Happiness by Numbers

What happens when you’ve spent so long fighting to stay alive that you’ve forgotten how to live, and never dared to love?

For ten years Mina has been defined by hospital rooms, scar tissue, and the shock of early menopause at thirty-nine. Now, at last, the health scares are behind her. Armed with a slightly chaotic bucket list and a determination to reclaim the life she put on hold, she decides it’s finally time to start living, maybe even loving, if she can figure out how.

The list takes her to places she never imagined: the world’s strangest adult ballet class, an awkward attempt to reconnect with the best friend she lost, and a weekly shift shovelling poo at a pig sanctuary where the animals she’s supposed to be rescuing seem suspiciously intent on rescuing her instead. None of this looks anything like the confident, glossy future she once planned, especially when it leads her to Sam.

Sam is a grouchy, painfully honest ex-army sniper with a soft spot for trees and a talent for avoiding people. Mina is a bubbly, self-indulgent advertising exec more comfortable with filters than feelings. On paper, they make no sense. In real life, they might just be exactly what the other needs.

Can two bruised, stubborn hearts help heal each other’s war wounds? And, in a question probably never asked before in a romcom, can a gang of rescue pigs really bring them together?