If you have watched the Netflix series One Day (2024), based on David Nicholls’ book (from 2009), you know he is brilliant at creating characters and relationships that are potent, tense, compelling, and real. You Are Here, his most recent book, is similar to One Day, in its voice and its focus on two characters: this time, both are social misfits grappling with previous painful relationships. 

Thrown together on a group hike, Michael, a geology teacher, and Marnie, a copy editor, hash out their lives on a trail crossing England from west to east, a hike that Michael had planned to do alone and that Marnie agreed to only three days. 

The story is funny, engaging, and therapeutic as we witness how human conversation and outdoor challenges can facilitate connection and diminish social anxiety.  

Several great lines made me laugh out loud. Describing Michael’s face after stepping out of the shower: “At Christmas, mum had a habit of picking up wrapping paper and smoothing it out to use again, and his skin had taken on that quality, especially around his eyes, of tissue paper used more than once” (73). 

Describing hours of rain-soaked hiking: “Only her trousers, held out against the rain, trapping sweat inside, so that it condensed on the fabric, like vapour on the lid of a casserole” (96). 

Excellent writing and a quick read, but also one with depth and quirk.