A hilariously offbeat and tender comedy about one bipolar woman’s messy search for love at a seaside wedding where no one can stay afloat.
Is she falling in love, or falling apart?

Dee, Misa, and Matt were the “three musketeers” of the psych ward. A year after discharge, Dee is eager to convince everyone that she’s finally turning things around. But Matt and Misa are tying the knot in Turks and Caicos, surrounded by guests who have no idea where they met, and the secrecy isn’t sitting well with Dee, who has been hopelessly in love with Matt since before she got kicked out of the hospital.

So, when Dee arrives at the swanky resort with her high-voltage sister, Tilley, it’s now or never to confess how she feels. But disrupting her best friends’ nuptials would jeopardize the entire support system that holds the trio together. When it comes to happily ever afters, how is a girl supposed to choose between love and recovery?

Leanne will be in conversation with Bristol author James Bailey on the theme of the art of writing comeback stories.

Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a Yonsei writer, educator and psychiatric survivor from Toronto, Canada. She loves writing joyful, messy, laugh-out-loud stories about living with mental illness, and the moments of hope that help us get out of bed day after day. Leanne is an MFA graduate and is currently teaching undergraduate creative writing classes and completing an EdD in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. Nominated for the Journey Prize in 2019, Leanne also launched a reflective writing program at Canada’s largest mental health centre after being hospitalized for bipolar disorder. Her debut novel NEVER BEEN BETTER – which was started during a research summer in England – is inspired by the community she has found through her mental health advocacy work. Leanne can be found on Instagram at @leannetoshiko and online at www.leannetoshikosimpson.com.
James Bailey was born in Bristol, and his two romantic-comedy novels both feature his home city. His debut, THE FLIP SIDE, is about a man who decides to spend a year making all his choices by flipping a coin, hoping to find himself and love. It has been translated into a dozen languages and was an instant Apple Books No. 1 bestseller. His second novel THE WAY BACK TO YOU tells the story of Simon Brown, a sixty-year-old widower, who tries to reconnect with his long-lost school pen pal by recreating his teenage bike ride from Bristol to Bordeaux. James can be found on Instagram @JamesBaileyWrites, and at www.JamesBaileyWrites.com

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