My Only Boy

The sensational new novel from the highly-acclaimed author of Dreamland: a once-in-a-lifetime love story

‘Electrically entertaining’, The Times, ‘Best Books to Read this Summer’

‘Ambitious… brilliant… exhilarating… Custom-built for fans for The Thick of It, Succession and Industry, with a romance plot that could have been written by David Nicholls’ Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times

It is Elle’s job to manage disasters.

But lately things have started to spin out of control.

At work, the latest catastrophe has been live-streamed to the nation. A shock election sees an extreme-right coalition storm to power. Then, on a night so hot it feels like London’s pavements are melting, she meets Ed.

Elle and Ed are not meant to be drawn to each other. Elle has only ever been attracted to women, and Ed, billed as ‘the great gay novelist of our times’, is about to release his first book. But something inexplicable sparks between them.

Can the unexpected attraction they feel last when it presents such a profound challenge to their identity? And as the country fractures and the heat rises, how will they choose between the people they’ve known themselves to be – and the people they are willing to become.

Both an unforgettable love story and a state-of-the-nation thriller, My Only Boy asks universal questions about desire, complicity, and what happens when your sense of self collapses along with the world around you.

‘Smart, beautifully written, joyful and terrifying – without doubt, Rankin-Gee's best work yet' Lucy Scholes, Prospect

'Thoughtful, challenging... Rankin-Gee explores the pull and push of queer desire turned unexpectedly heterosexual’ Marie Claire, Best Summer Reads of 2026

‘Sparkling prose… the novel handles its subject matter with such tenderness that it made this extremely gay man believe that it might actually be possible to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex (no small feat)’ Teo Van Den Broeke, Esquire

‘Bleakly funny… a surprising romance… As I read My Only Boy, I kept having to remind myself that the nation it describes is not (yet) real, because the novel’s England seems unnervingly close to what might come next…’ Sarah Moss, Guardian

‘Ominously realistic… a thumping, state-of-the-nation thriller with a complex romance at its heart' Cal Flyn, Five Books ‘Must-Read Novels of Summer 2026’

‘Hell is round the corner in My Only Boy, its skilfully imagined near-future, far-right Britain all too believable. But what I admire most is the way its grand sweep is studded with small human moments: brilliantly noticed instances of the ways we want and yearn and love’ Chris Power, author of A Lonely Man

' I can’t stop thinking about it’ Lucy Foley, author of The Hunting Party

‘I devoured this book. Rosa Rankin-Gee is a master at creating near future worlds with a simmering political back drop, pierced through with laughs and a love story that feels at once epic and beautiful and also completely universal’ Kayleigh Llewellyn, Bafta Award-winning creator of In My Skin