There's been a lot of buzz about this novel, and I can now say it more than lives up to the hype. The writing is beautiful, and characters are complex and thoroughly drawn. This novel should also be on the must-read list for anyone wondering about the direction our country has taken in the past few years. It provides much insight on the state of the US today.

Although the book starts out slowly and is a bit difficult to read, STICK with it. This will be THE book of the year is my guess. Very well done.

Extraordinary first novel that belongs side by side with Hillbilly Elegy. The writing had me gobsmacked. I needed to close my eyes and reflect long and hard about some passages. Beautiful and frightening.

Markley's novel has 5 long chapters: each follows one character from high school and into the next 10 years. We get their perspectives, fears, desires, hopes, dreams. We see how they relate to their friend group and others in town. We see how they adapt to unexpected changes in their lives. And boy is this book a ride. It went somewhere I was not expecting at all based on the prelude, where we first meet some of the characters.

In this book Markley touches on small town life, life in the rust belt, high school, popularity, athletics, love, friendship, family, kindness, hope, dreams, hate, cruelty, 9/11, war, the opioid epidemic, and more.

I found this book to be an excellent read, it is buzz-worthy!

I almost didn't read it; the description just didn't hook me for some reason. Yet you start with four separate stories that blend into one and it becomes a mesmerizing sleep trap because y9ou have to finish this book. I'll tell you this, if Bruce Springsteen wrote a novel, it would be this one. This book reads like many of his great lyrics of the 80's, enjoy!

This book was a struggle to read from page 1. I had high hopes for this one, but from the beginning I felt I couldn’t engage with the characters. After page 20 I put the book down. This is rare for me to do.

really liked this book. easy read. great story and i loved the characters. good for any book club. will bring up good topics to discuss.

I’ll be honest - I stopped reading this about 10% of the way through. It just wasn’t pulling me in the way I had hoped. The writing itself was good - I just wasn’t connecting to the storyline and found myself getting easily distracted while reading.
I think part of the reason was that there is little to no dialogue for the first little while in the book, which tends to lose my attention because I get bored with non-stop narratives. So for those who DO enjoy lengthy narratives, I think thus would be rightup their alley. It just wasn’t for me.

Markley’s thunderous debut is not to be missed. My thanks go to Simon and Schuster and Net Galley for the review copy, which I read free and early, but this is one of the rare times I can say that if I’d paid full hardcover price, it would have been worth it. This is the summer’s best fiction, and it’s available to the public August 21, 2018.

Our story is broken into a prelude and four additional parts, each assigned to a different protagonist, all of whom knew one another, traveling separately from four different directions; they were born during the great recession of the 1980s and graduated from New Canaan High in 2002, the first class to graduate after 9/11. We open with the funeral parade held for Rick Brinklan, the former football star killed in Iraq. His coffin is rented from Walmart and he isn’t in it; wind tears the flag off it and sends it out of reach to snag in the trees. The mood is set: each has returned to their tiny, depressed home town, New Canaan, Ohio, for a different purpose. The town and its population has been devastated economically by the failure of the auto industry:

“New Canaan had this look, like a magazine after it’s tossed on the fire, the way the pages blacken and curl as they begin to burn, but just before the flames take over.”

At the mention of football, I groan inwardly, fearing stereotypes of jocks and cheerleaders, but that’s not what happens here. Every character is developed so completely that I feel I would know them on the street; despite the similarity in age and ethnicity among nearly all of them, there is never a moment when I mix them up. And the characters that are remembered by all but are not present are as central to the story as those that are. As in life, there is no character that is completely lovable or benign; yet almost everyone is capable of some goodness and has worthwhile goals.

Families recall the closure of an industrial plant with the same gravity with which one would remember the death of a beloved family member; the loss has been life changing. Residents are reduced to jobs in retail sales and fast food, welfare, the drug trade, and military service due not to legal compulsion, but economic necessity. Everyone has suffered; Walmart alone has grown fatter and richer.

This is an epic story that has it all. We see the slide experienced by many of New Canaan’s own since their idealistic, spirited teenaged selves emerged from high school to a world less welcoming than they anticipated. One of the most poignant moments is an understated one in which Kaylyn dreams of going away to school in Toledo. This reviewer lived in Toledo during the time when these youngsters would have been born, and I am nearly undone by the notion that this place is the focus of one girl’s hopes and dreams, the goal she longs for so achingly that she is almost afraid to think of it lest it be snatched away.

Because much of each character’s internal monologue reaches back to adolescence, we revisit their high school years, but some of one person’s fondest recollections are later brought back in another character’s reminiscence as disappointing, even nightmarish. The tale is haunting in places, hilarious in others, but there is never a moment where the teen angst of the past is permitted to become a soap opera.

Side characters add to the book’s appeal. I love the way academics and teachers are depicted here. There’s also a bizarre yet strangely satisfying bar scene unlike any other.

Those in search of feel-good stories are out of luck here, but those that treasure sterling literary fiction need look no further. Markley has created a masterpiece, and I look forward to seeing what else he has in store for us.

Hard to believe this is a debut novel! Set in a small town in Ohio, the novel centers around four friends who initially return for a classmate's funeral. What follows is an examination of their lives--both past and present--that reveals memories that are bittersweet at best. Each has suffered love, loss, pain, and heartbreak. And although each has lived through different circumstances, we witness both the highs and the lows of mistakes made, decisions regretted, and lives restarted. At times it's a difficult read and painful to endure, but the writing is poignant and raw and cathartic at the end. So while it's not a great "beach" read, it is certainly worth the effort as its themes are universal and relevant!

Ohio begins with a funeral and ends in murder. What happens in between is as depressing as a high school reunion, but man, Stephen Markley’s writing elevates the wrist-slashing fatigue into a Stanley Kubrick-like, art-house style circa Clockwork Orange. Still, Ohio is 500-page work that feels like it takes all four years of the riding the after-activities bus route to read through.

Markley recounts the impromptu high school reunion of 2013 following the incredibly-pitiful-it’s-laughable funeral of fallen solider Rick Brinkland as told through the antics and mostly-troubled thoughts of four New Canaan alum, each getting a novella to tell their tales of woes: of trying to fit in, on being attracted to the wrong gal or guy, running away from responsibility, and the youthful persistence of taking the moral high road. After all, if Kevin Smith’s Clerks taught us anything, it’s that’s what high school is all about: algebra, bad lunch, and infidelity. Markley would add “with a ton of drugs” to that statement as apparently that’s all early 21st century kids in the Rust Belt seem to do. Ohio captures all of that and more. Sometimes, that’s too much.

Like its namesake river and the first ten years of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ existence, Ohio rambles on and becomes unwieldy. Markley’s accounts run so deep an Excel spreadsheet is needed to capture the dramatis personae, their nicknames, associates, sexual partners, and addiction of choice, because there is four years’ of catch up required for the reader while the story’s hook, that of the murder mystery, comes so late in the final act it’s nearly a post-credits zinger in a Marvel Studios film.

Aside from the back-and-forth storytelling told by a former basketball player, a beauty queen, a cheerleader, and a nerd, Markley builds a heavy universe, and one that is completely recognizable as anywhere in America and has the scars to prove it. Ohio may be depressing and fatalistic, but Markley’s craft brings a shine to this Shinola and casts a sense of importance to any of the fatalism plaguing fulfillment-seeking millennials. Unfortunately, this nine-course meal version of a history lesson suffers from distention well before any sort of a hopeful moral can be splashed back with Scotch.

Serious thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC. I just need a restorative nap and a mini-marathon of Teen Titans Go! for the laughs and I’ll be good to go.

I don't want to get too wordy because it will give away plot points that are best left as surprises. I enjoyed the writing style and descriptions of the town. I liked the characterization displayed in this book. The tension built well and resulted in a satisfying end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC of this book in exchange for a honest review.

This is one of those books that’s going to take a few days to truly digest because it is very, very heavy. But it is also a very, very good book.

The story is basically about this group of friends growing up in the post 9/11 years and how they cope with the recession that followed and how their various relationships changed. The book is not your typical chapter; instead Markley writes from the perspective of one character for 75 pages and then switches to another character. Basically there are 4 or 5 different stories in this one book but they are all written so they seamlessly move the plot along. For some authors this could be a tricky way to tell a story but for this book it really works because the plotting can get really redundant but for Markley it worked.

The writing in this book was absolutely beautiful but it was also challenging. I found that if I wasn’t quite paying attention then I would have to reread a passage to get what he was saying because there were times he rambled and I probably got the dictionary out a handful of times to look up a word BUT none of this was enough to make me want to stop reading it.

So why only 4 stars? As I said before the book is heavy. I found that I couldn’t read the book for a long time because it just weighted on me emotionally. Books rarely make me cry but there were many times while reading this that I found myself wiping away tears. This is not a book that I would recommend to everyone. If you’re former active duty, a survivor of sexual assault, or a recovering addict this could be potentially triggering. It’s a great book I just advise caution before reading it.

The Great Recession, wars and political unrest left scars on the town of New Canaan, an unremarkable and stagnant town trapped in a gridlock of apathy and economic loss. New Canaan became a living ghost town, its inhabitants shells of empty potential.

Four former classmates will come together once again, each with their own baggage, heartaches, shortcomings and histories of time spent away from their hometown. Their stories are chaotic, dark and their souls are lost in disillusionment. (Did they expect that life owed them something for existing?)

OHIO by Stephen Markley is by far one of the darkest and most depressing tales of a slice of America’s life as I have ever read. The writing is fabulous, but I found myself so caught up in the atmosphere, that my skin was crawling one minute and the next, I was almost overpowered by the depressing state of affairs.

Did I like the characters, um, only a couple of them. I admit, I struggled to continue at some points, but always the turmoil would suck me back until the emotional toilets were flushed and overflowing.

All in all, a read that one will love or hate with very few caught straddling the fence, especially if you find that relatable hook to your own memories and confusions or disillusionments about what you thought life would hold for you.

I received a complimentary ARC edition from Simon & Schuster!

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 21, 2018)
Publication Date: August 21, 2018
Genre: Fiction | Mystery
Print Length: 496 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews, Giveaways, Fabulous Book News, follow: http://tometender.blogspot.com

This is an amazing debut novel with mesmerizing prose. Markley portrays life in a small town encompassing both the beauty and the tragedy. An honest narrative of an American's daily life with all the trials and problems that can occur and do, which are not always discussed or depicted so realistically in fiction. This is the story of five twenty-somethings return to their small town for the funeral of one of their classmates killed in Iraq and how the economy has affected each of them and their small community life as well. This was a huge reality check with nothing sugar-coated. Amazing book to read! Highly recommend this one!

At times a three and at times a five, I settled on four. I had quite a hard time getting into this, but it eventually dragged me under with it. Not until about a quarter through the second vignette though. If you are not willing to do the thinking and put in the work and swallow the angst, this book is not for you.

Dark and sad with some really poetic lines I kept wanting to take snapshots of.

Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a different read than I usually choose to enjoy. It is the book I'd have carried around in my bag, I never had a purse, to read on the bus, or the subway, or while waiting in line. This is the type of book that fills you up while reading

I feel so conflicted about Ohio. On the one hand I rated this four stars and immensely enjoyed it. On the other, though, it look me a great deal of the book (honestly, nearly two-thirds) to get to a point where I was remotely interested in what was going on.

For the majority of the book, I just could not get into it. It was wordy and, frankly, terribly boring. Once the novel picked up for me, some time in the section on Dan Eaton, the story picked up steam and was able to manage a strong ending for me. I can't pinpoint a reason as to why the story picked up for me, but it think the last chunk of the book the story felt different. It was if the author had truly found his voice and the story found its grove.

While Goodreads says Ohio is both a murder mystery and social critique (and both are true), I couldn't agree more with it being a social critique. Ohio is a realistic character study. Each character's section provides a deep insight into who they really are. It was impressive to read each section, gather more information about each character, and see how so interwoven their lives were. The level of detail the author was able to maintain throughout the book was pretty awesome.

Though I feel Ohio had its flaws, I was still left having really enjoyed the book. I feel like this book won't be for everyone, but the ones that like it will do so intensely. Trigger warnings abound, there are disturbing and intense scenes throughout the book.

I wanted to like this book, the plot sounded very interesting. However, the writing style was not very good. I don't know if this is Mr. Markley's style or if this is because it is his first novel, but he is trying way too hard. The writing is clunky and quite comical at times. His use of metaphors are quite distracting. I can kind of understand the hype because of the topics this novel tries to tackle, but it just doesn't work. Also, his writing when involving female characters is sophomoric at best and something you would find from some high school boy in a creative writing class. I would not not recommend this book, as the themes and plot are somewhat interesting and others may not be distract, as I was, over the clunky writing. Looking forward to his future writing.

Does a dysfunctional town make for dysfunctional residents? Or do dysfunctional people make a dysfunctional town? The characters in this novel easily fit the "basket of deplorable's" category.

This is a gritty, harsh novel filled with irredeemable characters. It was a difficult book to read and the further I got into it the less I liked the way the novel was heading.

Set in New Canaan, Ohio around a group of people who went to school together and now, years after graduation - they have left and returned, and none of them have improved. The chapters are long and sometimes rambling, it could have been edited a bit to make this painful read go a bit quicker.

The ending is a bit far fetched, I won't give away any of the details, but it is not plausible.

I would have given this book 2-stars, but I think it is the perfect view of what's happening in America today... which makes it all the more horrifying.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC in return for my honest review.