“That was how time healed. When you filled it with opportunity and people and love.”

• Totally and Completely Fine by Elissa Sussman
• Published on July 8th, 2025 by Dell/Penguin-Random House
• Genres: Fiction, Adult, Romance, Contemporary
• Tropes: Celebrity/Normal Person, Older Woman, Grief, LGBTQIAP+, Sexy Accents, Mothers & Daughters, Moody Teenager
• Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
• Anne’s Rating: 10 out of 10

If you have ever talked to me about books, you know that Funny You Should Ask is my favorite romance book ever. It is one of the quickest reads, because the story and characters are so compelling that it almost feels as if I’m breathing the story in. I can read the entire thing in probably around 5-ish hours. While I loved Funny You Should Ask, Sussman’s second book, Once More With Feeling, left me a little disappointed. It just wasn’t as captivating or enjoyable for me – I wasn’t as invested in the characters. So I was nervous about Totally and Completely Fine. Which book would it take after?

Reader, it took after Funny You Should Ask and I completely DEVOURED it. You can correctly guess by my lapse in reviews that I haven’t been in much of a reading mood lately, which I’ve hated. There are so many books I want to read, but I just couldn’t get into them. But we are so back, baby. I read this puppy so quickly and loved it so much that I did a rare immediate reread, trying to make myself go slower so I could really enjoy it to the fullest. I laughed, cried, and blushed hard each time through.

In Totally and Completely Fine, we follow Lauren, older sister of movie star Gabe Parker, as she develops a relationship with his co-star who is more than 10 years her junior – Ben Walsh (who has an Irish accent, by the way). What starts out as a one-night stand slowly snowballs into something more as the chemistry between Lauren and Ben can’t be denied by either of them. But dating in a small town like Cooper, Montana isn’t easy – especially not when you’re a young widow still grappling with the unexpressed grief of not only yourself but your 13-year-old daughter. Does Lauren even KNOW what she wants? And once she figures that out, will she LET herself have it – even if it makes her the talk of the town?

This book hits on so many levels. I’ll get the obvious out of the way – this book is HOT. Ben is a talker and oh boy the stuff he says and does…🥵 It’s not super graphic throughout, but you honestly don’t NEED it to be super graphic. Sussman is good at giving us enough information to fill in those delicious blanks ourselves. And when the writing is more detailed, it’s not just for detail’s sake. It’s a scene where the characters are trying to savor every single moment together – so it makes narrative sense to know exactly what’s going on. 😏

There’s also so much heart in this book, and it doesn’t shy away from difficult topics like addiction, religious trauma, and grief. It’s not really a surprise that a story with a 13-year-old in it will have some dramatic moments where the tension finally snaps and things that have been unsaid for years are hurled at people’s faces. These moments are so believable and honest that they made me cry. It’s refreshing to have a romance novel that also deals with consequences of past behavior. It makes the story more complete and real.

Another fantastic aspect that I wasn’t quite expecting was the LGBTQIA+ representation. Ben, our leading man, is bisexual. Ollie (MY LOVE!!) is back again, and it’s even mentioned that his marriage with his husband is an open one. And without being too spoiler-y, there’s also representation of LGBTQIA+ youth dealing with things like first love and coming out. It’s not written like the author was just trying to check the “gay character” box – sexuality is the least interesting aspect of the story. Representation is vital, and I was so glad to see it in a book with a man & woman as the main couple.

Finally, as an incredible bonus, we get to see more of Gabe and Chani! Fine is written in a similar format as Funny, where you have chapters taking place “Then” and chapters taking place “Now”. Because of this, we get to see some events from the first book from a different perspective, which was so exciting. The story continues past where Funny left off, and we get to see Gabe & Chani’s relationship grow – both with each other and with the rest of the Parker family. Getting some “skim and you’ll miss it” easter eggs from their story (the dragon ring!) really made me feel like I knew these people.

In short, this book is everything I wanted it to be and more. I don’t know if there’s more story to tell with these characters that I love so much, and that does kind of make me sad because I’d love yet another book about this group of humans. I will definitely be adding Totally and Completely Fine to my annual reread of Funny, and I guess I’ll just have to imagine the happily-ever-afters that these characters are certainly living myself.