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thatswhatshanread's review
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This book reads like several different thoughts and feelings until it doesn’t. Which is to say, at first I felt a little lost in the quick dialogue and characters whose relationships overlapped in too many ways—until, without knowing it, I fell into their world with no effort, surrounded by the complex nature of looking for love and wanting companionship, but never quite in the right way. “The Happy Couple” in question is never very happy, and their exes are never very happy, and the impending wedding seems less and less likely as the story goes on in starts and stops, present day and scenes of the past ten years.
Celine and Luke are relatable in the fact that sometimes they are not relatable at all and yet, you see them in pieces everywhere around you. Their relationship is made up of all of the other relationships they’ve been in and are in, not necessarily on just the two of them, and therein lies the dilemma. Luke and Celine aren’t really meant to be together with such an unsteady foundation, but neither of them wants to disturb the peace, which is really a lack thereof.
Perhaps I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but my main takeaway was that, although the timeline was a little murky at times, and there were probably too many characters that I mixed them up at times, I still felt a part of this story. Like maybe I was one of those other relationships that makes up the one. WHAT I’M SAYING IS… Naoise Dolan has a way of getting into your head. Her characters aren’t exactly lovable or particularly notable, but the ways they act and the things they do read just like everyday life. It’s personal in its ambiguity.
Some favorite quotes:
She said one thing and your job was to contradict. You don't care about me' meant Tell me you care', and 'I put all the work in' meant ‘Tell me you're still committed'.
Loneliness wasn’t having no one. Loneliness was the gap between what you hoped for and what you got.
Jane Austen was Jane Austen, and wrote novels that have elicited centuries of tears and laughter. She had an intellect so huge that millions still long to know it. Countless hours of human life have been spent gratefully enjoying the output of her consciousness. If you measure love by how much time another person can spend in your mind while considering the benefit all theirs, then Jane Austen is possibly the most adored woman of all time. And she still couldn't imagine a happier ending than a man becoming less mean.
Celine and Luke are relatable in the fact that sometimes they are not relatable at all and yet, you see them in pieces everywhere around you. Their relationship is made up of all of the other relationships they’ve been in and are in, not necessarily on just the two of them, and therein lies the dilemma. Luke and Celine aren’t really meant to be together with such an unsteady foundation, but neither of them wants to disturb the peace, which is really a lack thereof.
Perhaps I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but my main takeaway was that, although the timeline was a little murky at times, and there were probably too many characters that I mixed them up at times, I still felt a part of this story. Like maybe I was one of those other relationships that makes up the one. WHAT I’M SAYING IS… Naoise Dolan has a way of getting into your head. Her characters aren’t exactly lovable or particularly notable, but the ways they act and the things they do read just like everyday life. It’s personal in its ambiguity.
Some favorite quotes:
She said one thing and your job was to contradict. You don't care about me' meant Tell me you care', and 'I put all the work in' meant ‘Tell me you're still committed'.
Loneliness wasn’t having no one. Loneliness was the gap between what you hoped for and what you got.
Jane Austen was Jane Austen, and wrote novels that have elicited centuries of tears and laughter. She had an intellect so huge that millions still long to know it. Countless hours of human life have been spent gratefully enjoying the output of her consciousness. If you measure love by how much time another person can spend in your mind while considering the benefit all theirs, then Jane Austen is possibly the most adored woman of all time. And she still couldn't imagine a happier ending than a man becoming less mean.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Drug use, Infidelity, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Addiction, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Alcohol
annoyedhumanoid's review
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
+3 stars for references to Taylor Swift and Mitski
+2 stars for an enjoyable, genuinely funny cohesive collection of character studies that each serve an overarching plot. (Phoebe is my favorite, she's just like me for real—which is exactly what i said about the narrator of Dolan's first novel, Exciting Times.)
-1 star for the awkward length, about halfway between a novel and a novella. there was very little plot progression compared to character development, which isn't inherently bad, but it felt like the story stood in place while we re-litigated every character's past. if it's between being longer with more plot or shorter with less character development, and as someone storygraph brands as "Typically choos[ing] fast-paced books that are <300 pages long", you can imagine i would advocate for the latter. the obvious one to go is Vivian—i don't really know why she got her own part in the first place, except i suppose that what plot it did have couldn't have been told through Luke's because his took the format of groom speech drafts.* i appreciated her outlook on life but it felt only tangentially connected to the rest of the book. i do recognize, though, that her character is the only woman explicitly said to be a person of color, leaving a hole in her absence. it's a difficult predicament then, for which i don't have a good solution that doesn't completely deviate from the author's intent. obviously none of this matters or will ever happen, i just like thinking about how to create the (probably nonexistent) "perfect story".
*+0.5 stars for the very fun format at times. the tables? yes please! tabularly-formatted data is so pleasing to me.
and if you haven't been keeping track, that's 3+2-1+0.5, which comes out to 4.5 stars.
+2 stars for an enjoyable, genuinely funny cohesive collection of character studies that each serve an overarching plot. (Phoebe is my favorite, she's just like me for real—which is exactly what i said about the narrator of Dolan's first novel, Exciting Times.)
-1 star for the awkward length, about halfway between a novel and a novella. there was very little plot progression compared to character development, which isn't inherently bad, but it felt like the story stood in place while we re-litigated every character's past. if it's between being longer with more plot or shorter with less character development, and as someone storygraph brands as "Typically choos[ing] fast-paced books that are <300 pages long", you can imagine i would advocate for the latter. the obvious one to go is Vivian—i don't really know why she got her own part in the first place, except i suppose that what plot it did have couldn't have been told through Luke's because his took the format of groom speech drafts.* i appreciated her outlook on life but it felt only tangentially connected to the rest of the book. i do recognize, though, that her character is the only woman explicitly said to be a person of color, leaving a hole in her absence. it's a difficult predicament then, for which i don't have a good solution that doesn't completely deviate from the author's intent. obviously none of this matters or will ever happen, i just like thinking about how to create the (probably nonexistent) "perfect story".
*+0.5 stars for the very fun format at times. the tables? yes please! tabularly-formatted data is so pleasing to me.
and if you haven't been keeping track, that's 3+2-1+0.5, which comes out to 4.5 stars.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Infidelity, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Cursing, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Alcohol
Minor: Racism, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Colonisation