Content Warning: This section of the guide contains mention of child loss.

The protagonist of The Good Part, Lucy jumps between her 26-year-old self and a future 42-year-old self. The novel is told from Lucy’s point of view, and this access to Lucy’s thoughts enables the reader to see her maturing and growing during her experience of traveling forward in time.

Lucy begins the novel as a junior TV researcher at a production company where she is almost at the bottom of the ladder and unappreciated. She expresses jealousy of her boss, Melanie Durham, and longs for monetary and professional success, both of which she attains after the wishing machine grants her wish to jump ahead in time: 42-year-old Lucy is “Queen Badger” at Badger TV, the company that she co-founded with Michael Green. However, while she has the wardrobe and financial success that she envied in Melanie, she soon realizes this success comes with strings attached. Her decision-making affects the future of her entire team, and she is under enormous pressure to make a successful pitch or risk putting everyone out of work. Twenty-six-year-old Lucy similarly dreams of skipping ahead to a time when she will be happily married, thus avoiding her current reality: a string of terrible dates and roommates with odd habits.