Set in the 80s, life seemed like it was a big part.

Armed with movie ticket stubs and a crystal ball, Astrid see all. She sees lies, drugs, cheaters, and her life turned upside down.

I enjoyed this story and still think about it from time to time.

The description of this book and the setting of NYC in the 80s immediately pulled me in; however, I was left disappointed. Despite the lack of 80s pop culture mentioned, or anything to define the time period, the overall plot seemed weak and even the characters failed to catch my interest. I didn’t feel a strong connection to any of them, and each time I started to learn a little more about one character, another was introduced. I also felt that the timeline was inconsistent and hard to keep up with at times. Overall, it was readable but I wouldn’t recommend it before other books.

I knew I wanted this book immediately upon reading about this setting. I love books that take you into a partying scene. Especially when it takes place in such a vivid environment as New York City in the early 80’s.
I was caught so up in the nostalgia of the 80s for most of the book. Our main character Phoebe navigates adulthood with drugs, booze and chance encounters with the rich, famous, and upcoming and stumbles into a job telling fortunes using movie stubs at the hottest club in New York. There she makes a name for herself as Astrid. I loved Phoebe’s character and she reminded me of other characters I loved because they seemed real—My So-Called Life comes to mind—heroines who were fallible and truthful and beautiful because of it. Though I've never lived in Manhattan and I was never a part of the world in this book, I felt so immersed in this world that always felt visible and real, This was a fun trip for me and upon finishing, I came to understand better how and why Astrid did what she did (trying not to spoil), and the book ultimately became that much better for it. This book was suggested for people who like Fleabag and Sweetbitter and I was instantly interested.

The premise of this book grabbed me - young 20 somethings in NYC, doing the club scene, described as a love letter to the gritty side of NYC. And it should have caught my interest - Phoebe hails from Baltimore, my home town, was just a few years behind my time at Brown, and she was never the popular girl. I can remember so clearly being young and wanting something wild and different to happen to me. But still, it failed to click.
Phoebe hitches her wagon to Carmen, another Bruin, a native New Yorker, but a spoiled, unlikeable young woman. As Phoebe tries to mirror herself after Carmen, she too, becomes a deeply unlikeable person.
Phoebe’s trick is that she tells fortunes by reading movie ticket stubs. She calls herself Astrid and gets a job at a hot nightclub. Her friend, Carmen, goes missing.
The book covers the drugs, the alcohol, the hard life these people led seeking excitement. But most of the story deals with the hollowness of their lives. It just reeked of emptiness. To me, it was a deeply depressing book. At the end of the book, Phoebe is reading a book about Edie Sedgwick. “Twenty eight years of money, drugs, loneliness, and fame; exciting and glamorous and terribly sad. I couldn’t separate the glamorous threads from the sad ones. They twined and fed on each other, the glamour impossible without the sadness, and the sadness heightened by the glamour.” This paragraph rang with the same truth behind this story.
These folks didn’t have the glamour themselves, although they sought it. They flitted at the edges of the famous people, like John Kennedy, Jr. and Andy Warhol.
My thanks to netgalley and Atria Books for an advance copy of this book.

This is my first read by this author and I really enjoyed the story. Two best friends move to New York and get caught up in the party scene with drugs and fame. When Carmen, one of the friends went missing , phoebe wants nothing more to find her no matter what the cost.
This is a deeply entertaining read.

This is a long anthem to the partying of the 80s, to drugs, to friends, to New York.

Phoebe and her friend Carmen go to live in New York. They are soon caught up in the drug and party scene. Phoebe has this thing she does where she saves every movie ticket stub and uses them to "tell the future" or her interpretation of it. She gets a job in a club telling people's fourtunes and starts calling herself Astrid. At some point, Carmen how missing and all Phoebe wants is to find her again.

I thought this was a very slow moving novel. There is no action. I took a long time to get through it. It's more of a character study than anything i think.

This was a solid, engaging book! For the most part, I loved the pacing — it was quick, making it the type of book you don’t want to put down. I read it in two sittings and felt completely immersed in the 1980s club scene, which I loved. The ending did feel rushed and a bit unsatisfactory, but not so much that it ruined the rest of the book. I ultimately just wanted a bit more complexity from the characters — there wasn’t much growth. Still, this was a super fun read, and I’m definitely excited to see what Standiford does next!

Set in New York during the 80s, Astrid Sees All by Natalia Standiford has it's two lead gal pals find themselves a reasonably affordable place to live, due to a boyfriend landing in jail for drug dealing, and the chance to figure out who they want to be .

Phoebe has always admired Carmen since their college days and her main motive for moving to NYC from Baltimore was to be her orbit. Carmen's party girl ways tend to leave Phoebe one step behind but upon the death of her father, she chooses to do more than keep up.

Calling herself Astrid, Phoebe turns herself into a fortune teller who uses movie tickets as her tarot cards, which allows her to stay within Carmen's social range. However, by dating one of her friend's boyfriends, that relationship becomes threatened, almost as threatened as the possibility of Phoebe being followed by a mysterious stranger.

Standiford is best known for her YA novels but I 'm sure that this change of shelf space will not turn off her regular readers; in fact, it may add some newcomers to her literary mix.

Whether it be adults or teens, friendships are tricky to balance if someone has to be top dog instead of even steven and Standiford seems to know how well to keep those character plot point plates spinning in the air quite nicely.

This is a story about a hometown young girl who wants to spread her wings. At the age of 22, Phoebe leaves her humdrum life behind to enjoy the bright lights of New York. Almost immediately she falls into the seedy underbelly of drinking, drugs, all-night partying, and scraping by.
The entire time I was reading this, I could hear Lou Reed’s deep and gravelly voice in the background singing “Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.” The character of Phoebe is two years younger than I was in 1984, so there are so many aspects of her that I could relate to. She wants to live a little before she becomes another domestic housewife raising kids. Her judgment and sense of character haven’t developed enough for what she will encounter in the big city, but you can’t tell her anything. She forges into a relationship with a much older man; a relationship void of emotion and sincerity. She befriends Carmen, who she idolizes and is strongly attracted to. The two of them find themselves a part of one of the most coveted nightclubs in New York, a hot spot for who’s who. Phoebe lands a job there as a fortune teller using her box of lifelong saved movie ticket stubs. She changes her stage name to Astrid, and voile, she’s a star!
Burning the candle on both ends, using drugs and alcohol with abandon, eating only as an afterthought, it doesn’t take long for the crash and burn stage. Phoebe is called home to her father’s funeral, which she takes especially hard. Answering Carmen’s call to come back and live with her, she returns to New York, a lot less caring and a lot more willing to take risks. She walks the streets late at night even though there’s a stalker on the loose. The tension grows as we watch Phoebe sink lower and lower, losing her best friend and beating herself up for not being with her dad in the end. You want to reach through the pages and shake her, but you’re helpless; you have to sit and watch. Where and what is rock bottom? Just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. This is a sordid and sneaky glimpse into the nightlife of “80’s New York; this ballad of Phoebe and Carmen will stick with you.
Sincere thanks to NetGalley and Atria for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date is April 6, 2021.

It's 1984 and Phoebe Hayes has left her parents' home in Baltimore for a new adventure in New York City. On her own with only a minimum wage bookstore job, she finds a friend in Carmen, someone she is secretly a bit obsessed with. What would Carmen do, wear, say, she constantly asks herself. Carmen charms everyone, but isn't without her flaws. When Carmen leaves, Phoebe struggles with finding her own identity, and eventually succeeds, but not until making some experiential mistakes of her own.

Astrid is Phoebe's stage name, so to speak, when she takes a job at a popular nightclub reading fortunes. This was a fun, clever way to make a living and get to meet the It people at the same time. I can see many of us copying Astrid's methods and making fortune telling an interesting party game post-pandemic.

Ms. Standiford previously wrote Young Adult books. This is her entry into the Adult genre, and I think she did a good job using Phoebe/Astrid to show that they have both successfully ventured into the adult world. New York is a fascinating and scary place, and such is life. Many thanks to Isabel Dasilva at Simon and Schuster for the galley copy from NetGalley.

I’m judging a 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.
“Carmen toiled in Bertha’s plush Park Avenue apartment: making Bertha’s tea, nursing Bertha’s hangovers, enduring Bertha’s insults, and cleaning up after Bertha’s miniature Yorkie, Mimi, who left a yellow puddle or a neat pile of dog shit in the entry hall almost every morning.

This book definitely gives off a vibe of a particular era in a particular part of New York: the East Village in the 1980s. It's a very bohemian atmosphere, with artists and partying young people and apartments that sound gritty and cold. In it, Phoebe Hayes is a recent college graduate who has always been the good girl but craves more excitement - and after the unexpected death of her father, in her devastation she escapes her family, who wants her to stay home in Baltimore and recover, and heads back to New York with no money to her name and no real prospects but a hunger for the glamorous life she envisions. She gets wrapped up into this bohemian partying scene with her best friend and roommate Carmen, getting a job as a faux fortune teller in the hottest exclusive night club in town, which leads down a path of sex, drugs, and self-destruction - including destructing her relationship with Carmen. Overall I struggled a bit to rate this book because as an enneagram type 1 rule-follower I sometimes struggle with stories about people who are making self-destructive and just clearly poor choices when it comes to drugs, relationships, and more (it's billed as being for fans of Sweetbitter, Fleabag, and books by Patti Smith, which are not my genre) - but at the same time, the writing and the story were propulsive enough that they kept me reading, even while I wondered whether these characters could be redeemed for me... The themes of female friendship and finding identity as a young woman brought it all together in the end, but the overall feel was maybe a little more gritty than I prefer.

𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝; 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐭. 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐠𝐨 𝐚𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮

A story about “It Girls” in the 1980’s living in East Village, New York City. Meet Phoebe Hayes, twenty-two years old and desperate for experience, excitement and a thrilling life that only the city can offer, especially under the guidance of native New Yorker Carmen. Moving to Manhattan not far from Carmen after college graduation, Phoebe works at a bookstore biding her time while others around her seem to be living the dream she yearns for. Carmen herself is wrapped up in her boyfriend Atti, and Phoebe’s Baltimore roots provides very little experience helping her navigate her new life in the city. One day she meets an older man named Ivan, a seductive doctor. When she gets in a jam, pride be damned, she must accept his money. Then her father dies, the heaviness of her grief causes her to lose her grip and behave strangely. She is desperate to get back to her life in New York, despite her mother’s protestations to the contrary. She is hungry, for distraction from her misery, for the glittering life that thrums in the gritty places only those on the inside haunt and for the chance to deal with Ivan and pay him back for his ‘help’.

Salvation comes in the form of Carmen, who is a lighthouse in her fog of grief. Together, they go underground. Carmen is spellbound by drug addicted Atti, the very person her parent’s want to keep her away from. She swears isn’t using drugs anymore, but like Phoebe, she wants to steer her own life and with Phoebe by her side, no one can stop them. If they leave it all behind, they will finally meet their fate. Through the bad luck of a drug dealers arrest, they grab up an apartment and thanks to Carmen, Phoebe lands a job telling fortunes at the downtown nightclub where famous people party, the Plutonium. Soon she will rub shoulders with people like Andy Warhol! Since college, Phoebe has believed if she could just hook Carmen and be interesting then her sophisticated friend’s ‘ritual of disappearance’ would end. In becoming Astrid the Star Girl, she’s entered Carmen’s world of drugs, sex, and the nightlife. Her world is fresh and new! Finally, she too is someone worth noting. All that glitters isn’t gold, faking it to fit to make it in the presence of celebrities, and secrets, Carmen is keeping secrets from her that casts Phoebe in a role she doesn’t like.

The relationship between Ivan and Phoebe is more tawdry than sexy. She’s playing at being someone else in the hopes to become wild, world-wise, alluring. Channeling movie stubs as a fortune teller (unsure if she has a gift or it’s all bull), lending a little theater to her act as much as she plays the sex kitten pretending ugly sexual encounters are thrilling, chalking it all up to experience, but beneath the surface she’s fooling herself. That whole scene isn’t quite as satisfying as she imagines it and she comes away with huge regrets. There is a disconnect in her life, between who she wants to be and who she is. She spends a lot of time running away from herself which comes off as genuine, it’s the price of youth, these burning lessons. Carmen isn’t as wise and cultivated as she appears either. If anyone has a warped vision of love, it’s her. Neither is truly in charge of their story, for now.

Worse, a shadowy figure is following Phoebe, she isn’t sure who but it can’t possibly be the man she thinks it is. She has got to be losing her mind. Carmen suffers her own loss but Jem, an artist, is there to comfort her, spending his time at their apartment, making Carmen ‘incandescently happy’. A distance is forming between the friends and she is ignoring all the signs that something is troubling her. She has needs, as much as Carmen, but the choices she makes may well drive her best friend away. When Carmen vanishes after their fight, she lies to herself that everything is fine, as the world she has created is crumbling around her. She can’t avoid the truth when she notices flyers of missing young women, it’s a dangerous time, surely nothing untoward happened to Carmen, right? In order to figure out what has happened, she has to wake up and face the heavy past she has been running from. She may just become famous in the end, but the universe has a strange sense of humor.

A coming of age about friendship, glamour, sex, drugs, and betrayal. It’s an ode to the 1980’s New York Bohemia scene. It was a solid read, one that strips us down to who we really are underneath the façade we show the world. In the end, both Phoebe and Carmen are young and vulnerable, despite the grit they sharpen their souls on. Both are liars, inventing who they wish they were, ignoring the truth of their struggles, their weaknesses, two drowning girls trying to save each other and failing miserably.

Publication Date: April 6, 2021

Atria Books

I unfortunately didn't connect with the characters or story in any meaningful way, so the book dragged until the last 25% or so. It wasn't bad, it just didn't grab me in the way I had hoped it would. I think it just wasn't the book for me right now, and that's ok!

If I were to picture a novel that portrayed the excess and dangers of stereotypical 1980s NYC, it would be Astrid Sees All.

Drugs. A little rock & roll. Clubs. A random serial killer, because, why not?

Yes, it was a lot and a bit over the top. Did I still enjoy it? I think so. I couldn’t put it down. I found myself rooting for Pheobe and loving her a little more with every page. Was the perfect? Nope. She was flawed and real.

I must be getting old. I couldn't find the appeal in this book. The characters never grew on me and I couldn't get into the story. I couldn't finish it and will not review it. Thank you so much for allowing me to try it however!

I really enjoyed this look into the seedy downtown NYC club scene of the 1980’s. The dirty glamour, the name dropping, the sex and drugs.....I couldn’t put it down! The characters were compelling but I was left wanting more from them. The novel probably could have been a little longer and accomplished this, but it didn’t detract too much from my enjoyment. All in all, I’m really happy I read this. I’m looking forward to reading more from this author in the future. 4 stars.

One of the most anticipated books for early 2021 by The Millions, this story is set in 1980’s New York City, brimming with alcohol, drugs, and the bohemian lifestyle of the time, the celebrities of Manhattan’s elite mingling with the ‘common’ people. The nightclubs, the music along with the seedier underground life. This is the setting for this story, which focuses on a young and somewhat more naive Phoebe, newly arrived from Baltimore, and Carmen from Manhattan, who meet at Brown, both undergraduates. After graduation, they set about trying to find an apartment in the East Village. Phoebe finds a room not far from Carmen’s apartment, and finds a job waitressing for a while. Eventually, after an acquaintance ends up in jail for trafficking drugs, they jump at the chance to grab the apartment before anyone else can and begin living together.

As a child, Phoebe loved going to the movies with her father, keeping her old movie ticket stubs inside an old shoebox. Over the years of her childhood, she would practice telling fortunes using those ticket stubs, her ’special divination method’ to determine if a certain boy liked her, or certain friends were talking trash behind her back, the questions one worries about in those years. The answers always came through those ticket stubs. When she returns home after her father’s death, she runs across this shoebox, and the memories return. This party trick will serve her in her years of living on almost nothing in the city, when she gets hired after attending a New Year’s Eve party, dressed for the part with a turban as a gift from Carmen, who convinced her to return despite her mother’s objections. Her public persona becomes Astrid the Star Girl.

Celebrities weave in and out of this story, which lends to the atmosphere of the time and place. The glitz, the glamour, the haves and the have-nots, all mingling in the grittiness of 1980’s with a heavy sprinkling of drugs and booze. The imbalance of power between the haves vs have-nots, the allure for some of even being in the presence of the likes of JFK, Jr., Andy Warhol, or Debbie Harry.

The first half plus flowed almost effortlessly for me. Shortly after, it takes a darker turn and the story begins to unravel a bit more as it takes many twists and turns, but overall it really does feel like an ode to the place and time, New York City of the 1980’s.

Pub Date: 06 Apr 2021

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Atria Books

Great story that captures NYC in the 80s—booze, drubs, nightclubs, chance encounters. If you like redemption stories, you’ll like this book. Not so much a tale of a character’s redemption, but a city’s. Dirty and dazzling at the same time, this story gets the Zeitgeist.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. This book would be enjoyed by someone who loves the 80s nostalgia but not necessarily someone who needs the characters to be likeable. Phoebe is a middle class suburban college graduate whose dad just died from cancer. She had moved to the glamorous and rough NYC of the early 1980's with her friend Carmen. I felt like this could have happened anytime in the past 30 years and the single in the city girls is a bit tiresome. The writing is fine but I struggled with these characters and not really caring what happens to them.