Scan barcode
nicolelavelle's review against another edition
medium-paced
2.0
i feel like there needs to be a moratorium on female protagonists being english professors having midlife problems. would otherwise be a good book i’m just very tired of this point of view. it feels way too MFA. like i get “write what you know” but please no more new york city hetero-marital strife. this eclipsed the rest of the book’s merits for me.
candygirl929's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed the read but felt like there was so much more story to tell and the end just left me feeling like 2 broken people were going to break even more...
alexblackreads's review against another edition
3.0
It was okay. The writing was a bit meh for me because it felt like the author was trying really hard to make it sound literary. I couldn't really relate to it because for whatever reason it felt soulless and distant. It's nothing I could exactly put my finger on, but I felt nothing for this book or any of the characters. The story itself was okay and I didn't dislike it, so it received a bare minimum three stars from me, which still feels kind of generous.
molliezeee's review against another edition
2.0
Hard to manage the split timelines and too many characters in an audiobook. Anticlimactic at best.
scorpstar77's review against another edition
4.0
Told from two perspectives in two timelines, Hold Still moves toward a central event that changed everything for a family in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The mother, Maya, deals with the aftermath of the event from the present day, flashing back to when it happened. Her daughter, Ellie, tells the story from the days leading up to her transplant to Florida during that fateful summer. Both are broken women who want to help each other, but they don't know how. In the course of trying to sort out their issues, they ruin the life of another mother they both love.
I was pretty taken with this story from the beginning. The writing and characters drew me right in. I don't identify with or even like either of the main characters, but I am sympathetic to their struggles. They story is completely devastating, but there is some hope at the end.
I was pretty taken with this story from the beginning. The writing and characters drew me right in. I don't identify with or even like either of the main characters, but I am sympathetic to their struggles. They story is completely devastating, but there is some hope at the end.
debi527's review against another edition
2.0
Harsh. Choppy. Confusing. I wanted to really like this book. It was kind of like a dark poetry reading that you just "don't get" at times. Felt deeper than just some fiction, but no, I ended up not liking it. When I finished I was like- "That's it? Really?" It wasn't the "oh I don't want it to end". It was more, "wow, I think I just wasted hours".
calsters88's review against another edition
1.0
Overall, I felt this book was disappointing. I did not like the ending, and I felt like it was slapped on. I wouldn't recommend this book.
eavers's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed the writing, but the plot (as much as there was one) was not developed well. What could have been an interesting look at family dynamics and how little the people who are supposed to know us the best actually do know us just fell flat.
writtenbysime's review against another edition
4.0
Selected by The Huffington Post as one of the '32 Books to Add to Your Shelf in 2016', Lynn Steger Strong’s heartbreaking Hold Still depicts a young woman’s journey towards a fatal mistake, and examines the culpability of its characters. It’s about family, and the depths and limits of the ties that bind.
Steger’s debut is told from two perspectives in separate timelines: the past and present, or pre-catastrophe and post-catastrophe, if you prefer – with various flashbacks in between. Stephen and Maya Taylor are vaunted Columbia professors, and from the outside, you’d imagine they have the perfect family. We assume success breeds success; that it inevitably rubs off on the people surrounded by it, or born into it. But that’s not always the case, and the Taylor children – Ben and Ellie – are struggling to live up to expectations. On the one hand, Ben is like any college kid: he’s questioning his choices, deliberating over the direction in which his life is headed. His problems are manageable, though irksome to his father. But Ellie – she has real problems, has fallen in with a bad crowd, and is developing a drug habit. She’s nosediving, and may not be able to pull out of it; even worse, she may not want to, has accepted her destiny and is ready to crash and burn. Not that Stephen and Maya are exactly flawless. They have issues of their own, camouflaged by their professions, veiled in public, but flare to life in the privacy of their own home. They have passed their imperfections onto their children, somehow magnified and twisted.
In a last ditch effort to revive her daughter, Maya send Ellie to Florida to look after a friend’s child. It’s a chance to step away from the dark tendrils pulling her closer to oblivion in New York; a fresh start, a chance to rebuild. But just as it appears Ellie is getting back on track, she makes a fatal mistake. And years later, the Taylor family is dealing with the consequences, struggling to cope with the guilt over the choices they’ve made, their fractured relationships, and the irreparable damage they’ve caused to the life of a young mother.
Lynn Steger Strong’s characters are beguilingly human, full of good intentions that pave the way to the very worst kind of hell. Hold Still is powerful, melancholy, and devastating. You will read it in a single burst, and it will resonate for a long, long time.
Steger’s debut is told from two perspectives in separate timelines: the past and present, or pre-catastrophe and post-catastrophe, if you prefer – with various flashbacks in between. Stephen and Maya Taylor are vaunted Columbia professors, and from the outside, you’d imagine they have the perfect family. We assume success breeds success; that it inevitably rubs off on the people surrounded by it, or born into it. But that’s not always the case, and the Taylor children – Ben and Ellie – are struggling to live up to expectations. On the one hand, Ben is like any college kid: he’s questioning his choices, deliberating over the direction in which his life is headed. His problems are manageable, though irksome to his father. But Ellie – she has real problems, has fallen in with a bad crowd, and is developing a drug habit. She’s nosediving, and may not be able to pull out of it; even worse, she may not want to, has accepted her destiny and is ready to crash and burn. Not that Stephen and Maya are exactly flawless. They have issues of their own, camouflaged by their professions, veiled in public, but flare to life in the privacy of their own home. They have passed their imperfections onto their children, somehow magnified and twisted.
In a last ditch effort to revive her daughter, Maya send Ellie to Florida to look after a friend’s child. It’s a chance to step away from the dark tendrils pulling her closer to oblivion in New York; a fresh start, a chance to rebuild. But just as it appears Ellie is getting back on track, she makes a fatal mistake. And years later, the Taylor family is dealing with the consequences, struggling to cope with the guilt over the choices they’ve made, their fractured relationships, and the irreparable damage they’ve caused to the life of a young mother.
Lynn Steger Strong’s characters are beguilingly human, full of good intentions that pave the way to the very worst kind of hell. Hold Still is powerful, melancholy, and devastating. You will read it in a single burst, and it will resonate for a long, long time.