In McClorey's droll debut, a young woman is on the brink of getting her life together, or so she hopes. After dropping out of "a rather elite university," Amy Hanley scrubs toilets as a chambermaid at the Salters Cove Yacht Club outside Boston, buoyed by thoughts of Florence Nightingale and the value of cleanliness as she studies for her third and final attempt at the EMT cognitive exam. Inspired by the "placebo effect" from her studies, she forges a test result and certification card, hoping they will help put her in the right mindset to achieve success. To combat her suffocating loneliness, she begins opening her landlord Gary's mail, and learns he's awaiting the arrival of his fiancée, Irina, whom he met on an international dating service cruise. Amy and Gary form an unlikely bond as she helps him prepare for Irina's arrival, and the placebo effect extends beyond her work life as she strives to find companionship with a man but sabotages her efforts with random hookups and deceit. With dark humor, McClorey conveys Amy's denial and hope in equal measures as she struggles through the minefield of her 20s hoping to find someone to share her life with. Fans of Ottessa Moshfegh will want to give this a shot. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)

A lonely young woman who works as a maid at a yacht club reaches for connection but grasps only straws. McClorey's debut is a poignant comedy starring an endearing female character whose quirkiness seems to be rooted in some unspecified admixture of disorders that is never fully pinned down in the book. Maybe that's just the point, so readers who identify with the eccentric protagonist don't have to climb over a diagnosis to get there. Though Amy Hanley attended a "rather elite university," as she reminds herself frequently, she is cleaning hotel rooms as she waits to take the test to become an EMT at the end of the summer, hoping to follow in the footsteps of her hero, Florence Nightingale. To short-circuit her terrible anxiety about the exam, she decides to apply a theory she learned in her favorite college class. "It might not be common practice to placebo oneself, but why not try? Weren't we all doing it to some extent every day anyway? Telling ourselves mind over matter, think positively, visualize, manifest, fake it till you make it." In Amy's case, this involves pretending she has already passed the test, making herself a fake results letter and certification card, and celebrating over cake with her landlord, who is also her only friend. What a tangled web we weave....McClorey has the courage to make Amy less than completely likable, which gives the book an interesting edge, but her courage seems to fail in the final pages. The story stops rather than ends, pretending to be more conclusive and less depressing than it is. Like a tasty half sandwich. What's here is good, but it's not quite enough. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Amy Hanley has a troubled heart. It's been six years since her mother died and she was expelled from her elite college before graduating. She has now started a summer job as a chambermaid at a posh Massachusetts oceanfront resort. In this debut novel about mothers and daughters and growing up, McClorey unfurls Amy's lonely, paranoid, angry, delusional, and paralyzed life in one cringe-inducing encounter after another. She's obsessed with becoming an EMT to help others, probably as atonement for her behavior toward her mother, for which she cannot forgive herself. Overrun with self-loathing, Amy can't stop ambushing herself. She's failed the EMT exam twice and has one more chance. With beautiful subtlety, McClorey conveys warping loneliness as Amy anthropomorphizes the world around her, seeing raspberries and deli packages as companions. Long out of touch with her concerned father and brother and having burnt all her bridges, her options are narrowing. At the darkest hour, when the all-knowing certainty of youth gives way to the full mystery of living, self-forgiveness opens and Amy hatches a plan with hopes for a better self.