I was struggling to finish this. This wasn’t a bad story to start with but it kinda fell apart for me halfway through mainly because of the main character, Lo. At first, I saw where she was coming from and why is behaving that way but she became increasingly more annoying as the story progressed.

I chose this cause the blurb intrigued me and I was disappointed that the plot failed to capture my attention. The plot centers around the road trip but the road trip itself was bland and there seemed to be no chemistry in the romance department. It just felt like two people thrown together and are forced to be in love.

Another thing I didn’t like was the way Lo treated people around her. She wasn’t called out for her behaviour and had no consequences towards her actions. If this was real life, she would have been cancelled.

Sadly, this book wasn’t for me. Thank you Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for the arc.

I didn't necessarily like or dislike this book. There were elements that I liked however, I found the rants and the way Lo was portrayed made her seem a bit immature to me. Thank you for allowing me to read this book.

Overall I enjoyed this story, however slow at times, I appreciated the way the author included scientific fun facts and the journeys we followed with the characters on throughout the book! I wanted to keep reading and see it through till the end, but I wasn't enthralled to pick it up everyday.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

𝑶𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆, 𝒍𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒖𝒕𝒆𝒔 𝒆𝒙𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝑱𝒆𝒂𝒏 𝑳𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆, 𝒂 𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓’𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒖𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔, 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔- 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒂 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒏.
As her twenties are passing her by, Lo is still trying to figure things out and feeling trapped in her hometown of Elysian, Minnesota. The winters are brutal, so she realizes she must admit defeat and get a car. Nothing exciting ever happens, or maybe she is too wrapped up in herself to notice? Back to her need for a car, it’s a dilemma for someone who doesn’t believe in capitalism, who despises the rat race and wasting money on things you don’t need, destroying the environment with more garbage. As a self-described freegan, imagine her luck when she sees an ad in the paper for a free car. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to repurpose things, to get what you can without wasting money but surviving on the good grace of others, doesn’t someone has to do the work and earn the things you want for free? She doesn’t want to contribute to all the waste, which reminded me of those who seriously leave a very small footprint, it’s a lot of work. Work I cannot imagine Lo doing, seriously, have you ever watched those people who spend a year barely using resources we take for granted and making little to no garbage? It takes serious willpower, not just lip service. Naturally, the car comes with strings attached, as in life it’s quite rare to get something for nothing. Blanche is the giver, but the car is a lure, a means to contact her estranged son, Jason, who she believes is headed for California. Blanche is dying, she just wants to see her son again but is far too ill to venture out and find him herself, that is where Lo comes into the plan. As an aside, Lo is nervous in this dangerous neighborhood, the places she has always been warned to stay away from. Isn’t that a bit of snobbery from someone who wants something for free? Is it just me? The car is hers for the favor of driving out to California and bringing him home. Lo finds a local mechanic named John, Blanche is willing to pay for the repairs on the old car. Then, another idea, John would be the perfect travel companion for Lo, can repair any troubles that arise on the journey, now she just has to convince them. Lo and John both work, it’s a wild plan, a lot to ask of them, getting involved in this family drama but can they refuse the dying woman a chance to see her son before she dies, even though she admits to being a bad mother? Isn’t she supposed to be about the freegan life, wouldn’t that also mean helping others without hesitation? Eventually, they accept. They are strangers at the start of the novel but as they get to know each other there is an attraction. Lo doesn’t seem to understand what boundaries are as she ‘resists the strong urge to check his texts, go through his photos’, it makes me like her even less and she has a strange obsession with fireflies, glowworms. But I won’t ruin the unlikely romance for the rest of you. I spent a lot of time scratching my head when it came to her. She scolds people and seems hellbent on sabotaging every relationship, or the possibility of bonds, by being antagonistic. Why does she think her way of existing is superior? She’s the person you want to shake and say, ‘how’s that working out for you?’, all her brilliant choices? I’m supposed to like her but I don’t. I’m sorry, but she is part of the problem too, as much as the people she judges. In many ways, she is lucky, there are people her age and younger struggling with bigger issues and zero help. That aside, she realizes if she were to be involved with John, sustainability and capitalism will be serious issues between the two of them. ‘She owed it to herself to find someone who accepted this part of her without judgment.’ Boy, the hypocrisy.

Jason’s story is presented at first on a farm in Twin Falls, Idaho where he is living with his girlfriend Alexis in a one room yurt. This life, working the farm, is all he has ever wanted. His tale in told in chapters as we breakaway from Lo and John’s trip. Alexis suddenly wants something more permanent, wants Jason to teach again, why waste his degree? He can still do some farming on the side, as there are Black Farmer’s Markets in the area. I don’t understand why the author didn’t dive deeper into the black farming community. Yes, Alexis is a ‘hands in the dirt’ sort of person but the reality is that they’re not getting younger, she misses her parents and wants a home, it’s time to settle down. More, she is pregnant, so there are pressing needs. He doesn’t want that life, tied down by loans and a job indoors and expectations of society. Wasn’t that the whole point of why they loved their current life so much? Add a kid to worry about, one he never planned on having, in fact it’s a crippling fear? When she asks for a plan, he is drawing a blank. She furiously tells him she will deal with it and he can remain the rootless guy he is. She thinks he should leave, and just like that, he does. As the story grows, we learn why he is a restless wanderer, it all goes back to the death of his father and issues with his mother. As much as he shirks his responsibility I think about Alexis, who knows full well the sort of person he is. Why? Why force a situation on someone who isn’t ready? It’s a recipe for disaster usually, but what do I know, maybe it will work out? Maybe he needs to leave to find himself, to figure life out but will Lo and Jason track him down, complete their quest to bring him home to see Blanche before she dies? The clock is ticking.

I pushed through the frustration I felt for the characters. No one seemed to have their head on right, maybe it’s the chaos of the world making so many people feel lost. I wanted to care more than I did but by the time I learned more about Lo, I still just couldn’t stomach her. I suppose you can sympathize over someone’s lot in life, their past sorrows, and still find them unlikable. Trauma has laid the foundation for the young people in this novel, you get past it or you sink, I suppose. It’s no surprise feeling trapped or frozen is often what happens but at some point, you have to make choices and take control of your life. You can’t expect someone to step in and save the day or clean up your disasters. It really is a part of growing up. It wasn’t a bad story idea, I just felt at times the plot deviated from where I thought it was going and that the author didn’t deliver on Jason and Alexis. Lo isn’t doing much to change the world she hates so much, despite her views, and that is something that turns me off anyone. Jason and Alexis’s story had potential to be engaging but I never felt they were solid enough as believable people. This is a love story I would not want to be in. Certainly, this is about idealism gone sour. Youth butting it’s head against reality and wrestling with whether to conform or find another way to live (at least in Jason’s case). Again, with Lo she seemed to love problems, not solutions, which is the mark of immaturity. I leave it to the reader to decide.

Publication Date: August 9, 2022

Blackstone Publishing

𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 is a story told in dual perspectives, Lo's and Jason's as they are both faced with uncertainties in life and work on themselves to overcome them individually.

- ~ -

I wasn't invested in the characters. Especially Jason and even his girlfriend because see she didn't take birth control and her only defence being that if men didn't then she shouldn't either.
While I'm wholly a feminist this was the dumbest argument ever, actually it wasn't even an argument because Jason simply accepted it? Where were their brains man? Ofcourse it lead to a pregnancy!

And for argument's sake I'd like to clarify that in the present generation with all means considered, it is biologically impractical for men to be heavy on birth control. Although they have some means (for instance, vasectomy) often these are limited and productivity is uncertain. Thus, medically speaking, women are better suited for birth control.

Well as for Lo's character, I don't have any positive adjectives and the ones right off the top of my mind are rude and abrasive but I guess she "evolved" in the last bit and the development felt a lot rushed for me but all's well that ends well right?

And I definitely didn't connect to Lo's philosophies of life. The anti-capitalist, freegan lifestyle wasn't at all relatable and I'm sorry if this comes off wrong because I guess her heart was in the right place but it felt like she was hell bent on making her life complicated but as long as she's satisfied who cares?

- ~ - 

2.78 / 5✩

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘗𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘐 𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 & 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘥. 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯.

I’m biased because I know the author, but I read this quickly and enjoyed Lo’s character arc. Looking forward to this one coming out!

2.5

This was very enjoyable read and I really liked the set up, but the book kind off falls apart in the second hand and the author starts spoon feeding you a bit too much. I also felt like this could have been to separate books, one a lit fic about a man coming to terms with his childhood and death of his father; and the other one a nice road-trip romance with a strong headed main. But alas it tried to be both and ultimately like many things that try to be too much, it just wasn’t enough of one good thing.

Also the ending is so so soooooo deeply unsatisfactory. Not unsatisfying but unsatisfactory, it was like a really good fried food that leaves you with a greasy after taste and a stomach ache but still hungry.

I wish this had been two separate books. The author has a lot of potential hopefully with a better editor to guide them in the future

I felt like I started this book from the middle of it the way that it was written. It was not a bad book don’t get me wrong but I feel that it could have been structured a bit better. It was an interesting story and I liked how it followed so many characters lives but mostly from two perspectives. The story follows Lois also known as Lo who is helping out Blanche an old woman reunite with her estranged son.

I enjoyed this book a lot! It was a quiet kind of story, and while some of the characters weren't 100% likable, they seemed to grow a bit and have some self-reflection, which I definitely appreciated. I kept reading because I really wanted to know where the book's storylines would go, and the ending was pretty satisfying.

I felt a bit like Lo's story was a bit more fleshed out than Jason's, but that wasn't a big deal for me. It was interesting how the characters in this small town in Minnesota were entwined with one another. It was a quirky book that I connected with in a lot of ways, even though Lo's freegan thing was a bit annoying. But, I mean, that's part of being in your 20's, right? Feeling like you know everything and are completely right all the time. But also, she seemed to evolve a bit towards the end, which was good.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC! I would definitely recommend this novel!

This book gets one star because - if anything - it motivated me to pull out the outline of my own shelved idea to start working on it again.

Because it’s an ARC, I won’t dwell too much on grammar or minor mistakes because I’m sure there will be at least one more round of edits to fix up all the comma splices, instances where words are seemingly missing, and the dialogue that is tagged with verbs that don’t indicate speaking.

I wanted to DNF this book for the first time five pages in. The first thing I noticed was the sentence structure, and this might just be me being a writer myself and a reader of books as a day job, but generally if I’m noticing sentence structure it is either one of two things: it’s too similar/repetitive or it’s unique. In this case, it started to feel - very quickly - like every sentence began with the subject.

Then, I wanted to DNF the book about 13 more times throughout the course of reading, but I powered through - even if I put it down and walked away in frustration a few times.

Let’s dive in!

Lois “Lo” Gunderson is what some people might call a “freegan,” except don’t call her that. She doesn’t like the term, and she only uses it to describe what she does to all the people who live in the same small town she was born and raised in because they all have little pea brains and think it means she’s a communist. (For the record, most of these people - including Lo - are assumed to be white.) Lois is perhaps the most insufferable, unlikeable main character I have ever read. If the author wanted to do this, then I guess she achieved her goal? She’s on a high horse right from the beginning - acting like everybody is below her and making snide little comments to herself about how awful the town is when she is no better. For example, she mentions picking things up at Salvation Army, but based on all her other views, I find it hard to believe she would willingly shop there given Salvation Army’s uh…not so great record? (And, considering that her boss and best friend is later revealed to be in a same sex relationship, you would think she would know.) She also lives in a duplex her father bought? So I guess it’s easy to be anticapitalistic when you don’t have to worry about being homeless? She also wants to leave Elysian, Minnesota because she wants to find “meaningful work,” and I guess there are no soup kitchens or outreach organizations in Elysian. I mean, maybe there are and Lo hasn’t actually done any research, considering she shops at Salvation Army.

For a book that so clearly follows the “Save the Cat Writes a Novel” beat sheet, it seems the author forgot where the “save the cat” portion of the title comes from; her unlikeable character never once does anything that redeems her enough for me to hope she succeeds in her goal. (Actually, she reveals she hates pets, so it's kind of... the opposite of saving the cat?) It’s pretty evident from the get-go that the internal journey will be about undoing all of her real strict convictions, but we’ll see.

Lo’s storyline involves getting a car from a woman named Blanche, who is old (but probably not as old as she looks?) and dying from emphysema but smoking and boy does Lo never stop judging her and her home from the moment she meets her. The car that supposed to be isn’t running so she gets it repaired by a man whose name is - and I am not making this up - John Blank. Blank. He’s southern, and in their first interaction, Lo reveals she’s a little racist! I checked the summary, and these two characters were supposed to have electrifying chemistry, but I never once saw it. Unless the summary is referring to a really risqué scene where the two characters touch fingertips in a way that is “alarmingly erotic” just hours after Lo berates him - publicly - for making a “poor” decision regarding plastic (which he apologizes for). In return for the car, Blanche asks the two of them to go off and find her son - who we discover is Black - in California where he is working on a weed farm?

So naturally the book also features Jason’s POV - Blanche’s son. His POV starts before we find out he’s Blanche’s son, so I gathered he was Black when he and his girlfriend talked about Black Farmers Markets and the like. Then I winced a little when the descriptions used for them included that they were both very tall and that their parents wanted them to be athletes. I guess because they were tall? But it also feels like an interesting thing to write about your Black characters. (I’m pretty sure these were really the only physical descriptors we got for this set of main characters, even though I can tell you all about Lo’s quirky hair and John’s is “the darkest shade of brown before black.”) Also? The Black character’s storyline revolving around whether or not he will be a good father and features him running off when his girlfriend says she’s pregnant is certainly A Choice, just like it’s another Choice to write that they are going to work at a weed farm. And, it should be noted: Blanche lived in the Bad Part of Town, so yeah… The optics are interesting here.

At this point, I have to mention the dialogue. I don’t know if the author has ever listened to conversations before, but from the way the dialogue was written, I would venture to say she hasn’t. It’s clunky, and it doesn’t flow, and a character at one point “nodded sagely.” I will be interested in hearing the audiobook version of this, if only to hear the line “There is finally stuff going on” spoken out loud.

The construction of the novel was bizarre to me. I am used to dual perspectives, but then there would be random dream sequences that maybe meant something? There were also “Objective Scientific Facts™️” that were not objective, scientific, or even facts about fireflies. I think there was a metaphor here that didn’t land with the fireflies. I was too distracted by the superfluous language in these supposed objective facts. Instead of writing long pieces of dialogue, the author inserts chapters that happen twice as far as I can recall when a character gets to first-person info dump without the author having to write out a full conversation. It’s a choice, and it feels lazy. There’s also one list of names (for fireflies, I guess?). All of this together feels like the author took a bunch of notes and shoved them into a notebook and forgot to actually DO something with them.

Lo at one point literally says the people of Elysian are “so obsessed with me.” She’s Not Like Other Girls. She hates the girl John Blank was sort of seeing for some reason and deletes his text thread with her for some reason, which is a huge red flag. Yikes! She has curly hair! It’s described as Medusa-like at one point, and she won’t stop touching it, which …if you have curly hair, you would know that you don’t even THINK about your hair out of fear it’ll go all bananas. Why do we keep smoothing it, Lo? You’re only making it worse!

(Sidebar: Lo-the-anti-capitalist gets this car from Blanche and they go across the country in it, but it’s never discussed if she gets it insured - was Blanche insuring a car that was sitting unused for all this time? - or if she re-titled it, which I can only assume costs money in Minnesota like it does in other states.)

Midway through the book and there are no signs of this alleged electrifying chemistry. I see Lo negging John the whole time, and him apparently being into that? I don’t know! At one point later on he calls her stomach her belly, and this was probably the twelfth time I wanted to DNF this book if only because adults talking to other adults in intimate moments and calling their stomachs bellies makes my skin crawl.

I was going to say Jason’s POV felt unnecessary, but honestly, so did Lo’s. I couldn’t bring myself to care about these characters. At least Jason’s character had some kind of arc, but I don’t think these two stories really needed to be told together - even with the tenuous connection they had (and do court sentences really work like that?). By the end, Lo was still insufferable. The best parts of the book happened when other characters called her out for actually being the worst, and it should have happened more frequently and earlier on. At one point, Lo argues against having children, and her argument has its roots in eugenics, so that’s a fun little thing to ponder.

The author is still mentioning that they “certainly had chemistry” at the end of the book, but I certainly would have liked to see it.

I still don’t know why the fireflies kept getting mentioned, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask. Was it a metaphor being crammed down our throat that I just didn’t understand? I guess they kind of parallel Lo’s journey, but does she even say why she likes them so much? It doesn’t land. The author mentions loving the same book Lo did at the end of her acknowledgements, so it makes me feel like maybe there’s some of the author in this character.

I had to come in and edit this review because I keep getting angry. By the end of the book, Lo never suffers any major consequences for her terrible attitude and the awful way she’s treated people. Everybody forgives her way too easily and there’s no real evidence that she has changed in any meaningful way.

Objective Scientific Fact™️ (because the words objective, scientific, and fact don’t have any meaning): I will forget I read this in a week.