I struggled with this one. I loved Coredia Strube's previous book but found the characters here hard to connect with and/or like.

As a restaurant manager in a small mom & pop local eatery/coffee shop, I related to the main characters struggles at work. As a mom, I related to her feeling of being “less than” when it came to her son and her newfound granddaughter. I teetered back and forth on how I actually felt about Stevie. Did I like her? Well ... I related to her, but found her irritating for the most part. Often times I wanted to shake her. Something kept me wanting to read more. I loved the dark humor and sarcastic wit. I kept waiting for redemption but was never fully satisfied. The ending left me wanting for more but unsure of exactly what that would be.

This book lives or dies on its characters. Strube focussed on a wide array of flawed characters with varying degrees of damage to them. Comedy is found amongst the dark, but this is some pretty intense stuff.

The dialogue sparkles with authenticity but the subject matter laid heavy with me and there was an uneasiness about a sexual assault for me.

On balance worth a read, with some caution if you’re affected by recounting sexual assault stories.

Thank you NetGalley and publishers for an ARC. All opinions are my own.

Strube does a created job of showing how valuable relationships in the work place can be. Stevie is a manager at a restaurant. Although the crew she works with is made up of those viewed as lowly and unwanted, great friendships and a solid community is formed. Stevie's life holds a deep secret full of pain that she tries to heal over through counseling, however, this approach proves unsuccessful and demoralizing. She realizes how to break down walls through a relationship with another, when she learns to love.

Strube does a great job creating likeable characters, a solid storyline, with a beautiful ending!

Cheer for Stevie as she navigates her life and tries to make up for her past mistakes. We all make mistakes and we all goof but it's what we do after that shows our true character. You will love this book as much as I did. Happy reading!

Nothing is easy for Stevie so be prepared to feel a bit of pressure- not as bad as she feels, but still.... She's a recovering alcoholic, she works for a chain restaurant, she's got a son with PTSD, she's got a mom with dementia, and she's possibly got a grandchild. Her son Pierce came back from Afghanistan damaged. Her dad is stressed from caring for her mom. The Chappy's people are circling like vultures because her location is not performing well. The bright lights are Trudy, who has been abandoned by her mother (I know but..) and Gyorgi the dishwasher at Chappy's. Can she keep it together? This felt all too real in spots, which is a good thing generally except that times are tough in the real world right now. Don't let that be an impediment to picking this up though- the characters are relatable, the writing good, and the story may well resonate. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC.

This was by no means a bad book, the topics that were included and dealt with ranged from Alzheimer's disease to drug addiction, racism and so many more.
I just had a very hard time connecting to any of the characters but especially the protagonist. The tone of the novel was trying to be light despite the heavy subjects and while it succeeded at times, it left me feeling - noncommital to everyone involved.
Unfortunately, this just was not my cup of tea.

This book!!! It takes on so much and yet does it all complete justice, and manages to be engaging and enthralling without being preach-y or losing the story and its characters. Nothing but respect for this book and everything it manages to do, I'm truly impressed and appreciative of what this book does and is!!!

I assume that my mood is not the right one to appreciate this book but I found hard to connect to the characters that I found unlikeable.
The plot is ok and I liked the style of writing.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I really enjoyed this book. Strube touches on a broad range of subjects which really resonate in today’s society including Alzheimer’s disease, PTSD, drug addiction, immigration and gang rape. Not to heavy then! The main character is Stevie, who works in a pretty awful and thankless job as a kitchen manager for a forgettable branch of Chappy’s. I sort of loved her; she comes across as so real it was painful to read about her hard, sometimes harsh life. I have no idea if Chappy’s is based on a real chain of restaurants but I completely believed in it, low pay, hard work, cold corporate owners who only care about money and the very limited ‘perks’ of the shitty job being chipped away daily due to poor performance. Stevie is struggling to cope with caring for her father whose physically ailing, her mother who has Alzheimer’s and her son who has PTSD all the while trying to come to terms with being gang-raped. Give this woman a gold star already! The characters were fantastic. They felt like real people. I loved them and they broke my heart a little.

3.5 Stars

This story covers a broad range of topics, from aging parents, Alzheimer’s and associated problems, to PTSD, especially for war veterans, alcoholism and drug addiction, work-related inequity, immigration and associated problems, corporate greed, and gang rape.

Set in Toronto, this centers around Stevie, a woman in her early 40’s, an alcoholic alternating from succumbing to the desire to facing her need for sobriety. She has a 23-year old son, Pierce, who is home after serving in Afghanistan, and has PTSD, which prevents him from working – among other things. Their relationship is strained; she was largely absent from his life, leaving him with her parents to raise.

Stevie works as a kitchen manager for a chain restaurant named Chappy’s at one of their lowest performing locations, according to Corporate, who seems to daily take away any “perks” to the job.

Entering her life amidst running back and forth to her father - whose health is failing physically, while her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, frequently accuses the caregiver for Stevie’s Dad of being his mistress – is 4-year old Trudy, who may, or may not, be her son’s child, abandoned by her drug-abusing mother with only a brief note.

Fortunately, Gyorgi, a co-worker from Slovakia, offers some respite from all this stress for Stevie, as well as a bit of insight and friendship.

Pub Date: 21 Apr 2020


Many thanks for the ARC provided by ECW Press

Stevie is a recovering addict manages a small restaurant feels her life unraveling..Stevie is sharp tongued living a life trying to keep head above water.Then the surprise of surprises a granddaughter she never knew about shows up. An author I will be following.#netgalley#ecwpress

Bummed! I was really excited for this title and it just didn’t jive with me. I stopped and re-started several times hoping timing was just off, but no. Just not my favorite.

I did not connect to this book at all and was unable to finish it. There's no real structure to the writing, and all the outrageous characters (aside from Stevie) speak in outrageous exclamations. Every one of the characters (except Stevie) are outrageous and unlikable. So as I read it I only feel completely stressed out because of the craziness that Stevie is surrounded with. I don't want to be immersed in the insanity for any longer. I'm giving it 3 stars as a neutral, since it's unfair to give it less if I did not finish it.

obody could hurt me because there was nothing left to destroy, which is why I relate to my traumatized son. In bed at night stuff comes back, just like it comes back to Pierce in his night visions- atrocities he can’t forget.

Stevie manages Chappy’s, a Corporate owned small chain restaurant placing ridiculous demands on the staff. The ‘restructuring’ of the kitchen is a mean feat for Stevie considering the non-English speaking workers, for staff who is now forced to ‘weigh’ the portions they serve, and cheap cuts that cause life threatening incidents like the accident that befalls one of Stevie’s cooks, Jesús. Her boss threatens her to ‘keep a closer eye on her staff’ or else he’ll tell Corporate, but how is she to make any of them listen when as a woman they just don’t seem to follow her instructions? With all these hassles and rules biting at her heels at work, her mission to keep the kitchen running and the staff on the job is like walking through fire. Home isn’t any better, her veteran son Pierce has come home from Afghanistan with more than a dusty cough. Suffering from undiagnosed PTSD, he assaults Stevie when his soldier’s hyper-vigilance kicks in and the body takes over. During war, it was necessary to keep him alive, “back home he’s just nuts”.

Stevie is a recovering alcoholic who knows all too well about PTSD, but the sort of war she struggles with is homegrown and one that far too many females have the misfortune of being veterans of. Her strained relationship with her son began long before he left for service and has nothing to do with their difference of opinions about politics. Her past feels like a cancer, one that has poisoned the well of maternal tenderness. Giving birth to Pierce when she was still in high school, there are secrets she has had to maintain his entire life, painful truths that would devastate Pierce and change how he sees himself. Alcohol was her escape, most of his childhood and upbringing was spent under the care of his grandparents Reggie and Peggy while Stevie spent years screwing up.

Reggie and Peggy are mentally declining in old age, lost in irrational thoughts. It would be funny if it wasn’t so damn sad, particularly when Peggy becomes jealous of the Filipino nurse Ducky, who is caring for frail Reggie. Mild Peggy, who spent the entirety of her marriage silent, bottling up any anger, jealousy and suspicion is now bursting with fury as her mind deteriorates. Stevie’s son isn’t the only one who goes on the attack, there is still fight left in the old gal who wants to keep that hussy away from her man, her daddy! Stevie couldn’t cope without Ducky’s nursing of her father, bad enough he and her mother may well burn down their home. Losing them to death, shameful as it is for Stevie to admit, would be a sweet relief from this madness. Her creative writing classes would be the perfect place for therapeutic release from the torment she has kept inside for so long, but that requires an honesty she isn’t ready for.

When Stevie takes an interest in fellow worker, Slovakian busboy Gyorgi, she may just make a connection and allow herself to be vulnerable. Which is a good thing as one day visiting her parents she finds “a little girl in purple sunglasses” on her parents front porch. A note informs Stevie the little girl is Trudy and may well be her own son’s child! Which means, she is a grandma! What will be born out of this new complication? Does Stevie have any love to give? Why can’t feel the same ease Gyorgi has around children? What about Pierce, still as distant as the sun, where is he in all of this?

Stevie is bitter but enlightenment dawns on the reader as soon as the past unfolds. Her youth was stunted, it was easier to wear the mark of shame than seek help for what really happened. Life just gets away from some people, as the years collect. It was a good book but it’s hard to warm up to Stevie. She is prickly, but can you blame her? I just felt so terrible for her son, you can’t give a child his youth back anymore than she can reclaim her own innocence. This is a book about how the consequences of one moment can change the entire lives of one family, keeping them from making emotional ties. How trauma numbs a person inside and out; a parasite that feeds on a person’s soul. It shows how for many veterans war doesn’t end when they return home, and is a look into what can happen to those who fall through the cracks.

Publication Date: April 21, 2020

ECW Press

An acerbic, compellingly told novel with well-written characters and some irresistible one-liners. The pace flagged a little and made it difficult to continue, but I found it worth doing so.

There is much to admire in this. Its strengths lie in the strong characters, not just the narrator, Stevie, but all the assorted misfits who swirl around her: her son, damaged by neglect and suffering PTSD from a stint in Afghanistan, her granddaughter, resilient and determined despite her own traumas, and all the characters at the diner where Stevie works. The author is skilled at capturing dialogue, the voices, banal, humorous or raging, who depict all these characters. I did feel, especially in the mid-sections of the novel, which went on too long, a certain unrelentingness of the cynical and angry tone. I didn't give up because I was interested to see what happened but sometimes it was a near thing. It is a very well written and mostly absorbing (with the previous comment as a proviso) portrait of inter-generational trauma. I'm not sure its messages are all that unusual or profound, but I grew to care for the characters.

Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube is an engaging novel about a recovering alcoholic called Stevie. She has to deal with her colleagues at the restaurant where she works, her dementia stricken parents, her son who has PTSD from his time as a soldier, and a granddaughter she didnt know she had.