Josh and Hazel's guide to not dating

Hazel Bradford is a self-aware hot mess -- eccentric, unfiltered, and, by her own admission, a lot to handle, with more in common with the third-graders she teaches than with most of the men she meets. Josh Im is her near-opposite: calm, composed, and steady, a physical therapist whose mellow restraint never meshed with Hazel's chaotic energy.

The two first crossed paths in college, where a string of mortifying encounters convinced Hazel she had disqualified herself as anyone Josh could date. Years later they reconnect, and Hazel -- certain romance is off the table -- sets her sights on simple friendship.

When Josh becomes newly single, the pair hit on a plan that supposedly keeps things platonic: setting each other up on a parade of increasingly disastrous blind double-dates. The arrangement gives them an excuse to spend more and more time together -- and steadily undermines the very boundary it was meant to protect.

Warm and broadly comic, the novel follows two friends insisting they are absolutely not dating while the evidence mounts otherwise.