Diary of a Secret Karen

She's not a Karen. She's just... thorough.

Meet the narrator of Diary of a Secret Karen: a woman who simply notices things other people are too busy to see. Like a soup that arrives lukewarm and dares to call itself "hearty." Like a mailbox that is unmistakably Cabernet, no matter what the HOA president insists. Like a yogurt shelf in complete and total anarchy, blueberry mixed in with vanilla, as if standards no longer exist.

She is not difficult. She is not dramatic. She is certainly not — and she wants this on the record — a Karen.

She's just a woman who believes shopping carts belong in the corral, restaurants should serve food at the correct temperature, and someone, somewhere, has to hold the line.

Told entirely through her own diary entries — some sprawling, some just a single perfect sentence — this laugh-out-loud comedic novel follows one delightfully self-unaware narrator through a year of grocery store standoffs, HOA color disputes, family group chats begging her to stop, a neighbor who has started hiding in his garage when he sees her coming, and a slow, funny, surprisingly tender realization that maybe — just maybe — being "a lot" isn't the worst thing a person can be.

Along the way, she'll take on customer service reps, book club seating charts, airport boarding groups, a contractor with a loose definition of "level," and a granddaughter who finally, finally teaches her what it means to sit quietly and just let something be.

Perfect for fans of sharp, character-driven humor and anyone who has ever silently reorganized a shelf that wasn't theirs to reorganize, Diary of a Secret Karen is a warm, wildly funny send-up of the very particular art of being right about everything — whether anyone asked or not.

She's not a Karen.

But you're going to laugh anyway.