After struggling to finish the book, I was disappointed. There were many, many 5 star rave reviews, and I was lukewarm about the book. It was a slow moving realistic fiction about a woman who is writing a novel while waiting tables to pay the bills. I think my problem is I'm too practical to understand Casey's choices in life. Knowing she's $70,000 in debt from college, yet she still ran off with Paco to Spain. Through it all, she yearns for stability? Glad I finished the book, but not one I'd recommend.

Still reeling from the death of her mother, Casey Peabody is a 31-year-old woman at a crossroads in her life. She is a struggling writer (and struggling waitress) who lives in a potting shed, has a mountain of student loan debt, and basically needs to come to terms with the idea of whether she will ever be able to survive leading a creative life. It’s a book about growing up, following your dreams, and the universal struggle to become the person you want to be.

I definitely enjoyed this book. The author perfectly captures what it is like to be a woman at this age: technically an adult, but still feeling like a kid in so many ways. And the writing itself is just so good—smart and fresh, descriptive without being too lofty. I did struggle a bit in the first half of this book, because it can be slow at times and there is a not a huge amount of plot. But the writing—and the characters—won me over. I was rooting for Casey throughout and practically cheered for her towards the end!

Gorgeous. Poignant. Heartwarming. Well-deserved adjectives being used by critics to describe Lily King’s new novel. I loved this beautifully written book. Amusing pictures of restaurant culture – Casey tried to keep her ahead just barely above water by waitressing while she was trying to finish the novel she’d been working on for years - and of writers’ workshops – and of teaching. A heartfelt depiction of grief. And there’s even a love triangle. What more could you ask? Ann Patchett in the New York Times summed it up for me: “‘Writers & Lovers’ made me happy.”

NOTE: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I started this book thinking, as an avid reader and wanna-be writer, that it would be right up my alley. Unfortunately, I just could not get into it. I never took to the main character Casey and did not find myself caring about what happened to her. Maybe I'll like the author's next one, as I liked Euphoria.

Casey’s life is a mess. She recently lost her mother, suddenly and unexpectedly. She has a history of bad relationships with men, including her father; has had numerous dead-end jobs; a heaping pile of student loan debt and collection notices. And did I mention she’s working on a novel…has been for six years?

While fighting this, she’s dating two different men – one her age (31), another who’s older (45). Somehow this propels her to finish her novel. Then she starts spiraling out of control. Will she finally get out of the horrible rut she’s in?

Writers & Lovers did not grab me right out of the gate. But by the time I read a quarter of the book, I could not put it down. I was rooting for Casey’s luck to change and was thoroughly proud of her by the end!

I love Lily King. Writers & Lovers is just as good as Euphoria - which I loved.

Frankly, she can do no wrong.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Having never read any of Lily King’s other works, but having heard so many great things about her, I was very anxious to read Writers & Lovers.

The story takes place in 1997 Boston and is a first-person, stream-of-consciousness look at the world through Casey Kasem, a highly educated, aspiring writer in her early 30s. Although highly educated, Casey is unpublished and has been working on her novel for the past six years, all the while struggling to pay back student loans and avoid total poverty by working as a waitress in a high-end restaurant. She is also dealing with her mother’s recent death as well as personal medical problems that have cropped up and her stalled and confusing love life.

Although I enjoyed King’s writing, admiring her attention to detail and finding some of her language fabulous, I thought that at least the first third of the novel was extraordinarily slow moving — so much so that this novel almost became a DNF for me. But, the pace picked up, I became more involved in Casey (I found the other characters not to be particularly well-developed), and the novel seemed to speed towards its end — an ending that I found satisfying, albeit just a bit too convenient. All in all, I liked this novel, but I did not love it.

If there is one sub-genre of grief-lit that will have me sobbing more than any other, it’s the one where kids lose their mother. I know we’re in the middle of a paper-products crisis but man, did I burn through my quota of tissues reading Writers & Lovers by Lily King.

It’s 1997, and Casey, in her early-thirties, spends her days working on the novel that she’s been writing for six years; her nights waitressing at an upscale restaurant; and every single moment grieving her mother. Her mother’s sudden death prompts Casey to consider all aspects of her life – her enormous student debt; her failed relationships; and the fact that her artistic friends have all ditched creative pursuits for ‘real’ jobs.

I haven’t mentioned my mother at the restaurant yet. I don’t want to be the girl whose mother just died.

And then Casey meets two very different men – one with whom she has great chemistry, the other who offers the sort of kindness and stability that she craves.

I’m done with the seesaw, the hot and cold, the guys who don’t know or can’t tell you what they want. I’m done with kissing that melts your bones followed by ten days of silence followed by a fucking pat on the arm at the T stop

Don’t be fooled by the apparent bad boy/ good guy narrative – King’s characters are far more nuanced and their circumstances more complex than I’ve revealed. Casey’s relationships with both men magnify the themes of loss and grief, as well as providing insight into her anxieties, and her own tangled family history. There’s a lot of emotional action in this book but King executes it with notable conciseness, leaving the reader to ponder their own experiences –

I’ve forgotten what gets revealed right after you break up with someone.

This is a book about writing and creative identity and much of the plot centres around Casey’s experience of working on her novel. However, as Casey herself states, considering the obvious in a book can ‘pull you out of a story’. Instead, a reader should push further in, and try to ‘…feel everything the author tried so hard to create’. Is that King’s meta message? How much of Casey’s story is also King’s? I didn’t ponder that for too long, or hit Google for definitive answers. Instead, I allowed myself to be pulled into her brief but aching observations about the experience of grief –

The air between us crackles, as it does when you speak of your beloved dead. But it’s hard to know what to say next.

Casey experiences many kinds of loss – from the obvious death of her mother, to the less obvious – the grief felt when expectations aren’t met.

That’s the wall I always slam into on a good morning like this. My mother will be worrying about me, and I can’t tell her that I’m okay.

You don’t realise how much effort you’ve put into covering things up until you try to dig them out.

I don’t want to make this book out to be overwhelmingly sad. It’s not. There are bits that are very funny. There are some gorgeous characters (the little boys! Her friends Harry and Muriel!). There are excellent restaurant scenes (snap to it, fans of Sweetbitter). And it’s chock-a-block with sensational writing.

Time I mercurial when you’re with children. A whole morning making pancakes and playing freeze tag goes by in a minute, whereas waiting for Jasper to tie his shoes or catch up on his bike is endless.

4/5 Quite sure this will be in my favourites for 2020.

I received my copy of Writers & Lovers from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Writers & Lovers what a literary wonderland filled with love, heartbreak, people trying to stay afloat monetarily while trying to bleed out the story that swirls around in their mind and soul.

Author, Lily King adds depth to Casey by trying to deal with the death of her mother while still living the life of a woman who just can't figure out her life close to age 30 all set in the middle of Boston. A Place I have always wanted to visit but hasn't and this book has made it even more of a dream of mine to go there just to see the places Casey talks about.

Casey Peabody has friends who are moving on with their lives, they are getting married, starting families and dropping their dream of writing "the great American novel". This book unlike, Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid, touches upon differing generational gaps, wage disparity, and moving from your 20's to your 30's without really grasping what it means to be an adult; shows the reality of these very situations without feeling immature or the characters being wishy-washy.
Casey is real, she has dreams, she is dealing with depression and her friends try to help her with her hard situation.
Casey meets two men, one a decade older than her, one her age, who will she choose. Will she finish her great American novel and will she finally find the peace she desires when it comes to mourning her mother's death??? Read Writers & Lovers. I promise you won't regret it.

I love Lily King's writing style, the book moved well, it continued smoothly along to the very end and I was disappointed when it ended. I was rooting for Casey through the story and wanted to reach through the book and hug her so many times.

Thank you, NetGalley, LIly King and Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read Writers & Lovers in lieu of my honest review.

I was totally uninterested in this by 10% of the book. Littered with odd and uncomfortable sexual references, Writers & Lovers fell completely off my radar after just a handful of pages. This was one of my most highly anticipated books, but I do not recommend.

Anyone with a love for the written word will adore this book, which perfectly captures the hilarity, frustration, passion, and heartbreak of a young aspiring novelist. Filled with well-crafted detail and poignant moments, "Writers & Lovers" is a captivating portrait of the uncertainty of falling in love and fulfilling your creative aspirations.

24 // “Of all of his strange responses, this is the one that helps me the most. This is not nothing.”

WRITERS AND LOVERS is the story of a struggling writer who is dealing with a lot—the recent death of her mother, mountains of debt, a love affair gone wrong, health issues. it honestly took me about 100 pages to get into the book, but after that, I really liked it. it’s beautiful writing on grief and love and also on the struggle of being an artist working to create. recommend for fans of solid literary fiction. 4/5 ⭐️

Here’s a positive about a pandemic. I was able to sit down and read this book in one day. That’s a perfect setting for a book I enjoy. Casey is trying to writer a novel, but she’s stuck living in an “apartment” that used to be a potting shed. She is a waitress in an upscale restaurant near Harvard University. She’s moved a lot in her 31 years including Spain. Her mother has recently died, and this has thrown her for a loop. She and her mother were very close. She’s basically estranged from her father. And then two romantic interests come into her life and she struggles who is the better choice. I love the descriptions of the people with whom she works at the restaurant. It opened my eyes to the people serving me my food actually have a life beyond me. And then I’m always a sucker for a book with a good ending. She picked the right guy. She’s figured out what really matters in life!

Thank you NET GALLEY for an advance copy of Lily King's Writers & Lovers. It is lovely, funny, poignant and certainly relateable for so many.

Casey Peabody is a waitress pursuing a dream to finish a novel. She lives in a tiny part of a house owned by a friend of her brother Caleb.
She is greatly in debt from school loans, just had a relationship end but hanging heavily on her is the sudden death of her mother. Her mom went on vacation and never came back.
Her friends are funny and supportive, the job isn't great and she agonizes over her book. When she meets two very different men and dates both, her life gets all that more cluttered.
Will she come out of her 20s and eventually see things clearly?
A wonderful story. 5 stars


https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3238508344?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Twitter - Thank you
@NetGalley
for an advanced copy of the wonderful WRITERS & LOVERS by
@lilykingbooks
. Follow along with Casey, a waitress with huge school debt, a dream of finishing her novel and living without her mother who suddenly passed away 5 stars..my
Jennifer (Brampton, ON, Canada)’s review of Writers & Lovers
Thank you NET GALLEY for an advance copy of Lily King's Writers & Lovers. It is lovely, funny, poignant and certainly relateable for so many. Casey Peabody is a waitress pursuing a dream to finish a...
goodreads.com
9:33 AM · Mar 20, 2020·Twitter for Android

On the shortlist of things one should never, ever say to a writer, “I just find it extraordinary that you think you have something to say,” would rank in the top three. Yet these words are carelessly hurled at the hopeful novelist Casey Peabody by her pompous Boston landlord early on in Lily King’s new novel, the aptly titled “Writers & Lovers.” Highly anticipated following her celebrated 2014 work, “Euphoria,” Lily King’s new book is a slightly “meta” account of a young writer struggling to complete her novel.

It’s 1997 and Casey spends her days waiting tables at an upscale restaurant, and her nights attempting to get her first book down on paper while she battles anxiety, self-doubt and grief. An educated and capable woman in her early 30s, she’s suffocating under heaps of student debt and grieving the sudden loss of her mother. A child golf prodigy, Casey long ago gave up a potentially lucrative career within the sport to pursue a life in the arts — and to put some distance between herself and her father. The sport is permanently soured for her, but we get the impression she deeply misses the former feeling of mastery as she presently flounders.

The majority of her writer friends have long since switched over to “real” jobs, only furthering the feelings of isolation and self-ridicule as she toils away, wondering if there will ever be a next phase in her life. Her desire to finish her novel — a project inspired by her mother — is strong, but calls from debt collectors and punishing shifts at the restaurant test her resolve.

As if her existing stressors weren’t enough, two men materialize in her life, one with whom she shares a chemistry that scares her, and the other whose life contains everything she covets. Ms. King strikes a balance between these two simultaneous love interests as easily as she did in “Euphoria” by avoiding the typical irritants of the love triangle dynamic and letting the situation instead provide further insight into Casey’s unattended demons. She inevitably must choose between the two men, but not before she spends time answering questions about her life she didn’t even know she had.

This is unquestionably a story about writing, but the prose is mostly barren of any mention of Casey’s writing process. There is no obsession with word count, no staring off into space in an attempt to pin down the perfect word, no fist-shaking at the shapeless creative enemy, writer’s block. Her writing is personal, something she keeps close to the chest. Even in conversation with another character about her work-in-progress, Casey desperately wants to change the subject. Speaking about her novel, she says, makes her “feel flayed alive.”

Yet the act of writing is still the center point around which the narrative revolves. Writing is Casey’s constant yet silent companion, the most complex relationship she has in the novel. The majority of the narrative space is refreshingly dominated by Casey’s attempts to navigate the social politics of her restaurant job and make the right choice of man, but we get the sense that her writing is what helps her cope with these matters. It is the means by which she resolves the internal conflict of her past and present, and her way of putting into words all that she can’t say to the people around her.

Throughout, we’re tempted to forget the real writer here is Lily King, disappearing behind the story of Casey’s first novel being born. What at first appears to be a surface-level, nostalgic venture into the life of a starving artist in the ’90s slowly becomes an examination of all that writing demands and provides. In this novel, writing is both passion and hardship, reprieve and punishment. It allows Casey to close earlier chapters of her life and open to a blank page.

“Writers & Lovers” is a triumph of a novel, as witty as it is profound. A queen of nuance, Ms. King hides an arsenal of emotional power behind quiet, intentional prose. Nearly every word of this novel seems carefully and deliberately chosen, rewarding close readers and promising re-readers an even deeper experience. Most significantly, although Ms. King’s portrayal of a writer’s life is brutally honest, it urges all of us to personally take on the agony, but also the sublime ecstasy of the writer’s journey. After all, we all have something to say, it’s merely about finding the right words with which to say it.

You'd think that I'd love a book about early-life existential crises and writers, but alas, I'm at a bit of a loss here.

Writers & Lovers kind of reminded me of a more realistic and toned-down version of the show Girls. I didn't think Lily King's protagonist Casey was a terrible person (not like Lena Dunham's Hannah Horvath is); she just wasn't a particularly interesting or insightful one. All of the love interests—both past and present—just seemed sort of dull. (But maybe that's also because writer dudes aren't particularly enlightening to me, given my profession.) The pacing was lopsided and often felt slow and aimless, then suddenly built to a walloping speed in the last few pages.

This one's in the middle at 2.5 stars for me.

Let’s talk about expectations. 🤓 Honestly. When you love a title by an author and they have a new release coming, don’t you feel the teensiest bit hesitant to read it? Just a little? 🤓I jumped at the chance to request this ARC of #writersandlovers by Lily King from @netgalley Her first novel, Euphoria, was unforgettable and outstanding! Here’s the truth, I wish I liked this one as much. 🤓What worked for me: the waitress gig because it had me feeling 20 again (hello 1997,) the blunt writing style, a coming of age story of a 30-something, the satisfying ending, the brevity. 🤓I wanted quicker engagement, this has a slow start with weak plot direction. I was eager for detailed development particularly pertaining to unpacking the emotional trauma Casey experiences. The supporting characters were superficial and underwhelming. 🤓I’m disappointed that it didn’t wow me. Look for it on shelves March 3. Thanks to @groveatlantic for my free copy in exchange for my honest review.

“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

This book started out slowly and by the middle, I became more drawn into the story. It was not one I loved, but for the right person, they will love the writing and the slow telling of this story. The main character is grieving for the loss of her mother and I felt this was well portrayed in this book.

Writers & Lovers by Lily King is about Casey Peabody, a struggling writer and waitress who is juggling relationships with two different men. She's recently lost her mother and has yet to deal with that loss. She makes some not so great decisions as she surges her way into the adult working world. Luckily she has a group of friends and a brother to lean on as she faces some challenges. This book has a great last line in it that I'll savor for some time to come. Read and enjoy!

Even though I seem to be reading a number of books about thirty something women who can’t get it together, I enjoyed this one. Casey, the protagonist is a sympathetic character and over the course of the book we learn about her unhappy childhood. She desperately wants to be a writer and to that end lives on little money. I enjoyed this book and recommend it.