On the surface, Marisa’s life looks enviable. She lives in a beautiful apartment in the center of Madrid, she has a hot neighbor who is always around to sleep with her, and she’s rapidly risen through the ranks at an advertising agency. And yet she’s drowning in a dark hole of existential dread induced by the expectations of corporate life. Marisa hates her job and everyone at it. She spends her working hours locked in her office hiding from her coworkers, bingeing YouTube videos, and taking Valium. When she has the time, she escapes to her favorite museum where she contemplates the meaning of human life while staring at Hieronymus Bosch paintings, or trying to get hit by a car so she can go on disability.

But Marisa’s success, which is largely built on lies and work she’s stolen from other people, is in danger of being unraveled when she’s forced to go on her company’s annual team-building retreat. Isolated in the Spanish mountains, surrounded by a psychopathic boss, overly enthusiastic co-workers who revel in their exploitation, a flirty retreat staff, and haunted by a deeply-buried memory about a past coworker, Marisa is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.

A darkly funny, provocative, and incisive tale of our modern times, Discontent explores the unease we bury eight hours a day, and how explosive it is when it rises to the surface.

I’m lucky enough to work at Book of the Month, so I love my job (and they pay me to say that—just kidding). But I’ve had some soul-sucking jobs in my time. Office politics, mean bosses, that person that insists on microwaving fish: these are the universalities of being a corporate worker in the modern world. So naturally, a book about a woman who is checked out and kind of losing it was right up my alley. Discontent had me laughing out loud at my desk—which is, fortunately, encouraged at BOTM.

Marisa has coasted her way to the top at a marketing company, creating ads and endless decks for projects that don’t spark joy. Joy is lacking in her personal life too, aside from her affair with her hot downstairs neighbor. After the death of the one coworker she was fond of, she begins to unravel even further.

Full of sharp observations and dark humor, and culminating in a mandatory company retreat where things get…messy, Discontent is an astute novel about corporate culture and the search for fulfillment outside of the nine-to-five. Beatriz Serrano’s sizzling debut is a fun and snappy read that will stay with you long after the final page.