twenty steps to a better you

Sasha Worth has hit the wall. Literally.

After months of doing the work of three people at the startup Zoose, she had finally had enough and ran out of the building. There were weeks and weeks of urgent emails that needed to be answered immediately if not sooner, ignored appeals to hire more help, interrupted sleep, no hint of a personal life, and no compassion from management other than telling her to post to their “wellness” mood board. And when a stranger talked to Sasha like a person, hit on her even, she realized she needed to change her life. So she ran out of the building. And as she realized she was being chased by the Zoose’s company “joyfulness” official, Sasha stopped paying attention to where she was going and ran face-first into a brick wall.

At the hospital, they told her she was okay, but she needed to take three weeks of rest. Her mother, wanting to help, booked her in to the hotel at the seaside resort she’d loved as a child. Her family had gone every year, every summer, until her father had died suddenly twenty years ago. Sasha, her mother, and her sister had never gone back. Her mother also found her an app to help Sasha, with twenty wellness steps she can take to heal her life. Sasha’s mother sees her off at the train with a wealth of supplies—a hula hoop, a painting kit—and called ahead to the hotel, claiming to be Sasha’s PA and ordering her organic kale for healthy green smoothies and noni juice.

When Sasha was a kid, the Rilston Hotel was the fanciest place in the town. Her family would go there once each trip to have drinks in the elegant lobby, but her father wouldn’t even pay for dinner there. Now, Sasha was finally staying there in all its opulence. So she’s a little surprised when she gets there. Twenty years is a long time, and the Rilston hasn’t held up all that well. The velvet sofas in the lobby have been replaced by antiques that are on sale. And while it is the off-season for swimming and surfing, it appears that Sasha is the only guest in the entire hotel. Her beachfront room has large windows that open up to wooden slats (for the ongoing remodel), and the luxury lodges on the beach are falling apart.

But it’s okay. Sasha has a plan. The app gives her twenty things she can do to recover from her burnout. There is yoga on the beach, meditation, her bullet journal, communing with nature. And the hotel is on board for her healthy diet, offering herbal tea and a morning melon plate instead of, say, coffee, eggs, bacon, and pancakes. They give her green smoothies and offer no alcohol.

She is miserable. All Sasha wants is junk food and gossip magazines. She wants to drink wine and sleep all afternoon. She hates kale and yoga and spends a lot of time venting about her job in her bullet journal. And she wants sex. I mean, she’s so exhausted she doesn’t, but she wants to want it. She tries to manifest it. And that’s when she meets Finn.

Finn is also exhausted at work and on a mandatory rest. He also had come to the seaside as a kid with his family. He also hadn’t been back in twenty years. He and Sasha immediately are at odds with each other. He avoids her, thinking she’s a spoiled brat who has to have her pushy PA take care of everything for her. And she thinks that he is obnoxious, self-involved, and unkind to children and wait staff. And he can eat all the pancakes he wants without the staff trying to give him green juice.

But eventually they start talking, and they find that they have more in common than they realized. They talk about their time at work. They talk about the times they visited as kids. And Sasha finds that maybe her libido isn’t completely dead after all. But she still has a lot of problems to deal with, she still finds herself in a toxic work environment, and while a fling may be fun, it won’t fix her life. Will she find the answers she needs to create the life she dreams of, or will she just return to London and fall back into her old habits?

The Burnout is the latest novel from perennial bestseller Sophie Kinsella, and from page one you can understand why. This is a tale of modern toxic work environments and how to battle them, but it’s also just a story about a smart, funny woman who has lost her way and is trying to find a way back to her true self.

As someone who has known burnout in her life (read: these days right here) and is struggling to find solutions that work better than kale and hula-hooping, I wanted this book as soon as I saw it. I loved it. It felt genuine and honest, but more than that it was fun and transportive and restoring to my soul. There were times I just stopped to laugh, and I loved how the story line of what happened as kids was woven in to the story line of Sasha and Finn as adults. This is such a heart-warming story. I can’t recommend it enough. All I need now is three weeks by the seaside, chocolate and crisps, and a boss who can follow the wisdom of a surfing teacher.

Egalleys for The Burnout were provided by Random House The Dial Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.