Kate Goldbeck returns with her sophomore novel, and she proves her debut success was no fluke. Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck delivers a refreshingly honest take on the single-dad romance trope, one that refuses to sugarcoat the messy realities of modern adulthood while still wrapping readers in the warm embrace of a genuinely earned love story.
A Romance Built on Unconventional Foundations
Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck introduces us to Sam Pulaski, a twenty-six-year-old art history graduate whose life has stalled somewhere between ambition and paralysis. She has been crashing in her mother’s condo office for five years, nursing student loan debt, working dead-end service jobs, and maintaining a situationship with Hal, a pretentious writer who keeps her emotionally at arm’s length. Her PhD dreams feel increasingly like fantasies she tells herself to justify hitting snooze on life.
Enter Nick, the new neighbor. He is everything Sam is not: a nearly-forty single dad who traded his globetrotting career for managing a Chili’s, all so he could stay close to his nine-year-old daughter, Kira. Where Sam runs from responsibility, Nick runs toward it. Where she hides behind ironic detachment, he shows up with a toolbox and the earnest desire to fix things, both literal and metaphorical.
Goldbeck constructs their connection through shared walls and chance encounters, building intimacy through the mundane. There are no grand gestures here, just two people separated by drywall, slowly discovering that proximity can become something far more complicated than convenience.
Character Study as Love Story
What elevates Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck beyond typical romance fare is Goldbeck’s commitment to psychological depth. Sam is not merely a quirky heroine waiting for the right man to unlock her potential. She is genuinely struggling, genuinely stuck, and the novel takes her internal battles seriously.
The comic book subplot proves unexpectedly resonant. Sam’s father abandoned her emotionally long before he left physically, but he left behind boxes of comics that she has transformed into a shrine to a relationship that never existed as she imagined it. She drew herself as Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice, casting various love interests as Marvel heroes, creating elaborate interior worlds because her exterior one felt beyond her control. When she finally confronts the truth about her father’s indifference, that he did not even pack her childhood drawings himself, the revelation hits with appropriate devastation.
Nick presents his own complexities. He is not some fantasy single dad with endless patience and zero baggage. He carries the weight of a marriage that ended, a divorce he has not technically finalized, and the constant negotiation of co-parenting with his ex-wife, Nora. His devotion to Kira is unwavering but also constraining. As he tells Sam, when you have a child, you exchange control for commitment, and there is never a split second of hesitation about whose needs come first.
The Truth About Tropes
Goldbeck approaches the single-dad romance with clear-eyed awareness of its pitfalls. Through Sam’s roommate Romily, who delivers relationship advice via PowerPoint presentations complete with citations, the novel directly addresses the statistical realities.
Key concerns Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck engages with honestly include:
- Second marriages with children from previous relationships face higher divorce rates
- Stepmothers report elevated stress levels compared to biological parents
- Young partners entering relationships with parents often sacrifice their own developmental milestones
- Children rarely feel genuinely close to stepparents, according to research on adult stepchildren
This is not cynicism masquerading as wisdom. Goldbeck simply refuses to pretend these complications do not exist. When Sam’s mother voices her concerns about her daughter becoming involved with an older divorced father, her points land because they are not wrong. They are just incomplete.
Where the Novel Stumbles
The pacing occasionally loses momentum in the middle sections. Sam’s journey through her situationship with Hal, while thematically necessary, sometimes feels like treading water. We understand that Hal represents everything wrong with Sam’s romantic history: the emotional unavailability she mistakes for depth, the commitment she chases from people incapable of offering it. But his scenes can drag, particularly when the reader is eager to return to the more dynamic relationship developing next door.
Additionally, some secondary characters feel underdeveloped. Sam’s stepfather Perry exists primarily as a benevolent presence, and Kira, while charming, occasionally tips into precocious territory that feels more scripted than observed. Nine-year-olds are indeed relentless interrogators, but Kira’s questioning sometimes serves the plot more than her characterization.
The resolution, while emotionally satisfying, arrives somewhat quickly after an extended period of separation. Readers who prefer their romantic payoffs proportional to their narrative buildup may feel slightly shortchanged.
Prose That Mirrors Its Protagonist
Goldbeck writes with sharp, sardonic wit that never curdles into meanness. Sam’s internal monologue crackles with self-deprecating humor that masks genuine pain. She sets shame alarms rather than regular alarms, notifications designed to remind her that other people are being productive while she hibernates. She describes her relationship with her bullet vibe as a romance that died long ago. The comedy exists not to deflect from emotion but to make it bearable.
The novel’s structure incorporates Sam’s comic-book imagination, rendering certain scenes as illustrated panels in her mind. This technique could easily become gimmicky, but Goldbeck deploys it sparingly enough to illuminate character rather than distract from narrative.
Similar Books Worth Exploring
Readers who connect with Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck should consider these companion reads:
- You, Again by Kate Goldbeck: Her debut novel follows an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers arc with similar emotional intelligence and sharper comedic timing
- Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon: Another romance that thoughtfully explores what it means to enter a partner’s established life, mentioned in Goldbeck’s author’s note as influential
- Book Lovers by Emily Henry: Features a protagonist whose ambition and identity are central to the romantic equation
- The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling: For readers who appreciate heroines finding themselves while finding love
- Happy Place by Emily Henry: Explores how relationships evolve when life does not follow expected trajectories
The Verdict
Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck succeeds because it trusts readers to handle complexity. Sam and Nick do not complete each other; they challenge each other to become more complete versions of themselves. The novel asks whether love can flourish when one partner has a child who will always come first, when the other is still figuring out what coming first would even mean for her. It answers tentatively, hopefully, but without false promises.
Goldbeck proves herself a writer worth following, someone capable of finding genuine tenderness in the anxious territory between arrested development and hard-won growth. This is not a romance about finding someone to rescue you from your life. It is about finding someone worth becoming a better person alongside.
For readers tired of romances where love arrives like a solution to everything, Daddy Issues offers something rarer: a love story where the work begins after the last page, and that feels like exactly the right ending.