(Pub date 5/26/2026)
Phoebe Berman’s gonna lose it. Like, IT!
Phoebe is a 29-year-old elementary school teacher in L.A. with one very specific goal before her 30th birthday. She's anxious, OCD-brained, plagued by intrusive thoughts, and the mere idea of dating makes her want to throw up. So naturally, she makes a list.
Her therapist suggested the list as a way to celebrate everything she's accomplished as a soon-to-be 30-year-old. Phoebe has other plans. Her list — meticulously, hilariously crafted — is a step-by-step guide to losing her virginity in the thirty days before her birthday. Items range from re-downloading Hinge to, yes, advertising herself on Craigslist. Easy peasy.
What follows is Phoebe heroically attempting to cross things off, one mortifying step at a time. And against all odds? She ends up with options. There's Jonathan, her roommate and best friend, with all the will-they-won't-they tension that implies. There's Matthew, cute and genuinely interested — until anxiety made Phoebe bail on their date entirely. And then there's Finn, the new fourth grade teacher at her school, who arrives with unfortunate timing and good looks. Suddenly Phoebe has options and several guys to help her cross items off her list (i.e. practice flirting, and get drunk and make out).
Alongside her tight-knit group of friends, Phoebe pushes hard against every instinct telling her to stay home and spiral. The result is both genuinely funny and quietly moving — a portrait of someone learning to live with her mental health rather than constantly fighting it, and slowly figuring out that she's already a whole, complete person.
There's also a twist I did not see coming. At all.
Overall, Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It is a delightful closed-door romance that had me fully invested in Phoebe from page one.
reviewed by Ashley Ewing
