Camille Perri

Steve Thomas: Camille, welcome to the podcast.

Camille Perri: Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here.

Steve Thomas: Before we get into the book can you tell listeners a little bit about your experience working in libraries?

Camille Perri: Absolutely. I started working in my local library as a library page in my teens when I was 16 or 17 I guess. I’ve always known that I wanted to be a writer, but I’ve also always loved libraries, and I thought working at the library would be the greatest job ever because in my mind I would just be sitting in the stacks reading all day, which is not actually what a page is supposed to be doing, although there is a little bit of that. So I was working as a page all through high school, and then when it came time to think about college and a career, I majored in English and I knew even going into college that I was going to go on to library school and I wanted to become a librarian. I knew that’s what I wanted to do just from having worked in the library. And I did just that!

I went to NYU, and then I went right to Queens College to get my master’s in library science. While I was in library school I was back working at my local library as a librarian trainee, a reference librarian trainee. So I worked getting that wonderful experience all through library school. And then when I graduated I worked there for a while. I also worked at another Nassau County library called Great Neck Library, did some work there. And then I started writing books, basically, started writing novels. That was always the dream. And I did think for a while a great job to have while also wanting to be a writer is being a librarian, and I was absolutely right about that. It was a great combination.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And I imagine it’s fun to go to the library and see your books on the shelf. Have you done that?

Camille Perri: Oh my goodness, yes. I actually took photos from when my first book, The Assistants, came out. Because when I was a page and shelving books in the fiction section, it was the same shelf, right? And I would look at where, if I had a novel, where it would be on the shelf. It would be right there next to Tom Perrotta. Because my last name’s Perri, and I would imagine. I would imagine my book up there, and then it was there, and I did. I took photos. I have those photos.

They have since renovated the library, which is good for them. But it’s less nostalgic for me because it’s not actually the same exact shelf that I used to shelf books on. But yeah, that was a real high moment for me when that actually manifested.

Steve Thomas: And were you there next to Tom Perrotta?

Camille Perri: Yeah, because we’re P-E-R. And he’s one of my favorite… I love his books, which is just a bonus!

Steve Thomas: They can be little shelf buddies.

Camille Perri: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Thomas: I guess speaking of little buddies you’ve written a book about dogs and them being buddies to us, and I think in the past, I read that you were a, I think like me, you didn’t want to be a dog parent.

Camille Perri: That’s correct.

Steve Thomas: And then the pandemic turned you into a reluctant dog parent.

Camille Perri: Yeah. That’s 100% correct. I did not want a dog for many reasons. One of the main reasons was that my wife worked long hours in an office and I was working from home. And I always said, “I’ll be the one having to take care of it all the time. You’re the one who really wants this dog, but it’ll be my responsibility.” And then of course COVID happened and everyone started working from home, a lot of people started working from home, including my wife, and so that argument went right out the.

Everybody was getting their pandemic puppies. It was a very popular thing that was happening. So my argument lost steam, and I did give in to getting a puppy a young Brussels Griffon pup, which is the same breed as one of the dogs in the book.

I did not expect much from myself. I thought at a certain point I’ll get used to having this animal living in my house, and I’ll hopefully be patient with it. And I didn’t anticipate how my heart would turn into a puddle for this little 10 pound maniac. I just did not think that was possible for me. I honestly just didn’t think it was part of my makeup, and I really surprised myself. So you just never know.

Steve Thomas: Can you talk about how you turned that personal experience into fiction and into this book?

Camille Perri: Yeah. So during COVID I was trying to work on … I had previously written two novels The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy, and I was working on an idea for a new novel, what would be my third. And I was having a lot of difficulties coming up with the perfect novel. I had some ideas. I had started working on a script for a little while. It was this buddy comedy that featured these two characters that I created named Val and Alex.

And that wasn’t really working. I tried to turn it into a novel. It just, I couldn’t figure out what wasn’t working about it. Meanwhile, we get Pip, we get our dog, and we take her to the dog park for the first time. And very quickly I picked up the vibe and the energy of the dog park, and I saw all these different characters, and we started to learn the politics of the place, and we started to learn the gossip of the place, like who had slept with whom, and who no longer spoke to who because of what.

So I started immediately taking notes, and it hit me oh my goodness I’m gonna write a dog park novel, so I took those characters that I had been working with and fallen in love with and then created the character of June, who’s the third woman in the novel, and set it in a dog park, and had the sort of inciting incident be centered around the dog park.

And hey, add dogs to the recipe and something amazing happens. Like, all of a sudden the book started writing itself. So I guess I do have to thank my wife for forcing me to get a dog that I never wanted, and then the dog herself. She’s my muse.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, ’cause you have these three characters, but then you’re adding three more characters ’cause you’ve got the three dogs that they own. Plus, again, all of the other supporting characters and all their dogs. You do a good job I think of, ’cause that can be a difficult thing, of having… you’re not doubling the number of characters because especially with those supporting characters, they’re just a little bit of a one or two note thing about the dog just so you can remember, but you can keep track of who’s who.

Camille Perri: I had a lot of fun with that. I had a lot of fun imagining which human would have which kind of breed and which kind of dog with which kind of personality, and what would its name be. And that was some of the most fun that I had working on this book, was figuring out the perfect combination of characters humans and animals together.

Steve Thomas: And was some of that based on what you were observing at the dog park? ‘Cause I can imagine you’re looking at the people at the dog park. You’re going, just by looking at them, “This person’s like this, and this person’s like that.” Did that help inform your characters?

Camille Perri: There is a phenomenon where people begin to resemble their dogs in a bit of a way, and sometimes they even look alike. And it’s funny, and you do observe that. But I also felt like for the sake of fiction, like Val, for example, who really didn’t want a dog and has only gotten her dog, Cash, for the sake of this job, she’s a private investigator and she’s on a job, and she needs a dog to go to the dog park with to spy on June. So I thought of course Val is going to need the most difficult dog of the bunch, right? Because we wanna make her life as difficult as possible from a novelistic standpoint. So I knew that she was gonna have this really difficult, self-important little dog that was gonna be based on my dog, Pip.

And some of the other… Like June, for example, she’s a natural animal lover and a natural dog lover. And she’s got this really easygoing dog, a golden retriever mix who is a little bit of a buffoon, but, just happy-go-lucky. And so yeah, I had a lot of fun matching people and dogs.

Steve Thomas: And like you said, the dogs and the people do match up a little bit. Like not completely because June’s outward appearance is bouncy and bubbly and not all that bright. But as you get to know her, there’s obviously more to her than that. But her outward appearance matches up really well with a golden because they’re just always happy, it seems.

Camille Perri: Yeah, I thought of June, the character of June, as golden on the outside and like sunlight, but on the inside she’s really lonely. She’s feeling really isolated, which is a major theme of the book. These characters are all in some way lonely and feeling isolated, ’cause those were the issues that were on my mind during COVID.

She’s really desperate for connection. And so when these two mysterious women enter the dog park, Val and Alex, she’s ripe for the picking because she’s so desperate for new friends. And they’re both there with ulterior motives. And so that set up a nice little dynamic where we’ve got this sort of vulnerable June and both Val and Alex have gone to the dog park seeking her out specifically for their own reasons. I liked how that kinda set up the slight suspense aspect of the book.

Steve Thomas: And it gives some conflict between Val and Alex too because they’re both there for her, but they’re not both trying to figure out the same thing about her or use her for the same reasons, and they’re trying to figure each other out, and it’s “Oh, who’s this person?” They’re suspicious!” Especially Val because she’s a PI, she’s very good at detecting things, so like she immediately clocks Alex, says, “This is not the right person.” She’s like she has designer hairdos and stuff. What’s going on here?

Camille Perri: “She’s not who she says she is. I can tell by those not-split ends.” Yeah, I love triangles in novels. I think pairing three characters is always a smart thing to do because of the odd number. I just love the tension. It’s much better than if people can team off into even numbers. I think a triangle of three is the perfect amount of characters in a book, main characters.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, ’cause you can explore all those different relationships ’cause you’re getting Val and Alex, and then Val and June and Alex. And so it’s all these different ways that they interact and then the three of them together is its own relationship as well. And, we’ve talked a little bit about that it’s about isolation and loneliness, but it’s got a light tone to it. So it’s like I don’t wanna make it seem like it’s this dark and dreary book, it’s a comedy, that deals with serious subjects too.

Camille Perri: Yeah. The main thing is entertaining and humor in my books, but there’s always something deeper going on at the same time underneath all the fun and fast pace. I think of this book as a caper. I think of it as a caper that’s fun and fast-paced that’s centered around a dog park.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and when you were talking about dog parks earlier I was like, they should do like a reality show set, like the Real Housewives kind of thing or, but just the Real Housewives of the Dog Park or whatever.

Camille Perri: Oh my God, such a good idea. It’s interesting, I think dog parks are very similar to libraries in that way. Because they’re these public spaces, right? And you get all different kinds of people because everyone is welcome. So you get automatically you get this mix of people who might not otherwise be mixing, and I know from working in libraries you definitely do get regulars the way that you get regulars in a dog park. And so relationships form and of course, like I think there should be a, instead of the Real Housewives there should be the Real Lives of Suburban Librarians, or City Librarians, Public Librarians. Because that could easily be a great television series right there.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. No, but you’re right. I mean it is about making that connection and I guess even better is that you can have dogs there. You can’t usually bring your dog into the library.

Camille Perri: No, that’s true.

Steve Thomas: Unless it’s a service dog.

Camille Perri: Yeah. We’ve got some rules at the library that wouldn’t apply at a dog park.

Steve Thomas: And I think, that connection that they’re having with their pets, some of them unwillingly having feelings and emotions for their pets, but I think that’s part of what June is, like why she goes all in on animals and loving animals because she’s not getting that from her marriage or just her, the rest of her life. She wants that human connection and, she wants it from her husband, but she’s just not getting it. So she has to love the doggy.

Camille Perri: Yeah. Silas was a tough character for me to write. He’s June’s husband and there’s a lot going on with him. I was trying to figure out, like how much of a villain do I want Silas to be? Is he essentially a good guy? Is he just a bad guy? And I leave that up to readers to kinda decide on how they feel about Silas by the end of the book. But he’s certainly not giving June what she needs in her marriage, that’s for sure.

Steve Thomas: Was there any of the other supporting characters that really felt, I’m sure you like all of them, but any of them that really popped or were really fun to write?

Camille Perri: They were all kind of fun in their own way. And, some of them I had strong mental pictures of because they were composites of people that I did encounter in my real-life experience at the dog park. So I had a lot of fun writing the minor characters. Edna Perlberg, who’s the elderly woman who sits by herself on the bench afar, she was probably, I think, my favorite to write because I just think that’s so real. You do always have that one older woman who you think “I don’t know she could be, like, 75 or she could be, like, 110. I don’t exactly know.” I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with that character.

Steve Thomas: And you mentioned, it’s a caper. There’s definitely mysteries in here and caper-esque elements of sneaking into files and all this kind of stuff. Was it difficult for you to figure out how much of that, you obviously were not wanting to write a mystery novel where that’s gonna be the core of it, but did you have to pull those back at any point to make sure you’re focusing on the emotional elements of the relationships with the characters?

Camille Perri: Yeah, that’s a great question. I did a lot of research for this book, just because I’m a former reference librarian and I love doing research so I had way more material than I needed. I did research on white-collar corruption, environmental malfeasance, the FBI, spies. I read a bunch of stuff on spies because it was super interesting to me and just all that extra reading. So I had way more material than I needed that couldn’t go into the book, but was still super helpful to me to know in the back of my mind.

Yeah, I didn’t want this to be, like, a hardcore genre book. Certainly I’m not a mystery writer or a suspense or thriller writer by trade. My books are just contemporary novels that are, I guess what you’d call general fiction or literary fiction maybe, I don’t know, but I love reading those kinds of books. I didn’t know if I had the skill to do it, like 100%, but I did want an element of suspense in here and an element of mystery. So I did have to know how high to put that dial, I guess you could say. So I’d say like the mystery and suspense element is like it’s at a six or a seven. It’s not at a 10.

Steve Thomas: But it is important to the plot. But yeah, like you said, it really it comes down to the relationship between the three women is the core of the novel.

Camille Perri: Oh yeah, no, it’s definitely character-driven. Yeah, the characters are where it’s at for me and the voice. I always have fun with voice in my books. I like reading voicey novels. So that’s always really important to me to get that right.

Steve Thomas: The previous Surgeon General had put out the report on the epidemic of loneliness. Had you already started the book at that point when that came out, or did that affect the novel, the writing of it at all?

Camille Perri: I had started it already. I was working on the novel when it came out. And when I read that, the Surgeon General came out with this report and I was reading it and thinking, “Oh my goodness,” like this speaks to me so much on a personal level just from what I was experiencing in my own life with the COVID isolation and then how it carried over, like the world opened up again and we all didn’t use those muscles for a while, and they atrophied. And I was feeling that really a lot. So the report spoke to me on that level. But having been working on this novel also, it really put into perspective how much my characters were struggling with that, and how much that was a driving force in the book.

Steve Thomas: Yeah you don’t mention, I don’t think, the pandemic at all in the book, but it definitely feels like a post-pandemic novel in that it’s dealing with those things.

Do you think it’s harder, June especially has this, of that self-confidence that you need to make friends as an adult? As a kid you’re just kinda thrown into school or sports or church or whatever kind of activity you’re doing. You just do whatever your parents put you in and make you go do. But as an adult, you have to make that proactive thing yourself, unless you’re making friends with people at work or something. Do you think that’s harder to do as an adult, and is it even harder now, post-pandemic when we all had to break?

Camille Perri: I think so. Just personally I’ve found making friends as an adult to be really difficult. You’re just not mixing with people the same way, and it’s hard to make friends, especially if you’re maybe a bit of an introvert, you’re a bit shy, which I am.

I think that one big difference is a lot of us post-pandemic never went back to the offices full time again. A lot of us are doing hybrid schedules where you’re there a couple of days a week or maybe you’re sometimes working from home. And it did change the dynamic of ” your coworkers are your friends when you’re an adult.”

You might have some friends that you had from college, and you have some friends as a couple maybe with your spouse. But the people that you are seeing almost sometimes more than your family in waking hours was your coworkers. They were your lives. And I think for a lot of people that did change.

I personally I don’t work in an office anymore. I’m pretty much writing full time, and anything else I’m doing is freelance work. So I felt that myself. I feel like these days I make a new friend every 10 years or something. And I just gotta hold onto that person because it is difficult as an adult, I think.

Steve Thomas: And that’s probably why people group up at things like the dog park of it’s “Oh, look other adults that I can hang out with, and we have this shared interest.” That happens a lot too when you’ve got kids, and so then you’re like, at a kid’s birthday party ’cause the kid invited your kid ’cause they just go to the same class. ” How do you, fellow adult?”

Camille Perri: It’s also nice if you are an introvert and kinda shy and not a super, social person. The dog park’s kinda nice because you have the dogs, and you’re mostly, like, paying attention to the dogs and looking at the dogs, and you don’t necessarily have to answer a lotta questions about yourself. Or one hilarious thing about the dog park is a lot of people refer to each other by “Baxter’s mom,” “Popcorn’s dad.” It’s really funny how you fall away a little bit, and that can be really freeing if you’re a socially anxious person. So I think the dog park’s kinda great in that way.

Steve Thomas: Yeah.

A lot of the book, I think, is also about who people are. They’re hiding who they are, or they’re trying to be hiding. Alex is trying to hide who she is, and June is hiding herself even though she doesn’t think she is, or there’s parts of herself that she’s hiding or can’t deal with. And Val has a past she doesn’t wanna deal with.

And I think the dogs do a good job of bringing some of their real personality out. Like especially Val, like the emotional side of her. It’s there obviously, but it’s pulling something out that maybe you didn’t know was there. I think maybe you even mentioned that earlier with your dog, of like you didn’t even know this little love for animals could be there. But they’re there, and they look up at you with that look in their eyes, and you’re like, “Oh my goodness, what is this I’m feeling?”

Camille Perri: Yeah. Oh, I think that’s really astute. And thank you. You’ve read my novel so well. It’s so refreshing to hear, not many people have read it yet, so like it’s still new so thank you so much for such a generous read. But I think that’s totally true. I think that a lot of the book I was thinking about nature versus nurture. Do we have the capacity to change? How much of our makeup is environmental? And there’s a line in the book that comes from, I think it’s a professor, which is ” Nature holds the gun, but nurture pulls the trigger.” And I think that’s true in the sense the dogs too, because it’s almost like you have these aspects in you, but it might not be activated, right? You might have the capacity for something inside of you genetically or whatever, and then it gets activated or not activated. The switch gets turned on or turned off. And for Val getting Cash definitely activates something in her. It’s almost having a virus in your body, and then all of a sudden, it comes to life. She realizes she does have a certain vulnerability and the ability to love. To love and connect.

Steve Thomas: Val at one point raises the idea of whether people ever really change or if they’re just revealing different parts of themselves. So I think that’s part of that identity thing, too, we contain multitudes as they say. And what you’re showing is depending on the circumstance or the person you’re around, the dog you’re around or whatever.

Camille Perri: Yeah, think the people we surround ourselves with bring out different things in us, which is why it’s so important to choose the right people to have in your ear all the time. Because it really can bring out the best in you or the worst in you. And I think one thing for these characters is they do find that although certainly in the first half of the book, there’s a lot of butting heads and there’s a lot of friction, but they do start to realize that maybe they bring out good things in each other, and things that needed to be brought out to the surface.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And lots of flirty behavior and things like that…

Camille Perri: There’s a little flirting going on. You gotta have a little bit.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and among a lot of the characters, ’cause some of them are flirting with each other, some of the ladies, especially the supporting characters, it seems like everybody is in love with this silver-haired man that nobody knows who he is even, but they’re all like, “Ooh, he’s so dreamy,” and….

Camille Perri: The Silver Fox. Yeah …

Steve Thomas: yeah, the Silver Fox, and we find out more about him later in the book. I won’t say anything. But I think the majority of them are like rich housewives, not our main characters except I guess June is, but the rest of them, Val and Alex are not.

Camille Perri: Yeah, I wanted to set it in an affluent suburban community. I set the book in Bethesda, Maryland. I had been living in Rockville, Maryland during COVID and when we got our dog, and the dog park that we were going to regularly was in Rockville, but I had been to Bethesda, and I just felt like people know Bethesda. It’s a town that they know so that’s where it’s set. And I definitely wanted an affluent community because I wanted to poke fun at some of the aspects of pet ownership that can be funny when you have resources to do things like buy your dog organic food only and dress it in elaborate outfits.

And in the book there is a whole theme of they want this renovation for their dog park because it’s got terrible mud situation, and they decide that they wanna raise funds to renovate the dog park because they’re not getting enough municipal support which is something else I think libraries, there’s some crossover there. Libraries reflect their town. But they’re also funded, public libraries at least, are publicly funded through taxes primarily, so a lot of times a library will have a Friends group, and there’s a Friends group in this book, they create a Friends group for the dog park so that they could raise funds. And I thought what better way to poke fun at these sort of affluent community than to have a fundraiser that kind of just goes off the rails and just goes haywire.

Because these people have way too much money and do some silly things. So yeah, there’s some satire going on. And I’m poking fun at myself too because to be totally honest, my dog right now, so that she’s not bothering me during this podcast, I sent her to daycare right now. So my dog, I’m someone who sends my dog to daycare. So I’m making fun of myself.

Steve Thomas: So in your writing process, is your voice there the whole time or do you have to go back in and add? In revision, what are you bringing out more usually? Are you bringing out your humorous voice? Are you bringing out the mystery or what kind of comes not in the first draft?

Camille Perri: So my first drafts are usually very heavy in dialogue. Dialogue kinda comes to me first, so I scene build in my first drafts, and I know how the characters, I get a kind of voice in my head for each of the characters, and I know how they speak to one another, and I build out from there. What I’m missing a lot in my early drafts is the deeper emotional stuff going on, the thematic stuff, and a lot of exposition and descriptions of setting. These are kinda things that come to me secondarily.

As far as the humor, that kinda comes through the dialogue, but definitely towards the end, I will do just one punch-up read of just reading for the flow and the humor and make sure that it’s not going too far in some places or, not far enough in others. I love comedy, and I love reading funny stuff, and I love watching sketch comedy and things like that, so that’s just a me thing where I think let me see if I can just punch this up a little bit and make it a little extra funny.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And are you an outliner or a, what’s it called, pantser? Do you have the story already figured out before you start writing, or are you making it up as you go along?

Camille Perri: I’m an outliner. Big time. I need to have a plan. I don’t know how people write by the seat of their pants. That’s not how I conduct any aspect of my life. I am a big planner. Every day, I have my checklist, and I like to put my checks, on my list.

So I certainly do outline. That said, things do change because when you’re working on a book of that length, like certain characters will be bigger than you think that they’re gonna be and, things change, things turn. You think of a great twist. So it’s not written in stone but I absolutely do need to know the major beats, like the beginning, middle, and end for sure and what the turning point’s gonna be and what the midpoint’s gonna be. And I’m a big, I like the formula of that, not to say that my books are formulaic, but I do think as a starting point, like it’s a good skeleton to build upon.

As a reader or a consumer of media I wanna know going in that I’m in good hands. I wanna know that you’re gonna land this, right? I want you to stick the landing. I don’t want it to be up to chance if you have inspiration at the last minute to properly end this thing. I wanna know, I wanna feel confident going in.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and it’s more obvious in a movie or a TV show, because it’s over a series, whereas in a book, if somebody were to write that way, you’re reading the final book. You don’t know that they made it up as they went along. And you can go back and edit, obviously, too, so that’s a difference with the book, is that you can write your way, and then if you write yourself into a corner, you just back it up, delete a little bit, and go back and go down the other path instead to the end.

So to wrap up, when readers finish Social Animals, is there any one idea you hope stays with them?

Camille Perri: I hope that they’ll finish the book and feel comforted by it, and that it was a good time. I mostly want people to be entertained. And I hope that they come away with some of those deeper things too. But I think of it this way. If I were to see someone on the train or on a park bench reading my book I would just hope that they had a big smile on their face. That would be the most, that would be really fulfilling for me.

Steve Thomas: I think comfort is something that a lot of us need in these days and times. It’s very good.

Camille Perri: Thanks so much for reading Social Animals. It’s meant a lot to me, and I loved our conversation. This was a lot of fun.

Steve Thomas: Yes, it was fantastic. And people can pick it up now from bookstores and go place a hold at your local library, buy a copy, do both, whatever you wanna do. If you place a bunch of holds at the library, they’ll buy more copies.

Camille Perri: Definitely. Definitely. Get it at the library, for sure.

Steve Thomas: All right. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Camille Perri: Thank you. Take care now.

*****

Sydney: Hi, this is Sydney. I’m a librarian at NoveList, and also constantly adding to my to-read list since I stare at book titles all day!

Caleigh: And I’m Caleigh Haworth, a NoveList librarian, and I get to connect with libraries from all over to help staff use NoveList more effectively to provide great reading recommendations to their communities. And so I also get to stare at book titles all day and have a gigantic TBR pile that I would need 1,000 years to get through.

Sydney: It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s so dangerous.

Caleigh: It sure is.

Sydney: So we’ve just finished listening to author Camille Perri talk with Steve about her new book, Social Animals. It’s also now added to my to-read list, of course. We’d like to give you all some readalike options of other titles to explore.

So Social Animals is about finding people to be in your circle, that chosen family feel. It’s also got adorable dogs. What’s not to love? So I searched NoveList Plus with some subjects like dogs, detectives, female friendships, animals, really playing around with the different options, the appeals, and I wanted to find something light, in the cozy vibe.

My first book is Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett. I wanted to put a little fantasy in there because it’s always nice to check out a different genre than you normally read. This one has some romance, but that’s not the main plot. Really, we’re looking at how the lead character is growing after a loss in her life, and part of that is through running a cat shelter.

The cats are their own characters in the story too. Agnes is grieving her husband while running a cat shelter with her sister in Montreal in the 1920s. We see how Agnes is trying to move forward while still very much dealing with what happened. Her sister’s a fun, perky person who often takes the lead, but as the book goes on, Agnes learns to do more for herself. Add in a grumpy magician, secrets, and some epic magic battles, and you’ve got a cozy but engrossing read.

And my next book is The Dogsitter Detective by Antony Johnston. This has a similar vibe of Social Animals. We’ve got dogs and detectives. And again, we’re looking at that theme of people looking for a new path after some major life changes. Gwinny Tuffel has lost her career and father. She’s looking forward to starting again, and then a dead body shows up at her friend’s wedding.

Gwinny is then saddled with two Saluki dogs and works with a retired detective to solve the case. The dogs are again part of the main cast here as Gwinny works to solve the murder in this cozy mystery. Similar to Social Animals, Gwinny develops a new friendship to help her move forward.

Caleigh: Oh, wow, just what I needed, two more books to add to my never-ending TBR! Thanks, Sydney. Those were great.

When I started looking for read-alikes for Social Animals, I was really drawn to the combination of female friendship, humor, and personal reinvention. The book brings together three very different women whose lives intersect through a dog park. And while there are secrets and complications, there’s also this warm feel-good story about found family and people helping each other become more fully themselves. So when I was searching in Novelist, I focused on subjects like female friendship, social classes, private investigators, and interpersonal relationships. I also looked for books that shared some of those feel-good and character-focused appeals.

That led me to my first pick, This Won’t End Well by Camille Pagán This novel follows Annie Mercer, who has intentionally kept her world very small after a difficult breakup but when she teams up with Mo, an enthusiastic amateur detective, to investigate a glamorous and mysterious new neighbor, she finds herself pulled into unexpected friendships and adventures.

What immediately stood out to me is how both Social Animals and This Won’t End Well combine mystery adjacent storylines with character-driven relationship building. In Social Animals, Val’s work as a private investigator sets much of the plot in motion, while This Won’t End Well also features amateur sleuthing as a way to bring characters together.

But in both books, the investigation isn’t really the point. The heart of the story is watching people form connections that they never expected. Both titles feature sympathetic, well-developed characters who are trying to move forward from difficult circumstances. They also share an upbeat tone and a strong emphasis on friendship and self-discovery. Readers who enjoy seeing unlikely people become important parts of one another’s lives will find a lot to love in both of these books.

My second readalike pick is Someone’s Gotta Give by Alicia Fernandez Miranda. This novel follows Lucia, a new mother who lands a high-profile job advertising wealthy philanthropists. As she navigates demanding clients, family responsibilities, and questions about her own identity, she begins to reevaluate what success really means and what kind of life she wants for herself.

This recommendation comes from some of the social class elements found in Social Animals. Both books bring together characters from different socioeconomic worlds and explores the tension that can arise when those worlds collide. In Social Animals, we see that through wealthy clients, private investigations, and the interactions among people who might not otherwise cross paths. In Someone’s Gotta Give, Lucia finds herself immersed in the lives of the ultra-rich while trying to stay grounded in her own values.

The books also share a feel-good, character-driven approach. Both feature women who are at a crossroads and trying to redefine themselves. While Someone’s Gotta Give focuses more on motherhood and career pressures, it delivers the same kind of emotional payoff that comes from watching a character grow into a new version of herself.

So if readers are looking for another warm, engaging novel about women navigating complicated lives, finding community, and figuring out who they want to be, Someone’s Gotta Give is a great next recommendation.

Sydney: Not fair, ’cause you’ve added two more books to my read list as well. Those sound really good. I like that the found family theme is coming up more and more in books lately. I think that’s really great for the audiences.

So that’s it from us today at the Circ Desk, and we’ll check you out next time!