Central Places A Novel Delia Cai by Delia Cai instant download after payment.

Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, & she never looked back. She moved to New York City & became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job & a seemingly faultless fiancé. But if she & Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she’s become, from those she left behind.

But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Audrey’s relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mother’s astronomical expectations & slights. The friends she’s shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then there’s Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, & being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface.

Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey’s proximity to her family & to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward & everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?

Delia Cai is currently a senior correspondent at Vanity Fair. She writes a media newsletter, Deez Links