Two best friends realize that their fake relationship—mixed with a dash of holiday spirit—might spark some very real feelings in this charming sapphic novella from the New York Times bestselling author of People Watching and Out on a Limb.
INtrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Set the Record Straight by Hannah Bonam-Young, which is out now.
On the very first day of her dream job, Clara messed up. Her photography idol, and new boss, assumed that Clara would be bringing her girlfriend to their upcoming gallery opening, and Clara, in her nervousness, failed to correct her.
This is an issue for two reasons: Clara is single and is most definitely (probably) straight.
Evan was recently dumped by her fiancée for a shared co-worker and is still trying to figure out where it all went wrong. So when she finds out that the happy new couple will be hosting the staff holiday party, she is determined to find a date.
Together, these two lifelong friends hatch a plan to get through Clara’s gallery opening and Evan’s holiday party by pretending to date one another.
It should be easy . . . right?
But Evan quickly realizes that pretending to date her straight best friend, whom she’s had a crush on for half her life, maybe isn’t the best idea. Meanwhile, Clara surprises even herself as she begins developing real feelings for Evan. . . .
Will the two make it out of the holiday season as friends—or ring in the new year as something more?
EXCERPT
One
Clara
The rain ricochets off the sidewalk and raps on my umbrella, the sound like a drumline tapping on a single snare. There’s a distant honk, some nearby yelling, splashing of tires. All the sounds that remind me of how much I’ve missed Toronto. Five months away managed to simultaneously feel like five minutes and five years.
It’s bitterly cold today, but not even that can stop the smile on my face or the pep in my step as I walk toward the gallery. I switch the umbrella from one hand to the other, then back again, the anticipatory energy building up in my chest and expanding its way out in movement as it so often does.
I knew while finishing my graduate degree in the spring that Loretta Stole’s gallery, DebuTaunt, only hired one new candidate per year. I also knew that they only took applicants in the winter season following a successful fall run. And if it wasn’t so successful, they didn’t take them at all. But I refused to work anywhere else but for my idol and took the risk.
I had some other offers, sure. I impressed my professors, shook the right hands, and got the interviews lined up in case. I just wanted more. I wanted Loretta-a world-famous, high-concept photographer with an almost forty-year career that I envy.
And while most of my fellow graduates are now shooting weddings for their third Ashley and Brad of the month, reminding kids to remove their fingers from their noses, or posing models in a way that makes their bones sharper, I’m here.
My roommates, Leah and Jen, haven’t been shy about admitting they see this gig as a major downgrade, being that it’ll be mostly scheduling meetings and coffee runs, but I don’t agree. Not at all. Because watching this gallery operate, being a part of that, it’s one step closer to having the career I want. Loretta’s career, to be exact. And this exact job forty-odd years ago, working for her idol, is how Loretta Stole got her start. That’s probably why she has hundreds of applicants every year.
Call it prideful, because it is, but I knew I’d get it. I’m damn good at what I do, and this is what I’ve been working toward since my seventeenth birthday.
I had come downstairs to a stack of pancakes, a tender note from my mom—who’d left for her shift at the ER already—and a gift sitting next to my father’s plate: a neatly tied red ribbon around an emerald-green box. My first camera.
I ran outside immediately with it clasped in two fists. Time slowed as I brought it up to my eye, looked through the lens, and clicked the shutter without a single thought of composition, angle, or perspective.
But even still, I was flooded with pride when I looked at that small playback screen. It was a photo only I could have taken. Not because of skill, that would come later, but because I was the only one in that exact place at that exact time. The tree was blown by the wind in a way that it would never be again. A moment so entirely unique that it would have disappeared forever if not captured by a seventeen-year-old girl and her cheap, entry-level Canon.
Pure magic.
From the second I heard the first click, I was hooked. Enraptured by the idea of collecting unique moments in time. Hoarding stills, poses, and views only I was present for.
I went from Clara, the fairy-sized girl from the middle of nowhere set to attend school for nursing—like her mother and aunts all did—to Clara, the one who constantly had a camera around her neck.
Convincing my parents to let me apply for an undergrad in image arts wasn’t as hard as you may expect, considering they are both working—class, no—bullshit folks from farm country. I think they were just happy to see their only child finally passionate about something.
For most of my life prior to that point, I’d have considered my parents worried about me. I was one of the rare unicorn little girls who was diagnosed with ADHD early. Mostly because my mother fought every doctor that said I didn’t show the classic signs (aka, I didn’t have a penis) and won.
The medication kept me pretty listless. The doctors were aiming for me to be more go with the flow, but I landed somewhere around lazy river. My parents tried all sorts of things. Different motivators, medications, diets. But ultimately, I wasn’t a bad kid, and they eventually just learned to let me be. I did my homework most of the time, had a few friends, got decent grades, kept a clean room, and didn’t really talk back.
But they never stopped encouraging me to find something that ignited a fire in my belly. Like my mom with medicine and my dad with growing crops.
So when they, in perhaps a last-ditch effort, gave me yet another hobby that I could hyperfixate on for a week or two, then quickly drop, I doubt they were expecting it to stick. But it did, and they were thrilled.
My dad came home with a nicer camera three months later. My mom would set up bowls of fruit while packing her work lunch at four a.m. just because it gave me something new to photograph.
And when I turned eighteen, got into the university I wanted, and got off those meds—mostly because I kept forgetting to go to the pharmacy—the world opened up. It felt as if I had been wearing 2D glasses at a 3D movie.
Suddenly, my photography got better, I was happier, and—this could be unrelated—I finally got boobs.
Ten years and thirty thousand dollars in student loans later, here I am. Crossing the street toward the DebuTaunt Gallery. First day as the assistant to Loretta Stole. She was one of my third-year professors during my undergraduate degree, but my obsession with her started far earlier than that. Leah and Jen, who I live with now and met in that class, hated me at first. I wouldn’t (couldn’t) stop listing off Loretta’s many accolades to them and anyone else who would listen.
But the joke’s on Leah, Jen, and all those other students who called me, often affectionately, a kiss-ass. Because it paid off. I’m here.
I fix the lapel of my beige trench coat, fold and tap my umbrella under the gallery’s awning, and take a deep breath. I encapsulate the moment as I normally would with my trusty Lumix S5, then push open the chic, two-story glass door toward my new beginning.
Excerpted from Set the Record Straight by Hannah Bonam-Young. Copyright © 2026 by Hannah Bonam-Young. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
