I enjoyed this book and was pleased to see it was a deeper book than I thought

Maybe because I'm from a small town, but I'm always a sucker for books with small towns. Glory Days is a fantastic book from Melissa Fraterrigo, exposing the seedy, gritty side of a small town.

Told from various points of view, this is a visual book. You clearly see the town and the people and the life. You feel their pain, their love and their heartbreak.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

What did I think of the book, Goodreads asks? I think it's much too gritty for me. I kept trying to find a single character with redeeming qualities, or something that would help me understand why the author was compelled to tell this story, and I just couldn't come up with anything. Way too much cruelty, sexual assault and ghosts for me to even tolerate, much less enjoy.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I'm sorry I had to be so honest with this one.

The best part of this book was the setting being around the Glory Days amusement park. It was intriguing and described well. The characters were lacking in descriptions and emotional range. While Fraterrigo created an interesting dynamic it just didn't hold up.

A solid 3.5 stars.

A very honest and real book.
The writing style of Glory Days is described in its synopsis as "gritty realism," and I could not think of a more perfect description.
Fraterrigo does a fantastic job exposing the seamy underside of the places in America that have undergone drastic change--from antiquated and comfortable to modern and unfamiliar--and have emerged battered, broken, and looking nothing like they once did. The same goes for the people who inhabit these places; either they have accepted the changes and work with them, like Teensy did, or they have fought against the inevitable metamorphosis of their hometown and are bitter, greedy, and spiteful, like Luann was.

Much of the theme of this book, in my opinion, revolves around self-entitlement, and this further plays into the book's grittiness.
Many of the characters let bitterness accompany the modernity that swept across Ingleside, and as a result, it transformed them into people who grew accustomed to taking what they wanted without considering others--although, in their defense, I suppose, they felt their actions were justified due to the fact that their once familiar way of life was taken from them by the money hungry real estate developers who came in and bought up most of Ingleside's fertile farmland.

There were definitely characters in Glory Days who were more broken and selfish (Footer and Luann) than the rest, while others had good intentions at heart, even if they sometimes made the wrong choices, particularly when it came to raising their children (Fredonia and Teensy).
And that's another major theme of the book--parenthood, all the ways parenting can go wrong, and the often devastating and lasting effects that poor parenting choices can have on the next generation.

Although the book had its fair share of darkness, there were parts that were more uplifting...(view spoiler). But for me, the brilliance behind the book was that it could be argued that the so-called uplifting parts were not much better than the darker parts. (view spoiler).

Themes aside, I enjoyed the fact that the book revolved around the amusement park Glory Days--an idea that, thankfully, has not yet been done to death in books--and that the park was what shaped many of the people of Ingleside, for better or for worse.

In the end, Glory Days is a book that highlights the flawed nature of humans and the choices they make in order to survive their circumstances and surroundings.

*Note: This ARC was kindly provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*