The plot and the characters failed to engage me. The pace of the book was painfully slow and there were very apparent instances of poor developmental and line editing.

This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Stories We Tell Ourselves by Sarah Francoise is about family relationships and dynamics and tensions that surface when they come together.

The concept of this book really intrigued me, but sadly the execution was lacking and didn't draw me in. The story was very muddled and confused, and possibly the ebook format didn't help but I struggled to remember who was who. And to be honest, I struggled to care. There is a chance that this is all to do with the translation of the story and that it tells much better in its native language, but within English and in the manner that it was translated, I did not enjoy.

The premise of this book intrigued me but I felt the execution left a lot to be desired. Perhaps it was because of the format of an e-book, but I really struggled to remember which character was which and had to keep swiping back to try sort them in my mind.

As the family reunite for Christmas, I was looking forward to the explosive dynamics that come with a dysfunctional family. Yet it all flat, flat and drab in my opinion. Nothing really progressed or came to a head.

Disappointing to say the least.

1/5 stars.

I received an e-copy from the publishers via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publishers via Netgalley.

Put simply, I didn't like or enjoy this book. The story follows a family, and how dysfunctional they all are in their different ways and problems. I thought this would make for interesting reading, and perhaps it would have done, if I had managed to get along with the writing. I found everything so disjointed, which often left me feeling confused. I struggled to remember who was who, and what was going on, as everything chopped and changed around in a hard to follow fashion. I suspect a lot of the problems I had with this book may be due to poor translation, as sometimes words just didn't seem to fit together in a way that would come naturally in English. Others have liked this one, so don't let my review put you off. This just clearly wasn't for me in terms of writing style.

I'll have to admit, I struggled slightly with the complexity of the characters in this one. I found there to be so many different little stories that it all got a little confusing, and in the end it really felt like there was no proper outcome to the story.

There were parts that made me laugh, and parts that I enjoyed, but as a whole, I really did struggle.

I liked this book and the author's writing style. However, I felt there were too many characters so it was difficult to follow the narrative at times.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read.

A gentle story about the relationships within a family who reunite for
Christmas. There is no heavy drama here but more of an exploration of relationship dynamics between the parents and their adult children Lois, Maya and William and their partners. A common thread is how these different relationships manage a third person in the relationship and much is left up to the reader to interpret.

This is set up as someones memory. It feels real, but with time, details have been forgotten. I never felt a part of the memory, I felt like an intruder in the house. I felt like I was watching a Christmas in someone else house where I was not invited.

The story was flat, and nothing spesial happened. I did not feel that ut was surprising in any way. The ending came to quickly. The ending felt like the types of "I have written myself into a corner, not knowing how to end".

“They were all adults. They were all entitled to ruin their lives, and to love.”
“And what was a relationship if not a to-do list?”
“Time, which is damage, has made the letters soft like a heartbeat.”

On the cusp of Christmas Eve, the family gathers for the traditional get together – but this year there are simmering tensions. Frank and Joan’s marriage is faltering. Is he having an affair? Why is he spending so much time on his computer in his study – effectively absenting himself from the family? Treacherous, desperate thoughts run through her mind, entering a gap that is normally closed:
“Last night, Joan had caught herself thinking that, maybe, just maybe, her heart wasn’t in it this year. Women in magazines wrote about that time they didn’t do Christmas, but found cheap flights to Madeira instead, or just read a very long book.”

They live in the French Alps in a curiously unfinished home and their children, and grandchildren are coming home for the Christmas holiday. This unfinished metaphor permeates the novel – in a sense we are all unfinished while we are living, experiencing, growing, making mistakes.

There’s Maya, a mother of two, who is considering leaving her husband to be with a woman: “It was a couple of weeks later that Liz kissed her. The kiss was like a question, beginning to end.” There’s Lois, who finds her own marriage emptying in the face of a miscarriage: “And then one day, Lois found that Nick could, in fact, resist her— and she, him. Over the next three years, the intervals between the remarkable moments of their relationship stretched out, and a mutual resistance infiltrated the landscape of their love. The miscarriage didn’t make things easier. It shone a light on their bad bits and poor doings, left the taste of death in their relationship, and a gaping want in the memory book.”

And then there is their brother, Wim who is considering leaving his girlfriend. The only one who might unreservedly believe in love is Simon, the dog. He too has a voice in the novel – and it’s both a poignant and humorous canine commentary on the family. He’s in love with Lois, although he’s aware it might be the last time he falls in love.

We journey through the holiday season – alternatively seeing the world through all their eyes, including the dog’s. a wise, warm, enjoyable read about the foibles of humans, about trying to live through it, be happy and find some meaning in it all. And perhaps, in the end, the only meaning is to be found in simply living through and beyond it.

This was an odd one for me where parts of it i really enjoyed and other parts i just did not get. It got confusing at times as well and i did struggle to keep up. I would like to read more from this author though

I was really looking forward to this one as I do enjoy a read of dyfunctional famlies but for some reason I didnt connect with any of these characters and they were quite self absorbed. I actually had trouble with the thread of the story, it seemed a bit jumpy to me.
I found my self skimming and that’s my ‘stop’ sign, so DNF at 30%.

Stories We Tell Ourselves focuses on the interactions of members of a family during a Christmas gathering. Events that have occurred in each person’s distant and recent past impacts significantly on the dynamics of events and relationships during the family get-together. The joy of this book is in the richly drawn characters and the way we are invited into each of their lives. We are even given glimpses into the musings of Simon, the dog. Simon observes all, and sensibly allows his head rather than his heart to dictate which family member he should give his allegiance to. Simon is possibly the most sensible and stable of all the characters! An enjoyable read. Thanks to Head of Zeus, Apollo and NetGgalley for the ARC.

It’s an interesting story. I think I had never read something like this before.

Characters are very complex. They are mysteries to be explored instead of problems to be solved, as I heard somewhere.

There is this common thread that connects the reality each member of the family is going through, so it is evident that the dynamic they all created while living together shaped the way they see life and do things.

My favorite was Lois, though. For some reason I could see something of me in her, as if we had similar personalities. So, her part of the story was the one I liked the most.

However, I must admit that the writing style was a bit confusing sometimes. There were moments when I couldn’t tell which character’s perspective I was reading from; it changed, and I didn’t notice immediately.

Also, there were many issues that, in my opinion, weren’t developed properly. Actually, I have the feeling that I saw the beginning of many independent stories, but none of them got very far.

Characters constantly analyzed their current situations, but they didn’t do much to deal with them, except for some few exceptions.

Basically, I believe the general concept of the book was interesting, but at the end I had more questions than answers. That might have been intentional, but it kind of bothered me that I didn’t know much of anything after reading the entire thing.

I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it; it’s just that I wish I had seen more. Stories progress as their characters make decisions, and that’s the one thing they didn’t do very often in this book.

**I received a copy of this book from Apollo through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own**

I found this so hard to read, too much straigt telling with no glimpses of interest or interaction. I won’t post anything online about it but it was not for me.

When I requested for this book for review, I knew it was family drama but I had hoped to read something light, happy, and encouraging where a family comes together for Christmas and sorts out all that is wrong with them. Stories We Tell Ourselves is anything but that. It is sad, gloomy, and painfully slow.

This is the story of Joan and Frank and their family. Once happy, their lives have fallen into a pattern of Joan collecting the memories and Frank refusing to be a part of creating new ones. He is more interested in his obscure research which I could not make sense of and in writing to his pen-pal(or pen-girlfriend). Their three kids Maya, Lois, and William are supposed to be faring better. But they are not. And almost similar stories repeat.

The reason I did not like this book:

There are so many characters with their own stories. They are all adulterers and wallow too much in past or future. The narration thus gets too confusing to follow and is difficult to follow at places.

It is very slow. It took me around three months to finish this book. Every time I picked this book, I would feel a sense of despair creeping inside me.

And what is the family’s obsession with salt??

There is also a part where the dog falls in love with Lois???

What I liked:

The one thing I liked in the whole book is a letter Joan writes to Frank towards the end. It forced me to introspect and consider if my own passion towards books is not limiting my social interaction. Then I just brushed it aside and moved on. 😛

I really tried but could not get into this book. Just didn’t find the characters appealing and was not drawn into the plot. Just not for me!

I started this book because it was about complex family relationships and dynamics. Set in France and focusing on the marriage between the two lead characters and their three children, I thought this would be a piece of fiction I would enjoy. However, I got about 25% into the book before I decided to move on from it. And it's not often I don't finish a book (I think I have just two or three on my DNF shelf).

Here's what irked me: the narration was confusing, the plot uninteresting and the characters unappealing. There are so many amazing works of fiction by women out there at the moment that it seemed a shame to waste my time on something I wasn't enjoying.

I hope someone enjoys this book but, unfortunately, it's a pass for me. As always, I am grateful to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read this.

If I need to compare this book to something else, I would say an art film. The story focuses on Frank and Joan, an ordinary couple that lives in France and their 3 adult kids (Lois, Maya and William) who now have family of their own, except for William, who is still a university student. After several years, they are planing to reunite for Christmas and share a traditional happy family moment.. or so it seems.

Told from a third-person perspective, we get to experience the family dynamics and take a glimpse of their past to understand their current situation. A situation in which they are all facing their own crisis of cheating, being cheated and the struggle of deciding to keep things as they are or taking a new direction. Now, here is where things get peculiar. There is a lot of symbolism, which is nice but at times feels like too much and this is one of the reasons why I compared it to an art film.

It has an abundance of visual images about their everyday activities. At the beginning this helped to set the mood of the story and portrait them as creatures of habit with monotonous, predictive behaviors. Sadly, this continued for too long and it reminded me of a short film where there is background music and the screen shows semi static scenes that stay for too long. From this and from the way the story ended, I presume that the book is more about depicting a certain mood and atmosphere rather than telling a compelling story.

The focus changes from one character to another, which I liked because I was able to see the same situation (like the cheating issues from each couple) from the point of view of more than one character. My favorite character? The dog who is in love with one of the daughters and has his moments of self-reflection and wonders how a dog can commit suicide. His name was Simon and when the focus went to him, I wasn't sure if we were still talking about a dog or a person. Confusing but funny.

Other thing that caught me off guard was the writing style. Most of story felt like I was reading a log or a bullet journal. Something similar to: - Character does this and that. She then walks away. She sees a bird on the tree. She makes a sound that scares the bird. The bird flies away. There is now one feather on the ground.- That is not a quote from the book, but you get the idea I hope. It has a choppy feeling which is also quite usual in art films.

About half way through the book, once I accepted that this is not your typical novel, I started to enjoy it. It requires you to analyze and find your own meaning to the story. Plot and character- wise I didn't find anything remarkable and, just like art films, doesn't feel like the type of book that would appeal to most readers. However, it might interest you if you want to get out of your comfort zone, enjoy books with realistic depictions of family matters or if you prefer style over story.