'Warm, wise, witty and wet-your-pants hilarious' Laura Bates

Hannah is in her mid-30s and struggling to make ends meet when she is introduced to her best friend's affluent colleague Oscar Jennington-Bridge and asks him out on a date by mistake.

It's not exactly love at first sight, but somehow their awkward first encounter becomes a tentative relationship. Before she knows it, Hannah finds herself relocating halfway across the country to move in with Oscar and his terrible glassware (old Nutella jars), his terrible towels (the sort you'd throw in the boot of the car if you were taking a dog to the beach) and his terrible collection of watercolours (painted by his mother).

Hannah has always hated romantic comedies where a man holds the key to a woman's happy ending. But when you're barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck and it's a choice between living with the one who loves you or the mother who disapproves of you, how are you meant to afford your own?

Irrepressibly funny and unexpectedly moving, Love and Rent is a brilliantly observed and original novel about love and friendship and forging your own path.