Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really, really, really tried with this one, but oh my god talk about annoying, unlikable, unredeemable main characters. "Homemaker" and yet she does nothing but go around bothering people all day for gossip regarding a missing person because all of her housework is taken care of a team of hired individuals. She even has a business card like okay maybe I should get a business card for being a stay at home student who reads and looks at celebrity subreddits all day 😭. Also the whole premise is just weak and takes great inspiration from LuLaRoe (yes all MLMs are the same but the whole set up in this is just too similar down to the rotten storage containers). Not once did I find myself caring enough about what could have possibly happened to the missing mom because the main character spends so much time just stroking her own ego. We also keep getting told the same information repeatedly as she goes around catching other characters up on what she learned. We as the reader already know what's going on, we don't need to be reminded every other page.

I'm sorry this book just made me so angry and I had really wanted to give it a chance enough to finish. Others seemed to have really liked this book so maybe I'm truly just a #1 hater. 

I really wanted to like this so I'm sad to be putting it down. I think Holly Wilson presents a unique writing style and in a way does a good job of describing the inner workings of an annoying child lmao. The writing becomes a chore to read after a while though and unfortunately I found myself putting this down every 3 mins and just overall wanting the story to be over. I never found myself coming around to any of the characters and the vibes alone were not enough to carry me through. I wasn't the biggest fan of the magical elements in this and I think I might have enjoyed it more had it stayed more realistic, but I can see how that plays into this being told from a child. I might want to revisit this in a few years, we'll see. 

Reading this I sort of felt like Scott Pilgrim while he's reading that email and he's like "... blah blah blah ... this is .. this is ... bORINNNNNNG!"

I felt Sash Bischoff shows great promise, her writing is good if not slightly too detailed. But man the more I read from this book that more I looked at the pile of other library books awaiting me and I just had to give up. This is sold as some "feminist" retelling of some Fitzgerald book I never read, but man are the female characters in this so ... stereotypical? I don't know everyone felt like a caricature and it didn't help I finished The Silent Patient not so long ago (very similar vibe here but this book is written better lmao). I am still interested in seeing what Bischoff does next. Maybe I'll revisit this some other time (probably not).

Having gained the skill of DNFing I now seem unable to control myself. Anyway this book was ... you guessed it! Boring. At first I really found myself enjoying the setting and hearing about the same places I have visited and explored in the Bay Area. I thought I would learn to love the characters, get over their obnoxious song discussions, and instead I just kept disliking them more and more. There was a weird scene where the one notable (?) person of color (I think they were half Mexican and half white) makes a comment about privilege and that even if white people did invent country music (they did not) it would have been poor white people not annoying teenagers in college. I say weird because (I know this is the 2000s) she's dismissed basically for being middle class herself ... huh?? 

I didn't know people were comparing this to Daisy Jones and the Six (which I admittedly rated highly at first but looking back I'd rate much lower today) and I think had I known that I would have hesitated in picking this up. I know there's a movie coming out staring Saoirse Ronan sometime in the future, so I might end up picking this up again if I like the movie. Time will tell. 

Híjole! This was not good. 

This book is fairly well rated and I was excited after reading the inside cover, but wow I just ... am I a massive hater? Is this a me problem? The writing was just not good and doing multiple POVs without distinctive voices made it all that more boring. The weird use of second person in parts of Mila's chapters to throw off the reader felt annoying. I'm like 90% sure my predications are right, but I don't care enough to skim read to check. Moments like these make me so glad I make use of my library.

I put this down initially cause it was too slow and the story wasn’t interesting enough to power through. I decided if I liked his other book I’d keep going but I ended up dnfing that one too lmao. I just don’t think his writing is for me and it’s time to move on. 

I admittedly did not do my due diligence and was unaware this was actually a romance book, I was thinking it’d be more lit fic with slight background romance. Anyway, I’ve read romance books before so I was willing to keep going. Man was this so boring lmao just long chapters of the most mundane conversations and “quirky” humor I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes. Any time I picked it up I could not wait to put it down. Also way too many taylor swift references for me personally.

I really tried to power through this but HOTDOG! it was so boring and it just kept going on and on and on. I think this book was interesting in that it attempted to explore how it's not just Fox News that leads to an Alt-Right thinking. There are different pipelines like "crunchy" mom influencers, ads that prey on you during vulnerable times, and a lack community/friendship. However, it almost takes on a silly tone after a while of just repetitive scene after repetitive scene. The message becomes jumbled and I was just so bored I didn't care to see how any of this ended. 

This would have been much better left as a short story which I believe is what it originally was and then got stretched to 300+ pages. 

Going in I had a feeling this wasn't going to be a book I was going to like and I just had my feelings confirmed. I think I'm bored of the dom/sub stereotype with a tall, handsome man and a stressed, overworked woman. I want something nontraditional! I want the short, dorky femme domming the shit out of some tall, burly guy. Fuck it! Anyway, yeah this was lame lmao I just could not care at all about anything that these characters were going through and it all felt so forced. Ali Hazelwood ... might we never meet again. (This is a lie I'm gonna try and read her Bride book.) 

This has been on my physical TBR for so long I don't recall what initially made me buy this book. I think the premise is interesting and something that actually makes my skin crawl, the inevitable loss of water in California. However, this was such a bore to get through and it just felt like for so much of the opening nothing was happening that was interesting enough. Also the characters are so completely unlikable I can't excuse it just because they're going through some kind of hardship. Eventually it got to a point where I knew I was gonna rate this horribly and I have too many other books calling my name.