Thanks to @randomhouse for the ARC of How to Fall Out of Love Madly by Jana Casale. I read this book for book club. I was looking forward to it because the author has drawn comparisons to Sally Rooney. After reading, I think that comparison was just done for marketing. I didn’t really like this one, and I definitely do not think the writing compares to Sally Rooney.

This book follows three women in their 30s through some ups and downs. Joy and Annie are longtime close friends and live together, though Annie would rather live with her detached boyfriend if he would only ask. To save money, they look for a third roommate and settle on Theo. Joy is infatuated with Theo, and as they grow closer, she finds herself spending almost all of her time with him or thinking about him. The problem arises when he brings home Celine - the third “narrator” of the book.

Some of the problems in this book were interesting - how Annie would deal with her uncaring partner, for example, or deal with an anonymous note at her work alleging sexual harassment by her favorite boss. Unfortunately, though, I thought most of the character and story arcs didn’t work well. Joy lacked self respect, had major body image issues, and her interactions with Theo were very cringe. I realize this was intentional but I just didn’t think it was done well. I never felt sympathy for the characters. Celine was also a wet sandwich. She was supposed to be a misunderstood bombshell who had more going on below the surface aside from her looks, but it is only a few weeks out from reading this and all I can remember about her is that she was pretty.

For a book about friends and relationships, there is a surprising lack of intimacy in the writing and between the characters. The writing tells you what happened instead of showing you. There aren’t many actual conversations between people - more descriptions of interactions and conversations that don’t let you get to know the characters. Because of this, I thought some of their inner dialogue came off as mean, and I didn’t even buy the friendship between Annie and Joy because Annie seemingly disliked Joy so much.

I think selling this book as similar to Rooney is doing it a disservice, because I went in expecting something different than what it was. I felt like the writing was trying to be almost trendy in its wittiness, but it missed the mark. This one just wasn’t for me.