What A Time To Be Alive

Playful and witty, What A Time To Be Alive is a charming meditation on coming-of-age, privilege, and grief' - Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Souls
Some people move to the big city hoping to find themselves - Sickan Hermansson isn't leaving it up to chance.
Twenty-one, friendless, without money but not without hope, Sickan's arrival at Stockholm University represents a new start. Her lonely childhood in a small southern town has left her utterly unprepared for intimacy: for friends, for sex, for love even. But Sickan is determined to build a new version of herself from the ground up, to make up for lost time. To simply be normal.
Just as Sickan seems to be finding her first ever friends, in whose company she finally feels safe, she meets Abbe: beautiful, charming - and by some miracle he wants her too. Unlike Sickan, Abbe seems completely at ease in his own skin. A solid foundation then, on which to build a relationship? Maybe?
What A Time To Be Alive is a story of class, sex, loneliness, and the trials of young womanhood. But above all, it's a story of firsts: the first party you're actually invited to, the first moment you fall in love, the first time you betray a friend. The first time you ask yourself, how much of myself am I willing to sacrifice, to finally fit in? It's the story of how we are irreducibly, inevitably returned to ourselves.

Jenny Mustard is a writer and social media influencer, born in Sweden but living in London. She has over 600k followers, and more than 50 million views on YouTube. Jenny and her work have featured in the Observer, the Independent, Vogue and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Okay Days, was published in 2023.