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3.85 AVERAGE

aiyam's review

4.25
challenging emotional sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book would have been 5 stars if I wasn’t so uncomfortable with the cheating. Like falling in love with someone else while married but never acting on it until you’re divorced? Messed up but morally more okay to me. 

McBrayer drew me in immediately to this story. Merit’s story broke my heart, unhappy in her marriage and life but doesn’t know any other way is the fate of so many great women. The writing is incredibly emotional, I genuinely felt myself tearing up at points. 

I adore Jane. There is nothing to dislike about her. From the second she stepped onto the page I fell in love, so I really can’t blame Merit. She’s charming, funny, and completely comfortable in her own skin being in charge. 

This book is set over the course of several years, with many time skips. At the beginning I was crying over how sad Merit was, and by the end I was crying tears of joy as everything fell properly into place. It felt like a natural progression, not rushed and with all the pain that comes from an affair and a divorce.

I read the book in a morning, I was obsessed and could not put it down. 

Thank you Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the chance to read and review Lauren McBrayer's Like a House on Fire. This is a wonderfully character focused story of a woman, Merit, at a cross roads in her life as she examines her identities as a wife, mother, and artist/architect and mostly just who she is and who she wants to be. There are timely and relatable themes on motherhood and the mental load that women, all women (stay at home moms, working moms, working women... all women) navigate at various points in their days. There are genuine examinations of complex relationships, particularly those that unfold at work but then outside of work and how to balance and integrate those experiences into one relationship, and there are timely details on women's lives and experiences in midlife.

As a relatively new mom, and a working mom, I was very connected to much of how Merit felt while balancing home and work and emotional labor and how she felt great joy at being at work and the feelings of what that meant about her as a mother. I appreciated this part of the story the most ( I could have written that whole first birthday party scene down the beer run) but I also enjoyed how Merit learned to understand herself in new ways, not just as a person in relation to others but as a person in relation to herself, someone with talent and ambition and a lot of opportunities to explore for herself and for herself with others. I thought that was a subtle but present theme that stood out to me as it gave Merit important depth and dimension. Ultimately this story to me is one of self growth, identity, change, and seeing opportunity and hope, that midlife is just a series of new beginnings for many women (what a wonderful theme).

This is an excellent book for book clubs, especially those seeking books about women's lives and representation of sexuality and love and as noted the ever present mental load and I think this will be a wonderful book for me to discuss with many working mothers who I value as friends, they too will feel seen I think in these pages. Highly recommend! A full review will be shared on my website and other social media sites in April near publication date; small preview review will be on instagram and my website soon to support pre-orders as well.

where to find my review around publication date:
https://www.dont-stop-reading.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pageus_of_books/
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/131395833-meghan-pageus
amazon
B&N
https://twitter.com/PageUs_Meghan
and this one is already listed on some of my lists as a bookshop.org affiliate

rly18's review

5.0
challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced
cpalmisanod's profile picture

cpalmisanod's review

2.75
emotional reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Merit is drowning in motherhood and the weight of managing her family with limited support from her husband. After years of trying to make her art career take off she decides to return to the workforce as an architect, her professional background. 

Here she meets Jane.  Merit is captivated by Jane, who becomes her mentor, best friend, goals and eventually something more. 

When Merit gets the nerve to cross the line of friendship to more what will happen?


Spoilery below. 

Jane and Merit’s relationship seems a bit unhealthy with it’s lack of boundaries. I also hated how creepy Merit was when Jane initially asked to just stay friends and Merit was all ‘ok as long as I can touch you’ cause yeah no
papersquared's profile picture

papersquared's review

3.75
funny lighthearted fast-paced
sapphic_library's profile picture

sapphic_library's review

4.0
emotional funny medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley and I am so glad this was my first book because I absolutely loved it. I mean, it's gay and there's MILFs, so it's very much up my alley. Going in (and based on the summary), I was expecting the falling-in-love bit to go much faster, but I can honestly say I'm glad that it was developed right and it took its time to unfold because the payoff was worth it (especially toward the end). I loved Merit as a narrator, I thought she was so funny and relatable but I also really empathized with her at times. And every other character was both lovable and unlikable at times, which is something I really appreciate in books—people aren't perfect, and characters shouldn't be, either. This especially applies to Cory, Merit's husband, who might have been a terrible husband and a very stereotypical heterosexual male, but he was a good person and I'm glad he wasn't vilified. My only real criticism of the book is that the ending felt really abrupt and confusing and I think it could use some clarifying.
We leave off thinking that Jane and Merit have ended things for good and we pick up again with Merit, her kids, and Cory, so it was really confusing and not entirely clear until the very end whether Merit was with Cory still or whether she eventually went back to Jane.

ahill33's review

3.25
challenging reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was an interesting read. It is a book that follows Merit, a mother who is a little bit lost in life and is going back into the work place, and Jane, her captivating new boss.

In the first half of the novel, I found Merit to be annoying. She was not in the best place with her husband, but it was frustrating to read about it. She never actually communicated with her husband about anything, but then would get mad at him all the time. Reading through it, you could tell that Merit was unsatisfied with her life (and motherhood) and was looking for a change. 

Enter Jane. Their relationship was unique from the start and was very codependent right from the beginning. The second half of the book was focused on Jane and Merit's affair. I definitely understood Merit's struggle, and I thought the author did a great job showing that. I was not surprised at the ending, I just wish we could have seen how that came to be.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for an honest review. 
lucky13advenures's profile picture

lucky13advenures's review

DID NOT FINISH
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

4.5 Stars

A beautifully written book about how messy life and love and family can actually be. I want to say it took me by surprise but I knew I would love it going in and the author did not disappoint. It touched on so much stuff but felt so real. Review to come.

kelseysreads's review


This is an interesting exploration of rethinking who you are and what you want later in life. It did end up being more romance than literary fiction in my opinion, but I enjoyed the experience of reading it, and the twist at the end was incredibly satisfying. I do have to mention that parts of Jane and Merit's relationship felt very inaccurate to real life lesbian relationships (I've never in my life heard of women in love having a passionate night together but not kissing even once?), but I was pulling for them, and still managed to have sympathy for Cory. As a side note, there was also a concerning amount of drinking in the book- not sure if that was supposed to be a subtle statement at "wine moms" or not, but it seemed like overkill. 

Overall, I did enjoy reading this one. Thanks to Putnam and NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.