Jessica Darling is day drinking. She is day drinking hard. Because she is thinking of doing something a little bit crazy.

Jess has graduated from Columbia and now lives in a tiny room in New York City, where she shares bunk beds with one of her oldest friends, Hope. The walls are painted in such a way as to encourage them to call the room The Cupcake, but it’s home. She’s working as a freelancer and a paid babysitter for her niece Marin, and she’s thinking about breaking up with her high school boyfriend.

Jess and Marcus Flutie had known each other for years before that day in high school when he convinced her to break the rules for him. An unlikely friendship developed from there, and then something more. They stayed in touch while Marcus was in rehab and while Jess was in college. Now Marcus is starting Princeton, and Jess is thinking it’s time for them to move on, in spite of her love for him.

She lives in and loves Manhattan. He’s going to be on campus, enjoying all the freedom of a freshman, even though he’s got a few years on the others in his classes. Jess worries that they’re just in very different places in their lives. But right as she’s about to tell him she wants to break up, he catches her off guard. He gets down on one knee and proposes. She doesn’t know what to say (maybe that would be partly from the day drinking?). So he hands her a notebook and tells her to write down he thoughts for a week, and then they’d see where they are.

As Jess goes through her week, she writes extensively about what’s going on and what she’s thinking about. As she spends time with her friends, she thinks about where they are in their relationships. Some are engaged and some aren’t but having a baby together anyway. Some are breaking up to go after old loves, and getting back together when that idea goes really badly. And it wouldn’t be a Jess Darling novel without at least a mention of Paul Parlipiano, her high school crush to end all crushes and the gay man of her dreams.

But it’s the time that she spends with her family that brings out her truest desires for her future. Her talks with her sister, who offers her the chance to be the original Doughnut Ho, actually helps Jess see what it takes to make a marriage work. And then a trip back to good old Pineville, New Jersey, when her dad ends up in the hospital from a biking accident, helps Jess clarify what is the best choice for her and come up with an answer for Marcus that she can live with.

Fourth Comings is the fourth in the delightful Jessica Darling series from Megan McCafferty, and it’s clear that Jess has grown a lot since that first book. Even though much of this book is written like an extended letter to Marcus, the depth of understanding that Jess shows in her assessments of herself and her relationships as well as those of others shows how much she has grown over these years since we first met her in high school. (Incidentally, if I’d had one fourth of her wisdom when I was her age, I would have considered myself very fortunate!).

I got to listen to this one on audio, and narrator Katie Schorr perfectly embodies the voice of Jessica Darling. She has been Jess since book one of the series, and she has the perfect blend of intelligence and humor, of self-deprecation and snark (so, so much snark!) that is Jess’s signature voice. I read the first Jessica Darling book and have listened to the next three. The final book in the series is coming out early next year, and there is no way that I will not listen to the audio book for that one as well. Schorr is just too perfect as Jessica Darling, and I can’t wait to see where we all end up at the end of the book.

I love the Jessica Darling series. In fact, I think Fourth Comings is my favorite volume so far, just because of how she has grown to understand the world so beautifully and snarkily. And I definitely recommend listening to these on audio. The combination of book and narrator are as close to perfection as it gets.

A copy of Fourth Comings was provided by Macmillan Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks.