Instruction Manual for Future Lover

For readers of Margo’s Got Money Troubles and fans of Fleabag, Instruction Manual for Future Lover is an unabashedly delightful comedy of the Gen Z dating landscape and a tenderhearted coming-of-age about using romance to unstick yourself from your own life—when perhaps the person you’ve been waiting to arrive is yourself.

At twenty-nine, our narrator accepts a plus-one to an upcoming wedding and embarks on a crusade of ruthless self-improvement to get someone—anyone—to fall in love with her. After all, the only thing worse than seeing her ex with his not-at-all-new girlfriend at the event is letting them see her alone.

All she has to do is become the most optimized version of herself. But she’s got this. She’s doing the daily crossword—daily! She’s getting that tattoo removed. She’s dating, or trying to. She’s on the apps, she’s on dates, she’s Putting Herself Out There. As the wedding approaches and Liam, the ex she never got over, starts drunk texting at all hours, the rest of her precariously constructed new life begins to crack. She tumbles through the absurdities of modern dating—from Feeld to Hinge to past lovers—in her mad dash away from herself as she grasps for love, acceptance, and salvation. But what if the person she’s been waiting for is herself?

Lovable, unexpectedly moving, and very, very funny, Instruction Manual for Future Lover is a fizzy Gen Z comedy of manners for our era of endless swiping and ghosting. Wearing its wild, romantic heart on its sleeve, Garfinkle’s debut asks: Can you ever move forward when you’re always trying to leave yourself behind? And what if the parts of ourselves we spend so much time trying to fix are essential pieces of who we are?