Guido and Vincent are childhood best friends—third cousins, really—living in Cambridge and dreaming about their futures. Guido plans to write poetry while Vincent feels confident he will win a Nobel prize for physics. When Guido spots Holly while exiting a museum, he can immediately sense that she will be difficult, quirky, and hard to live with. He loves her on sight. Vincent, open-minded and cheerful, meets Misty at work. Though she is a bored and misanthropic brunette, he finds himself desperate to know her. Through courtship, jealousy, estrangement, and other perils, Happy All the Time follows four sane, intelligent, and good-intentioned people who manage to find love in spite of themselves.

One of the best parts of being on Book of the Month’s Editorial Team is sharing with you, our members, a book or author you might not have encountered before. While we usually give this to you in the form of the best new releases, every once in a while, something different sneaks up on us. Next in our series from the late Laurie Colwin, an under-the-radar talent we’re shining a brand new spotlight on, is Happy All the Time.

Using a powerful and unique voice to highlight the minutiae of domestic life, Colwin wrote a variety of fiction and nonfiction until her unexpected death in 1992. Her work is character-driven but never boring—each page is steeped in drama, humor, and sheer life. While Colwin wrote in and about a time decades ago, her singular ability to capture the human experience makes her work timeless. Book of the Month believes that Laurie Colwin still has a story to tell a new generation of readers, and so we wanted to give our members a chance to step into her quirky, relatable world.

Book of the Month has selected three books that capture the essence of Colwin’s talent. Happy All the Time is the second book we are featuring of Laurie’s (be sure to check out Family Happiness), a romantic comedy that cuts a layer deeper, following the marriages and love affairs of two couples living in New York City.

And keep an eye out in subsequent months for more from the great Laurie Colwin.