People, Please

From the author of Too Blessed to Stress, the in turns uplifting, emotional, and uproarious story of consummate people pleaser Kat, who has to stop fixing everyone else long enough to fix herself.

Kat has spent her entire life making sure everyone else is okay. When her husband Pat announces he’s leaving her, he lays the blame for their demise squarely at Kat’s feet: her chronic people pleasing, he says, left little room in their marriage for him.

Desperate for a fresh start, Kat retreats to her father’s cramped apartment on the Jersey Shore, planning to stay just long enough to lick her wounds and help him plan his wedding. When her formidable mother muscles her way into Kat’s carefully curated summer of rest and reset, dragging along Kat’s teenage half-sister, her plans to take the time for herself are fully upended.

Then Kat meets Sydney, an essential oils evangelist, single mother, and force of nature. After a night of tequila shots, vulnerable conversation, and sandalwood oil, Sydney wonders if perhaps her products are the cure for Kat’s chronic people pleasing. Level-headed Kat doesn’t believe Sydney’s audacious claims for a second—until she starts testing them and sees some undeniable results.

Over the course of a wild, experimental summer, with her dad’s wedding approaching and her divorce looming, Kat discovers the surprising freedom of falling apart, and begins to wonder what it might mean to take responsibility for her own happiness instead of everyone else’s.