A review by katyrc
Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen

2.0

Listen, I picked this up because I wanted some 1920s historical fiction after reading Lair of Dreams. I had no idea what I was getting into and to be honest right now I'm still not sure what this was. It read like a soap opera, which I expected, but it didn't have any charm: the characters were whiny and I couldn't strongly differentiate their voices, the setting wasn't special (it felt like you could have changed New York to any other city and most descriptions would have still made sense, mainly because there wasn't much of that - not to mention the glaring lack of realism in diversity of the characters, especially for 1920s NY). The drama was interesting, but in a comedic way I don't think was deliberate. I found myself confused a lot, trying to figure out how we'd just gotten from point A to point B so illogically - the last quarter of the book went at such a speed and got so dramatic but I couldn't figure out why the hell anyone was doing what they were doing. But, if I'm honest, it was a quick read and a break from whatever the hell is going on with the world, so I might consider picking up book two (with waaay lower expectations) for a bit of fun.