Will I love Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory?

For those who don’t know Raphael Bob-Waksberg, he created Bojack Horseman. For those who don’t know Bojack Horseman, watch it immediately—it might be the best-written television show ever.

Bob-Waksberg has an unmatched talent for creating an absolutely nonsensical world and then breaking your heart with the characters living in it. In this collection, he does it again and again, story after story, all about love.

It made me chuckle, then broke me, then somehow put me back together again.

I’ve singled out the story “Up and Comers,” the tale of an indie band whose members have superpowers (but only when they’re drunk) because of its bisexual narrator, but every story in this collection has similar merits: a delightfully odd premise, a grim honesty about how bad life can get, and an unrelenting humor about how ridiculous life always is in spite of the grimness.

Maybe everything is meaningless and absurd, but I’m still here, and so are you, so let’s have a good laugh at ourselves while we can!

Best known as the creator of the Netflix series BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg brings his brand of offbeat and scathing dark humor to this collection of stories about love in all of its complicated, humiliating, soul-crushing absurdity. But even when the stories involve biting social commentary about modern-day dating or the appropriate number of goats to sacrifice at a wedding, they still manage to be heart-achingly poignant. Good writing should affect you on multiple levels, and this collection hit all of my emotional buttons.