Gritty + 80s + drama = automatic read. Astrid See All is a solid read. Set in NYC in the early 80s, Phoebe is not known for making the best decisions. There's a chance to improve her fortunes - haha - when her psychic persona becomes a sideshow at a popular club. As Phoebe/Astrid desperately tries to survive, will she figure things out? It's worth a read to find out.

I enjoyed this novel more than I expected to. There were light moments that balanced out the heavy moments, which were plentiful. I read this in 3 sittings and thought about it when not reading it, which for me, is always a good sign. I'd give it a shot.

DNF - did not finish. I was intrigued by this one but, I could not connect with the writing and storyline so I decided to put this one down. Thank you, publisher and netgalley for the chance to check this out!

Had this on my TBR, but I'm afraid I didn't get to it!
This sounds like a super cute story, but I didn't see much buzz about it on social media.

I love a book in which the setting is a character, and Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standiford gives us that and more. We get NYC in the '80s in full display, and I felt like I was there. I was in elementary school during this era, but I've always been fascinated with this gritty era.

We get a non-linear look into Astrid's world, and it's quite the ride.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

I found this to be a satisfying, fun and very fast read. I found myself relating to Astrid/Phoebe, even though there were instances where she was downright unlikable. She is quite the people pleaser and at certain times that became annoying. The atmosphere was enjoyable and the overall feel of this book was fun. At times it felt a little cliche, but this didn't affect the overall enjoyment of the read.

I loved the characters in this book and the gritty ambiance of NYC in the 80s. Standiford perfectly captures the city at that specific time and her descriptions are vivid and immersive. The celebrity appearances were an added bonus! This short read is a great one to plow through over the weekend and the funky way the story is told matches well with the bohemian, artsy vibe of Phoebe and her friends.

Thanks to Atria and NetGalley for a copy to review.

It took me a while (a few chapters) to get into this one but once I did, I couldn't put it down and finished it in a day. I was still in middle school during the time this book was set. MTV was a few years old but pictures of celebrities in New York were all over the gossip and teen magazines. Some of those same celebrities make brief appearances in this novel.

I was reminded of how bad trash smells in NYC during hot summers and was thankful there wasn't an olfactory component to the book. I've no doubt the place Phoebe and Carmen end up living in smelled just as bad. It felt very true to the times for gay men to be dying of an unnamed illness and for young women to disappear in the city and to seemingly have no one looking out for the dying and the missing.

Standiford plays with time a little bit in that she uses flashbacks to show where Phoebe and Carmen met in school, the time Phoebe spends at home during the funeral, and so on. She perfectly shows how it can be easy to feel like you're not "cool" enough or interesting enough for people to want to be around and the lengths a person will go to be liked. I loved the fortune telling job.

Overall, I found the novel very compelling but didn't like how neatly Carmen's disappearance was wrapped up at the end.

http://www.amberstults.com/?p=5130

Fundamentally, I suppose this is a coming of age story, that follows Phoebe, a young 20 something who is left reeling following the unexpected death of her dad. Perhaps not wanting to face the trauma, she disappears into the seedy underbelly of New York City in the 1980’s, with her cherished friend Carmen as her companion. She struggles to survive by turning fortunes at a local night club. Perhaps inevitably, things turn dark and Phoebe faces the temptation of drugs, and alcohol. It doesn’t help that her good friend Carmen also seems to be vulnerable to the same misfortunes, so these girls are in a vicious feedback loop. The story is well written, I have heard that New York was a rather dangerous place in the 80’s and that comes across well. I myself struggled a bit with the overwhelming amount of narcotic use here and all these awful things that in large part seem to be spun from a toxic cocktail of extreme poverty and drug use. That said, it does end in a good place. I can see this story perhaps not appealing to everyone, as there are a lot of trauma triggers discussed here. Review posted to Goodreads, Facebook, Amazon, Litsy, and LibraryThing.

This was a fun and fast read! I enjoyed and could relate to Astrid / Phoebe, despite finding her kinda unlikeable. She is very much a people pleaser and at times that got a little redundant. I enjoyed the atmosphere and feel of this book and did enjoy reading it. It felt a little simple at times but none the less made for a fun read.

**I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standiford was an interesting peek into 1980's party/clubs scene in Manhattan. Phoebe moves to NYC, seeking out dark, creative, fringe characters to immerse her new phase in life with. Lots of drugs, questionable decisions, rubbing elbows with famous people, and unusual turn of events, this book took me to a whole other kind of existence. Thank you Netgalley, author and publisher for the copy for review, all opinions are my own.

I love any book based in New York City ,especially if they are written about the eighties and set in the East Village. This book felt like being back in the Tama Janowitz, Bret Easton Ellis days, gritty dark rooms and always one step away from losing to the City.

Decent telling of a girl growing up in the punk and club scene of the 80s. Astrid is a great character, I wish her story had been more fleshed out than her ongoing fascination with roomie and friend Carmen. Felt like it tied the character up a bit.

New York City, 1983: home to pop artists, celebrities, and serial killers. Phoebe and Carmen, who had met as undergrads at Brown, are more worried about trying to find a place to live in the East Village. When Carmen’s boyfriend dies unexpectedly, the women are able to quickly take over the apartment he’d been living in and begin what they hope is a mirrored opposite of what their lives uptown had been. Desperate to afford her new nightclub life — and to find new ways of distracting herself from everything that pushed her away from home — Phoebe takes a job at Plutonium, a nightclub full of performance art and themed rooms. This is how Phoebe becomes Astrid, a fortune teller-slash-new gimmick to help Plutonium stand out among the other night clubs across the Lower East Side. If only Astrid could have really seen all.

Grief and identity, the impact of one on the other, builds a foundation around the chaos of the 80’s party scene. Every day something new is going on. Someone new is dying, disappearing, opening a club, closing one, becoming a celebrity, losing everything they’ve worked for. Phoebe, unable to process the quick succession of the end of an affair and the death of her father, she checks out, no longer wanting to be a main player in her own story.

Bohemia is alive and well in Standiford’s New York City but there’s always a question of how long is it really going to last? As Phoebe slips deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole of avoiding and escaping, whoever the girl was who graduated from Brown and lived uptown fades like the pictures of the missing girls that line the streets. Astrid Sees All may have a lot going on, but to me it captured the chaos of the 80’s — specifically of the Lower East Side during this time period. A general feeling of things can always be worse, and will get worse ripples through the book that pushes the story forward even if Phoebe doesn’t want it to. Drug addiction, toxic friendships, illness, murder, and celebrity sightings add the right amount of noise and confusion to make it feel like we’re moving with Phoebe through her nightclub, where every night feels like the night before, reflected through a fun mirror. When Phoebe starts feeling like she’s being followed, you have to question whether someone is actually hunting her, or if it’s just paranoia fueled by lack of sleep and white drugs.

As a big fan of Cat Marnell’s How to Murder Your Life and Tara Isabella Burton’s Social Creature, I loved Astrid Sees All from start to finish. Standiford captures the impact compounded, complicated grief can have on someone. Astrid Sees All, while a coming-to-age story steeped in thriller undertones, digs more into how much losing people and parts of yourself can change who you are. Empty you. Force you into a survival mode that sometimes blurs the line between self-preservation and self-destruction. Both thought-provoking and entertaining, Astrid Sees All is a wild ride I can’t wait to go back and read again.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. My thoughts and opinions are my own. Any quotes I use are from an unpublished copy and may not reflect the finished product.

Sadly, May has not been a great reading month for me. I picked up Astrid Sees All thinking it would be the book that saved me from this slump (I'd read several really good reviews for it), but it was just as disappointing. I honestly cannot remember the main character's name (I'm sure it will come to me later), because all she ever talked about was Carmen this and Carmen that. The main character was OBSESSED with Carmen! She salivated over every crumb of attention that her "friend" deigned to give her. Where were her other friends? A roommate was briefly mentioned, but I have no idea what happened to her after she moved in with other people.

I don't even want to get into the main character - AH! Phoebe! - describing her vagina as having a "plain milky smell," or how much her boyfriend (someone she didn't even like until Carmen suggested she give him a chance) enjoyed it. Phoebe had no original ideas and couldn't go to the bathroom without Carmen's permission. Their relationship was seriously fucked up. Once Phoebe realized that Carmen was "repelled" by people who wanted her attention, she started playing hard to get. Who does that? Oh, yeah! Psychotic people. (Everything about Phoebe's relationship with Mark - including Carmen's role and the information she withheld - was VERY strange.)

"I thought the problem was with me, that in some way I was unworthy of her confidence. What was I doing wrong? I looked around at the behavior of my fellow students and came to the conclusion that carmen sensed how much I wanted her to like me, and that repelled her. I opened my eyes and received the message blaring all over campus: vulnerability equals weakness, and weakness arouses contempt. I had only to hide my longing and my desire, and they would be fulfilled."

RED FLAG! This entire statement is problematic, and it honestly makes me think everyone involved needs therapy. Your longing and desire to be someone's friend? Why was Carmen so special? Why did Phoebe single her out and think she HAD to be her friend? Carmen wasn't even a nice person, yet that was who she wanted to emulate?

Let's backtrack a little! The guy Phoebe started dating only because Carmen said to? Yeah, she's absolutely terrible to him. He wasn't a great guy or anything, but she did use him and then admit to herself that not being as invested in the relationship gave her power over him. If you're thinking, "What the actual fuck?," join the club.

"I tried to comfort him, but the longer he groveled, the more disgusted I felt. Did Mark really like me this much? If he did, wasn't it kind of gross of him to show it?"

Oh, so now feelings are gross? If you do read this book, can you please explain Mark's off-the-wall monologue to me? It was so confusing! And what was the point? Pregnancy? Coffee? No free will? Please, don't leave me? You guys, my brain. *mimes explosion*

I really didn't like any of the characters and thought Phoebe consistently got worse as the story progressed. She just wasn't a good person, so I had no desire to continue reading about her. At one point, the rich kids were throwing a Gatsby-themed party, and she was disappointed that it was being held where they'd filmed the movie. Girl, you weren't even on the guest list and now you're complaining about where it's being held? Go fuck yourself.

"It wasn't very original of the host consortium to throw a Gatsby party in the Gatsby house."

Carmen. Carmen. Carmen. It's basically every third word Phoebe says or thinks to herself and I AM OVER IT. If this was supposed to be a book about Carmen, then she should have been the protagonist.

"I was sorry I'd hurt him, but not really, because it had been worth it. I'd glimpsed the golden world, and returning to it was my only goal."

She's so shallow! Seriously, all of the characters were awful. I stopped on page 53 because I couldn't take it anymore. I really wanted to like this book, but the characters made it impossible. The setting was interesting, but everything was ruined by Phoebe's commentary and her actions. Carmen was just as bad, but we're not in her head. Maybe a duel POV would have made her more likable? I doubt it, but anything's possible.

Oh, and everything the author wrote about Jack Kennedy (JFK's grandson, I think), only made this book feel even more unbelievable. He kept popping up in their lives (in class, at parties, etc.), and every interaction she had with him made me cringe. It just felt fake and forced, like the author needed a celebrity to make the story more interesting.

Also, the story went from the present to the past, but then jumped around in the past? It was weird. It wasn't necessarily hard to follow, but it did make it hard to get a grasp on the characters and what was happening in their lives. The ONE thing I liked about this book were the ticket stubs. I love the idea of using the titles of shows to tell fortunes or predict the future. It sounds like a fun game you'd play at a party. Unfortunately, I only read enough of the book for the concept to be explained, and I didn't actually get to see Phoebe performing with them. (★★☆☆☆)

Great characters good storyline phoebes friend Carmen disappears after being betrayed by phoebe this is the story that takes place in the east village where there a lot of damaged residents

I love books and tv set in the 80s and 90s.

This was such a great book, it was super easy to follow and I definitely felt transported back into time. The narrator fit this story well, and she showed a great range of emotions with her voice. I was expecting a light hearted fun read, but there was definitely more depth then I was expecting.

Unfortunately, I couldn't really get into this story. The characters felt like caricatures to me, and though the premise sounded interesting, it just didn't really work for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the early copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

I ended up doing audio for this and really enjoyed the story. The friendship reminded me of my 20s and I flew through the audio. The setting felt so vivid and real.

This was recommended for fans of Fleabag and this couldn’t be further off base. I personally loved Fleabag because of the realness and how darkly comedic it is and honestly, this book didn’t possess a single funny bone in its pages. It was dreary and pretentious and none of the characters left any semblance of an impression on me.