Mellow-ish: A Love Story in Ten Movements

Ada Herman

‘Just say it. Tell me how my desire petrifies you. How I’ve ruined everything – because female desire always ruins everything. Say it. Tell me I’m too intense. I’m used to it, you’ll see.’

Mellow-ish is a psychological, sensual, and philosophical novel about longing. It explores motherhood, social alienation, emotional labour, and the fragile possibility of reinventing oneself in mid-life. At its heart is a woman who, caught between caring for others, cultural uprooting and identity loss, struggles to find her voice and fulfil her raw need for rapture.

On the brink of depression, a 40-year-old mother and expat shares a hug with a much younger man – vital, talented and full of potential. What begins as a fleeting moment of intimacy becomes an existential reckoning – an awakening at the faultline of love, duty, and selfhood. As Ioana revisits her past — her failing marriage, her professional irrelevance and the ghosts of her artistic ambitions — she must decide whether eroticism can redeem a life, or whether the true act of redemption lies in reclaiming her space in the world.

Written in the first person, in introspective prose that blends ironic self-analysis and poetic meditation, Mellow-ish delves into complicated inner landscapes, multigenerational pressures, and fraught relationships, while exploring the thirst for transcendence in a world that values compliance and functionality. Realism meets confessional modernism, and psychological intimacy alternates with precise social observation. Its lyrical style and emotional honesty make it a powerful piece of contemporary literary fiction.

234mm × 156mm; 233 pages
Paperback 978-1-917904-13-1

Published 30 October 2026