Early Thirties, Josh Duboff
Early Thirties, Josh Duboff
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

Early Thirties

Author: Josh Duboff

Narrator: Graham Halstead, Rachel F. Hirsch, Helen Laser, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, Emily Tremaine

Unabridged: 10 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/18/2025

Categories: Fiction, Lgbtq+, Family Life


Synopsis

Kaia Gerber’s Library Science March Book Club Pick • Best Books of 2025 List by Vogue • Most Anticipated Novels of 2025 List by Marie Claire • Best New Books of Spring 2025 List by Bustle • Must-Read Books of Spring 2025 List by Town & Country

“The year’s best coming-of-age novel is about adults.” —GQ

A hilarious and painfully relatable debut novel about two thirtysomething best friends’ messy search for connection and love in New York, perfect for fans of Rebecca Serle, Gabrielle Zevin, and Dolly Alderton.

Sometimes friendship can be its own love story.

Victor and Zoey are getting old, well older-er, and it’s beginning to be a real problem.

Best friends for a decade in New York City, they have supported each other through bad dates and office drama, late nights and hungover brunches.

As their wild twenties come to a close, though, the dynamic between the two is shifting. Coming off a tough breakup, Victor dedicates his energy towards building a career writing celebrity profiles for one of the last glossy magazines left, while Zoey navigates the terrain at her nascent fashion startup, questioning her future with her fiancé. The friends and acquaintances in their orbit—authors, influencers, “It girls”—are also searching for a sense of belonging amidst anxieties and self-doubt.

But when tragedy befalls Victor, his once unbreakable bond with Zoey really starts to crack. They find themselves ignoring their ongoing text thread and pushing away what might be the most meaningful relationship of their lives. An immersive, hilarious, and heartbreaking story, this is a debut novel about best friendship, finding yourself, and realizing growing up has as much to do with the person you were as it does with the person you are desperately trying to become.

About Josh Duboff

Josh Duboff is a novelist, journalist, and playwright. A former senior writer for Vanity Fair, Josh has written cover stories on Taylor Swift, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Gigi Hadid, among others, and contributed to The New York Times Book ReviewThe Wall Street Journal MagazineHarper’s BazaarGQW MagazineTown & CountryBon AppétitAir Mail, and more. A graduate of Yale University, he lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ashley on October 30, 2024

DNF at 46% When the majority of the description of the book says it's about two best friends growing up in New York City, coming into their adulthoods, and then compared the writing to Gabrielle Zevin and Dolly Alderton, I expected to be captivated by the characters and the story. However, I was sore......more

Goodreads review by Shannon on March 15, 2025

This book follows a group of interconnected NYC and LA elder millennials in their 'early thirties' as they navigate, love, loss, divorce, infertility, abortion, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, depression, career ups and downs, celebrity culture and journalism and more. I fear that anyone who dives in......more

Goodreads review by Lily Morreale on October 27, 2024

I felt like this book was similar in theme to movies like Love actually where you have all the characters somehow meeting each other and stories overlapping. However, I found this very hard to follow in written form as there were a lot of characters who were only partially developed and you never he......more

Goodreads review by Matt on July 07, 2024

Calling this brilliant is an understatement—beautiful, imperfect, devastating, and page-turning. I feel like I know these characters. Wait, scratch that, I might be one (or two) of them…......more

Goodreads review by Joel on April 02, 2025

This is so sharp in so many ways. Sometimes to a scary degree, to be honest. I sent multiple snippets to friends in that sort of "isn't this funny but also oof" way you acknowledge that a piece of art has hit a little too close to home. These are thorny characters but they're not irredeemable and I......more