'Perfect Tunes is an intoxicating blend of music, love and family . . . one of the great New York coming-of-age stories' Stephanie Danler
'A profound story of love, loss, heredity and par enthood . . . both funny and deep' Emma Straub
'Mind-blowing . . . brilliant and fearless' Elif Batuman

The perfect song. The biggest dream. The love of her life.

It's the early days of the new millennium, and Laura has arrived in New York City's East Village in the hopes of recording her first album. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she's just beginning to book gigs with her beautiful best friend when she falls hard for a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. Their time together is stormy and short-lived - but will reverberate for the rest of Laura's life.

Fifteen years later, Laura's teenage daughter, Marie, is asking questions about her father, questions that Laura does not want to answer. Laura has built a stable life in Brooklyn that bears little resemblance to the one she envisioned when she left Ohio all those years ago, and she's taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. But neither her best friend, now a famous musician who relies on Laura's songwriting skills, nor her depressed and searching daughter will let her give up on her dreams.

Funny, wise, and tender-hearted, Perfect Tunes explores the fault lines in our most important relationships, and asks whether dreams deferred can ever be reclaimed.

Praise for Emily Gould
'Emily Gould is massively talented, just as good at devastating us with an emotional truth as she is at amusing us with a clever joke' Curtis Sittenfeld
'Enlightening insights into what it is to be female and coming of age in twenty-first-century New York, but there's the warm glow of real friendship too' Daily Mail
'A sharp study of female friendship, that treacherous terrain where envy and deep fondness often go hand in hand' Observer
'A wry, sharply observed coming-of-age story for the post-recession era' People
'A vivid exploration of the missed connections and overwhelming isolation of modern urban life . . . Compulsively readable' Los Angeles Times
'It points to Ms Gould's abilities as a keen-eyed noticer and her knack for nailing down her ravenous observations with energy and flair' New York Times