An unflinching and incisive look at modern dating, womanhood, friendship, and obsession.—Courtney Preiss, bestselling author of Welcome Home Caroline Kline

Juicy,  queer-coded, smart-as-hell, and propulsive.—Chloé Caldwell, bestselling author of Women

Funny, sharp, and tragic; a brilliant and unforgettable debut.—Katie Gutierrez, bestselling author of More Than You’ll Ever Know

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A scintillating debut about a disillusioned tech executive who goes into an obsessive spiral when her best friend—and longtime crush—is implicated in a woman’s death.

Edie Walker’s life is not going as planned. At thirty-five, she feels stuck: in her career, in her love life, and in her tiny San Francisco studio apartment. It doesn’t help that her best friend, Peter Masterson, is basically the über successful male version of her—and she’s hopelessly, unrequitedly in love with him. But when Peter breaks up with his girlfriend of seven years, Edie thinks her life might finally be turning around. He’ll discover how toxic dating app culture is and realize that Edie has been right for him all along.

Except Peter almost immediately lands a date with Anaya Thomas, a gorgeous, whip-smart professor and writer of feminist literature who even Edie—reared in the culture of tech bros—is smitten by. Unlike the women Peter has dated before, Anaya is like an alternate reality version of Edie—one with shampoo commercial hair and a meaningful career, who definitely doesn’t spend her weekends scrolling social media alone in her apartment. It’s only a matter of time before Peter falls head over heels for this woman; Edie herself is infatuated after one meeting.

Then, Anaya is found dead in her apartment. Right after a date with Peter.

Driven by her near-fanatic love of Anaya’s work and a desperate need to prove Peter’s innocence, Edie begins searching for clues to what really happened that night. As her obsession with the investigation grows, so do her doubts in Peter. When the truth finally comes to light, Edie must decide where her loyalties lie, who deserves justice—and who deserves to be punished.

Provocative, tense, and compulsively readable, Nothing Serious is a shrewdly observed, astonishingly heartfelt debut combining a darkly funny takedown of online dating with an honest examination of the challenges women face every day—but don’t dare discuss—from a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction.

What people are saying.

  • “Sharp, funny, engrossing and deeply felt, Emily Smith’s Nothing Serious seduces with its yearning in a world that so often feels as if it has no space for yearning, compels and entrances with its questions and its mysteries, and satisfies with its humor and its honesty.”

    Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight

  • This is the modern, feminist dating world thriller I've been waiting for. I tore through Nothing Serious over a single weekend. It’s a fast-paced story with characters so fully realized they linger in your mind long after the central mystery has been resolved. Smith paints a fresh and honest portrait of 30-something life that is as hopeful as it is clear-eyed about the trap of ‘having it all.’ Because, of course, ‘nothing serious’ rarely is.”

    Kate Brody, author of Rabbit Hole

  • "Nothing Serious takes an anthropologist's eye to digital dating and real-life friendship and explores those battlefields with a weary and tender heart. Funny, sharp, and tragic; a brilliant and unforgettable debut about public and private selves in the digital age, wrapped in a (maybe!) murder mystery. Emily J. Smith is an enormous talent, and I am now a devoted fan."

    Katie Gutierrez, bestselling author of More Than You'll Ever Know

  • "Nothing Serious had me holding my breath as I devoured it in two sittings. Emily J. Smith captures the intricacies of modern dating, technology and obsession, masterfully. Everyone should buy this book for that one female friend they admire. Juicy, queer-coded, smart-as-hell, and propulsive."

    Chloé Caldwell, author of Women

  • "Nothing Serious is an unflinching and incisive look at modern dating, womanhood, friendship, and obsession. Smith's unforgettable voice, wit, and cultural precision will make you crave her take on all contemporary quandaries. Her debut is cause to clear prime shelf space in eager anticipation of everything else she writes. "

    Courtney Preiss, bestselling author of Welcome Home Caroline Kline

  • “This smart, exceptionally readable novel lays bare the hazards which confront women working in tech, an industry monoculture whose patina of brilliance masks its witlessness about the psychic damage brought on by its preoccupation with power. Emily J. Smith draws a haunting character, Edie Walker, whose efforts to maintain her integrity ironically lead her to take on a series of dodgy self-identifications. It’s both touching and maddening to follow her as she seeks for honest answers in an inescapable algorithm-driven world where everything is quantified, preordained and relentlessly toxic.”

    Sarah Blakley Cartwright, New York Times bestselling author of Alice Sadie Celine

  • "Nothing Serious is unputdownable from start to finish. It's that rare gem of a book that is compulsively readable while also brilliantly probing issues of power, gender, and the slipperiness of digital relationships, and Emily J. Smith manages to drill to the heart of modern life in a way that is consistently fresh, funny, and #retable. I can't wait to see what she does next."

    Sara Petersen, author of Momfluenced

  • "A delightful debut that weaves the everyday indignations of a single 30-something woman into an engaging tale of self-discovery and suspense. With hauntingly real characters and Smith's sharp prose, Nothing Serious left me gripped to the very end. Its questions around technology, accountability, and modern womanhood pull you in and leave you thinking long after the last page."

    Jo Piazza, internationally bestselling author of The Sicilian

  • “A slyly humorous and deeply relatable ode to female obsession. Smith’s whip-smart commentary on modern dating reveals the perils of flattening oneself to serve an algorithm—and the power of embracing the complicated person in the mirror.”

    Sarah Kasbeer, author of A Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man

  • "A smart, nearly sociologically-drawn story about the kind of thirty-something woman we all know and maybe once were: intelligent, ambitious, adrift. Smith’s protagonist is a woman eking out her own idea of selfhood in the tech goldrush of mid-2010’s San Francisco where online dating, feminism, fertility and family collide. NOTHING SERIOUS is many things-- funny, propulsive, thoughtful-- but above all, it is a whodunit snapping into a who-am-I: a satisfying story of a woman coming to be."

    Hyeseung Song, author of Docile

  • "A pulsing page-turner of a mystery, and a wise and clear-eyed critique of the enigmatic and inequitable worlds of dating and tech. Emily J. Smith's endearing, obsessive, and utterly relatable protagonist, Edie Walker, engages us from page one in her quest for the truth about a fair-weather friend-crush, a feminist icon, and, ultimately, herself. With wit, honesty, and great insight, Emily J. Smith brilliantly captures single womanhood in one's thirties—and all of the undue challenges and pressures that accompany it—in this smart, gripping, hilarious, and vitally serious debut."

    Jessie Chaffee, author of Florence in Ecstasy