A jaded twentysomething is stuck living at home, her life on pause, when a single dad becomes her new neighbor and unexpectedly sets her life—and her heart—into motion in this modern love story from the bestselling author of You, Again.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Kate Goldbeck’s Daddy Issues, which releases on November 18th 2025.
Sometimes love shows up where you least expect it—right next door.
At twenty-six, Sam Pulaski expected to be thriving in her academic career, living on her own in some exciting city. Expectations meet reality: She has massive student loan debt from studying art history, a dead-end service industry job, a situationship that’s equal parts intoxicating and toxic. And she’s been crashing in her mom’s condo—at least it’s not a basement?—for the last five years. If she can finally get accepted into a PhD program and get out of Ohio, the adult life that’s been on hold for half her twenties will finally begin.
Her mom’s new neighbor, Nick, is the ultimate grown-up. His adult life began the moment his nine-year-old daughter, Kira, was born. Her happiness is Nick’s only priority, especially in the wake of divorce. There’s nothing he won’t do for Kira, including giving up his globe-trotting career for something more stable . . . like managing a chain restaurant.
Sam has zero interest in an ultra-dependable guy pushing forty; frankly, she’s a little afraid of kids. But with just one thin wall separating the two condos, Nick proves difficult to avoid. His quiet confidence forces Sam to grapple with the other men in her life: her emotionally derelict friend with benefits and her actually derelict father. As her unexpected connection with Nick heats up (and steams up his minivan windows), Sam finds herself falling fast for a man whose life is steady and settled—while hers is anything but.
EXCERPT
He shrugs. “The place hasn’t been updated in years. I’m installing some shelving,” he says. “It involves lots of wall anchors.”
“My entire bed was vibrating.” He raises his eyebrows in a way that makes me wish I had phrased that differently, and I quickly return my attention to my Batman piles. I wonder if he was able to hear everything on the other side of his wall.
He turns to look at my unsightly metal bookshelf. “I think you need wall anchors, too. I can look at it when I’m done with the sink if you—”
“That shelf is just temporary. Don’t worry about it.”
Nick squats down next to me on the carpet, angling his neck to look at some of the covers.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you live in the building?”
“It’s my mom’s apartment,” I say, trying not to sound defensive while having the opposite effect. “I’m basically subletting. Temporarily. Because of the pandemic.”
“Temporarily?” He reaches out to grab the corner of Batman #635. “For five years?”
My cheeks burn. He turns the book to ninety degrees to read the title, and every memory of some condescending man trying to explain comics to me floods my brain. I want to go the rest of my life without hearing another man’s opinion about two things:
- How long I’ve lived in my mom’s office.
- Any iteration of Batman.
“Don’t touch that!” I snatch the issue from under his index finger. “It’s valuable.”
Nick pulls his hand away. “I wasn’t—”
“Sam! Do you want to grab some breakfast while Nick works on the sink?” Mom shouts from the kitchen.
When I hear Nick turning the bathroom faucet on and off, I venture out of the office in search of a bagel.
“Those are for Nick!” Mom practically slaps my hand away from the sesame bagel I was reaching for.
“He’s not gonna eat five of these, Mom.”
“He might want the sesame.”
“Fine,” I say, grabbing a plain bagel off the platter.
“Say, I went ahead and called Barbara Silverton yesterday.” Pause. I tear a chunk out of the plain bagel. “Do you think you should email her? She said that her college does have a graduate program in art education.”
“Art education isn’t my field.”
“And she said she’ll keep an eye out for any job opportunities. Don’t you think she’d be a good connection for you?”
“Mom—”
“Here.” Mom wipes her hands and takes out her phone. “I can forward you her LinkedIn profile. Or do you want me to send an email and officially connect you? Less awkward?”
“It’s not that it’s awkward.” It is awkward, but I’m doing my best not to be insolent. “I just don’t see how she could help me. I have a plan. I know exactly where I’m applying. We’ve talked about that.”
“Here, let me slice that for you.” She takes the bagel out of my hand and saws it in half with a serrated knife. “Have you thought about casting the net wider than grad school?”
Her tone is so innocent that I’m ninety percent sure this is a phrase she’s been rehearsing in her head for a week.
“I can’t get the jobs I want without a PhD.”
“Academia is a really tough job market,” she says, like the last several years haven’t made that glaringly obvious. “What about another type of position in the arts? Raising money, maybe? Wouldn’t you like to have more options?”
“I don’t want more options. I want to do something that’s meaningful to me.”
Mom puts down the knife. “You’re working in a restaurant right now, Sam. How is that ‘meaningful’?”
“I’m not going to sit in a cubicle all day pestering old people to rewrite their wills.”
“I’ve been through several recessions, Samantha. I had to find a new job during the dot-com bust. Do you know how many English majors work in PR? They can’t all write the Great American Novel. Sometimes highly educated people do things that they’d rather not in order to earn money and pay rent and buy food. People who have full-time jobs in fundraising have insurance.”
“Nine,” he says. “Actually, we met Sam at the pool yesterday. Kira loves swimming.”
“I love that there’s a pool here,” Mom says, even though she rarely uses it. “It’s so important for kids to feel comfortable in the water.” She places his unwanted bagel in the toaster oven and turns to me. “Remember how scared you used to be to get your face wet? We had to practice by dunking your head in a plastic tub next to the sink.”
I stare at her, praying that she can pick up my telepathic message to stop embarrassing me in front of this near stranger who I’m bound to encounter in the breezeway, taking out the trash, in the parking deck, the mailroom.
“It’s not a problem anymore,” I tell him. “I wash my face now and everything.”
Nick smiles. My mom pours him some orange juice.
“I think it had something to do with holding your breath,” she says, ignoring my brain waves. “They wouldn’t let her take advanced-beginner swimming lessons until she would go completely underwater. I was so worried she had some kind of phobia.”
“Oh my God, Mom.”
“Well, you were a really good sport with Kira,” Nick says, glancing at me.
“Really?” Mom exclaims, placing a bowl of fruit salad in front of Nick. “You’re always complaining when kids are at the pool.” I mean, I do complain about kids at the pool, but does she have to point that out in front of a literal parent? “You barely tolerated kids when you were a kid.” The timer on the toaster rings. “I’d send Sam to camp and she’d make friends with the staff members instead of the other campers. Maybe it’s an only-child thing.”
“Kira’s an only child,” Nick says, “but she’s pretty outgoing.”
Mom nods approvingly and places the lightly toasted bagel I wanted in front of him.
My face feels hot. I’m makeupless, braless, lacking any maternal instinct, and possibly a recovering aquaphobic.
There’s a lull in the conversation as Nick politely takes a bite of the bagel and I sense my mom’s unease with just a few seconds of silence.
“Nick, could you use a Bundt pan?” My mother squats down and begins rummaging through a lower cabinet. “I have two and I’ve been trying to downsize.”
“Does anyone need a Bundt pan?” I ask, reaching for a speckled banana from the fruit bowl.
“Maybe he bakes.” Mom stands up with an armful of baking implements that she hasn’t used since the nineties. “Do you bake?” Before he can answer, she adds, “Does your daughter like to help in the kitchen?”
“She’s better at eating than helping,” Nick says, smiling again.
“A woman after my own heart,” I say, trying to sound normal. But when Nick laughs, the sound of it hits somewhere deep in my rib cage, and I know that’s not normal at all.
DADDY ISSUES copyright © 2025 by Kate Goldbeck. Used by permission of The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. Cannot be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
