A review by astralasher
Worry by Alexandra Tanner

  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
This book is very hard for me to rate at this in this moment of having just finished it. I think it did what it set out to do very well. If you’re trying to read something to “escape” the real world, you will not like this. Everything annoying and the worst about our real world and all of the types of people in it is magnified in a satire-y way. Everyone is flawed and unbearable. I was really worried about the ending, since I saw so many people say it was needless animal abuse (which it wasn’t abuse, it was a
dog fight, which wasn’t abuse. There is a mention of animal abuse in the middle of the book, but it only references it, nothing is shown
but I see why it was done. At least, I have my own understanding of why. There is no character growth in this, you see why these people are the way they are, the toxic cycles that they’re, to an extent, quite hyper aware of, and in other ways completely oblivious and/or just unable to break their way out of. My thoughts on the ending bit are
that it highlights how nothing has changed for our MC. They’ve been through this year where they could’ve grown, could’ve become less toxic with their sister, could’ve broken this toxic cycle of being so much like her mom, or taking the easy way out, but she doesn’t. And in this moment, when her sister really needs her, what does she do? Nothing. Instead she opens her phone and scrolls through the ocean of conservative mommy blogger captions that she uses to numb out or feel better about herself, whatever reason she does it. Rather than doing anything in her real life.
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Overall I really enjoyed this, as much as you can enjoy something so miserable hahah. The writing way great, the narrator was amazing too, she kept me very engaged. I read along on my kindle while listening, and the way the narrator of the audiobook said certain things totally was different than how I would’ve read it, so it added a lot of tonal subtext. This is a character study type of book, no plot. Just a peak into the lives of these toxic people and the cycles of toxicity. I am just a bit tired of the late 20s something, white woman living in NYC who somehow always can afford their rent going on about how miserable they are type of book. That’s my bad for picking them up so often, I just like unlikeable MCs  
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