Fates and Furies in Our Shared Shelf

Nov 01, 2015 Brian rated it liked it

(3.5) Entertaining.

Understand the comparisons to Gone Girl, but the concept and style seem a little better. A few inconsistencies in characters, plot eye rolls that bothered me. Still page-turning fun. The bracketed parentheticals might've been lazy literature, but were helpful/playful literary irony.

Recommend reading in long stretches as the jumps in time can be a little jarring but for the most part are specifically chosen to enlighten surrounding narrative. You may be lost if you read in 10 p ...more

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Oct 27, 2015 Erin rated it liked it

Three and a half. I felt robbed that it took so long to get to Mathilde.

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Dec 08, 2015 Alexis rated it liked it

Shelves: bookclub

I was surprised that I didn't "love" this as much as many people do. I can certainly appreciate the excellent writing. I think I was distracted by real life and some of this book went over my head (I felt like to truly understand it I needed to be reading it as part of a literature class...all of those Shakespeare characters and myths? Over my head). I am glad that I read several reviews that mentioned how different the second half of the book is from the first, or I might not have even kept rea ...more

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Oct 19, 2015 Rasika rated it really liked it

I wanted to give this 3 stars, but I'll give it 4 for now because I'm easily pleased by Greek drama and vivid descriptions. I really enjoyed this book, but I was slightly disappointed in its characters. It is more "literary" than Gone Girl and Girl on a Train, and less over the top, yet still engrossing. Perhaps I was also biased by the literary references and sumptuous language. Yet, perhaps this book errs on the side of being overwritten, especially because it is written from the characters' P ...more

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Dec 29, 2015 VerJean rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction-contemporary

hmmm... For "the book of the year". . . I liked it; simply not a 4 or a 5 that I would enthusiastically recommend to family/friends. 'Tis true. . .we are not always that which others perceive, nor is life . . . and there are always (!) 2 (or more?) sides to a story. I just didn't get too involved with these characters, perhaps it was the one-sided "halves" of the format of this book that made them seem a bit one-dimensional as I read the book. Groff's writing IS exquisite and I'll plan to read m ...more

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Mar 12, 2016 Emily Brown rated it did not like it

Shelves: didnotfinish, kindle, clp-blog-recommendation, daily-show-or-john-oliver

I could not finish this book. It was just another story about two people in a relationship that wasn't so great. If it had better, more engaging writing, I might have gotten through it. You're better off reading "The End of the Affair" by Graham Greene or The Alexandria quartet by Laurence Durrell. Now those are EXCELLENT works of literature that will stun you. This book is just another set of words that someone decided was great so everyone else decided to read it. Yawn. ...more

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