Being an introvert is not easy. You want to stay in, be alone, and recharge your batteries. But the world (and your extroverted family and friends) want you to go out, have fun, and make friends. Sometimes it can be hard to know what to say. Now there’s help for innies like me, The Escape Manual for Introverts.

Artist Katie Vaz has put together a helpful, funny, warm, smart, slightly snarky guide to help us introverts think of ways to sneak out of social situations early as well as excuses we can use to stay home. With kindness and understanding, Vaz offers suggestions to help with weddings, dinner parties, house guests, airplanes, family vacations, coworker get-togethers, the gym, and waiting rooms.

The Escape Manual for Introverts helps you think through social situations and come up with strategies to use for friends, relatives, coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers. And she includes a “Plausibility of Excuse Absurdity,” a guideline for how crazy your excuses can be in relation to how close you are to the other person you’d be spending time with. For example, your excuses for family have to be far more coherent than what you might say to a stranger.

The charming illustrations and intelligent compassion of The Escape Manual for Introverts makes it the perfect gift for all the innies you know. And staying home to read it can also be used as an ideal reason you can’t go out after work and have to go straight home instead, for a quiet evening of rest and recuperation.

I am a big fan of Katie Vaz, her art, and her inclusive attitude towards others. She’s clearly an introvert herself, but through her work she is open to innies and outies, and I feel like she can help us introverts explain to the extroverts what life is like for us and how easy it is for us to get overwhelmed in social situations.

I love The Escape Manual for Introverts, and I recommend it as a fun, quick, informative read for introverts and extroverts alike!

Galleys for The Escape Manual for Introverts were provided by Andrews McMeel Publishing through NetGalley, with many thanks.