The Odyssey is a strange and ultimately quite bleak book that follows cruise ship staff member Ingrid as she joins a “membership” group after being recruited by the ship captain. I’m not quite sure if I enjoyed it, but I continued listening to the audiobook, so there’s that. Ingrid isn’t particularly likable but the story is quirky enough to keep the reader captivated-ish. Maybe a year from now I will have a clearer sense of the book but in general it was another book about a millennial protagonist feeling meh.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.

A bit like "Fleabag Goes to Sea" with a bit more surrealism creeping in at the edges. Funny and weird and ultimately very bleak.

this book is virtually impossible to talk about without giving things away, and honestly is better read knowing nothing about it.

plot-wise, the book follows ingrid as she works at the gift shop on a cruise ship. one day, ingrid is selected for a ‘mentorship program’ by the ship’s enigmatic captain, and ingrid is forced to reflect on the mistakes she made in her past that she would rather not relive. much like odysseys from homer’s epic of the same name, ingrid is also lost at sea and trying to find her way back to herself.

i went into this book hoping for the same enjoyment i got out of williams’ novel ’supper club’, but instead we got a dark and satirical novel about a woman’s descent into a cult-like group in an attempt to escape her past life on shore. i think a lot of the meat of this book is in the subtext, but the actual book itself leaves the reader with more questions than answers.

The Odessey was a weird, wild and wonderful audiobook. Ingrid was deeply complex and flawed. It was one of those books I couldn’t predict which was delightful.

What a wacky ride! Lara Williams' The Odyssey follows a depressed, listless young woman (and unreliable narrator) as she works on a giant cruise ship that slowly sinks into absurdity.

The setting of this book was excellent--I could really visualize the excessive nature of the cruise liner and understood how one could disappear into its banality--how it could easily become your whole world. I also enjoyed how the author depicted the many menial jobs the main character did, and how she found great meaning in each one. The author is effective at using an unreliable narrator and giving us just enough about her trauma to keep us interested, then waiting to tell us her driving impulses until the end in a satisfying reveal.

The most absurd part of this book was the cult-y-ness of the cruise ship itself. There was not enough groundwork laid for the reader to understand why the captain had such a cult of personality, and then I was truly baffled at the author's decision to take it incredibly far with the depiction of the "procedure." I am disappointed she then ended the novel so strangely, as I think this would have been a really excellent read without all of the more absurd elements.

Last thought: I loved the narrator for this audiobook.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the ARC!

I typically love a book by an unlikeable narrator who does weird stuff the whole time, and I LOVED the cruise ship cult premise, but I don't feel like this ever grabbed me. I love Lara Williams' work so I'm not even sure how to describe what fell flat. The audiobook narration was perfectly fine. Maybe I didn't always love how things jumped from point A to point B without a ton of spice. I really enjoyed the ending — which is not typically something I have with these weird girlie books — but it was just kind of meh in the middle to me! No regrets on reading it though. Love the premise and cover and I remain a Lara Williams stan.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed listening to the reader even though I found the story very strange and not relatable. Better audiobook than read.

3.5 stars because it was fun but also what the heck?!

I love a disorienting main character just having a go at life in a way that works for her - despite how out there it might be - and The Odyssey delivers on that.

Joan has walked away from her doting husband and comfy life at home to board and work on a luxury cruise line where her only comforts are provided uniforms, a small window in her small room, rotating jobs and a couple of friends who share in her quirkiness. After five years on the ship she’s accepted into the on-board program said to help her become her best self. It’s weird!!

This book is confusing, and funny, and strange and dark all at the same time and while I’m not 100% convinced that I understand the ending, it’s just giving me more reason to read it again - which I would happily do.

Thank you for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook in exchange for my review.

This book was wild from start to finish! The narrator, engaging and enthralling, had me on the edge of my seat. I will not soon forget the eeriness and strangeness of this novel.

Honestly, just couldn't get into this. I found the narrator completely non-compelling. Her childlike lifestyle and friendships were really boring. I wanted more cruise-ship hijinks, but the level of introspection into nothing just dragged me down.

I am unsure if I was just the wrong audience for this title, or if I had expected something different. I did not understand the Millennial attitude of the main characters and it never worked out for me in the end. I do thin that this novel will find its readers, but I am not one of them.

The Odyssey is a fantastical realism tale of Ingrid, an employee on a cruise ship who really only has two friends, a brother and sister with whom she engages in a role-playing game where one of them is the baby and the other two are the parents, and a tenuous grip on reality. Ingrid's character reminded me a lot of Eleanor Oliphant in the way that her muddled perceptions of reality make her an unreliable narrator and that her past trauma prevents her from being the arbiter of her own life. After Ingrid is invited to join a leadership track involving problematic one-on-one sessions with the CEO of the cruise ship company who harbors aspirations of becoming a Svengali of life-affirmations, she thinks this is going to be the key to finding the feeling of success.

This was a quirky, weird book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The audio narration was superb.

I was hooked up until the very end. The characters and their relationships are incredibly fleshed-out. It’s a wonderful allegory (though I don’t think it works as “a merciless takedown of consumer capitalism,” as is stated in the description). I enjoy the use of Wabi Sabi as an anchor, the scattering of bread-crumbs hinting at Ingrid’s past is tasteful, and the idea of a cruise ship/the open sea as a vessel for Ingrid’s depression/general mental illness is brilliant.

However, I fear chapter 8 unravels ungracefully. Whereas the rest of the book is a slow descent into insanity—broken fingers, cult-like amputations, incest-lite—slowly unveiled over the course of multiple chapters, the final chapter feels rushed. The introduction of Ingrid’s husband, the beginning of her alcoholism, and her fertility issues are haphazardly thrown in amongst Ingrid’s confession that she views Brian as her child, a half-argument between Mia and Ingrid, and the revelation (plot twist?) that Ingrid has become the captain of the [now-sinking] ship. If the final chapter had been spread out a bit more, the book could’ve been perfect, but its conclusion feels hectic in all the wrong ways: premature and unsatisfactory.

Many thanks to Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for the advance copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for an audiobook arc of The Odyssey.
Unfortunately this book was not for me. I was really excited about the premise and had originally though it would be one of those "unhinged women" stories but I quickly realized this book was a lot more sad and uncomfortable.
Ingrid is dealing with the disappoints in the life that have lead her to drink, and leave her husband for 5 years while working on a boat. All of the interactions Ingrid has with her friends or colleagues can only be described as uncomfortable, from the game of Family, Keith encouraging her to drink knowing she's an alcoholic (among encouraging other uncomfortable and dangerous things), to her own power struggles between her work colleagues-all of which I believe are in her own head.
Some people love this genre, unfortunately I just didn't get this book.

This is a hard one to discuss. I started it expecting a light, women's contemporary fiction style twist on a Greek classic, but I quickly realized the writing and character was definitely more in the vein of dark literary fiction.

I felt like this book was a combination if My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and The Circle by Dave Eggers.

The ending lost me, both in terms of interest and understanding (the same way Megan Hunt's 'The Harpy' did). I see a lot of reviews mention satire, but I don't think that element came across well for me.

I feel like it is a book featuring a spiraling, unreliable, unlikable female narrator and books like this are very hit or miss for me. This was a miss.

Unfortunately, I did not really connect to this book. I didn't like the main character or understand her actions. It was just a bit too much weirdness with not enough substance.

This book is full of deep twists and turns, dark themes of blind worship, and what grief does to us. I liked the writing, but struggled with the narrator, who was inconsistent in their tone and candace.

I don’t believe this book will be for everyone. If you are into books that are dark and funny, similar to say The vegetarian or My Year of Rest and Relaxation you might enjoy this! I really enjoyed this book and I thought the narration was great! I recommend to those who like unhinged female protagonists.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for the audiobook arc

This nautical satire starts off fast and fizzy, darkening so subtly that it wasn’t until the perfectly bizarre dead center of the novel that I realized what Williams was doing. I gulped this audiobook in a single sitting. For fans of Mona Awad and Ottessa Moshfegh.

Oof.

This starts out as potentially excellent satire, but unfortunately devolves into something far more depressing and frankly, kind of obnoxious. Which is a shame, because Williams is a gifted writer and the potential to take this in a different (and far better) direction was there.

What begins as a hilarious skewering of consumer culture devolves into a sputtering, depressing reveal that what we’re really talking about here is the unraveling of a woman who is, quite frankly, a gross drunk who destroys her own life, makes everyone around her miserable, and embarks on a fever dream journey that could have been funny and poignant if it had been rooted in pretty much any other cause. The attempt to link her alcoholism to her prior infertility struggles at the end came out of left field and almost felt offensive.

And it’s too bad, because there was a lot to like here. Modern satirists seem to really struggle to see the concept through all the way to the end of the book, and that’s a lot of the problem here. True satire gets its message across without ever deviating from itself, and books like this too often devolve into some sort of rock bottom, watershed reckoning for the main character. The divergence from theme always feels like a misstep, a fear of committing to the bit or trusting the reader to recognize the intent of the story.

I’ve seen this book compared to My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and that’s a perfect example of a book where the author *did* fully commit to satire and succeeded at it. This book missed the mark widely on that.