A review by alisonburnis
Girls They Write Songs About by Carlene Bauer

emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I love a good plotless navel-gazing novel, but this was not it. It was trying way too hard to be intellectual all the time that it was exhausting. There were some sharp lines, but the pacing was weird, and the characters were too flat to be the subject of a plotless book. Rose and Charlotte are writers trying to make it in New York in the early 2000s, and this is the story of their intense friendship over decades, which ultimately fades. They see themselves as two sides of the same coin, before diverging in their thirties. 

Worse that all of its other crimes, it was boring. Charlotte stopped being interesting a few chapters in, and it continued to go downhill. They’re unlikeable in a very real way, but this is a hollow, dull novel.