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$11.32The Story
"What You Should Worry About is literary, feminist, sexual, brave, smart, and hilarious. Meryl Branch-McTiernan is a real voice of our city and time."
--Jennifer Belle, author of Swanna in Love
IT'S JANUARY OF 2020 and thirty-seven-year-old Layla Moody is trying to worm her way into a party at the Sundance Film Festival. When she's not picking up other people's abandoned drinks or skinny-dipping in the hot tub, she's trying to gain access to someone who can jump-start her stymied career as a Hollywood television writer. After a run-in with one of her creative heroines, she lands an opportunity to get her show produced. The only catch is, she has to return to New York, which she's been avoiding since her father's death.
But soon all is thwarted when COVID-19 shuts down the entertainment industry and any opportunity to propel her life forward. While quarantining alone in her parents' apartment in Queens, she wrestles with the ghost of an ex-boyfriend who disappeared unexpectedly, the grief of processing the loss of her father, and the notion that she just might be the one responsible for her current state of solitude.
Finally, in spite of warnings and stay-at-home orders, she throws caution to the wind and joins a share house on Fire Island where she spent summers in her twenties. By returning to the house and its eclectic denizens, she is reintroduced to the comfort and annoying tendencies of other people, and begins to grasp how to find family on her own terms.
Author: Meryl Branch-McTiernan
Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
Published: 06/02/2026
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 8.80h x 5.71w x 1.34d
ISBN: 9781636143088
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2026
Booklist 05/01/2026
About the Author
Branch-McTiernan, Meryl: - MERYL BRANCH-McTIERNAN is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. Her short fiction has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail and the Southampton Review. She cowrote and produced the comedy feature Katie's Mom, which won the Audience Award for Fusion Features at the 2023 Dances with Films festival. She received her BS in television, radio, and film from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and her MFA in creative writing and literature from Stony Brook University. She lives on Manhattan's Lower East Side. This is her first novel.
Description
"What You Should Worry About is literary, feminist, sexual, brave, smart, and hilarious. Meryl Branch-McTiernan is a real voice of our city and time."
--Jennifer Belle, author of Swanna in Love
IT'S JANUARY OF 2020 and thirty-seven-year-old Layla Moody is trying to worm her way into a party at the Sundance Film Festival. When she's not picking up other people's abandoned drinks or skinny-dipping in the hot tub, she's trying to gain access to someone who can jump-start her stymied career as a Hollywood television writer. After a run-in with one of her creative heroines, she lands an opportunity to get her show produced. The only catch is, she has to return to New York, which she's been avoiding since her father's death.
But soon all is thwarted when COVID-19 shuts down the entertainment industry and any opportunity to propel her life forward. While quarantining alone in her parents' apartment in Queens, she wrestles with the ghost of an ex-boyfriend who disappeared unexpectedly, the grief of processing the loss of her father, and the notion that she just might be the one responsible for her current state of solitude.
Finally, in spite of warnings and stay-at-home orders, she throws caution to the wind and joins a share house on Fire Island where she spent summers in her twenties. By returning to the house and its eclectic denizens, she is reintroduced to the comfort and annoying tendencies of other people, and begins to grasp how to find family on her own terms.
Author: Meryl Branch-McTiernan
Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
Published: 06/02/2026
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 8.80h x 5.71w x 1.34d
ISBN: 9781636143088
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2026
Booklist 05/01/2026
About the Author
Branch-McTiernan, Meryl: - MERYL BRANCH-McTIERNAN is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. Her short fiction has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail and the Southampton Review. She cowrote and produced the comedy feature Katie's Mom, which won the Audience Award for Fusion Features at the 2023 Dances with Films festival. She received her BS in television, radio, and film from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and her MFA in creative writing and literature from Stony Brook University. She lives on Manhattan's Lower East Side. This is her first novel.
