Consider Yourself Kissed

By: Jessica Stanley

Narrated by: Lydia Leonard

When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and (he insists) a quarter inch taller than the average male. His charming four-year-old daughter only adds to his appeal.

But ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dreamed of, Coralie has lost something else she once had: herself.

Set against an eventful British decade that included the soap opera of five prime ministers plus the chaos of the pandemic, Consider Yourself Kissed puts the subjects of love and family on a grand stage, showing how the intimate dramas in our homes inescapably compete for energy and attention with the shared public dramas of our times.

Told over ten years of one woman’s life, Consider Yourself Kissed is an unforgettable literary love story that effortlessly balances sweetness with bite, the public with the personal, and humor with heart.

©2025 Jessica Stanley (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

'Consider Yourself Kissed is an incisive story about the complicated task of loving and being loved. There’s so much in this smart book – about class and identity, family and work. Stanley’s idiosyncratic characters are the heartbeat of this novel. I could see them, full-bodied, jumping out of the page, interesting and strange and, by the end, I missed them all.' (Erin Riley, author of A Real Piece of Work)

'Consider Yourself Kissed is a tender, layered novel and one of the sharpest portrayals of marriage and motherhood I've ever read. It's also warm and clever and funny. I completely inhaled it. As with all my favourite novels, I wished I could read it forever.' (Alice Robinson, author of The Glad Shout)

'Jessica Stanley captures all the quiet ecstasy and devastation of being a lover, a mother, a woman in the world, and wondering what is left over for yourself. In Coralie's endless labour to do everything right and try to write, I felt achingly seen. I want to hand this gorgeous book to every mum I know with a hug.' (Care Fletcher, author of Love Match)