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msmichaela's Reviews (546)
Paper thin plot, full of stereotypes about poor folks with low self esteem and snobby rich kids who don’t worry about a thing. The romance is sweet, but there isn’t a surprising or unexpected moment in the novel.
I wasn’t sure I would stick with this formally inventive novel—it felt obscure and too precious for its own good at the start. But wow am I glad I kept going. The social media allusions and meme-y references turn deeply, affectingly human in the second half of the novel. Lockwood is ferociously smart!
This novel is brilliant, but I wish I had a map or had taken notes—there are a ton of characters and their interconnected relationships reverberate through the plot in ways that would’ve been enhanced if I could have tracked them better.
Vividly drawn characters and a plot in which not much happens externally while a whole lot shifts internally. Caitlin Shetterly’s writing has gotten on my nerves since she wrote for the local alt-weekly 20 years ago. I found a few of those tics early on, but they dissipated as I read.
One note: The whole novel is written in first person except for a few chapters in third person, each of which focuses on a different member of the family. Those shifts in perspective were a little jarring, but I think they ultimately worked? Not sure why she had to do the caricatures of Maine accents, though.
One note: The whole novel is written in first person except for a few chapters in third person, each of which focuses on a different member of the family. Those shifts in perspective were a little jarring, but I think they ultimately worked? Not sure why she had to do the caricatures of Maine accents, though.
Really don’t know why I finished this repetitive, ultimately boring memoir. I am here for women’s transgressive stories about marriage and parenting but Frangello needed a far better editor.
Easy, plot-driven read that is a little heavy-handed in its progressive messaging. (And I say this as a progressive!)
Beautiful sentences, but I had a really hard time connecting with or even following the arcs of these characters.
Did I tear through it in two sittings? Yes. Was the slow-burn plot thinner than a tissue? Also yes. The characters’ motivations often made no sense, and the author seemed to assume that you’d read her first book and could fill in some major missing pieces about the cousin and her new husband.