Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Exciting Times

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Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

14 reviews

ariana3's review against another edition

emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This sucked so bad. I finally got in the groove towards the end, but the whole book was confusing. I didn't understand what I was reading. It's an Irish author, so references, jokes, and just colloquial language was hard for me to understand. And I hated the humor (aka everything about the main character...).

Basically about a girl who hated her life at home (despite what sounds like a loving, caring family) to go teach English in Hong Kong to mix things up. She's miserable because she doesn't let people in, then finds this odd (and maybe autistic?) English banker she starts sleeping with. She ends up being a freeloader and moves into his nice ass apartment, not paying rent. She's tortured by the way he treats her, since they're basically roommates with benefits, but she's unsure if she wants more. She meets this girl, they start fucking and fall in love (turns out the main character might be bisexual or just a lesbian? Unclear), but of course the main character fucks it up because she's too scared to express her feelings and regrets and apologize. The ending is vague and ambiguous on purpose, but it could be that they get back together right as the main character is literally headed to the airport to move to Berlin with her roommate-with-benefits...so freaking stupid and childish

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sestout's review against another edition

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challenging funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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alisonfaith426's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

very similar to the only Sally Rooney book i've read, Normal People, (in fact, both audiobooks were read by the same person) but where i found NP depressing, i found Exciting Times *comforting*. i think it's in the narration: NP's is third-person, detached, and almost cold, while ET's is first-person, familiar, and didn't make everything feel completely futile? it helped that i related a lot, more than i would like, to the narrator 🥲 she's just like me fr. i loved her character's voice (in the literary sense, not the audiobook, though that was good too), i saw myself reflected in it a bit.
i want to talk about the ending. at first i was disappointed, asking myself how the author could think that's a good place to stop. but i read it back and there's more to it:

the comparison of exiting the subway station to ascending into the clouds—heavenly, or at least stepping out of the dark and into the light. and to spot & run after Edith there? and Ava's admission to herself that she loves Edith, and that Edith changed her life… i think it says more about me that i wasn't against her moving to Frankfurt with Julian. because at least she had someone who ostensibly wanted her, and what more is there, right? but that's not what i was meant to take away. it's a little bit romcom, but chase after the person you wronged in a transit hub and get them back; don't settle for the emotionally stunted man-child. (i do actually kind of like Julian though, despite his politics [Miles is right]).

i also appreciate that the book is a vessel for talking about these things: even though you lovely storygraphians did not ask to hear any of this, it's nice to be able to express it.

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abbruzzese's review against another edition

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funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The truth is, you like Julian because he enables this perception you have of yourself as a detached person. Plenty of people are willing to offer you intimacy. That terrifies you. You prefer feeling like no one will ever love you.

the more i read books written by authors with a similar writing style to sally rooney, the more i realize how much i dislike sally rooney's writing. naoise dolan writes the way sally rooney thinks she does. at least that's how i think of it. dolan's writing has the wit and humour and snark needed to balance out the sociopolitical commentary and regretful introspection (much of which is so accurately reflected upon myself that it is equal parts terrifying and thrilling).

i think it's very understandable and important for a girl to have a man who she hates solely on the grounds that he does nothing to justify her feeling any other way about him. someone with whom she can say, "no, there's no genuine contempt here, however a slight animosity is the only mutual feeling either of us can play up convincingly enough to give this relationship any sort of flavour, so that's how it is." because being able to think like that—if you cared as little about me as you claim you do, you'd have gotten rid of me long ago. and because i am still here, i know this lack of consideration for me is a facade, and i can enjoy the fun that being mean brings without the usual worry that it is all based in something real.—is so good for a girl's psyche, actually. i am lucky enough to have a boy like this in my life.
it is very refreshing from other friendships, where there is no hatred, and also from other enemyships, where the hatred is real and means there's something unlikeable—and, consequently, wrong—about me.

however, there are lots of things about this book that make it a bad book fundamentally. mostly, there is a lot of casual racism that is written so plainly it is easy to miss if you don't tend to pick up on things like that (which i don't, something i know is problematic in my own being and indicative of the inherent privilege i have as a white person who can read racist things and not think too hard about them at first). there is no reason for being set in hong kong. you could pick this story up and drop it into the middle of any non-white country and achieve the exact same result. even so, despite being set in hong kong, the main characters are both white. if we divide ava's social circles into categories of friends, work colleagues, and families, only one category—friends—has any non-white people in it. and even so, half of it is still white (there are only two people in said category, julian and edith, but i rest my case).

overall i did enjoy reading this book. except i think i missed the big meanings and lessons and morals. after finishing it, i have a bit of a sour taste in my mouth caused by realizing things that didn't occur to me while reading (re: casual racism). also, i can't really grasp how things play out between ava and edith in the end. i largely dislike books with vague, unspecified endings, and sorry to say it but this book had one of them. but i can just invent a proper ending in my head and go on with my life, so that's not too troubling.

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suchheavenlytouches's review against another edition

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reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

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georgiaalexturnbull's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I feel like this book read me just as much as I read it. Ava ends up making a decision very much the opposite than I would have done myself but I love her for it.

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