Worth the Paperwork: A Love Story in Triplicate

By Ilhem Belkherchouche

Iris Halloway has spent six years at Desk 4 of the Bureau of Affective Complaints, stamping other people's heartbreak in triplicate. She has read every complaint love can generate. She has stopped believing the leaflet.

The job has rules, and Iris is excellent at them. Form 14-C for a grievance against a living party. Form 22-B when the party is unreachable. Section 9 when the complainant is, on inspection, the problem. Three copies of everything: one for the file, one for the respondent, one for the person who has to carry it home.

Then Theo Marchetti starts turning up at her window. Every week, same time, always about the same woman. He fills the forms out badly. He apologises for the handwriting. He complains about a woman who orders bookshelves by colour, and who keeps a mug he gave her at the back of a cupboard, and who has never once said the thing he is actually there about.

Against regulation, against six years of excellent procedure, and strictly between the fields of the standard form, Iris begins to look forward to Thursdays.

She could ask who the woman is. The form has a box for it. Asking would be a breach of Section 9, and it would also be the first honest question either of them has managed, and Iris has spent six years learning that the two are usually the same thing.

A warm, funny novel about red tape, guarded hearts, and the complaints people file instead of saying what they mean.

For readers of Beth O'Leary, Katherine Center and Emily Henry: a workplace romance with a filing system, a slow burn conducted in triplicate, and a heroine who has read everyone's heartbreak but her own.

The Bureau has a form for every heartbreak. It doesn't have one for this.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HD99D3K1
• ISBN13: 9798191182933
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"