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3.39 AVERAGE
3.39 AVERAGE
Promising beginning until you realize how awful both of these characters are. To be fair, I don’t mind awful characters, I’d even say I can come to love them, like Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. But this no Wuthering Heights. The story wasn’t very compelling and it was impossible to sympathize with their “white people” problems, especially with the financial crisis backdrop that was going to affect the world for the decade to come. They are both young and privileged, behave horribly towards each other, probably in part because they have fallen out of love, and generally lack empathy. I guess you’re supposed to feel for them because they both lost their jobs (even though neither one of them was really all that passionate about the work in the first place) and ended up cheating and betraying each other (they’re in their early 20s for crying out loud, break up and move on!) Not sure why I even finished this book as I would get thoroughly annoyed on a very regular basis.
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Never mind I'm just going to do my review now. But hold on - this will get bumpy.
I really want to give this one star, but I can't. Thinking about this book, there's a lot of positives. Pitoniak is a great writer, if somewhat cliche. Evan's plot line was really interesting and compelling, and, without it, this book would have been literal trash. But with it, it was almost enjoyable. Flawed as it is, The Futures is also a really interesting character study.
I don't mind characters we're all supposed to hate - I really, really don't. But Julia and Evan are just such pricks.
Let's begin with Julia, shall we? She starts out as a whiny, privileged little white girl, who enters the real world, and somehow finds more ways to be whiny and privileged. Towards the end of the novel, Julia mentions how incapable she is of loving, but newsflash Julia: you're not. You're just dumb. I've read books, watched movies, and known plenty of cheaters. It's not the adultery that bothers me as much as the fact that Julia never really acknowledges her faults. She's just kind of like "oops!" the first time she cheats in college, which I guess we can chock up to youthful ignorance. Who hasn't done something stupid in college? But then she cheats with Adam and then ON Adam and she's still like "meh." The only thing she's really upset about is that Adam ruined Evan's life. Sure, she says she feels bad about the cheating thing too, but she never told Abby about Jake. So we spend this whole novel thinking Julia's a psycho, and we're forced to accompany her on her SUPER DUPER HARD LIFE!1!!111 not feeling bad for her at all. Her story line was honestly the worst thing to get through.
BUT WAIT!!! It turns out it isn't Julia's fault at ALL that she cheated all those times!!!! NO!!! It's Adam's . She was sexually assaulted, after all. And if we know anything about sexaul assault, it either makes unable to love (STILL BITTER AT [book:A Little Life|22822858] ) or, in this case, a cold-hearted cheater who uses men to make herself feel better. This message is damaging to victims, it's lazy writing, it's damaging to victims, and it's literally all bullshit. I'm SICK OF READING ABOUT IT!!! I AM FUCKING SICK OF IT!! SICK!!! OF!!! IT!!!! So, anyway, that's when I stopped reading.
But now let's talk about Evan!!! Evan is at least better because his story line is so much more interesting and easier to care about. But he's still awful?? Like he treats Julia terribly the whole time they're together, so when you're not reading about how terrible Julia is, you're feeling sorry for her because Evan is, like, the WORST boyfriend ever. Plus it's hard to care about him being jerked around because, once again, who's fault is it that he's involved in all this??? EVAN'S!!!! Yes, Evan's. And he just happens to run into Adam one day. In NEW YORK CITY????? Um okay. Yeah no I'm totally with you Pitoniak. But the real moment was when Evan was like "it's not the big of a city - Julia probably ran into him to" like ONCE AGAIN!!! WE ARE IN NEW!!! YORK!!! CITY!!! NOT LIKELY that they'd just happen to run into each other. AND BOTH OF THEM???? in that order??? like the world is small, but idk. And then Julia runs into that other guy from college who obviously had chemistry and complicated with Julia, and Julia and him obviously are both secretly still madly in love. Like enough. Okay we get it.
Also Adam is only dating Julia to get to Evan to back stab him and tear Spire to shreds???? I guess I missed the point where he's God and happened to know what Evan was going to do like months in the future. Anyway, everyone in this book sucks. Except Abby. I think I like Abby. But the Fletchers? Awful, both of them. Julia's parents? Terrible. Julia's boss? psycho cliche New York crazy girl we've all met. Evan's boss? Power crazed jerk. Everyone in this book??????? AWFUL.
Anyway, really didn't enjoy reading this, but I appreciate what Pitoniak was trying to do. It was just a really unenjoyable experience and so it was hard to ever really love it. The sexual assault thing was really what sent me over the edge, but the whole time I struggled.
I really want to give this one star, but I can't. Thinking about this book, there's a lot of positives. Pitoniak is a great writer, if somewhat cliche. Evan's plot line was really interesting and compelling, and, without it, this book would have been literal trash. But with it, it was almost enjoyable. Flawed as it is, The Futures is also a really interesting character study.
I don't mind characters we're all supposed to hate - I really, really don't. But Julia and Evan are just such pricks.
Let's begin with Julia, shall we? She starts out as a whiny, privileged little white girl, who enters the real world, and somehow finds more ways to be whiny and privileged. Towards the end of the novel, Julia mentions how incapable she is of loving, but newsflash Julia: you're not. You're just dumb. I've read books, watched movies, and known plenty of cheaters. It's not the adultery that bothers me as much as the fact that Julia never really acknowledges her faults. She's just kind of like "oops!" the first time she cheats in college, which I guess we can chock up to youthful ignorance. Who hasn't done something stupid in college? But then she cheats with Adam and then ON Adam and she's still like "meh." The only thing she's really upset about is that Adam ruined Evan's life. Sure, she says she feels bad about the cheating thing too, but she never told Abby about Jake. So we spend this whole novel thinking Julia's a psycho, and we're forced to accompany her on her SUPER DUPER HARD LIFE!1!!111 not feeling bad for her at all. Her story line was honestly the worst thing to get through.
BUT WAIT!!! It turns out it isn't Julia's fault at ALL that she cheated all those times!!!! NO!!! It's Adam's . She was sexually assaulted, after all. And if we know anything about sexaul assault, it either makes unable to love (STILL BITTER AT [book:A Little Life|22822858] ) or, in this case, a cold-hearted cheater who uses men to make herself feel better. This message is damaging to victims, it's lazy writing, it's damaging to victims, and it's literally all bullshit. I'm SICK OF READING ABOUT IT!!! I AM FUCKING SICK OF IT!! SICK!!! OF!!! IT!!!! So, anyway, that's when I stopped reading.
But now let's talk about Evan!!! Evan is at least better because his story line is so much more interesting and easier to care about. But he's still awful?? Like he treats Julia terribly the whole time they're together, so when you're not reading about how terrible Julia is, you're feeling sorry for her because Evan is, like, the WORST boyfriend ever. Plus it's hard to care about him being jerked around because, once again, who's fault is it that he's involved in all this??? EVAN'S!!!! Yes, Evan's. And he just happens to run into Adam one day. In NEW YORK CITY????? Um okay. Yeah no I'm totally with you Pitoniak. But the real moment was when Evan was like "it's not the big of a city - Julia probably ran into him to" like ONCE AGAIN!!! WE ARE IN NEW!!! YORK!!! CITY!!! NOT LIKELY that they'd just happen to run into each other. AND BOTH OF THEM???? in that order??? like the world is small, but idk. And then Julia runs into that other guy from college who obviously had chemistry and complicated with Julia, and Julia and him obviously are both secretly still madly in love. Like enough. Okay we get it.
Also Adam is only dating Julia to get to Evan to back stab him and tear Spire to shreds???? I guess I missed the point where he's God and happened to know what Evan was going to do like months in the future. Anyway, everyone in this book sucks. Except Abby. I think I like Abby. But the Fletchers? Awful, both of them. Julia's parents? Terrible. Julia's boss? psycho cliche New York crazy girl we've all met. Evan's boss? Power crazed jerk. Everyone in this book??????? AWFUL.
Anyway, really didn't enjoy reading this, but I appreciate what Pitoniak was trying to do. It was just a really unenjoyable experience and so it was hard to ever really love it. The sexual assault thing was really what sent me over the edge, but the whole time I struggled.
I’d give it a three and a half if I could, relatively entertaining but also nothing spectacular. Happy to have read it, but not clamoring to recommend it to someone else either.
Rounding up for good writing. These were two very hard to care about characters. I feel like I really stuck with it because I don't shy away from difficult characters but in the end they had just lost me. There's a decent idea in here somewhere but the execution is somewhat tone deaf.
Kept waiting for the POINT to appear. Two young and self-absorbed kids have a tough time adjusting to adult life after finishing their Ivy League degrees. They have jobs in NYC and their morals are challenged. Ok. Writes from both their perspectives but I did not find this particularly interesting. Perhaps if I were younger!
After reading several books this last year about young white people in NYC, I think I have finally learned my lesson. I'm not sure if the characters in these novels live a life so unlike my own reality that I can't relate or if it is that I hate every cliché they stand for (cheaters, liars, shallow, money obsessed...), but if a novel even MENTIONS "New York City" then I'm going to do myself a favor and skip it. This book was not for me and the only reason I bumped it up to two stars was because there was at least SOME character development for the female protagonist at the end.
I’m conflicted because on the one hand I read this quickly and found it somewhat gripping (I will think back on it in a few months and not remember why), but on the other hand it’s about very privileged (rich, white, beautiful, tall) university grads who feel sorry for themselves (a lot) and make selfish decisions, and none of that is a problem except that I think we’re meant to empathize with them? A step too far for me. Also it’s set during the 2008 financial crisis but all of our characters are employed and living in New York. So you know, even that’s ok for them. Hilariously there’s a characters who’s worried about being laid off and losing his visa and being sent back to Canada. I found this funny. Made it sound like a dangerous country with no prospects. lol.