Coffee with Vodka

Three women. Three secrets. One unravelling summer.

Thanks to a childhood traumatic brain injury, Dee Dee Bremen’s life runs on a cocktail of ADHD, a temperamental memory, and anxiety attacks that arrive uninvited and overstay their welcome. Yet, somehow, she was able to pull herself together and, with her best friend, Maxine, she is on the brink of launching Altered States, a combo art gallery and gift shop that feels like a real, adult step forward. For Dee, it’s an upgrade from scraping by on commissioned art. For Maxine, it’s a bold exit from her sensible-but-suffocating job as an elementary school art teacher.

They’ve secured a space, hired their first employee-Genevieve, a polished-but-fraying mother of teens shopping for her own second act-and amassed enough paint to alarm the fire marshal. They have a plan. They have momentum. In theory, this should go beautifully.

Reality, however, did not get the memo.

A drunken family confession at a funeral flips a switch in Dee’s brain-and not a helpful one. Her nights become filled with vivid dreams of fire, explosions, and a shadowy figure who feels less symbolic and more...personal. As the nightmares bleed into daylight, Dee starts to wonder if they’re not dreams at all. Could they be memories? Asking that question sends her skidding toward a familiar cliff-the same one she nearly went over as a teenager, when trauma, medication, and terrifying visions culminated in a full-blown breakdown.

Unfortunately, ignoring the problem only makes it louder. The visions intensify. The whispers sharpen. And when Dee’s secret fling with Cooper-a married man, poor choice, noted-collides spectacularly with her new employee (who turns out to be his wife...surprise!), the chaos spills out of her head and into her carefully constructed life.

As Dee struggles to stay grounded, Maxine faces the slow implosion of her own marriage, and Genevieve-keenly aware of how little of her life actually belongs to her-quietly unravels behind a curated, capable smile. Together, these three women are knotted up in secrets they didn’t ask for, relationships they can’t cleanly escape, and a past that refuses to stay buried-no matter how much they’d prefer to paint over it.

Told in alternating perspectives with biting humor and gut-punch emotion, Coffee with Vodka is a story about friendship, fragile beginnings, and the kind of truths that refuse to stay buried. Perfect for fans of Ghosts by Dolly Alderton and Elin Hilderbrand’s The Rumor, this is a novel about the chaos we hide, the family we choose, and what it means to find your way-again.