Totally and Completely Fine

Lauren Parker is a widowed mother in her early forties living in Cooper, a small Montana town. Three years after the death of her husband, Spencer, Lauren remains emotionally frozen. She works at the Cozy, a bookstore and craft store financed by her younger brother, Gabe Parker, a famous actor, and raises her teenage daughter, Lena, largely alone. A ball of Spencer's homemade pizza dough sits untouched in the freezer, a relic neither can bear to use or discard.

The novel alternates between Lauren's present-day life and flashback chapters tracing her history. As a child, Lauren lost her father to a brain tumor. Spencer was originally Gabe's childhood friend, a quiet boy who became a fixture in the Parker household. After their father's death, the community expected the Parkers to move on quickly, and Lauren channeled her anger into rebellion, running a secret basement poker game and sleeping with several classmates. Her former best friend, Jessica, who had drifted toward the conservative church of Spencer's mother, Diana, spread exaggerated rumors about Lauren's sexual activity. Lauren bore the town's judgment alone, while Spencer watched from a distance with a pitying expression that wounded her more than any insult.

Over time, their relationship shifted from antagonism to romance. Their first kiss at the kitchen counter was the first moment Lauren felt safe since her father's death. Spencer wanted to wait for penetrative sex due to his religious upbringing, but their intimacy deepened through patient exploration. They married young. Financial tensions strained the marriage, but they learned to compromise, and Lauren told Spencer he was her home.

Gabe's acting career accelerated. He was cast as James Bond, a role originally offered to Oliver Matthias, a gay British actor and director known as Ollie, before the studio learned Ollie intended to stay publicly out. Gabe's sudden wealth transformed the family: He paid off mortgages, funded Lena's college savings, bought the Cozy, and bankrolled Spencer's return to college. These gifts bruised Spencer's pride. More troubling was Gabe's escalating alcohol addiction, which the family felt powerless to address.

In the present, Gabe invites Lauren and Lena to his film set in Philadelphia, where Ollie is directing a modern adaptation of The Philadelphia Story. Gabe introduces Lauren to his co-star, Benjamin Walsh, a 30-year-old, bisexual, Irish-raised actor of Hawaiian and Irish descent. Lauren feels a powerful attraction, the first since Spencer's death. They exchange numbers, but she pulls back, unwilling to pursue anything while caring for Lena. When Gabe takes Lena on a solo outing the next day, Lauren texts Ben. Their flirtation is interrupted when Gabe calls because Lena has gotten her first period at a museum. On Lauren's last day, she visits Ben's trailer, where she discovers an untitled James Bond script. They have passionate, liberating sex, and Lauren feels bold in a way she has not in years.

Back in Cooper, months pass. Lauren and Ben maintain a flirty texting relationship, but Lauren insists the encounter was a onetime thing. Her friend Allyson urges her to call Ben, but Lauren refuses. She endures passive-aggressive criticisms from Diana and Jessica at a church bake sale and, after learning the school's sex education relied on a degrading metaphor, gives Lena a frank conversation about anatomy and consent.

Gabe returns to Cooper with Chani, a journalist who wrote a famous profile of him years earlier and with whom the family long suspected he had a relationship. Lena is hostile toward Chani, distrustful of journalists after the press's invasive coverage of Spencer's death. Around the same time, Ben arrives in town to perform in a play Ollie is directing at a theatre Gabe has purchased. Lauren, panicked about gossip, dismisses the fling as meaningless in a conversation Ben overhears. A disastrous date with a controlling man who tells Lauren to "get over" her dead husband sends her to Ben's apartment, where they sleep together again. Ben confronts her, saying he has made his feelings clear and she needs to decide what she wants.

Their dynamic shifts on a proper date at a restaurant outside town. Ben shares his past: His mother, Leilani, died from alcohol addiction when he was 14, and his father shipped him to boarding school in Ireland. Ben does not drink; the smell of white wine triggers him because his mother drank a bottle a day. His surrogate family in Dublin, including his agent Fran, gave him stability and a career. Lauren and Ben bond over parallel experiences of loss.

Gabe takes Lena and her close friend Eve to New York, but the trip ends when the girls raid a hotel minibar. Back home, Lena explodes, accusing Gabe of being drunk at Spencer's funeral and caring more about alcohol than family. She also comes out, revealing that Eve is her girlfriend. In the aftermath, Lauren and Gabe have their most honest conversation: Gabe confesses survivor's guilt, and Lauren admits she cannot remember whether she told Spencer she loved him the night he died. Lauren tells Lena she loves and accepts her completely.

Lauren and Ben begin dating quietly. Ben fixes things around Lauren's house using Spencer's old tools, a gesture that comforts and unsettles Lauren simultaneously. He tells Lena he understands what it is like to lose a parent, and she warms to him. Then Ben receives the official James Bond offer, requiring a move to Australia for at least four years. Devastated, they spend a final night on a motorcycle ride to a field outside town and share what feels like a goodbye kiss.

A farewell dinner goes catastrophically wrong when Ben unknowingly throws away Spencer's moldy pizza dough. Lena, distraught, reveals she knows about Lauren and Ben and screams that she wishes Lauren had died instead of Spencer. Lauren quietly replies that she wishes the same. Lena runs to the roadside memorial cross where Spencer died, a spot she has been secretly tending with planted flowers. Mother and daughter finally talk openly about grief and love. Lena asks if Spencer would have still loved her knowing she likes girls, and Lauren assures her without hesitation. Lena tells Lauren she does not want her to be lonely.

Ben leaves Cooper. At Gabe and Chani's engagement party, Lauren attempts a speech but breaks down. Lena finds her and tells her to go to Ben. Before Lauren can act, Ben appears. He has turned down the Bond role, explaining that the money would have let him buy back his late mother's house from his father, but he has accepted that the house will not bring Leilani back and that she would want him to choose love. He has signed a year lease in Cooper. Lauren tells him she is falling in love with him, and he replies that he is already there.

A brief flashback confirms Lauren's deepest fear: On the night Spencer died, he said "Love you" on his way out, and she murmured it back while absorbed in a cookbook, never certain the words reached him.

The novel closes at Gabe and Chani's wedding, held at the Cozy. Lena loans Spencer's scarf, which Lauren knitted years ago, to Ben for the play, a gesture of profound acceptance. Lauren reflects that grief and love can coexist and that the heart expands to hold new people without diminishing those who came before: "Life was short. So fucking short" (419). Being herself, messy and scared and full of feeling, is totally and completely fine.