Samus’s Reviews > Fundamentally > Status Update

Overall feeling on this one is frustration I think. Novel fails to unify its tone with its subject matter, and fails to come to a unity or clarity with the points it’s making. Ending felt a little rushed, a little mawkish - I would have liked more time for then ending themes to develop and resolve.

Somehow, going back to her shitty family and not staying with the hot lesbian she’s vibing with in Turkey for four months does not seem like the winning play here

Called it

This book could almost be rephrased as a woman in her 30s with a PhD is a serial clinger-on to a variety of emotional-unavailable-but-physically-near characters and co-opts their personalities, and who fails up to stop repeating this dysfunctional pattern. I want her to have a personality, be less insular and emotionally distant, but is she deliberately characterised this way, as intentional evidence of her trauma?

I have split opinions on this novel. I can’t help but wonder what it was like before the industry got hold of it and edited into something chick-lit sellable