Lauren Graham is best known for her role of crazy but caring mother Lorelai Gilmore Gilmore Girls, and is now playing Sarah Braverman on Parenthood. What many people don’t know is that she has also performed on Broadway, and wrote a book in 2013.

With a cover of a girl riding a bike through a Manhattan and a title of Someday, Someday Maybe, this book is easy to write off as chick lit, and predictable.

In some ways, it is. In a lot of ways, it’s not.

Set in New York circa 1995, Franny is the dreamer trying to make it big as an actor. However, she set a three-year deadline for herself. If it doesn’t happen by then, she figures it’s never going to, and she refuses to get stuck in a rut somewhere. There’s one problem: she’s six months away from her deadline and has nothing to show for her two and a half years in The Big Apple besides a used Filofax Day Planner and one commercial.

Throughout the book, Franny struggles with reality pressing down on her, and bad agents

making worse calls about what roles she should audition for. With the help of her two roommates, Jane and Dan, she maneuvers the tricky streets of adulthood and pushes past the nagging reminders of how easy it would be to go back home and marry her ex-boyfriend.

            While there is a love-triangle, it is not the main focus by any means. Graham does a fantastic job at portraying how romance can play a factor in a  girl’s life, and cause undue stress, but it does not have to be the thing life revolves around. Franny holds her friends closer than a man, and doesn’t allow herself to become distracted from her dream.

            Ultimately growing out of the meek girl she wants to leave behind and stepping towards the confident woman she so desperately desires to be, Franny finds empowerment at her own hands, and learns that sometimes mistakes can take you to exactly where you need to be.

            Someday, Someday Maybe is a fantastic debut novel, and I hope that Graham will write many more!