Reviews

“What a joy it is to discover Maddie Dawson.  In the best storytelling tradition of writers like Elizabeth Berg and Anne Tyler, Dawson delivers a fast-paced, unflinching, often hilarious novel about the challenges of love, parenthood, and staying true to yourself in a marriage.”
–Holly Robinson, author of The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter:  A Memoir

“Both tender and exquisite, Maddie Dawson’s triumphant debut, The Stuff That Never Happened, is a pitch-perfect look into the choices we make in our past and the consequences that they carry long into the future. I loved every page.”
–Allison Winn Scotch, New York Times bestselling author of The One That I Want

“The Stuff That Never Happened is unlike a lot of novels I read – I was never quite sure what was going to happen, and in that way, I found it compelling and compulsive to read.  Often when I’m halfway through a book, I’m fairly certain of the characters’ paths.  This time, the lives encountered were surprising, illuminating, and always believable.”
–Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales

“’I can admit that I went there hungry for the drama of him, that I craved that heightened sense of loving and being loved again,’ Maddie Dawson’s middleaged heroine confesses.  In trying to make sense of one married woman’s relationship to her old flame, The Stuff That Never Happened is a paean to family happiness as much as romance.”
–Stewart O’Nan, author of Songs for the Missing

“This deceptively bouncy, ultimately wrenching novel will grab you at page one.  At a half-century, narrator Annabelle McKay revisits dashed dreams in a tale that jumps between 1977, when she and her husband first fall in love, and 2005, when they fall out. The phrase ‘summer read’ seems invented for this debut.” — People Magazine

“Nicely written…Enjoyable prose and keen characterization.” –Publishers Weekly

“Dawson writes simply but so clearly and with such detail that the characters feel incredibly real. Fans of women’s fiction will enjoy this inside look into a marriage that has everyday challenges and one possibly unhinging test.” –Library Journal