Do you sometimes wake up and wonder if your true adult life is just across the country? If you’ll ever get to fall asleep next to someone who admires your gnarled toes. If you’ll ever have the confidence to roast a whole chicken for a dinner party that you’ll host at your apartment, atop a fully-accessorized dining table?
THIRTY:
A Guide to Embracing the Wonderfully Messy Decade
by Ariella Elovic
Bloomsbury, December 2026
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)
34-year-old Brooklyn-based illustrator and author AriellaElovic has spent the last four years investigating (and being plagued by) these questions, and she writes with a revelation: The truth is, thirty (and adulthood) isn’t about finally feeling settled. It’s understanding that life is all about the in-between.
In these pages, Ariella presents an array of disorienting, thrilling, disappointing, hilarious, and grounding experiences in the most important areas of life—home, career, family, love — offering ways she’s been able to find « richness in the flailing. » Despite all that we’ve been told, our thirties are actually made more valuable by not having everything figured out.
Ariella Elovic is an illustrator and author living in Brooklyn. Her first book, Cheeky: A Head to Toe Memoir, was published in December 2020 with Bloomsbury. From 2020–2022, Ariella partnered with Aidy Bryant and Sudi Green (SNL, Shrill) to develop Cheeky as a pilot for Peacock. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Hey Alma, Cosmopolitan, and elsewhere. She writes and illustrates a weekly newsletter on Substack called Snack Time.
Too tall. Too short. Too fat. Too thin. The message is everywhere—we need to pluck, wax, shrink, and hide ourselves, to not take up space, emotionally or literally; women are never “just right.” Well, Ariella Elovic, feminist and illustrator extraordinaire, has had enough. In her full-color graphic memoir CHEEKY, she takes an inspiring and exuberant head-to-toe look at her own body self-consciousness, and body part by body part, finds her way back to herself. How does Ariella learn not to see herself as a never-finished DIY project, but to accept and even love the physical attributes society taught her to hide? How does a mirror go from a “black hole of critique” to a “who’s that girl” moment? Essential to her journey is her posse of girlfriends, her “yentas.” Together, they discover that sharing “imperfections” and some of the gross and “unsightly” things our bodies produce can be a source of endless laughs and deep bonding. It helps to have a team with some outside perspectives to keep our inner bullies in check. Charming and hilarious, full of empathy and candor, and gorgeously illustrated, CHEEKY aims to inspire women everywhere to embrace their bodies, flaws and all, and also their respective bodies’ needs, desires, and inherent power.