Scan barcode
nahyee's review
3.0
See my full review of this title on my blog: Books Under the Blanket (with a flashlight):
https://booksundertheblanket.com/hell-hath-no-fury/
https://booksundertheblanket.com/hell-hath-no-fury/
llamafish1991's review
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
millspg8's review
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ridgewaygirl's review
4.0
Rose is a bright young woman, although less young than she used to be. She went to Harvard, based on good grades and a brilliant one-act play she wrote during her junior year of high school. She got her MFA and even an agent who expressed excitement about her novel-in-progress, but now she's thirty and she still hasn't managed to get her novel published. She's decided to move to NYC, like all the bright young things before her, but she's finding it hard to find work, eventually settling for a job with a tutoring company, and harder to find a place to live. Then she runs into her childhood best friend and, although their friendship ended badly, she manages to get Lacie to let her move into her spare bedroom. Their friendship at first in tentative and careful not to touch the reasons that they hadn't spoken in over a decade, but slowly Rose and Lacie relax into enjoying each other's company. But Rose isn't telling Lacie everything, like what her novel is about or what she does when they aren't together.
This is a fun mash up of a familiar kind of debut literary novel written by people with MFAs who are now living in Brooklyn, and the kind of psychological suspense novel that is based in the often fraught territory of women's friendships. I'm not entirely sure the combination worked, but it was good to read a thriller that was well-written and where the actions of the characters came from who they were rather from the necessities of the plot, even if that came at the expense of much of the suspense.
What you think of this will be largely determined by your love of unlikeable main characters behaving badly, not in a fun, isn't-she-reckless kind of way, but intended to cause discomfort. What I'm saying is that Rose, for all her initial presentation as a young woman whose early promise failed to translate into success and who is just trying to get by and build a life for herself despite her insecurities, is a terrible person whose ability to justify her own behavior is both impressive and more than a little scary. If that sounds like a fun afternoon, then this book is for you. If you want to like the characters you read about, there are other books out there.
This is a fun mash up of a familiar kind of debut literary novel written by people with MFAs who are now living in Brooklyn, and the kind of psychological suspense novel that is based in the often fraught territory of women's friendships. I'm not entirely sure the combination worked, but it was good to read a thriller that was well-written and where the actions of the characters came from who they were rather from the necessities of the plot, even if that came at the expense of much of the suspense.
What you think of this will be largely determined by your love of unlikeable main characters behaving badly, not in a fun, isn't-she-reckless kind of way, but intended to cause discomfort. What I'm saying is that Rose, for all her initial presentation as a young woman whose early promise failed to translate into success and who is just trying to get by and build a life for herself despite her insecurities, is a terrible person whose ability to justify her own behavior is both impressive and more than a little scary. If that sounds like a fun afternoon, then this book is for you. If you want to like the characters you read about, there are other books out there.
maralyons's review
4.0
The writing in ‘Everyone Knows How Much I Love You’ is fantastic and the characters are fascinating. The story follows the friendship of Rose and Lacie in two timelines, as children and as adults, focusing more on present-day. They are best friends as children through high school, but their friendship ends abruptly. The book picks up when they are both about 30 and reunite. The book’s narrator, Rose, is not sympathetic or even slightly empathetic and details her unhealthy, jealous interest in Lacie. The beginning and end really hooked me, but the middle is a little uneven, but I liked being a voyeur into the Rose and Lacie’s friendship.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group / Ballantine Books for providing this ARC.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group / Ballantine Books for providing this ARC.
marilynw's review
3.0
Everyone Knows How Much I Love You stars Rose, a woman who thinks nobody notices her. She's awkward, weird (but I think the weirdness is almost forced because she thinks so much of herself, all the time), extremely intelligent, and a high achiever in so many areas, while thinking she is a loser. The thing is, she throws away opportunities and brushes off the big, good things that happen to her, in order to indulge in her obsession with her best friend, Lacie.
Best friends since the age of ten, Rose has always been jealous of Lacie. Lacie is the one boys noticed, even if they were teasing her in their younger years. One way to become "closer" to Lacie is through Lacie's boyfriends, in the way that betrays Lacie the most. But Rose has no guilt over what she does to Lacie and Lacie's things...she'll go through all of Lacie's belongings, invade Lacie's life in every way possible, sleep with Lacie's boyfriend and more. Because of what happened with Rose and Lacie's high school boyfriend, they don't see each other for twelve years. I don't understand why Lacie would let Rose enter her life again, at the age of thirty, especially when it seems stalkerish that they run into each other twice in a short time. But Lacie lets Rose live in her apartment, shares her things with Rose and seems oblivious to Rose overstepping boundaries, right and left.
There is a book within a book aspect to the story since Rose is writing a book about Lacie and their life, from the time they were ten. I personally think it will be a boring book since Rose is boring to me. Lacie is fine but I'm sure that only Rose thinks this book needs to be written but that's the thing, Rose is really writing this book for herself, everything is about Rose when you come down to it. Rose is a wrecking ball of obsession and destruction and a boring one at that.
Published June 23, 2020
Thank you to Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine and NetGalley for this ARC.
Best friends since the age of ten, Rose has always been jealous of Lacie. Lacie is the one boys noticed, even if they were teasing her in their younger years. One way to become "closer" to Lacie is through Lacie's boyfriends, in the way that betrays Lacie the most. But Rose has no guilt over what she does to Lacie and Lacie's things...she'll go through all of Lacie's belongings, invade Lacie's life in every way possible, sleep with Lacie's boyfriend and more. Because of what happened with Rose and Lacie's high school boyfriend, they don't see each other for twelve years. I don't understand why Lacie would let Rose enter her life again, at the age of thirty, especially when it seems stalkerish that they run into each other twice in a short time. But Lacie lets Rose live in her apartment, shares her things with Rose and seems oblivious to Rose overstepping boundaries, right and left.
There is a book within a book aspect to the story since Rose is writing a book about Lacie and their life, from the time they were ten. I personally think it will be a boring book since Rose is boring to me. Lacie is fine but I'm sure that only Rose thinks this book needs to be written but that's the thing, Rose is really writing this book for herself, everything is about Rose when you come down to it. Rose is a wrecking ball of obsession and destruction and a boring one at that.
Published June 23, 2020
Thank you to Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine and NetGalley for this ARC.
thechroniclesofmariah's review
2.0
Dnf - one of those “the main character is terrible” books and I just didn’t want to be in her head anymore.
kkoxidized's review
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
debi_g's review
3.0
Portions are extraordinary.
The novel is over-written and under-felt as a whole.
Uncomfortable for sure.
Can’t recommend it.
2.5
The novel is over-written and under-felt as a whole.
Uncomfortable for sure.
Can’t recommend it.
2.5
dfwsusie's review
5.0
Woman-centric Friendship Novels are tricky to pull off. The choice becomes picking a realistic or romantic narrative, and inevitably people seeking the former will be unhappy reading the latter.
Personally, I like gritty, messy, vicious, beautiful, painful, or powerful representations of relationships. Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is a novel about female friendship in NYC, to a point. However, this isn't a romanticized post-Sex In the City vision of sisters out there empowering each other and clinking martinis.
Time and the passage of years fundamentally alters all relationships. Just like matter, friendships are subject to entropy and become more complicated as the collective history piles up.
The book rolls out in four non-linear phases, occuring in 1999, 2012, sometime in 2015-2016, and 2020. Even though there were plenty of clues, I didn't realize until the very end that the 2012 sections were not the narrator's current time. The whole story is told while looking in the rearview mirror. Given the influence of the Arrow of Time in our memories, it makes sense why all the chaotic actions of previous days seem so ordered and sensible to Rose.
Usually the reader isn't privy to the inner dialogue of the bad girl. Even when toxic friendships are told so perfectly, like in [b:The Robber Bride|17650|The Robber Bride|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388263287l/17650._SY75_.jpg|1119196] by [a:Margaret Atwood|3472|Margaret Atwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1282859073p2/3472.jpg] what makes the terrible friend tick isn't the focus. Here we see and hear Rose's motivations for consistently putting everyone on a collision course with annihilation. I never cheered Rose on, but there were points where I could see how she justified her own terrible actions.
I saw Rose described a few places as an unreliable narrator. Everyone telling a story about their past is unreliable, so that's perhaps misleading. The only way unreliable fits is if Rose herself willfully abandoned or warped the facts for a better story.
This is possible, as her editor kept urging her to punch up the details, create a character with a mental map, etc. Perhaps she did that and we are simply reading a work of fiction about a work of fiction. Going down that road may be a little out there, but technically the Lacie/Ian roommate situation was predicated on a ton of coincidence. It's possible only the 1999 section is based in anything real.
Many summaries centered on the "envy" and "jealousy" aspects of Rose and Lacie. But to be envious is to want what someone else has for your own. Rose's real desire appears to be complete dominion over Lacie. She wanted, consciously or not, to leave her with nowhere else to turn for comfort, emotional connection, and sexual release.
Rose isn't the stereotypic jealous girlfriend either. She's a power-hungry annihilator. Even in 2020, remorse is absent. Instead, Rose believes she protected Lacie from betrayal and abandonment at each turn.
Neither does Rose seem particularly angry at Ian for his emotional rejection after intense sexual connection. She's really angry at Lacie for reconnecting with a guy who cheats. That overarching lack of impulse control halts Rose from having a healthy relationship with anyone, and also puts the people closest to her in a ring of fire.
In the end, this distinction is what hooked me. McCarthy doesn't give us an easy Mean Girls II story. Instead, we get to peek inside the mind of a brilliant, damaged, obsessive woman for a while. One who has motives likely hidden even to herself. Unlike many of the books I read where the author very clearly spells out all the answers, the beauty here is in the ambiguity.
Personally, I like gritty, messy, vicious, beautiful, painful, or powerful representations of relationships. Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is a novel about female friendship in NYC, to a point. However, this isn't a romanticized post-Sex In the City vision of sisters out there empowering each other and clinking martinis.
Time and the passage of years fundamentally alters all relationships. Just like matter, friendships are subject to entropy and become more complicated as the collective history piles up.
The book rolls out in four non-linear phases, occuring in 1999, 2012, sometime in 2015-2016, and 2020. Even though there were plenty of clues, I didn't realize until the very end that the 2012 sections were not the narrator's current time. The whole story is told while looking in the rearview mirror. Given the influence of the Arrow of Time in our memories, it makes sense why all the chaotic actions of previous days seem so ordered and sensible to Rose.
Usually the reader isn't privy to the inner dialogue of the bad girl. Even when toxic friendships are told so perfectly, like in [b:The Robber Bride|17650|The Robber Bride|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388263287l/17650._SY75_.jpg|1119196] by [a:Margaret Atwood|3472|Margaret Atwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1282859073p2/3472.jpg] what makes the terrible friend tick isn't the focus. Here we see and hear Rose's motivations for consistently putting everyone on a collision course with annihilation. I never cheered Rose on, but there were points where I could see how she justified her own terrible actions.
I saw Rose described a few places as an unreliable narrator. Everyone telling a story about their past is unreliable, so that's perhaps misleading. The only way unreliable fits is if Rose herself willfully abandoned or warped the facts for a better story.
This is possible, as her editor kept urging her to punch up the details, create a character with a mental map, etc. Perhaps she did that and we are simply reading a work of fiction about a work of fiction. Going down that road may be a little out there, but technically the Lacie/Ian roommate situation was predicated on a ton of coincidence. It's possible only the 1999 section is based in anything real.
Many summaries centered on the "envy" and "jealousy" aspects of Rose and Lacie. But to be envious is to want what someone else has for your own. Rose's real desire appears to be complete dominion over Lacie. She wanted, consciously or not, to leave her with nowhere else to turn for comfort, emotional connection, and sexual release.
Rose isn't the stereotypic jealous girlfriend either. She's a power-hungry annihilator. Even in 2020, remorse is absent. Instead, Rose believes she protected Lacie from betrayal and abandonment at each turn.
Neither does Rose seem particularly angry at Ian for his emotional rejection after intense sexual connection. She's really angry at Lacie for reconnecting with a guy who cheats. That overarching lack of impulse control halts Rose from having a healthy relationship with anyone, and also puts the people closest to her in a ring of fire.
In the end, this distinction is what hooked me. McCarthy doesn't give us an easy Mean Girls II story. Instead, we get to peek inside the mind of a brilliant, damaged, obsessive woman for a while. One who has motives likely hidden even to herself. Unlike many of the books I read where the author very clearly spells out all the answers, the beauty here is in the ambiguity.