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A review by dragonlilly
Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
2.0
Julia was extremely infuriating for at least the first 75% of this book, and goodness she made it a struggle to get through but luckily the audiobook helped and the audio was at least well done. Being in her awful head sucked. She does get better in the last quarter when she somewhat redeems herself and really starts to support Ben and Sunny more. Besides the last quarter where every character in the book grew and became better, Julia was consistently terrible the rest of the story, outdoing all the rest because while everyone had faults and that was quite realistic, Julia just kept making the worst decisions over and over. None of the trauma and emotional abuse she suffered when younger and from her mother (which was very real, and certainly I sympathized and understood child Julia), justifies the wrongs she does within the novel (of course not), but I also was not convinced that it all made sense. I get that her mother basically caused Julia to suppress any emotions and this causes confusion for her and that her traumas (both from childhood and from giving birth) may have also been a big part of her depression and what seemed to be postpartum depression, but she still does some extremely dumb things. Mark should have tried more too, but how is Julia married to him for so long and yet they never really talk about anything? She never tries to sit down and tell him something is wrong? And then she gets angry when other people are rightfully upset at her and this causes you to hate Julia even more because she doesn't usually have a right to be mad.
It was gross when she thought Ben and Sunny's marriage would be doomed due to the concept of marriage, which is unfortunately clouded by biases Julia has when looking at her own marriage, and throughout the book I hated whenever she talked about marriage generally because she made the marriage herself, what the heck. She refuses to understand most people. The cheating was terrible, and the fallout of it, and how even though she was the person in the wrong she would still somehow twist the situation and blame others, even getting mad at Mark when she was being an enormous hypocrite many times. I truly just wanted her to fall off a cliff unfortunately, and it all felt like meaningless pain for the other characters and herself even because non of her stupid decisions really made sense, which I guess was the point because she didn't even know why she was doing these things either until after the fact, but she should have known better with the things that were morally wrong.
At least the ending for the present timeline was sweet, although the future overview was sad again, even though I felt nothing for Julia there. The future wrap up made sense at least. The story was a bit too long, but was intriguing if irritating because of Julia. Francine said something wise about relationships and the type of things a couple talks about and how it could be hard to introduce a new topic or kind of conversation if the couple never had the context for it. This story worked well when it illustrated the difficulties of motherhood over the years; how mothers are affected during pregnancy, childbirth, and after; the seriousness of depression; and the different kinds of mothers, of which we see many. I was not as convinced by how this story explored marriages, especially since the main one between Mark and Julia was essentially a marriage of not just misunderstanding, but almost a refusal to communicate. Female relationships were explored in interesting and different ways, whether between family, friends, acquaintances, and rivals (even if the rivalry is stupid). So, at least two out of three of the main themes were explored somewhat well and convincingly.
It was gross when she thought Ben and Sunny's marriage would be doomed due to the concept of marriage, which is unfortunately clouded by biases Julia has when looking at her own marriage, and throughout the book I hated whenever she talked about marriage generally because she made the marriage herself, what the heck. She refuses to understand most people. The cheating was terrible, and the fallout of it, and how even though she was the person in the wrong she would still somehow twist the situation and blame others, even getting mad at Mark when she was being an enormous hypocrite many times. I truly just wanted her to fall off a cliff unfortunately, and it all felt like meaningless pain for the other characters and herself even because non of her stupid decisions really made sense, which I guess was the point because she didn't even know why she was doing these things either until after the fact, but she should have known better with the things that were morally wrong.
At least the ending for the present timeline was sweet, although the future overview was sad again, even though I felt nothing for Julia there. The future wrap up made sense at least. The story was a bit too long, but was intriguing if irritating because of Julia. Francine said something wise about relationships and the type of things a couple talks about and how it could be hard to introduce a new topic or kind of conversation if the couple never had the context for it. This story worked well when it illustrated the difficulties of motherhood over the years; how mothers are affected during pregnancy, childbirth, and after; the seriousness of depression; and the different kinds of mothers, of which we see many. I was not as convinced by how this story explored marriages, especially since the main one between Mark and Julia was essentially a marriage of not just misunderstanding, but almost a refusal to communicate. Female relationships were explored in interesting and different ways, whether between family, friends, acquaintances, and rivals (even if the rivalry is stupid). So, at least two out of three of the main themes were explored somewhat well and convincingly.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Infidelity, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Abandonment, and Classism
Minor: Adult/minor relationship