I appreciated the way that Mona's interest in theatre was a part of the structure of the story and her growth as a character. The turning point in which you peek into Mona's life was one that I appreciated getting to see into for a few hundred pages.

I had a hard time enjoying this, because of the writing. It wasn`t a bad book pr say. But it was written so childish and kind of all over the place.

Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC in exchange for my honest review. This was an enjoyable book.

The dysfunctional family trope was difficult to come to terms with in this for some reason. The division in three parts was helpful and I feel like flowed easily for me as the reader, but some parts were stronger than the others. I feel like at some points it dragged on to much for my liking especially for such a dark book.

gave this another go after not enjoying it earlier in the year, and I was pleasantly surprised to be quite invested this time. The writing wasn't something I found a standout, (that could be a translation issue) but the coming-of-age story and exploration of grief, trauma and emotion is quite well done. Not quite a 4 star for me but worth a read

I received a reviewer copy of Mona in Three Acts by Griet Op de Beeck from AmazonCrossing s from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What It’s About: This book follows Mona, a young woman from Belgium through three different periods in her life. Part one follows Mona as a nine year old who has just lost her mother and is gaining a stepmother. The second part follows twenty something Mona getting into a job in the theater and finding her partner. The third part follows Mona and her father's relationship as he nears the end of his life.

CW: Parent Death. Mental Health Issues. Hints of Abuse.

What I Loved: This book gave me all the feels, I connected with Mona because I lost a parent in a car accident as well so a lot of the emotions and storylines felt similar. I really loved the young Mona portion of the book, it was interesting to watch a child deal with the loss of her mother and the gaining of a new stepmother. Mona's stepmother Marie is emotionally unstable and so watching Mona develop the social skills and carefulness to not set her off was devastating but done really well. We watch Mona too worried with being good and kind and not causing drama to prioritize her mental health, something I could really connect with. Also, I found the last part about coming to terms with losing a parent in a different way (sickness rather than accident) to be very harrowing and loved this portion of the book as well. The book is a book in translation and lots of reviewers say it is a good translation, I agree that there was no confusion or major plot holes.

What I didn’t like so much: There isn't a lot of character growth within the book because Mona largely is driven to avoid conflicts, so at times it can feel repetitive. I also didn't really love the aspect about the theater or her boyfriend and felt it could have been shortened in that regard. I also wish that I had more answers to the subtle abuse storyline or to what was wrong with Marie, what her trauma was.

Who Should Read It: People who love character studies. People who enjoy looking at aspects of grief. People who like stories spread out over the years.

General Summary: A novel that follows Mona as she goes from child to thirty something

Although I found the premise of this book interesting, unfortunately, for me, It didn’t deliver. I gave it two stars ⭐️ ⭐️ . Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read and review.

My favorite part about this book is definitely that Mona is a regular girl; she has no special skills or quicks or memorable personality traits, but she is sensitive, pensive, and incredibly intelligent. Even though it deals with a heavy topic (death and grief of a parent), I found myself unable to look away from the page. It is an engrossing story about a girl who is simply trying to keep it together after her mother's passing and reconcile with the grief she feels, even if the woman wasn't the nicest to her.

Mona in Three Acts tells the story of a child growing to womanhood and how the actions of her family and others around her formed her thoughts, feelings and ability to deal with life. It is very relatable in how we often bend our will to others, allowing them to mold us, often causing us to keep our own desires at bay.

Mona's strict and sometimes cold mother is killed in a car crash when Mona is young, and her father quickly remarries. With a father who has been distant most of her life, and with a new, insecure and demanding woman as her new mother, Mona continues the desire to please mechanism she formed with her birth mom. Always trying to be helpful, blaming herself when things go wrong, and stuffing down her own feelings, she finally finds some release as an adult in working with a theater group.

Still, in her work and her choice of a lover, she doesn't even try to explore what really matters to her, she comes across as a "good girl" to her parents and as powerless but somewhat helpful in her job. She recognizes that things aren't wonderful, but seems unable or unwilling to change anything.

In the "third act" of the book, situations involving her father cause Mona to begin seeing things in a new way, and to alter relationships that had stayed stagnant for years.

Some may describe this story as depressing, but I didn't feel that way. Certainly at times I wanted Mona to just break out and break away, but actually her life seemed very realistic in many ways. I was definitely ready for the story to end, however, as I felt it dragged a little in the middle.

I applaud the translation from Dutch to English; it was done very well and I felt no awkwardness at all, as I have in the past with other translations.

Thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Crossing for an opportunity to review this book.

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read and review this title. I will review this title at a different date.

I had a difficult time getting into this book, but part of me wonders if that is due to the translation - the story itself was interesting but on the depressing side. I'd give this 2.5 stars.

3.8

Is Mona extraordinary? Nah. But is she pensive, sensitive, and smart? You bet. So I got pulled into her trials and tribulations and had a good read.

Mona’s family is dysfunctional (aren’t most?) and she goes through lots of turmoil as she grows up, but none of it is overly dramatic. I just loved buddying up with Mona while she pondered what was happening in her head and heart as life happened to her. The internal monologue never overpowered the story. Plot to pondering ratio: excellent.

Like the book title says, there are three acts: Mona as a 9-year-old, Mona in her twenties, and Mona in her thirties. I liked Mona as a kid slightly more than Mona as an adult, because 1) she spends more time observing people and things, 2) she takes things literally (I always love that because it adds humor), and 3) she seems more unique as a kid. Occasionally the kid voice is too adult, a pet peeve of mine.

Stand-out portrayals: her needy stepmom, her dad, and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was a class-A jerk. There’s a sex scene where he is described in a super unappealing way—it’s pretty vivid—and from then on, I felt yucky whenever he was in the room. Kudos to the author for getting his yuckiness across to the reader.

Standout scene: being in a sweat lodge. Man was that vivid and cool!

Standout lines (I know, I know, I’ve overdone it, but honestly, it’s all I can do not to add twenty more):

“Her teeth are very white, much whiter than Daddy’s, buttermilk compared to banana skin.”

“And now we’re supposed to call Marie Mommy. That’s like getting two kittens and calling them both Fraggle…”

“…some dreams stick to the roof of your head.”

“…because all of the hunger from all the times she didn’t finish her plate has gotten stuck in her body.”

“Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative.”

“They couldn’t have looked more shocked if he’d just told them he was going to jail for stealing a truckload of zucchini.”

“I’ve been falling out of a window my whole life, that’s what it feels like.”

“Honestly, I missed my dad more because the absence of a person who’s standing right in front of you is more intense, it seems.”

“If you ask people what’s the best feeling you can have, most of them will say being in love or having an orgasm, but I know differently. It’s relief: being afraid, waiting, and then the moment of salvation.”

The author, from Belgium, is an award winner in her country, and this is her first book to be translated into English. I couldn’t tell that this was a translation, always an excellent sign. I hope more of her work is translated.

This is a good little story. I highlighted a lot (as you can see from the quotes I pulled), which is why I rounded up my rating to 4 stars. Check this one out!

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

I quit at about 30%. I just couldn’t get into it. I think It’s a book people may really enjoy, but it wasn’t for me right now.

It was a little difficult to get into this book but the story is an interesting one, about coming of age.

This book was a bit hard to get into. I'm not sure if it was the original writing or just the translation of it, but I couldn't really enjoy it because of it. I thought the story was intriguing, and so were the characters, but again, I couldn't really enjoy it because of the writing.
I'm sad to say it wasn't for me.

We first meet Mona when she is almost ten, locked in a dark room in the basement by her mother, Agnes and accepting the punishment as her due since she has internalized her mother's criticisms of her being difficult and poorly behaved. But, the cruel discipline soon ends when her parents are in a devastating car accident that kills Agnes.

Mona's distant father, Vincent, waits only nine months before marrying Marie whose moods are erratic. Marie often lapses into paranoia, believing Mona or her brother Alexander's benign behavior to be a deliberate slight. Mona learns to repress her emotions to humor Marie and keep peace in the family. Highly verbal with a rich interior life, the precocious child is observant and insightful but given her age is not always accurate in her observations.

Part II finds Mona, in her mid-twenties, at a turning point in her life when she accepts a position with an acclaimed theater producer/director and meets a famous author while Part III presents Mona in her mid-thirties as she faces personal and professional crises wondering if she can ever escape the patterns she learned as a child.

For me, reading Mona in Three Acts, set in Belgium, written by Griet Op de Beeck, and translated by Michele Hutchison, was a pleasure. I really felt for Mona in my bones, and I particularly enjoyed Part I, when she was trying to understand adult problems through a child's perspective. Above all, the book is a character study, and its structure allows the reader to watch Mona's evolution over time. Personally, I also really like books that have gaps like this where the events of the intervening years are puzzles to solve.

Mona's central challenge—the pull between fulfilling family responsibility and expectations and pursuing individual passions—as well as her challenging relationships with her father and stepmother reflect universal conflicts, and I think many readers can if not see themselves in Mona certainly empathize with her. She also has some brilliant reflections: I highlighted many passages!

I was satisfied with everything in the book, but I did wish the novel had developed certain areas more, particularly how outsiders like spouses and boy/girlfriends relate to the family dynamics and a subplot about a conflict between Marie and one of Mona's younger siblings which felt incomplete.

I really enjoyed Mona in Three Acts, and I wasn't ready for it to end. Readers who enjoy literary fiction, character-driven novels, and books in translation should consider this book.

This was an interesting book because it is not at all my usual reading fare. Mona is divided into three parts, the main character at different ages, starting as a child. The story is depressing and saddening - hard to read for these reasons, as well as because I too have lost my dad to cancer and also because of the child abuse scenes. Mona didn't luck out in very well when it came to mothers. The style of writing was quick and engaging, and to me nothing was lost in translation. This would be a good book to recommend if you want something gritty and something that doesn't end in a happily-ever-after romance. I interpret it as a story of a woman coming of age and learning to know who she herself is and subsequently learning to love herself. Thanks, Netgalley, for this arc. This novel isn't what I expected, but it was still a pretty good read.

Fans of the dysfunctional family story will find this Dutch version interesting. It's divided into three parts, each detailing (sometimes too much so) Mona's life beginning when she is 9 and then in her twenties, and finally as she resolves things with her dying father. It's well written and translated but it felt a bit cold to me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good opportunity to read an important writer in translation.

Split into three distinct moments in a woman's life, we follow our title character Mona as she grows from a young girl to an independent woman. Her life and relationships are less than ideal as she deals with the hardships of her upbringing.

This was a rough story, as it shows how detrimental our parents can be to our overall development. Mona has to struggle with forms of destruction—an emotional abusive mother and an absent father. While there were some funny moments, I just couldn't connect with any characters and that could have been because of the fact that it was translated.

Loved the concept, just not for me.

“Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for my review copy “

Although I had a hard time to get into the story at the beginning, in the first act as the title suggests as well, the story picks up a lot after the second part and it makes good and reliable points in a young woman life nowadays. The way she sees life now and how she got there, her upbringing was an interesting read overall, heartbreaking at times but as said, reliable.