"Vita Woods is on the brink. She produces a popular podcast and lives with her successful doctor boyfriend, Max, with whom the sex is great and the future promising. Her brilliant if unreliable sister, Gracie, is her best friend and sparring partner. And her steadfast goldfish, Whitney Houston, brightens even her dimmest days. But as much as things are going right, the days are dark. Vita is not leaving the house. In fact, she can barely make it out of bed.

Instead, she spends long, blurred hours falling in and out of The Pit, dead to the world and to herself. For months, Vita has been sick with an illness that no doctor, not even Max, can diagnose. And recently, Luigi, a Renaissance poet nursing a 500-year-old heartbreak, has started showing up at her bedside, bringing snacks and unsolicited romantic advice. He says he’s come to release her. The issue is: he may be a ghost, an apparition of her sickly mind.

Then, when an unexpected mix-up pushes her into the path of her upstairs neighbors, Vita finds friendship—and perhaps more—in the apartment above. But something about her "condition" keeps nagging at her. What if the problem is Vita herself? Because as far as anyone can prove . . . there’s nothing wrong with her." - There's Nothing Wrong With Her by Kate Weinberg

Not many books take place almost entirely in one room, and fewer yet manage to do this while making you feel like you’ve travelled hundreds of miles. It was a surprise to reach the end of this novel and realise how little occurred in the plot or setting, as I was so enraptured by Vita, her story, and her illness.

We needed a story about the reality of living with chronic illness, and Kate draws upon her own experiences in filling this gap. Chronic illness is such a mysterious subject, both for the medical industry, patient, and loved ones, so it was beautiful to gain this little peep hole into the reality of it. It was a true ode to the silent suffering of invisible illnesses.

I’m also such a sucker for sister dynamics, so you can bet that the flashbacks of Vita and Gracie had me in tears. My only qualm is that the novel isn’t a teensy bit longer, so more could have been explored or clarified, but I also think that’s just because I enjoyed it so much.

It's also worth mentioning that Kate based Vita's chronic illness on her own experiences with long COVID, and she's spoken beautifully about this in various interviews.

I also adored Kate’s first book, The Truants, which is a very different pace and plot, but also worth checking out!

Buy There's Nothing Wrong With Her by Kate Weinberg

If you like this, then you'll love:

- Liars by Sarah Manguso

- Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

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