rachels_booknook 's review for:

The Main Character by Jaclyn Goldis

3.5

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Thank you @atriabooks & @netgalley for sending this book for review. Opinions are my own. 

I loved Jaclyn Goldis’s last book, The Chateau. Unfortunately, I didn’t connect with this one as much but there were elements I enjoyed. 

Like The Chateau, The Main Character has five points of view – Rory, her three friends, and famous novelist Ginerva who writes books based around real people that she adapts into her main characters. After her novel about Rory is done, Ginvera sends Rory and Rory’s brother, best friend and ex-fiance on an Italian train trip. Secrets begin to unfold and Ginerva promises to reveal all when they get to their final destination. However, Rory is concerned this trip will play out like one of Ginerva’s murder mysteries and we know from the beginning that someone dies on the train. 

This book was pretty slow for the first 75% but picked up as I read to see who had died and what everyone’s secrets were. The author’s note makes it clear that this was a personal novel. A lot of her father’s childhood hiding his Judaism in the Soviet Union is given to Rory’s dad. I enjoyed the Jewish representation, especially about a time and location I don’t think is often captured in novels. However, I think as a result, she tried to do too much to make everything fit the narrative, and some things felt a bit random. 

Sadly, some of the quotes about Jews being persecuted are again relevant today, as antisemitism is rising. Against this backdrop and reading this book around Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, this quote rings true: “Jews had a moral responility to save one another – because, by and large, no one else in the world could be relied upon to do so.” 

I will definitely read Jaclyn Goldis’s next novel, The Safari. I love her writing and the exotic settings of her books.