Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this book. While this title is no longer within the realm of my current reading interests I appreciate the opportunity in receiving an ARC.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“[A]ny numbing or mood-altering agent would do. Weed, wine, sex, starvation.”
“I especially liked men who already had girlfriends. The hope was always that they’d leave their girlfriends for me; [that] would have been the ultimate victory, proof of my irresistibility, but they never did.” I appreciate how Gerard does not hand us the tidiest little love story, that our protagonist isn’t saved. In fact, one of the highest compliment was a line I’d read in a review—True Love isn’t suffering under the weight of its own, nor anybody else’s gaze.

How did Gerard do that?

Unfortunately I just could NOT finish this. The trope has been done before and nothing felt particularly new or ambitious. The writing itself was strong but the story left oh so much to be desired.

Struggling twenty somethings and their narcissistic ways. Unemployment, drug addiction and quirky families contribute to this novel. There is some good writing here but the antics of the various becomes a bit of a drag.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

TRUE LOVE, the latest novel by Sarah Gerard, is a tough pill to swallow. It unfortunately doesn't bring anything new to the table in the "sad girl in Brooklyn" literary tradition, though I did find the book hard to put down. Gerard's writing is singular and special, and that is the gem of this novel, but the story left much to be desired. Nina, our heroine, is complicated and crass; an unlikable writer who has too many abusive relationships with men to count. She bounces between her hometown in Florida and her college and life in Brooklyn as we watch her battle mental illness, poverty, accepting herself as an artist, and a destructive marriage. It is not a fun read, and it's not anything groundbreaking, but Gerard's writing shines.

I am not the target audience for this book. I didn't relate to Nina in any way. This book was vulgar at times, raunchy in others and she had no respect for the various men in her life. I didn't understand Nina, her various men, or why they put up with her.

Thank you HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I can’t say for certain whether it was the beautiful cover or vague promise of a story of self-discovery that lead me to request this novel on Net Galley, but whatever it was that I found alluring about this title was quickly overshadowed by feelings of frustration, boredom and outright disgust.

Spoilers for all who enter here, but in the last few pages of this book, Gerard describes how both our protagonist, Nina, and her husband, Aaron, are suffering from some type of genital infection that involves sharing a single tube of Monistat. The words, “cheese,” “rash” “abscess” and “blood” all appear in one after the other, in the middle of a violent domestic dispute where Aaron is beating down their bathroom door yelling, “Why is my dick rotting Nina?"

I wanted so badly to liken this to another novel I had recently read called Luster, except in that story the mentally-ill, sexually promiscuous heroine doesn’t actively work against her own self-interests. Even the novel I compared Luster to, Queenie - which also featured a mentally-ill sexually promiscuous heroine - wasn’t as frustrating as a novel wherein a white woman repeatedly sabotages her own relationships by cheating, chooses to stay in an abusive marriage to make herself feel superior and somehow tries to put herself on the moral high ground just because she dislikes Trump.

And even looking past how unlikeable the protagonist is, Sarah Gerard goes to great lengths to paint gruesome and repulsive scenes of sex, self-harm and domestic abuse.

It’s very rare that I read a book to completion and dislike it this severely, but True Love gets NO STARS from me and I DO NOT recommend this book for anyone.

I wanted to like this novel but the novel ended up feeling the same way I do about certain people whom I tend to avoid because all they do is talk at length about their screwed up lives, never asking about your own life.

At times, the writing was engaging, and I thought, "Ah, now our main character, Nina, will finally make a turn in her life." But no. Instead we watch former lovers die of suicide or near deaths from overdose, while she just trods on with her minimum-waged job engaged in her narcissistic world.

Unlike other novels with more domestic/romantic themes, it's easy to pass the novel off by saying the book is an easy read for the beach. Not this one. Not one character is pleasant. No relationship seems healthy.It's difficult to connect with any of them or feel anything toward them, other than relief that you don't actually know them.

Oddly enough, at times, I read the novel as if it was a memoir, and temporarily, it made more sense then, but not necessarily more likeable. Had there been more introspection on the characters, this novel could have been more fulfilling, but even her therapist turned out be an asshole. Plenty of great material about Nina and her MFA quest to write her memoir, her parent's shitty marriages, but there were too many lousy lovers and fights to endure in this novel, so the ending, that probably should have felt more dramatic, just felt more expected.

Truly a book of our time. Sarah Gerard knocked it out of the park capturing the discontented young adults of our generation.

This novel is bite-sized but packs a punch. It's so compulsively readable I flew through it in two sittings.

True Love is a book so self-aware it's essentially about itself. We follow Nina, a young woman raised in Florida after a few years attending college in NYC, a brief stint in rehab—more for her destructive behavior than for addiction to any one drug—and return to Florida. Nina wants to be a novelist but all her work comes out autobiographical. She wants closeness but her relationships are destructive and she is unfaithful. Nina is overworked, anxious and chronically unhappy.

The portraits of the young adults in this book hit me like a slap to the face. Somehow they manage to be absurd and realistic at the same time. I say this as a woman of Nina's age, who likewise spent her early 20s in Brooklyn, working in the creative field. There were parts that made me giggle and others that made me groan. This novel can be funny but mostly it was painful in its raw honesty. There were no fade-to-blacks, everything is out there on the table whether you want to look or not. I love Sarah Gerard for her frank and unflinching take on being a young woman in the Trump era.

Look. If I had read this a few years ago, when I was deep in my 'white woman sadness mental health issues' book cycle, I would have loved it. Now, not so much. And that's okay. I shouldn't feel guilty about not liking something.

This is a navel-gazing book about a broken woman in broken relationships with broken men. She has broken parents who live in broken cities and live broken lives. It's depressing, it's honest, it's real. Sex, toxic relationships, MFA programs, etc etc.

I feel like these kind of books try to glamorize the idea of being a 'sad girl.' and no. I get it, I get it....post Trump American, etc.... but take your pills. Drink a glass of water. Break up with the guy who barely talks to you. Make new friends. Get out of the trailer park. Believe in something important. Fight for a real issue.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity.

Had me wincing at times when Nina went from one catastrophic mistake to the next. It's a story of a woman's struggle to figure out her life. Of where she belongs and what she wants. At times sad and at times funny it will stay with you long after you finish the last page. Happy reading!

I think I've lived this life before.
*
First, let's all take a moment to appreciate the beauty and sadness of that cover. Here, you really can judge a book by its cover, because that combination of art, satire, and melancholy is exactly what is delivered in Sarah Gerard's True Love.
*
This will likely be wrongly eviscerated, or at least under-appreciated, by the modern masses, who seem to only find validity in literary fiction that deals with disenfranchised people. Perhaps if the author's biography and ties to the LGBTQ community was highlighted or placed at the beginning of the novel, so that we're fully aware they have a deeper history of societal struggle than their character's, it might be considered more favorably, or at least given a chance at objectivity.
There's a certain authenticity that makes this book feel more memoir than fiction, which I quite like, as it resonated more deeply for me. Nina is exactly the kind of self-centered, self-destructive person who might spend long nights on the phone, complaining about her circumstances, while continuing the patterns, ignoring the advice of friends and her psychiatrist. She's difficult to love, but at the same time remains cognizant of the particular maze in which she has found herself/created for herself. She is a woman trapped not by an oppressive system, but rather paralyzed by the options and unable to really start living in a way that is satisfying and true to herself-- likely because she hasn't defined who she is or what she values, or figured out how to cope with the reality of herself.
True Love is a searing look at what it is to be a millennial woman in 2020, and the myriad struggles we face-- and, spoiler alert: it's bleak. Gerard demonstrates a deftness with words and an acerbic wit as she handles her characters, though rather than judging or sugarcoating them, she gives them the freedom to be dislikable and narcissistic.

This was an incredibly difficult and cringeworthy read. I kept waiting for Nina to grow up and become a better person and was continually disappointed until the very last word. I get that not every book has a hero, but this was not an enjoyable read in that everyone was the worst. The writing was good and thoughtful, but it was really difficult to see the bright spots through such a depressing story.

I'm a big fan of the author's previous work, so I had high expectations for this novel. Details are wonderful, and the tone and voice are consistent and strong. The book reads quickly and has an addictive quality to it. Unfortunately, a lot of the book fell flat for me; it was frustrating not to see the main character experience any changes or self-awareness, and we got few answers to any of the number of side-plots. The main character didn't feel very fleshed out beyond the "I" narration, and simple explanations like her supposedly not knowing why she had so many addiction and mental health struggles. I felt at times that I was reading a lot of pain, violence, and abuse, without knowing why or what it meant to anyone involved. I noticed the author included a number of references to queer sexuality and gender identity, but the depiction of heterosexuality was centered and so abusive and troubling, the sweet trans side character didn't balance it out for me. I think some readers will connect to this book a lot more than I did, especially if they're fans of writers like Chloe Caldwell.

Nina is drifting through life, and choosing the worst men along the way. She becomes involved with Seth, an artist, who doesn't really do much, but also can't be bothered with her. Even if he asks her to come over, he may not answer the door when she arrives. Yet, this only heightens her ardor and when she moves to New York from Florida to attend an MFA program, Seth comes along because he wants to live in New York and she's willing to pack up his stuff, rent the moving van and make housing arrangements for them in New York. But in New York, Seth is incapable of holding a job, unwilling to do menial work, leaving Nina scrambling to support both of them. When Seth turns jealous and needy, Nina switches over to Aaron, with as much drama and conflict that she can wring out of the situation.

Nina is a lot to deal with. The friends she manages to keep are all messes themselves, as is her mother. There's a whole genre of novel of women destroying their own lives over terrible men, similar to the WMFuN,* but differing in that in these novels, selfless men don't leap out to help the women, nor is eventual forgiveness a given. But usually, and usually in most novels, there's character development, the protagonist is changed over the course of the novel, or seems like they would like to, at least. That doesn't happen here. Nina's path is a circular one, endlessly repeating the same behaviors, endlessly justifying them with the language she picked up in therapy. And since Nina's behavior is the same at the end of the book as it was at the beginning, the beginning and end are merely arbitrary. She'll switch men at some point, take advantage of different acquaintances and co-workers next time, find a new thing to be utterly irresponsible about.

Gerard can write well. And she can create scenes that are so vivid I would cringe. But the lack of an arc to this story left me feeling unmoored. What's the point of reading about a terrible person continuing to be terrible in the same way to different people? I do love an unlikeable narrator, but Nina's self pity and manipulations never led anywhere. Still, Gerard clearly has a great deal of promise as a novelist and I look forward to seeing how her writing develops.

* <spoiler>White Male Fuck-up Novel</spoiler>

I had to DNF at chapter 10. The main character wasn't readable for me. She didn't seem to have any clear motives and felt like a a ball in a pinball machine.

I read this story about unstable Nina Wicks and her series of overlapping poor choices, with mounting concern and discomfort. There are so many "five dollar words" (as my AP English teacher used to call them) in here like reified, in medias res, and handfasted that I loved looking up and learning. Sarah Gerard is a brilliant writer, capturing the numbingly mindless American Zeitgeist in dialogue filled with blurty non sequiturs that look pithy but aren't. Seth the non-motivated artist especially cracked me up, the way he talks sounds like art gallery text or wine enthusiast babble. There's a lot of psychobabble too. I guess that's what America sounds like now, just a mishmash of babbling, nonsense and shrieking. The backstories of Odessa and Brian and Nina's mom are all so heartbreaking, and graphic. Before marrying him, Nina says she finds Aaron "charmingly rude," and it saddened me to think this might be a thing. So did this: We're in the stage of our love's deepening through rejoicing that I have left another man to be with him. Does everyone in Florida have sex from the age of 14 or 15?

I must say I am relieved to find that the author is a lesbian in real life, so this isn't a memoir and now I can stop worrying about her. If I'd known that from the outset I would have enjoyed reading this more.

I saw this book on bookstagram and knew I wanted to read it. I absolutely loved it. It drew me in and I didn't want to take a break. Definitely did not disappoint!

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve read a lot of books about fucked up chicks and this one as well crafted without adding anything particularly new to the genre. If you like reading about girls who do drugs and cut themselves after sex, this book won’t steer you wrong

"True Love" is anything but. This novel was so over-the-top and pretentious. There is not one sane character. Everyone is bat-shit crazy. The protagonist Nina needs a straight-jacket pronto! She was so unlikeable and pathetic. She's also extremely needy and sexually impulsive. I couldn't figure out why she was so out-of-control? Nina's other indulgences include self-harm and an eating disorder. This book glamorized mental illness. It was embarrassing and insulting to read. I didn't think anyone was more crazy than Nina until we meet Aaron. He terrified me. I couldn't stand all their silly arguments and temper-tantrums.. Horrible, horrible people. The sex scenes were anything but sexy. Just really off-putting and vulgar. There's no character development and that abrupt ending really aggravated me. "True Love" was trying so hard to be raw and groundbreaking, but in reality it's much more patronizing and cartoonish. This book was pure shock value, plain and simple. The only positive thing is the cover. Gorgeous artwork. Pretty on the outside, ugly (and dumb) on the inside.

Thank you, Netgalley and Harper Collins for the digital ARC.

Release date: July 7, 2020