Mara Williams is not where she thought she would be. She went to film school. She was supposed to e making movies. Instead, she is a bookkeeper for a community pool club that’s seen better days. She had moved to Broadgate to be closer to her best friend Charlie, but she got married and had a baby, and she just doesn’t have time to hang out with Mara much anymore. So when Mara suggested a girls’ trip to Budapest, Mara didn’t take long to say yes. But right before they were to leave, Charlie called her and had to cancel—the baby had been sick, and she just can’t leave her. So Mara went to Budapest alone.
After spending most of the trip by herself at the hotel, Mara finally forced herself to leave her room and finds herself wandering the streets. She stumbles across a small shop for a fortune teller, and she knows she’s right where she’s supposed to be. A longtime follower of her horoscope, Mara lives for those times that fate intervenes and tells her what to do. This is no different.
Mara was having a lovely reading, finding out that she was going to meet the love of her life imminently, and that she just needs to fix something, and then she will be ready for the relationship. And then her fortune teller went into labor. The woman rushes out to the hospital, and Mara promises to lock up for her. But just for a moment, Mara wonders what it would be like to be a fortune teller. She puts on the veil and some of the woman’s bracelets and looks at herself in the mirror. She’s about to put everything away and lock up as she promised when a man rushes in. Mara is about to tell him that there was a mistake, that the fortune teller is gone, but then she notices the obvious. He is gorgeous. He is imminent. He is her fate.
Mara tries reading his palm, trying to get more information about him. She learns that his name is Josef, he is a cellist with a traveling orchestra, and he’ll be in the UK later in the summer. Mara tells him that the love of his life is in the UK, and if he were to go to Broadgate on a certain Friday in August, to a local bar, that he will meet her there. She knows she’s taking a big risk, but she’s not ready yet. But she will be in August. She will fix everything, and Josef will be hers.
Mara goes back home to her new roommate Ash. He is a builder and a thoughtful roommate. But Mara’s mind is on other things. She has to fix something, and she knows exactly what it is. She needs to fix herself. She thinks about all the things she’ll need to do to become someone who Josef would date. She has friends at work who have offered her help in the past. Her friend Samira can help her find some new clothes that aren’t all black, and maybe she could recommend someone to do something with her hair. Then she’ll need to find a new job, and maybe Ash can help her fix up their apartment.
But then Mara finds out that the lido, the pool where she works, is getting set to close and be sold to someone to turn it into luxury apartments. Mara is concerned that she and her friends will be losing their jobs, especially since she’d been trying to come up with new ideas to bring in business since she got there. But her boss Gerry had turned them all down. But when Gerry announces that he’s going to London for a week, Mara and her coworkers see that they have a short window to try to breathe some new life into the lido.
Mara starts to transform herself with a new haircut and new clothes, but as she’s working on making the lido better, she wonders if that’s not what she’s supposed to be fixing. While getting word out to the community, she finds herself in a video store stocked with shelves and shelves of the movies she loves. She and Ash spend many happy nights on the sofa watching movies, while Mara makes more plans for herself and for the lido.
But the more she fixes in her own life, the more she wonders if Josef really is the one she was supposed to meet. She finds herself more and more drawn to Ash, but that makes her question everything she has ever believed about fate, about her horoscopes, about her future. As she faces her own battered self-image and the mistakes of her past, will Mara find her true fate, or will she let her best opportunity slip through her fingers?
The Setup is a fun romantic comedy about a woman who let life beat her down and found her way back up again. It’s sweet and heart-warming as Mara finds her way back to herself, and the characters are (mostly—I’m looking at you, Gerry) great people that are fun to hang out with. Author Lizzy Dent also wrote The Summer Job, which I loved, and is back with another celebration of summer and all its possibilities.
I really enjoyed The Setup. I’m not a big horoscope reader myself, but there have definitely been times in my life that I was looking outside of myself for signs of what to do. I’m sure some readers won’t like Mara’s dependence on astrology, but that didn’t bother me. I did find some of Mara’s self-punishment a little harsh and found it difficult to read some of those scenes where she was really beating herself up for past mistakes. But sticking with her and watching her heal was life-affirming and lovely, and it made me happy I stuck it out until the end. I do recommend The Setup, and I think it works well as a summer book. But be prepared for some deeper scenes also as Mara goes through her dark night of the soul.
Egalleys for The Setup were provided by G.P. Putnam’s Sons through NetGalley, with many thanks.
