kevin

this was fun

i didn't know anything about the author beforehand and was pleasantly surprised to be picking up some queer literature. the tone has that droll irish humour at times which i found enjoyable. it's also a pretty short read which i picked up over a sunday afternoon

the story follows the lives and perspectives of a couple who have a lot of shit going on between them unexpectedly getting married interwoven with the perspectives of their friends / wedding guests. i found all the characters pretty interesting with the exception of the best man archie. i found myself really disliking him and found his characterization both inconsistent and a little unfleshed. we don't learn anything deep about his motivations and he's just a bit of a dickhead who can't get over the groom

i'd recommend this if you enjoy reading stories about the same situation from multiple perspectives. i would've liked this a lot more if it were an exploration about the situation itself (i.e. the couple getting married) as opposed to the personal histories and relationships behind the characters. i would've preferred more action around the engagement party itself like more infidelity or more secrets being spilled but i'm not disappointed by what we got. will definitely be checking out more of Naoise Dolan's works in the future

this was kind of a pain to get through for me. i read this as a part of a book club but would not see me picking this up on my own

in the author's notes, Shelby Van Pelt talks about how the literary device of the octopus came from a creative writing prompt to write from an unusual perspective and i felt like this novel never really expanded from that. the octopus feels like a bit of a gimmick and rarely has any presence throughout the book. the short chapters (if you can call them that) of the octopus are the most interesting parts of the novel as they give an interesting omniscient view of what the characters are going through but his thoughts rarely expand on the plot meaningfully and are also disappointingly infrequent

the overall plot is so unbelievably predictable that it makes the latter chapters a huge slog to get through. i was expecting some sort of crazy surprise in the end since it felt like the plot beats were a bit too obvious to predict but the ending is super disappointing. it sweeps by too quickly and there's no surprising reveal that happens

the worst part for me is the character cameron. he is completely insufferable and genuinely has 0 redeemable qualities. i'm told that he's "actually smart" but he does nothing but make idiotic decisions all day. i have absolutely no sympathy for this guy even though he's built up as the "down on his dumps" character

would not recommend this one. it's just slightly too long to be a quick read and overall just not very interesting. can't see what anyone could get out of this one but i won't yuck your yum if you enjoyed it

i loved this a lot. found out about this from the miniseries (with daisy edgar jones and paul mescal) and read it on a 6h travel day to texas. it's not a super long read so great if you're looking for something easy to pick up

i understand why this doesn't jive with a lot of people since this is pretty much the poster child of "main characters who have a minor misunderstanding who don't communicate with one another". i've also seen criticisms around some decisions that the characters make (both marianne and connell) and how the ending is pretty open ended which could be felt as being kind of inconclusive; both valid criticisms in my opinion

but nonetheless this touched a nerve for me in a really similar way that the film past lives did. it's a really raw slice of life sort of story so there are parts and situations that i can really connect to that pull me in, but there are also cases where characters do things that i don't understand (c'est la vie i guess 🤷‍♀️). will-they-won't-they tropes are also some of my guilty pleasures so it makes sense to me why i enjoyed this book so much

you're gonna love this if you love stories where you take more of a bystander approach and watch characters live their lives and do the things that they do but i can see why this would fall flat if you find the negatives of the characters to be annoying