Joan use to be a reporter. Now she is living back with her parents and searching for any job to get back on her feet. She interviews at Bloom. She is surprised when she gets the job and walks around looking for ways to make fun of the young people she works with while everyone pretends 30s are old. As she starts to get over that, she learns that the some of the people she works with aren't so bad. But some are and some she can't figure out at all. She starts to question what the owners are saying and what the company is even doing. That's when it gets interesting, as she recruits three new friends to help her uncover what is really happening at Bloom.

#partner August was a great reading month for me. I had all five-star reads which is a rare feat. Included among that amazing stack was the Nobodies. I heard about this book from a wonderful review from Mari (@allegedlymari on Instagram). Her review intrigued me and I was able to get an ARC for this from the wonderful Amelia @flatironbooks. One thing that you must know about me is that I love investigative journalism. I love following along with a character that has a strong hunch and follows it until she uncovers the truth. That’s what happens in this story when we meet Joan Dixon. When we first meet her, she’s a 36-year-old, unemployed, ex-journalist who is down on her luck, has had to move back to her parent’s home and is desperately seeking any job. What I loved about Joan was how instantly relatable she was. I wanted to get to know more about her, I wanted her to keep sharing her thoughts and feelings because I had been where she currently was so she helped me put into words a lot of the things we feel in moments when it all seems to be going wrong. There’s a part at the beginning of the book that transfixed me. Joan has come to the realization that she expected people to give her and find in her more than she was willing to even ask for herself. The way she worded this was just beyond amazing. Joan had me more than happy to follow along as she uncovers the truth of what’s really going on behind closed doors at Bloom, her new job at an up-and-coming “unicorn” company that is setting out to revolutionize technology. The story felt so similar to reading Bad Blood and to borrow my friend's words this is truly a “quirky Bad Blood”. On top of everything else, as we are following Joan along to uncover the truth, we are also finding friendship, new romances, and new beginnings. I can’t express in more words how much I truly loved this book. It gave me so much hope that no matter what we can truly start again. That sometimes we are so down, we ask less for ourselves than we deserve but you can begin again. I will say that what moved this from a 4 star to a 5 star to me was a twist in the end. There was something about the story that Joan uncovered that kept nagging at me, something didn’t feel right. When the twist is revealed, I gasped out loud. It made so much sense but I hadn’t known it was coming. It was hands down amazing.

The Nobodies was a 5 star ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ read for me. I thought that Joan’s character was exceptionally written. I felt that if I met her in real life, we would bond and connect instantaneously. Joan is no fluff, she is as real as it gets, and has a heart of gold with a strong moral compass. Straight out of high school, as a brilliant journalist, she lands a job at the LA Times, which she unfortunately gets laid off. Now, she is in her late 30’s and has completely lost her mojo - her once tough, go getter, and super confident persona has slipped to the wayside, and so has her writing and her edge! After almost a year of searching for a job and moving back to her parent’s home, she lands a job as a junior copywriter in a tech start up where her nose for a story leads her to some big decisions to make. What in the world would Joan do? Save the masses or save herself?

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for the fun protagonist and the cast of characters all with their special quirk which adds to the fun of this book. It gives hope for people who have to restart their career or job that they may have been too comfortable in, until one day, a change had to be forced - like a layoff or a life change. I think the writing and prose was amazing. I love how Palmer is able to describe even the most mundane of life experiences, such as riding a bus or simply just making coffee and making it a hilarious read.

This is my first Liza Palmer and definitely not my last.

Thank you to Flatiron Books for providing me an ARC for my honest and objective review and feedback.

The Nobodies is a complete delight! Liza Palmer has created a winning main character who is relatable on so many levels. And her observational humor shines through when describing the realties and banalities of the modern work place. So funny! Bravo. Loved The Nobodies.

This was such a fun read! I loved Joan’s journey, and the characters of Joan, Hani, Elise and Thornton were so well-developed. I kept laughing out loud at various points, especially at Hani and the Bloom millennials.

I applaud the author for making the heroine in her mid to late thirties. Maybe it’s because I’m now that age myself but I am realizing how most female protagonists are in their 20s. I loved how Joan didn’t have everything figured out and how she and her friends learn that that is okay.

The work environment of Bloom was hysterically funny to read about and the concept of this book was amazing. I did feel like it jumped around too much at times and that some of the minor characters were underdeveloped (Hugo and the other friends in this group especially, but also Joan’s family). Joan almost became too whiny at times as well.

But overall, a fun, fresh, laugh out loud read and I will definitely read more by this author!

An entertaining quick read about Joan, a journalist who has lost her mojo, and Bloom, a tech company which does...? Joan is relieved when she gets hired as a junior copywriter for Bloom, even though everyone else at the company is 10 years younger than she is, the job is not equivalent to what she's been doing, and she doesn't know what it actually does. She's lucky, though, because she finds herself working for Thornton and with Hani (and later Eliza) so navigating all the trendy stuff is less painful than it might otherwise has been. She's also lucky because she has a great family (are her parents really growing marijuana?) and friendly like Omar and Rueben. And then she gets the idea to find out what the CAM that Bloom sells really is and this becomes more of an adventure story. While Joan's a tad melodramatic early on (some of the complaining, especially about coffee, could have been edited out), this settles down into a twisty little tale that will make you chuckle in spots. And there's a big twist. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. The publicity for this doesn't reflect the story as it's not really about journalism and more about a woman finding herself. It's also a very good read.

Liza Palmer has written a fun and clever tale that made me laugh. A feel-good story that left me wanting to turn up the 80s music and dance around the house. No this book is not set in the 80s, but there is a great scene in the book with an 80s party that is guaranteed to make you want to do the same! Joan was once a successful journalist, but now she’s out of a job and having little luck finding a new one. She is less than thrilled when she finally lands a job as a junior copywriter at a tech start up where all her coworkers are more than a decade younger than her, but hey it’s a job. Lucky for Joan she finds her niche with Thornton, Hani, and Elise. Soon this quad of friends/coworkers discovers that the company they are working for is not everything that it seems and an investigation ensues. Has Joan found her big story? Her way back into journalism? And at what cost?

The strength of the story for me was the characters and their relationships with one another. Not only did Joan have these fantastic coworkers, but she also had a great family and some amazing friends. The investigation (while interesting) took a backseat to everything else and mainly just moved the story forward. Honestly they could’ve been investigating anything, I just enjoyed seeing how they went about it alll. There was so much love, laughter, and camaraderie. There was also romance and love and not only with the obvious characters. An entertaining story that will put a smile on your face and the Moody Blues in your head.

This book in three emoji‘s: 🔍 💞 💻

A quick read featuring a relatable character for anyone that’s 30something and in between jobs. If you liked Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine or The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, check out this book!

Have you ever read a book that just pulls you into its universe? The characters become your friends and your family. You cannot stand for it to end as if you can tell that the characters don’t want to lose you as the reader either. The Nobodies is that book for me. It is the first book that I have read this year that I was fully able to immerse myself in and become friends with the characters.

Joan Dixon is a journalist, although she has issues accepting this because she was laid off from her journalism job almost a year ago. She has been paying the bills with freelancing work, but that is becoming harder and harder. Her solution is to apply for a job at Bloom, a 21st century technology company. If you are not well versed in the technology world of Silicon Valley, do not stop from reading The Nobodies. Palmer explains everything very simply, and you only need to understand what she tells you in the story, nothing more.

Bloom is a company that seems to only employ millennials, and a lot of them, to thirty-six year old Joan’s dismay. This starts her on a path of finding herself, and possibly a little destruction along the way. You have to read to find out, but I will tell you for sure that it kept me entranced for the entire book. This is not a typical predictable romance novel. I appreciated that the romance was woven into the bigger story, but it never overshadowed Joan’s true purpose.

Through reviewing women’s fiction I have discovered some things about my certain preferences for a story:

I like a strong female narrator who is on a quest to find something meaningful from life, whether it be how to forgive someone (Things You Save in a Fire) or simply how to love yourself through all circumstances (The Nobodies).
I want to read more about the aforementioned quest than the mushy gushy love stuff. I like a little love stuff. I appreciate a knight in shining armor just as much as the next person, but I like the narrator to save herself first with maybe just a tad bit of help from that knight.
I need there to be likable characters who do not grate on my nerves. I especially need the narrator(s) to be likable. I may not agree with all their choices and thoughts; they may frustrate me at times. Whatever choices they make, I need them to own up to those choices and their own flaws.
Liza Palmer’s novel has all of this. Joan was certainly at a time in her life that was challenging and included a lot of negative self-talk, but I was cheering for her the whole time. I felt like I was having coffee with my best friend who just went through a hardship, and my job was just to listen to all of it and encourage her through it but not fix anything for her. I just had to love her through it all without offering up my nosey advice, knowing that when she came out on the other side I would love her more for her resilience. I hope it is clear just how much I connected with this story and the protagonist, Joan Dixon.

As always, this is a spoiler-free review, but I can say that I was on the edge of my seat until the very end and laughing the whole way. This is very unusual for a book of the chick lit genre, which makes it hard to even call it that. How does one qualify a book that feels to have checked every box? Fiction is most beautiful when the reader knows that it is not true, but at the same time it feels so real, so raw, so right. I have had the same thoughts and fears as the protagonist; I have walked in her shoes in ways that I haven’t been able to put into words as beautifully as Liza Palmer writes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for giving me an advanced electronic copy of The Nobodies in exchange for my honest review. I can safely say that I can and will recommend this book.

This is the 3rd book of Liza Palmer's that I've read. I find all of her books entertaining and written in a practical and easy-to-follow manner that keeps me involved to the very end. In The Nobodies there was also just enough romance to keep the side story interesting.

A fun and creative read that will make you smile.

This was a fun, quick read about a 36-year-old journalist who can’t find work in journalism - so she joins a startup filled with millennials as a junior copywriter and lo and behold, she unearths a big story and starts to investigate. Joan is a sweet character who is all of us in some ways, she doubts her intelligence and abilities, she is going through a life crisis, she is reluctant to get into a relationship. But the novel is about her making it through all that, rediscovering the good things in her life, and finding her place again. The investigation is a little open-and-shut and is a little bit too easy - and I wasn’t 100% sold by the romcom aspect of the plot, but overall, I found it to be a cute story of self-rediscovery.

This was a fun and quirky story! I have never read this author before but will look for others in the future. I would recommend it for someone looking for an upbeat storyline.

I love Liza Palmer stories. This one was full of quirky, yet relatable characters. The plot steals the show, though. The Nobodies appeals to readers of all ages for its current, fresh storyline and characters. A great read, and btw, just the right length!

Oof. I don't know what to say. I think this book was supposed to be about the death or journalism and impostor syndrome. However, it jumped all around and I maybe went am I supposed to care about this or no? And then it had a weird ending and then love and I maybe went ah well at least I am done. I loved so many of Liza Palmer's older works and now I am feeling iffy about reading her anymore. The main character didn't grab me and I wish that she had done a fish out of water storyline with chick lit elements. I would have eaten that all up.

"The Nobodies" follows Joan Dixon as she starts a new job as a junior copywriter for a new tech company called Bloom. We find out that Joan is in her late 30s and until recently had a job as a journalist. However, stories/jobs dried up and her writing doesn't seem to be hitting the same beats anymore. Starting at Bloom Joan starts again and she finds something she didn't have before, a solid group of work friends. However, Joan starts wondering about Bloom and starts digging to find out what the founders of Bloom are really up to.

So here's the thing. The book positions you to like Joan, but I honestly felt exhausted by her. She beats herself up about every last thing. We get that she feels like a failure with having to leave her chosen career behind, but I didn't get hard hitting journalist from her. I was actually surprised that Palmer had her as only having a high school degree and somehow turning a story from high school into her getting hired by a major newspaper. It just felt off. And when Palmer talks about some of the stories she worked on I didn't get it. Her digging into Bloom was boring to me and I liked it better when she was hanging with friends and dealing with her new love interest.

I thought the development of the coworkers (Thorton, Hani, and Elise) was very good. I got very quickly that they were a great core group and they all worked very well together. I wish that Palmer had developed Joan's parents a little more (beyond they are nursery owners) and her brother. And even her best friend Lynn needed more development I thought.

The writing was good, I think though reading about Joan and her constant doubts was exhausting after a while. You find out that her problem is that she doesn't get that she's good enough (impostor syndrome) and that she has a hard time with actually going forward and being good and believing in herself. I think that's a good message, I just needed the storyline to be tighter. Focusing so much on Bloom, servers, etc. made my head spin. And this is from someone who gets how servers work. It was just boring and I even went does this matter a few times.

The ending totally made me laugh. I don't know. I think Palmer is trying to say something about how the tech culture is toxic, full of lies, and also how in the end it doesn't matter because people don't pay attention past a 24 hour news cycle. However, we have our young quad planning on taking evil tech bro down. It was a weird way to go.

Joan is a failed journalist who, as she is desperately searching for the next big story that will catapult her back to the top, has lost everything: her job, her apartment, and her car. Finding herself living with parents and reduced to searching for any place who will just hire her, she gets a lead at the up-and-coming tech company Bloom. Joan finds a paycheck, makes friends, meets a guy, and gets a story.

This story is an examination in dealing with failure, an attempt to redeem oneself, and also deals with millennial stereotypes. Joan was fairly realistic, albeit a little annoying with her self-pity filled angst. Still, the story was enjoyable until the end, which was abrupt. It felt like there was no place else for the story line to go, so the story was wrapped up and ended.

A very cute book about an unemployed reporter going to work as a copywriter for a start up company. I loved the main character and thought the author did a wonderful job with the development of all characters. I found this to be a quick fun read.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

a very clever book that is irresistible to put down! joan is an unemployed writer who has seemingly lost a bit of her sparkle. when she finds a job with bloom industries she meets a cast of characters that become a team. it’s a smart, fresh read that will have me on the lookout for more.

A young talented journalist loses her job this young woman’s life starts to come apart .She lives at home with her parents can’t sell an article no matter how hard she tries and then finally a job ,a job that will change her her life a job that is not what it seems.This is a warm engaging novel written by Lisa Palmer who has a magic way with words grab this book read everything she’s written you will be delighted. #netgalley #flatironbooks,

I couldn’t put this down. I fell in love with all of the characters. The plot and pacing were superb. The whole story was relatable, and it would make for a great book club read. Only two things threw me- that ending (sequel please?) and the fact that the MC rags on millennials, but according to Pew, she is technically a millennial herself. Minor details that don’t take away from a great novel!

When she's on her game and in her true voice, Liza Palmer is one of my favorite Women's Fiction writers. She has a unique blend of sincerity, snark, humor and poignancy, wrapped up in wildly creative plots. Lately she is writing a lot about hitting middle age and measuring your dreams against reality (a topic I can still relate to as I hit, uh, older middle age).

Joan has lost her financial and emotional security as her journalism prospects have dried up, and in desperation she takes a job as a junior copywriter at a Millennial-filled tech company called Bloom. When her journalistic instincts tell her there's something rotten going on underneath the motivational speeches and free snacks at Bloom, she enlists the help of her new boss and colleagues, all of whom are at least a decade younger, to dig out the truth. But is she pursuing a worthwhile story or going on a wild goose chase in a futile attempt to prove to herself that she hasn't lost her touch?

Joan is easy to root for. She's a hard worker and a good friend. I liked the way her self-esteem issues aren't easily traced to parental dysfunction - she has a perfectly lovely family, who have taken her in while she's putting her life back together, and an especially close relationship with her brother. Sometimes it's not as important to figure out why you don't believe in yourself, as it is critical to figure out how to start believing in yourself. And of course there is the valuable lesson that you can't do everything on your own - you are stronger with help from your friends.

The secondary characters, including Joan's family, friends and new colleagues, are all well developed (at least one of them is crying out to be the subject of a sequel) and two of them provide a cute secondary romance. The primary romance, between Joan and a younger Bloom colleague who bond over shared low self-esteem and the desire to find their true professional passion, felt slightly lackluster to me, partially because the object of Joan's affection was pretty much perfect so there wasn't much suspense about whether or not they would end up together despite the age difference.

The generation gap between characters is played for gentle humor. Palmer isn't here to rag on Millennials for their kombucha and buzzwords (okay, maybe just a little); as she says, "I came in here looking to make fun of a generation of people because they appear to be doing work that is thought of as silly or unimportant. The truth is, they're doing the same work people have done throughout the ages with the same level of thoughtfulness...Unlike us, however, they have an eye and a respect for innovation and looking to the future instead of proclaiming that 'this is how we've always done things.'"

I have to admit that I didn't see the signs that there was something hinky going on at Bloom; Joan's deduction that all of the buzzwords had to hiding something only made me think that Liza Palmer has never sat through any modern organizational meeting. But once Joan got rolling, I appreciated the journalistic and detective skills that she and the rest of the enthusiastic Scooby Gang displayed.

I wasn't a huge fan of Palmer's most recent release, The F Word, but this one has me firmly back in her camp. Hell, the 1980s party alone that brings together Joan's Gen X friends with her Millennial colleagues is worth the price of the book. Whether you remember a time before cell phones or not, you'll enjoy The Nobodies.

ARC received from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.