skudiklier's Reviews (647)

God Mary Oliver was a treasure. We are so lucky to have her words. 

A possibly red flag about me is that part of me deep down truly believes that if everyone in the world read at least one Mary Oliver poem every day, the world would be a better place. 

I was really excited about this book because I loved these authors' other book, but to be honest this one just felt worse to me. The writing isn't great in a lot of ways, and I just kept being like, why is this happening? It felt so much less real.

Like, why does Deja think their relationship is real when the marriage for money thing was her idea? Why are the conversations between Lillian and Kia so surface level? Why didn't the neighborhood just vote not to sell, since they clearly didn't want Mega Eats to buy it? Wouldn't the neighborhood association people have known the property line cut through her house? Why do they have to live together?

Everyone seems to make a lot of assumptions and things feel really forced.

I did end up finishing the book and I liked it more by the end, but I'm just a sucker for romance in general. It's not terrible or anything but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I'll still read whatever the authors write next though, in the hopes that it will be better than this one/more like the first one!

Thank you to Netgalley and Forever for the chance to read and review this ARC. 

Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my favorite authors, so I don't like how conflicted I feel about this book. In some ways I really liked it, and I read the last 80% of it basically in one sitting. But in other ways it was unsatisfying and distressing, and not the book I felt I'd signed up for. I was not a fan of the sudden affair or how much that seemed to be the main point of the book/ending. As someone twelve weeks pregnant, it was really interesting to read about all the pregnancy experiences in this book, and her life as a stay-at-home parent. But I also hated the ableism, even if it was probably more of a product of the time it was written than anything else. I don't know. I'll still read anything Sittenfeld writes, but I don't think I'll be recommending this book to anyone ever.