I found this story quite good, in the beginning. The characters were likable, and there seemed to be a general idea of where we may be headed. Once our main character, Connie, gets to Los Angeles, the plot kind of fell apart for me. It was really hard to follow, with a lot of jumps between past and present tense. There were a few very random plots tossed into the story as it went along as well. Suddenly throwing in that Connie had been to medical school? That Mr BB has cancer? That Jack loves weird food? None of these things felt like they flowed with the story, but more like they ended up in there as a check list item nearly forgotten.
I didn't hate it, but I think it could have been a little smoother of a read.

This was honestly terrible. It was so hard to get through and the narration was ridiculously disjointed. The grammar was also terrible. I wish I had something good to say about this one, but I don't. This book is in need of serious editing.

*Book received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

The beginning was strong, but deteriorated somewhat into what seemed to be more of an outline of a more expansive work rather than a novel. It may have worked better in another form as, say, a graphic novel or even a screenplay.

Even though the premise is in interesting and some of the characters, mainly David are quite unique, the whole book seems kind of stuck between being a novel and a theater play. I found it a bit like reading fanfic, with the underdeveloped and boring main character. I liked that the ending of the book mirrored the ending of the first chapter.
Thank you to Net Galley and Editus Publishing for this ARC.

Lonely Hearts Bar review
More than anything, I found this book confusing. The content deals a lot with cinema and screenplays, and it almost reads as though it was intended to be presented visually. Characters that were previously mentioned reappear, but rather than their lives interweaving in a web of coincidences (as the blurb suggests), they just run into each other and remember their one-off encounter, despite the unlikelihood of such an event. The woman in the red dress was the most obvious of these, but Connie’s early encounters with Jack also seem quite artificial.
The plot was confusing and a bit aimless, not much ever got learnt about Connie (the main character) and the backstory of the other characters seemed spoon fed and two-dimensional. The storylines (plural) towards the end, when multiple characters end up suffering ill health so that their vulnerability could lead to emotional scenes somewhat reminiscent of a soap opera.
There's a chance I'd have enjoyed The Lonely Hearts Bar more if I had watched all of the movies that are referenced, but I simply wasn't interested enough to look them up. There were also several callbacks in The Lonely Hearts Bar (blueberries and hummus) that I assume were meant to indicate the depth and significance of the characters’ relationships with one another, but almost did the opposite. The relationships and characters were never explored or displayed in enough detail for me, so a lot of the tension and emotion in the book ended up falling flat.
Connie was the only female character that mattered in the story line, so there was a lot of ‘you’re not like other girls’ talk that made me roll my eyes rather than relate or feel like Connie was special and amazing. Not that I think that was the point. As far as I can tell, the point of the book seemed to be showing a bunch of people interacting while quoting movies at one another. Connie was shown to have ambitions, but her motivation to actually achieve them seemed lacking. The plot instead centered around her relationships with the other characters, which were never fleshed out enough for me to really appreciate.
The ultimate ending of this novel left me feeling cheated, and while there’s a pretty good chance that the ending was a reference to classic cinema that I didn’t understand, I did not enjoy the way this book ended. The cover hints at a far more definitive conclusion to the book than is provided, and does not match the tone of the novel very well.
Overall, I don't know that this is the sort of book I can recommend, as I feel pretty strongly that I'm not the intended audience. Perhaps diehard fans of classic cinema, aspiring screenwriters or Los Angeles aficionados can appreciate the nuances of The Lonely Hearts Bar in a way that I failed to do.

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I found this story quite good, in the beginning. The characters were likable, and there seemed to be a general idea of where we may be headed. Once our main character, Connie, gets to Los Angeles, the plot kind of fell apart for me. It was really hard to follow, with a lot of jumps between past and present tense. There were a few very random plots tossed into the story as it went along as well. Suddenly throwing in that Connie had been to medical school? That Mr BB has cancer? That Jack loves weird food? None of these things felt like they flowed with the story, but more like they ended up in there as a check list item nearly forgotten.
I didn't hate it, but I think it could have been a little smoother of a read.