like if you really wanted me to. In an emergency situation.”

“You’d fuck me to save my life?”

“Yes, exactly. You’re welcome.”

Star Shipped is low-angst with minimal drama – which isn’t always my cup of tea, but Cat Sebastian has a way of writing this type of story that hooks me completely and keeps me coming back for more. (Two emotionally constipated chaos gremlins circling each other cautiously while they fall deeply in love has to be one of my favourite tropes.) The anxiety rep is well done and feels authentic, the social media snippets that appear occasionally between chapters are spot on, and the character work is incredible – Simon and Charlie are awkward and sweet and so thoroughly adorkable, so tender with each other and protective of each other, and obviously so much happier when they’re together. And the humour, oh my god, this book is so damn funny in a way that absolutely speaks to me; it’s dry and witty and bitchy and snarky, and the banter is top-notch.

If you’re in the mood for an entire book in which you are basically a fly-on-the-wall to two people figuring out that their annoying long-time co-star is actually the love of their life, then Star Shipped is the book for you. 10/10. No notes.