Is It Too Early To Bitch? by Grace Rouvray

We talk about romance as life’s greatest love stories, but sometimes the rarest thing we’ll ever find is a soulmate in a friend.

In the first week of their drama undergrad degree, Grace Rouvray and Katie Lees become best friends, bonding through a timeless tradition: bitching.

Over the next 13 years, this lightning-in-a-bottle friendship becomes the most constant and important relationship in both their lives. Carrying them through miserable second jobs, breakups and the creation of a comedy duo, it survives long-distance years sustained by voice notes, and thrives when they live just one minute (and eleven seconds) apart in Sydney’s Inner West. They become each other’s rock, each other’s person. Until the impossible happens, and Katie dies suddenly.

What follows is an unravelling. Does Grace deserve to grieve Katie as deeply as her family? Can ‘just a friend’
be the most important person in your life? And how do you move forward when you’ve lost someone who was
ostensibly your whole world?

Hilarious, heartbreaking and deeply honest, Is It Too Early to Bitch? is a love letter to and memoir of the magic
of a unique friendship, and a celebration of all friendship and its lifechanging power.

‘Equal parts devastating, funny and frank, Is It Too Early To Bitch? is a meditation on love, guilt, self-acceptance and grief. I cried and I laughed and I gasped in recognition at Rouvray’s ability to capture the messy, powerful essence of friendship, and how we can honour it once it’s gone.’ – CLARE STEPHENS

About the Author: Grace Rouvray is a writer, actor, producer and podcast host. She wrote and starred in the series 600 Bottles of Wine, adapted from her viral dating blog, which premiered on BBC Three and later aired internationally, including on Netflix, Channel 10, CBC, TVNZ and YLE. The Guardian UK listed Grace’s writing with the likes of Hannah Gadsby, Felicity Ward, Claudia O’Doherty and The Letdown; and called her ‘A unique and refreshing voice, great things are expected of Grace’.

Grace co-wrote and performed Hour of Power with Katie Lees, which saw sold-out shows at Sydney Fringe Comedy and seasons at Flight Path Theatre and Adelaide Fringe online. Her acting credits include House of Gods, Heartbreak High, The PM’s Daughter, Colin from Accounts, House of Hancock and Strife.

Grace co-wrote The Plan (And Other Plans) with Bridie Connell, commissioned and premiered by HotHouse Theatre, and later published by Currency Press.

She has hosted the podcasts Good, Great, Wonderful!, Little Love Stories and Watch Party, and co-hosted Hello Bump alongside Jana Pittman.

Is It Too Early To Bitch? is her debut memoir.

26 May 2026
 

Is It Too Early To Bitch? by Grace Rouvray ISBN 9781761566738