Did you ever meet a couple who are married or dating, and you wonder what it is that keeps them together? Reading Nancy Pearl's George and Lizzie is kind of like that.

George Goldenrosen and Lizzie Bultmann couldn't be more different. George is affable, earnest, maybe even a little goofy. His parents loved him and his brother (and loved each other), and his father was a successful orthodontist in Tulsa, where although he was known as "the Jewish orthodontist," he treated not only all of the Jewish kids, but others as well.

Lizzie, on the other hand, was raised by two behavioral psychologists, who approached parenting as more of an experiment, and worked to control their daughter's behavior like they did their lab rats'. Everything she did, how they responded, and how she reacted were fodder for their research, and so much of her life was part of their academic legacy. But when in a moment of weakness Lizzie admitted her participation in a morally questionable activity she called "The Great Game," she didn't expect it to haunt her.

George and Lizzie have a meet-cute at a bowling alley when Lizzie and George are both students at the University of Michigan, Lizzie as an undergraduate, George as a dental student. Lizzie is nursing her wounds after the end of a relationship she thought was "the one," so she had no expectations of meeting anyone else, but George was instantly smitten. And Lizzie? Well, Lizzie was certainly fond of George...

As their relationship blossoms, Lizzie knows that George isn't really what she wants, but she doesn't seem to have the strength to object. While their different philosophies on love, relationships, and marriage cause friction, George knows he wants to spend the rest of his life with Lizzie. It isn't quite what she wants, but she doesn't know what the alternative really is. Is it settling if she loves George but feels unfulfilled?

George and Lizzie follows the couple through their first 10 years of marriage, until a long-hidden secret of Lizzie's surfaces, forcing her to finally decide what path she wants to follow. In the meantime, the book shifts back and forth between the two, and also shifts back and forth through both of their lives, detouring all over the place to briefly profile other people who have a peripheral role in the story. Sometimes the chapters serve more as vignettes than anything that actually advances the plot.

Nancy Pearl, who is a books commentator for National Public Radio, definitely knows how to tell a story. Parts of the book are entertaining, even funny, while others are poignant and thought-provoking. But in the end, I found Lizzie really unlikable and couldn't understand why anyone, much less someone like George, continued to want to be with her. At one point in the book he tells her that she is the most self-centered person he's ever known, and another time he says that she has the emotional maturity of a young child. While some of that can be attributable to her odd childhood, she doesn't do much to break out of that rut as an adult, and continuing to cling to old memories and regrets, while understandable, doesn't make her a particularly sympathetic character.

There's still a good story in here, but it requires more patience, as well as work to unearth it, than most books do.

NetGalley and Touchstone provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

It took me a long time to read this book, and I typically sail through books. I had to start three separate times. Some of that was my personal life, some was the book.

For me George and Lizzie is a coming of age book. Lizzie an interesting character. She is obviously a child of her environment and carries a lot of baggage from her childhood with her in her adult life. I found her very hard to like or to identify with. She, in my opinion, is basically a victim. I kept wondering why she couldn't just pull her head out and get on with her life. The ending gave me some hope that she will finally come into her own and be able to drop at least some of her victim mentality.

This is the story of the love story between never happy Lizzie and always positive George. Switching between the past and present and alternating between Lizzie and George readers are treated to a glimpse of the episodes that formed them and made them the Lizzie and George that find each other. A story of insecurity, friendship, and believing in love this was an enjoyable read that has you rooting for George and begging for Lizzie to get over it and allow herself to be happy.

Oof. This book was extremely uneven with pallid characters and awkward language. It read like an early draft cobbled together from disparate short stories. I wanted to love it, am a big fan of Nancy Pearl, but just couldn't.

This is indeed an unlikely marriage and George is too good to be true. The plot is ingenious, although I found it hard to believe. The characterizations were good, but again hard to believe. The best parts for me were the literary allusions and poetry, which would be expected from the librarian author.

George and Lizzie is the debut novel of Nancy Pearl, arguably the world’s most famous public librarian. Set in the 1980s/90s, George & Lizzie is mostly the story of Lizzie, who as a teenager slept with the entire high school football team on a lark. This haunts her, as does her relationship with her aloof psychologist parents and her breakup with her first love, Jack. In a post-Jack world, Lizzie somewhat reluctantly begins a relationship with George, a man from a lovely family who is very patient with Lizzie in spite of her dark moods. Even as they become more serious, Lizzie cannot let go of her past – and it puts her future with George in peril. This short, quirky novel is definitely a character study. The first half is a bit slow going but thankfully it picks up when the stories of George and Lizzie intersect. It reminded somewhat of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, but it is quite a bit lighter.

I was so disappointed by this book. Nancy Pearl is one of my favorite book people, but her first foray into fiction is lacking. The central event of the book--Lizzie's sexual adventures with her high-school football team--is perhaps meant as a kind of feminist rejoinder to slut shaming and our general cultural unease with women expressing their sexuality. But while the characters are endearingly flawed and often very funny, the plot never really goes anywhere interesting. Lizzie never does much but grow up, and while that may be seen as accomplishment, given the oddness of her childhood, it does not a plot create.

Imagine being so impacted by every event in your life that you carry it forever forward. This is exactly what Lizzie does in so many aspects. BG (before George) life is not in Lizzie's control, but after meeting George she has the power to change this. How to make that happen and how the people and events in her life can affect her ability to do so is Lizzie's struggle. Relationships, good and bad, past and present, all come together to make a truly wonderful tale of the reality of the struggles of everyday life. Very well written.

I'm not quite sure where to start. I feel almost guilty that I disliked this book as much as I did, because I greatly admire Nancy Pearl. I have to be honest and just say that this was one of the most pointless books I've ever read in my entire life. There were so many times when I just wanted to put the book down and never pick it up again. First, there was so much background on each and every character that it dragged down the plot to excruciatingly slow pacing. I didn't care about how Maverick's parents met and I certainly don't think it added anything to the novel! Pearl's numerous headings such as "THINGS WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LIZZIE" just didn't work for me and also served to slow down the pacing. Wouldn't it have been more sophisticated to just work these details into the narration? Another thing that bothered me were the sections on each and every one of Lizzie's sexual encounters with the football starters, plus the players' microhistories. I found it disturbing that she would even embark on such an incredibly stupid and dangerous "game" and certainly didn't want to read about each of her 23 experiences with them. I ended up skipping great chunks of this novel, trying to find the, admittedly, very fine thread that was Lizzie and George's relationship. How can this novel even be called "George and Lizzie" when there was far more attention and emotion put into Lizzie and Jack's relationship? The idea that Lizzie could date Jack for a mere 3 months, fall madly in love, and stay in love with him for the next several years was absolutely ludicrous and totally unbelievable. I never really felt that Lizzie truly loved or appreciated George, even after reading the ending where she supposedly realizes what she has in him. In fact, I found myself hating Lizzie throughout the entire novel-- she was incredibly selfish and judgmental, rude and unfriendly to George's friends on numerous occasions, and an overall unlikable character. I get that her parents messed her up, but I never saw any kind of warmth from her to redeem her in my eyes. I was continually told by the narrator that she was witty, had a great sense of humor, possessed superior intelligence and sweet to George, but I never actually saw this first-hand from anything she said or did. There was far too much "telling" rather than "showing." Similarly, the narration dominated the dialogue. The only parts of the novel I actually enjoyed involved George and his family's Christmas traditions. Lizzie did not deserve George, nor his loving family.

I honestly couldn't read much of this book. Not well written or intriguing. People will want to read it because of the author, but it wasn't for me.

Thanks for sending the copy but I couldn't finish.