Loved One: A Novel

Named a Best Book of 2025 by NPR and Newsweek

“[A] funny, heartwrenching novel.” —People

“A genuine pleasure to read.” —Vogue

“Full of wildly astute, delectably thorny questions about love and loss and possession.” —Maggie Shipstead, New York Times bestselling author of Great Circle

From an Emmy Award–winning writer comes a funny, wise, heartbreaking story about a woman journeying into the unknown in the wake of sudden loss

When her first-love-turned-close-friend, Gabe, dies unexpectedly at twenty-nine, thirty-year-old Julia is launched into an intercontinental quest to recover his lost possessions. Her journey takes her from Los Angeles to London and into the murky realm of the past. It also sets Julia on a collision course with the last woman he loved, a guarded, self-possessed florist and restaurateur named Elizabeth, who insists on withholding Gabe’s beloved guitar—one of the departed indie rock musician’s dearest belongings—for reasons Julia can’t understand. Both women, it turns out, have something to hide, and soon find themselves engaged in a complex dance of withholding and revelation.  

An emotional mystery spanning years, continents, and relationship statuses, Loved One introduces Aisha Muharrar as a novelist intimately attuned to the intricacies of love, memory, and ambiguous loss. What happens when we admit that the deepest feelings never die? How do we reconcile various—and sometimes contradictory—truths about those closest to us? An engrossing and profoundly moving coming-of-age story with a powerful love at its heart, Loved One is poised to become an instant classic.