This novel follows the lives of three couples in a wealthy Connecticut town. Trip and Virginia are a popular couple with one child. But no one knows that Trip has become a survivalist with a basement full of guns or that Virginia has breast cancer and that she isn't treating it even though her mother died of the same disease.

Richard and Margot have three boys. Richard is Trip's best friend but has had a crush on Virginia for a while. He majored in literature and Virginia wrote a published novel plus she is beautiful. Margot is focused on whether to move her boys to the Petra school instead of the public schools they attend. She also wants another child as they had a daughter who died of SIDS.

The last couple, Gunther and Rachel, are the newest ones to come to town. Gunter is German and older than most of their circle. Rachel is working from home in design but both find the town suffocating and wonder if they were too hasty in leaving the city. Gunther starts out opposed to the Petra school but later becomes one of its leading advocates.

The Petra school is a focus point of the town. It has strong ideas about how children should and shouldn't be taught. It focuses on cooperation not competitiveness so sports are out as are academic pressure and competitions such as spelling bees. In fact, in the lower grades children who already know how to read are pressured to not do so because it might make their peers feel badly. As the year goes by, several of the parents start to wonder if anything is actually being taught there except how to feel good about yourself.

The couples are entering middle age and facing issues such as the waning of sexual desire for each other, worries about money, fading of the love that brought them together and a last gasp for the freedom to be the individuals they always wanted to be. It seems likely that some of them will not make it as couples. The moms worry about fitting into the social norms of the mom groups while the men fret about their careers.

Bethany Ball has captured many of the issues and thoughts that affect married couples as the first rush of love and lust for each other starts to fade as career and child rearing take precedence in a couple's life. The reader will find someone in these men and women to relate to and will want to read to the end to see how everything turns out. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

One of the best openers I’ve read this year. An active opening for your novel can really propel you into the story, and allows the reader to make judgements and assumptions right away about the characters . Boy does this one deliver. The story begins with a neighborhood New Year’s Eve party where we are introduced to a few sets of couples, it’s quickly evident they are all fucked in the head in their own self absorbed way. If you love an unlikeable character (and I do love messy chaotic relationships in fiction ) , you can have your cake with this one. Add lots of suburban ennui, dark absurdist humor, a culty private school , some guns and infidelity - I read this in a day and couldn’t put it down!

I wasn't able to finish this. It just didn't hold my attention; I wasn't motivated to continue. It needed a more intriguing beginning.

DNF @ 30%

I really couldn't get into this story. The characters were absolutely awful, which I know was probably partially intentional, but it was miserable to listen to them. Which is saying a lot because I normally love unlikeable characters

Thank you Netgalley and HighBridge Audio for this arc.

In Ball’s second novel we follow three married couples living in a small town in Connecticut. The book depicts the lives of these upper class families in a white suburb and their “struggles”, dilemas, and discontent. Anyone could say they are perfect people, living perfect desirable lives but a closer look shows they are dysfunctional and falling apart.

This book was a great surprise. I liked the writing style and the audiobook narration. While the reader watches the characters open up their messy lives from up-close, there is this satirical element throughout the whole story. The Pessimists is a good portrait of how futile people can live their lives. I had a good time listening to this audiobook and I definitely recommend it.

This book was just okay. The satire of wealthy white suburbanites and their new-agey private school was funny at times, but a little heavy-handed at others. As someone who has lived in Sweden, the Swedish character Gunter didn't really ring true to me. I thought Tripp's character was the most interesting and wished his storyline hadn't been wrapped up so quickly. In fact, a lot of the ending felt rushed and unsatisfying.

An interesting look at families and their “stuff”. We all have it, “stuff”. It felt like a burden to me. A relationship that should of ended. A trap. The story drove on empty and feed on dissatisfied. It made me uncomfortable and I really don’t know how I feel about the ending. Good writing, sad story.
A lot of people liked it but me, not so much. I chose to listen to this book on audio and the narrator was great.
Thanks HighBridge Audio via Netgalley.

I failed to connect with the characters in this book. This just felt really slow and despite moments that were supposed to be funny, I found little humor in it. Perhaps this was too clever, but I don’t think this book was for me. 2 stars ⭐️. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy for review.

I don't think I've read a novel set in Connecticut in quite a while so the setting definitely pulled me in. The story features (3) upper middle class suburban families. We meet soccer moms who want everything in their lives to be perfect but deep down are failing miserably and dissatisfied with life. The couples have some serious issues and secrets: fertility and other health issues, infidelities, even preparing a basement cache for the end of the world, Who cares though as long as appearances have these individuals coming across as having it all together. Besides the couples we have Agnes, the Nazi-like headmistress of The Petra School, an elementary school whose tuition is more than many colleges but where learning early on (even reading and math) and competition seem discouraged and no Jews please.

I know this book was supposed to be satirical but, for me I just never connected with the characters and the absurdity of their situations. On audio all of the characters, their issues and unhappiness just seemed to blur together without a real plot line to the story.

Rating - Disappointed

I really wasn’t sure where this was going to go in the beginning. It took me a little bit to get into it, and attached to the characters. But I ended up really liking it!! It’s a fun dark comedy, and I found it really humorous. I’m familiar with small-town Connecticut, and so it felt very true to form. The whole thing read really smart and contemporary. Really quick read, so happy I picked it up.

I wanted to like this book. However, it fell flat for my taste. It was an easy read about three white suburban families living in Connecticut. The common ground of all the families was the Petra School. A Hippie Dippy alternative school that blames technology, testing and competition for the downfall of society. I wanted to roll my eyes every time the emails went out from Petra to the families. From the outside, these families seem not only somewhat normal, but perfect. However, a closer look shows that they are all falling apart and failing from the inside.
The writing style wasn’t my cup of tea. I didn’t like and couldn’t relate to any of the characters. The idea of the story was on point, I just don’t feel it was executed great. There were supposed to be parts with humor in it, but I never really found it funny or amusing. It was interesting enough to keep me going through it but wasn’t exciting. There didn’t seem to be a climax to the story, it was just all at the same level. Honestly, I tried reading this one because I share the same first name with the author. Probably won’t be doing that again.

2.5 stars

Listening to this audiobook has made me realize that I might not be a literary fiction kind of reader. It's not about the genre being bad, but I just don't think that I am the target audience.

There are certainly moments of brilliance in The Pessimists that capture the damaging monotony of suburbia and the complexities of modern marriage. Watching the parents succumb and resist the borderline cult embodied by The Petra School was so horrifying and well-rendered that I almost wished that it had been the main storyline.

However, the rest of the book - billed as a darkly funny portrayal about three couples attempting to parent amidst their own deferred longings - just felt like a series of events linked by a theme rather than a plot. Listening to the audiobook, I found it difficult to distinguish between the couples and their different situations because every character exists in this perpetual state of dissatisfaction. I found very little of the book to be funny because I have to live with the wide-reaching consequences of people who act like these characters. I have enough existential dread to deal with, thank you very much.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Thank you Net Galley for an audio ARC of The Pessimists by Bethany Ball. This story was about different families in suburbia and all their idiosyncrasies. Great work!

Enjoyed this more than I thought I would! A slow burner, but it really sucks you in — I found the intricacies of the relationships in suburbia to be fascinating, if not a little bogged down by a lack of subtlety. A perfect vision of suburban nihilism and the boredom of aging. I wish the throughline of the Petra school had been developed better; certain elements of that plotline felt a bit thrown in and underexplored. I can't say that I truly grew to care about any of the characters, but I did come to recognize parts of them — and that's maybe more honest.

“Love is truth, but it’s also lying.” - From the Pessimists

4 stars

For most of the book I was not completely drawn in. I’m not a fan of cheating (and there was a lot), and I didn’t care too terribly about these rich folks. The writing was nice, but they are such phenomenally bad characters that I was still a bit removed from it. This is one of the few books I read that the end made it all sort of come together and my enjoyment dramatically increased. I did not see that coming. I loved the constant updates from the ridiculous (and accurate) private school. It has quite a few triggers including death and cancer so avoid if that isn’t your cup of tea.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.