People Watching: A Novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this sexy and emotional romance from the acclaimed author of Out of the Woods and Out on a Limb, a small-town woman’s journey to spread her wings intertwines with the arrival of an adventurous newcomer who brings out the best in her.
Prudence Welch has found solace in her introverted life in Baysville, a charming tourist town in Northern Ontario. Despite once dreaming of a life beyond its borders, she now finds contentment in her routines: working at her father’s gas station, writing poetry, and caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease shortly after Prue’s nineteenth birthday. But as her mother’s condition worsens and her father’s concerns about her own future intensify, Prue feels her world slipping further out of control.
Enter Milo Kablukov, an enigmatic wanderer whose beat-up van covered with ill-advised bumper stickers rolls into town just when Prue needs a change. It’s all too easy to let go with him, and Prue can’t help but strike up an unlikely friendship with Milo, which leads to a wild and sexy agreement between them.
Milo, a man of many adventures and countless stories, is not one to settle down. However, his brother’s urgent need for help has brought him to Baysville, and now the intriguing Prue has given him more reason to stay—especially once they start spending more time together, their chemistry intensifying, and casual-sex lessons begin at Prue’s request.
But as their temporary arrangement blossoms into something deeper, Prue and Milo discover that getting out of their comfort zones is one thing . . . taking that leap together is something else entirely.
Prudence Welch has found solace in her introverted life in Baysville, a charming tourist town in Northern Ontario. Despite once dreaming of a life beyond its borders, she now finds contentment in her routines: working at her father’s gas station, writing poetry, and caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease shortly after Prue’s nineteenth birthday. But as her mother’s condition worsens and her father’s concerns about her own future intensify, Prue feels her world slipping further out of control.
Enter Milo Kablukov, an enigmatic wanderer whose beat-up van covered with ill-advised bumper stickers rolls into town just when Prue needs a change. It’s all too easy to let go with him, and Prue can’t help but strike up an unlikely friendship with Milo, which leads to a wild and sexy agreement between them.
Milo, a man of many adventures and countless stories, is not one to settle down. However, his brother’s urgent need for help has brought him to Baysville, and now the intriguing Prue has given him more reason to stay—especially once they start spending more time together, their chemistry intensifying, and casual-sex lessons begin at Prue’s request.
But as their temporary arrangement blossoms into something deeper, Prue and Milo discover that getting out of their comfort zones is one thing . . . taking that leap together is something else entirely.
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Community Reviews
Open up the gorgeous TLSS cover of Hannah Bonam Young’s People Watching and walk into Baysville, Ontario. “It's autumn there so, before you turn the page, grab a mug of your drink of choice, snuggle up under a blanket,” and get ready to “meet Milo, our nomadic artist returning home for the first time in a decade at his brother's beckoning, and Prue, our tortured poet who has never fled the nest and is now a caretaker for her beloved mother. This story was inspired by [Hannah’s] love for Muskoka, The Beatles, poetry, the sex-lessons trope, and family - both the kind you're born into and the sort you find for yourself.”
But as an educator, it was Prue’s mother/Milo’s high school art teacher Julia that most inspired me. To be a teacher is to repurpose mistakes, to fill classrooms with color, and to serve as the architect of childhood. She sews each student a pair of wings and decorates them with lace, diamonds, and pearls. Nothing too heavy, as to not weigh them down. Nothing too light, to teach them their strength. Then, she places them on her students’ backs, hopes for the best, and sends them off into the world with an invisible cape of confidence and an internal compass to point them in the right direction so they could take what they need. “The world requires so little of you…These expectations are all in your head. Go, question, and find what you require of yourself. That is all you owe.”
As teachers, we are also people watchers. We notice the students who feel as if no one really sees them at all. They spend so much of their lives watching other people live, believing they were meant to observe from the other side of the door. A teacher may be the first person who opens that door for them. Who makes them feel as if they are worth seeing too. Who reminds them that each one of them is “a special, watchable, fascinating, beautiful thing worth creating art about. I know for certain I cannot give that up. Not without a fight.”
It was when I had a student with a prosthetic leg in my class and stumbled upon her novel Out on a Limb that I was introduced to Hannah Bonam Young’s earnest, approachable love stories set in Canada, “featuring a cast of diverse, disabled, marginalized, and LGBTQIA+ folks wherein swoon-worthy storylines blend with the beautiful, messy, and challenging realities of life.” And People Watching is no exception. Like its typeset, “it offers modern style based on the classic tradition” and will remain in your heart long after you’ve closed the cover.
Once again, I’ve finished one of Hannah Bonam-Young’s books with tears rolling down my cheeks. This book was everything and more. It hit harder personally for me than Out on a Limb because of Julia’s Alzheimer’s. Especially the early reference Prue makes about having to downgrade her mother’s puzzle size. My grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s, loved puzzles and got so angry when we started giving her the 300 piece puzzles instead of the 500 piece ones. Anyone reading this book who has ever cared for someone with Alzheimer’s will know right away that the author is writing from personal experience.
Now about Prue and Milo. First of all, I love their names! I also loved all of the Beatles references scattered throughout the book. They were just perfect for each other. I can’t put it any simpler than that. Hannah Bonam-Young has become an auto-buy author me.
A lot of people don’t like this book???
I loved both Prue and Milo… they had this chemistry from the very first page that was just electrifying!!! You couldn’t help but root for them.
If anything I just wish that we got to see more of the dynamics between Milo and his siblings (or an interconnected sequel!!)
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