"'Wistful, funny and sweet and just a small bit murder-y' Marian Keyes, Sunday Times bestselling author
'The perfect sun lounger read' Sarra Manning, Sunday Times bestselling author
'Their new standalone is funny and smart, raising big questions about friendship … I loved how this kept me guessing the whole way through - I predict another big hit' Red
'Packed with accounts of chaotic summer jobs and romantic misadventures, the story is hilarious, tense, and deeply nostalgic' Woman
*
Laura and Dee haven’t spoken since the day they buried a body together.
2001. It was supposed to be the best summer of their lives. A break from university, from parents, from wasting their time on Irish boys with farmer’s tans.
They’d imagined flirting with Ryan Phillippe on a New York rooftop. Instead, with summer jobs waitressing at a country club on Long Island, pickings are slim.
Mikey is a bully. Marco is off limits. Jose is angry. Mr Haight is a sleaze. Josh is too keen. And Other Josh… he’s something else entirely.
It’s a miracle only one of them ends up dead.
Dee is pretty sure she didn’t mean to kill him. Laura, to her credit, never asked.
Not until she sends an email, out of the blue, more than twenty years later. It’s finally time to mend the biggest heartbreak of that summer; Laura wants her best friend back.
A hilarious and heartfelt story about friendship, young women and bad men. Sarah Breen and Emer McLysaght bring their trademark Aisling humour in this completely new direction. Noughties nostalgia and a dead body, it’s the novel you didn’t know you needed.
'Tender, bittersweet and utterly hilarious. The final twist made me gasp' Daisy Buchanan
Our Deadly Summer launched at No. 1 on the Irish Times bestseller chart w/e 23/05/26. C 2026 Emer McLysaght C 2026 Sarah Breen P 2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"
"Brought to you by Penguin.
Aisling is thirty, flirty and frazzled.
But - just when she should finally be feeling all grown-up - she's floundering.
Because when you're recovering from a broken heart as well as struggling to keep your café as sizzling as your award-winning sausages, it's hard to feel you've really made it as an adult.
Which is just the moment for the unexpected to strike and complicate everything.
Now is not the time for a delicious new man to show up, her best friend to demand the hen do of the century and a surprise celebrity appearance.
But Aisling, never one to worry about having too much on her plate, rolls up her sleeves: she's got this.
Until she discovers that being a proper grown-up means you can't do everything.
Sometimes you will let someone down.
But will it be those she loves, or herself?"
"Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Importance of Being Aisling by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, read by Amy McAllister.
Meet Aisling.
She's a country girl learning to love the city sophistication of unlimited Pinot Greej and brunch, though smashed avocado still mystifies her. She can plan anything, from Secret Santa for her ungrateful colleagues to a hen party for not one but two brides.
But even Aisling is thrown off course when her job and relationship suddenly go up in smoke.
Life in the city was supposed to be glamorous and grown-up, but all at once she's heading home to live with her mother. (Not without a detour to Vegas first - she's unemployed and single, not dead.)
But between making new friends and rivals, and finding her eye caught by a very handsome but very unavailable new man, going home is full of surprises. Could small town life actually hold the answers Aisling is missing?
People can't get enough of Aisling:
'There aren't enough words for how much I love it' Marian Keyes
'The year's funniest book to date' Hello
'Will have you shedding a tear as well as laughing your socks off' Fabulous
'Both Aisling and the novel have a great big thumping heart' Sunday Times"
"Aisling is twenty-eight and she’s a complete ... Aisling. She lives at home in Ballygobbard (or Ballygobackwards, as some gas tickets call it) with her parents and commutes to her good job at PensionsPlus in Dublin. Aisling goes out every Saturday night with her best friend Majella, who is a bit of a hames (she’s lost two phones already this year – Aisling has never lost a phone. They love hoofing into the Coors Light if they’re 'Out', or the vodka and Diet Cokes if they’re 'Out Out'. Aisling spends two nights a week at her boyfriend John’s. He’s from down home and was kiss number seventeen at her twenty-first. But Aisling wants more. She wants the ring on her finger. She wants the hen with the willy straws. She wants out of her parents’ house, although she’d miss Mammy turning on the electric blanket like clockwork and Daddy taking her car 'out for a spin' and bringing it back full of petrol. When a week in Tenerife with John doesn’t end with the expected engagement, Aisling calls a halt to things and soon she has surprised herself and everyone else by agreeing to move into a three-bed in Portobello with stylish Sadhbh from HR and her friend, the mysterious Elaine. Newly single and relocated to the big city, life is about to change utterly for this wonderful, strong, surprising and funny girl, who just happens to be a complete Aisling."
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