Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Where'd You Go, Bernadette

This book kept me laughing. I was pretty much the target audience at the time I read it, so it was very relatable to me. Also it’s set in Seattle which I know well and boy does she do a good job with parodying the characteristics of a PNW mom of the time. A good palate cleanser with a darker emotional understory, but uplifting nonetheless. (The movie was awful and drained all humor from the story -skip it).

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meganpbennett's review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

2.0

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is a book that's incredibly hard to rate. It's... a mediocre book about a family you hate from the get go. Bee, the daughter, is not a nice person, and it shows throughout the entire story. Bernadette herself suffers from a horrific experience while trying to build the Twenty Mile House, one which people told her to dust herself off and get back on the horse, all the while ignoring what happened. Then she moved to Seattle, and wasted away in a house that was literally falling apart around her ears. The sort of falling apart where it's a miracle social services hasn't been called.

The novel isn't exactly as described, since a third of the story takes part before the family trip to Antarctica, and it's a little hard to follow, at first, since it's only later revealed that it's Bee creating the story from a dossier she received about the few weeks before Bernadette disappears, causing the perspective to drastically change and the reliability of the narrator to shift from 'unreliable' to 'complete fiction'.

However, that's what makes this book work, and the fact that we lose that shifting, epistolary story exactly when Bernadette disappears, thoroughly weakening the last 50-100 pages, and causing it to lose a star.

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chris_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful mysterious reflective relaxing

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

5.0

4.5 Stars

Apparently I need to read more satire because I liked this way more than I thought I would. It took a little to get into the epistolary format, but I learned to love it. It definitely served the story best and couldn't have been told any other way.

This was wild. I got so sucked into these characters lives. Who knew how lively the underbelly of tech company office politics and the somehow even more dramatic school pickup line discourse could be. The view through the back-and-forth gossipy e-mails of "Seattle's Elite" was too priceless. The characters were entertaining, annoying, dramatic to the point of obnoxiousness, but believable. They all had flaws that were specific and personal and developed in ways so much more than I expected.

The crowning jewel was Bernadette herself, whose situation wavered from plausible to ridiculously absurd and back again. I loved seeing her larger-than-life personality navigate the treacherous waters of social interaction, uncovering her various neuroses and the reasons behind them. Her spirited, meandering tirades were some of my favorite parts.

This book was far from perfect. There isn't some big message, and there are things I would change, but I had fun reading it, and if that's not the point, what is? I'm here to have a good time, and so is this book.

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erickert's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

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thewordsdevourer's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

I don't know whether to regret not reading this book years earlier, but in hindsight, I feel like I'm able to appreciate the book and its ideas more that I'm older.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is a refreshingly atypical story filled with complex but ultimately humane characters. Despite its 'comedy' genre, I don't find the book that humorous, perhaps because underneath all the satire, there lies irrefutable truths. Bernadette is one-of-a-kind, and so are her drive, backstory, and motives, and her relationship with Bee is a great, nuanced one as well.

The book's unconventional format also elevates it, enabling the audience to read the story from multiple perspectives and offering an insight to each narrating character. Instantly readable from start to finish.

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