Sally Rooney’s follow up to bestseller Normal People is almost here

We can’t wait to read it!

Sally Rooney, novelist, at the Hay Festival on May 28, 2017 in Hay on Wye, United Kingdom
(Image credit: Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)

Writer Sally Rooney achieved monumental success with her novel, Normal People, which went from strength to strength after Hulu released its highly praised, Emmy-nominated adaptation. With the lead characters of Marianne and Connell memorably played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, it’s no wonder that the story once again captured people’s imaginations. 

As her second book, Normal People followed her brilliant debut novel, Conversations with Friends, which was released in 2017 to great critical acclaim and is itself being adapted for television. 

Given the success of Sally Rooney's previous books and the reception to the Normal People show, fans across the world are no doubt keen to read more from the popular Irish novelist. And now it seems they won’t have to wait too much longer after all.

It has now been announced that Sally Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You will be released on September 7, 2021. It’s understood that a fourth book will then follow shortly after.

What will Sally Rooney’s new book be about?

Just like Conversations with Friends and Normal People, Beautiful World, Where Are You promises to be another insightful story that focuses on Irish millennials negotiating their own path through romance and social upheaval. Beautiful World, Where Are You will follow novelist Alice, who meets warehouse worker Felix and subsequently invites him if he’d like to join her on a trip to Rome. 

Meanwhile, Alice’s best friend Eileen in Dublin is still getting over a break-up and finds herself flirting with Simon, who she has known ever since childhood. 

They may all be young with their lives ahead of them, but life isn’t always straightforward. Desiring and misleading each other, romances form and are broken apart. Soon they must question if there is a way to believe in a beautiful world after all.  

"The title itself speaks to some of the book’s themes, it’s an unanswered question," Mitzi Angel, the publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux reportedly told The New York Times. 

"The characters are contemplating a world in which the future is very uncertain for them — what’s the world of work going to look like, what’s going to happen to the planet, what are the politics we are all living through. I think the stakes are higher.”

Sally Rooney's new novel is surely set to be one of 2021’s most anticipated books.

Are you just as excited to read it as we are?

Emma Shacklock

Emma is a Senior Lifestyle Writer with five years experience working in digital publishing, ranging from book publishing to magazines. She currently looks after all things Lifestyle for Woman&Home, GoodToKnow and My Imperfect Life.


Before she joined Future Publishing, Emma graduated from the University of Warwick with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Comparative Literary Studies. After leaving education, she started out her publishing career in the world of books, working as a Publisher for an independent digital publisher specializing in back-list and debut commercial fiction novels. With a huge book list and a passion for bringing the best stories to the broadest audience possible, Emma filled her spare time with reading the latest best-sellers and catching up on hit adaptations.


In 2017 she joined TI Media as a fiction writing coordinator on Woman’s Weekly and Woman’s Weekly Fiction as part of the features team. From here, she used her love of books, working to bring short stories to our dedicated readers and began writing for the books pages of Woman, Woman’s Own and Woman&Home, as well as online features ranging from genre round-ups to travel pieces for womanandhome.com.


After honing her skills, Emma branched out online in 2020 when Future gave her the opportunity to focus on digital-first. When she’s not writing about the next big lifestyle trend, she enjoys cooking, long walks and watching as many crime dramas as she can!