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3.39 AVERAGE
3.39 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Much of the experience of reading this book is wondering why anyone would care what happens to any of these dumb people.
Recently I’ve been reading a lot of books that I love and then when I turn to Goodreads I see that they are given pretty mediocre reviews. This is another one.
I loved this book. I loved it because I am currently feeling just as unmoored as Julia was, even though I’m 27 and maybe should be way more established. Whatever. It was a book that came to me at the perfect time, and it left me feeling hopeful about the future.
I loved this book. I loved it because I am currently feeling just as unmoored as Julia was, even though I’m 27 and maybe should be way more established. Whatever. It was a book that came to me at the perfect time, and it left me feeling hopeful about the future.
If I could give this book 6 stars I would. It’s like Anna Pitoniak wrote this book solely for me. From the start I was staying up past my bedtime to read one more chapter and waking up early to keep reading, it was just that good. Instead of trying to hash out everything I loved about it, I’m going to include some of my favorite quotes (mostly for me to remember):
“I was melancholy because, despite my fixation on Evan, I’d forgotten his birthday until that moment. Time was passing. I was forgetting things, the specific things. Evan was becoming an abstract longing” (235).
“I had always been the girl that had done everything right, who had followed the rules and checked every box. The problem emerged from my failure to continue that trajectory. I had grown too unsure of everything. I hesitated, I wavered. I needed someone to tell me what to do next” (248).
“What Maria had given me was simply a reminder that the loneliness didn’t have to last forever. I didn’t have to know what came next in order to have hope” (277).
“I was so focused on the idea of what came next. On the idea of packing up the last of my boxes and putting them in the U-Haul with Julia’s and arriving later that week at our apartment in New York, beginning the next chapter of our life together. That’s all that mattered, the continuation of the present into the future, the un-interruption of that dream” (286).
“But maybe there would always be people like me. Those for whom figuring it out came at a steep cost. I could feel it happening slowly, in the smallest of steps. The future getting brighter. Where I was that day was in fact better than where I had been a year earlier. But the painful part was admitting what had happened to get there. The implosion of two lives so that I might one day rebuild mine” (304).
Just an absolutely perfect book that felt like it was written about me, for me. It perfectly summarized the drifting of an early 20’s relationship at the beginning of real adulthood.
I already want to read it again.
“I was melancholy because, despite my fixation on Evan, I’d forgotten his birthday until that moment. Time was passing. I was forgetting things, the specific things. Evan was becoming an abstract longing” (235).
“I had always been the girl that had done everything right, who had followed the rules and checked every box. The problem emerged from my failure to continue that trajectory. I had grown too unsure of everything. I hesitated, I wavered. I needed someone to tell me what to do next” (248).
“What Maria had given me was simply a reminder that the loneliness didn’t have to last forever. I didn’t have to know what came next in order to have hope” (277).
“I was so focused on the idea of what came next. On the idea of packing up the last of my boxes and putting them in the U-Haul with Julia’s and arriving later that week at our apartment in New York, beginning the next chapter of our life together. That’s all that mattered, the continuation of the present into the future, the un-interruption of that dream” (286).
“But maybe there would always be people like me. Those for whom figuring it out came at a steep cost. I could feel it happening slowly, in the smallest of steps. The future getting brighter. Where I was that day was in fact better than where I had been a year earlier. But the painful part was admitting what had happened to get there. The implosion of two lives so that I might one day rebuild mine” (304).
Just an absolutely perfect book that felt like it was written about me, for me. It perfectly summarized the drifting of an early 20’s relationship at the beginning of real adulthood.
I already want to read it again.
I really felt like I was able to relate to what the characters were goin through although the time period isn't the same. I just recently graduated so I understand the struggle of hunting for a job and stressing about the "real world."
I did enjoy the premise of this novel - particularly the Canadian references. However, I started to really become irritated by both protagonists in the middle of the book. I couldn't empathise with either, which just annoyed me. But overall, it was well-written and I hope to read more from Pitoniak in the future.
Really enjoyed this one. For a financial collapse novel, it doesn't come near Behold the Dreamers, but as a portrait of a relationship, it really delivers. Reminded me of a younger Fates and Furies.
I read this because I needed a book and it was at the library. It just wasn't believable and the characters were anything but likeable. I appreciate the perspective of the crash from this demographic, but this did not even scratch the surface of the consequences of the economy are still occurring.
This was a 2.5 for me. Partly just because I thought it was too long for what it was. I thought both of the main characters were sort of awful and selfish and I couldn't understand why they were staying together. If they were married or a lot older where they had invested years in the relationship or had kids or something it would have made more sense to me, but it took forever of them being unhappy for one of them to even consider breaking up. Just meh.