Here's the thing, I so badly wanted to love this book. It's about an elderly widower who meets an equally elderly woman and they embark on a romance, only for him to discover that her husband is alive and suffering from Alzheimer's. That sounds so wonderful and complex. It also deals a lot with antisemitism, as the woman is Jewish and Harvey is antisemitic, although he spends the whole book convinced he's not. He's just surrounded himself with antisemites. In fact, as proof that he's not antisemitic, he actually told his former wife to keep her antisemitic rants in private. But the antisemitism is the point, so that's not really a point against the book. 

But the thing is, it doesn't actually deal with the antisemitism well. Sarah is concerned because she doesn't trust non Jews not to be antisemitic. Harvey says they're both old and nothing matters anymore- he doesn't mind she's Jewish. So noble of him. He occasionally says offensive things and Sarah gets upset, but he's always so sorry to have offended her and decides he must walk on eggshells. He never actually confronts his own antisemitism.

Only. He gets mad at Sarah at one point. He goes through a very emotional situation and wants her with him for emotional support. So he calls her repeatedly for about 12 hours and she doesn't pick up. He gets mad about this. And I don't want to write out exactly what he said, but it was really awful. Very antisemitic and sexist, included a number of slurs and "you people are all alike." There's no coming back from that. Like at that point, I do not care about this dude and I do not want them to be together because Sarah deserved so much better. That's just abusive. Full stop.

Harvey obviously feels bad about it and calls to apologize. He says he doesn't know where it came from (ignoring the entire book's worth of his antisemitism, I suppose). And then after a while, he decides that the price he's paying (her leaving him) far outweighs his crime (antisemitic and sexist slurs). I hated the ending. It felt like it excused away a lot of his antisemitism and sexism- I don't know where it came from, how was I supposed to know you were in the hospital that night and had forgotten your phone, I'm not antisemitic, how could I be when I love you. And all of those statements were taken at face value.

Apart from that, I didn't enjoy anything in this. I didn't connect with the writing style. It felt so dry and like it spent too much time explaining everything. I was rarely in the moment with the characters. It needed to be edited a lot more as well. There were a few occasions I noticed back to back lines that looked like a slight rephrasing, like he'd written in two to see which he liked best and then forgot to delete one. And there were a few times that actions in a scene didn't make sense- like when a character is standing during a conversation and then two sentences later it'll say she stood up. And Sarah giggled constantly. Like I swear I counted about 11 times across three pages once. She didn't stop giggling. It was so annoying.

It was also super instalove-y. Nothing about their romance is built. They run into each other a couple of times at a dog park and then are immediately in love. Unless I'm mistaken, it only took three meetings for them to declare their love. It felt so shallow and emotionless. I didn't care about the relationship, apart from desperately wanting Sarah to find someone better.

Nothing about the Alzheimer's husband was really discussed. I didn't feel Harvey's pain in that situation at all. He treated it more like an inconvenience getting in the way of his relationship. He didn't really seem like he cared that Sarah was suffering. Just that he really wanted Sarah to spend more time with him, and this dying husband was taking that away from him.

This was gross. Probably would have given it two stars if Harvey had died sad and alone.