The Story: A young widow, Ellie, discovers, after her husband’s death, that he was cheating on her with one of his colleagues at work. Ellie flees to the French Rivera with one of her best friends to process/get through/ cry/rage about her husband’s death. She leaves her law firm job and just takes off. At the fancy resort, the friends meet and intriguing and mysterious couple, Robbie and Fauna.

My thoughts: If you are someone who needs things to happen in a book, this one is not for you. This is a slow (in terms of action) roll that focuses on characters and their relationships. The writing here was crisp and I was very into the story because — CAN YOU IMAGINE THIS HAPPENING — especially so soon in a young marriage. Sometimes people who are not who they seem. A great debut by another fellow Northwestern University alum!

Thank you @harper for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I was initially attracted to the beautiful cover and the title of the novel. The novel starts off super fast and super deep and captures your attention right away. I felt the middle and end were on the slower side and were missing some substance. Overall a great first novel

When Ellie's husband dies unexpectedly in a car accident, she can't believe the sudden turn her life takes. She even more thrown when she discovers that her husband has been having an affair. Reeling, Ellie uses the proceeds from her husband's life insurance to book a stay at an exclusive resort in France, and convinces her best friend, Mable, to accompany her. There, far from the life that she so carefully built, Ellie and Mable find escape and a new friendship with an enigmatic couple. After a while, though, paradise is not enough to hold off the realities of their lives and relationship that Ellie and Mable have been long avoided.

This is a well-written story about loss, ambition, and friendship. The author creates both strong characters and an unforgettable setting to explore these timely and important themes.

Highly recommended!

Have you ever had the experience of life just blowing up in your face? How did you react? What did you want to do? Anyone who has gone through this upset will relate to Ellie Huang.

Ellie’s husband dies suddenly and, of course, that would be enough for anyone. However, there is more bad news ahead for Ellie. No spoilers so read the novel to find out what happened.

Ellie does something dramatic in response. She leaves San Francisco to spend an extended time in France accompanied by a close friend. Mable and Ellie meet some interesting people at a resort and things go on from there.

This is a well written debut novel told from the perspective of a young Asian woman. There are both a good setting and good characters here.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Harper for this title. All opinions are my own

You Can’t Stay Here Forever is a great debut novel by Katherine Lin! Character driven and somewhat of a slow build and burn, we follow Ellie’s story as she deals with the death of her husband. Lin dives into themes of race, family connections, and grief - a page turner for those that enjoy Literary Fiction.

Thank you to Harper and NetGalley for this ARC.

I wanted to love this book, based on the premise but it was a huge disappointment. The story fell flat and the characters were one dimensional at best

I loved this book and although I wasn't expecting it to be so unputdownable, that's exactly what it was! It actually did remind me of Sally Rooney, which is such a huge compliment because I think the dialog/conversations she writes are unparalleled. This went places I was not expecting and it may not be for you if you just want action, action, action but if you are interested in introspection, even when it's not pretty, you will also love this book!!

You Can't Stay Here Forever comes out next week on June 13, 2023, you can purchase HERE! I love this book!!

I realized that I had a strong sense of anticipatory social anxiety. It was the kind I'd had on the first day of college, after everyone's parents had left and we sheepishly wandered from dorm room to dorm room, trying to be cooly casual but still friendly enough.

You Can't Stay Here Forever follows Ellie the moment she finds out her husband died in a car accident to the weeks following her receiving that news. Her and her husband, Ian, are successful lawyers in San Francisco, recently married and new homeowners, and the news feels cruel and unfair. After one of Ian's partners at his firm makes a pass at Ellie in the wake of his funeral, divulging information that Ian was being unfaithful to Ellie, she discovers one of her own co-workers was the other woman. Ellie, needing space and time away from the city, books a luxurious vacation to the south of France with her best friend, Mable, and the story continues from there.

I thought this novel was slow-moving, heavy with detail, and most definitely one of the best definitions of a "disaster girl/sad girl lit fic" novel that I've read in a while. Ellie is clearly lost after her husband passes away, and becomes even moreso as she attempts to navigate a new life without him. Mable, her best friend, helps coax out unresolved or unrecognized issues that were within her marriage, but also in all of her other important relationships. There was a feeling of unease that permeated throughout most of the novel that left me on edge while reading. However, I thought the commentary on grief and anger, relationships, and privilege were all very intriguing.

Outside of the slow pacing, the only other thing that I picked out was the habit the author had of dropping a name or a memory and then jumping into an explanation of that person or instance in the middle of the current moment. It played fine with how the novel was set up, but it was sometimes a bit of a whiplash to then get back into the present moment.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for the advanced reader copy. This title publishes June 13, 2023!

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins for allowing my to read the digital arc for You Can't Stay Here Forever by Katherine Lin in exchange for my honest review.

This book had me underwhelmed. The beginning starts with a punch to the gut as Ellie finds out her husband has passed, resulting in her life being turned upside down. But after the first chapter it felt like nothing really ever happened, especially in terms of character growth.

I know the story is about a grieving woman but i just wanted to shake her. i couldn't find her relatable, her fancy life as a money making lawyer in san fransisco was never really acknowledged as that being something extremely privileged (especially since it's being marketed as a book about the subject). and maybe that has do with the fact that she never fully understood how passive she was throughout her whole life so she never comprehended how lucky she was to afford a house in san fransisco.

i felt like her journey of self discovery never really went anywhere in the end. part of that was due to the fact that the writing didn't really go deep enough for me when it comes to creating the backstory of ellie and mable's relationships. and we only saw bits and pieces of her relationship with ian (granted he was already dead when the novel starts). i ended up like mable, a side character, more than the main.

i guess i just wanted more from this novel. it's branded as a book about loss, friendship, racism and privilege yet none of that was really fleshed out in a way that felt like core themes of the book. even the final confrontation between ellie and cat was underwhelming. i just wanted a deeper dive into these themes and to feel like the characters had actually been impacted by them in some way.

i just wanted a bit more from it.

An evocative and fast read about a young woman whose life shatters in an instance and escapes to a luxury resort in the south of France with her best friend to heal. She also learns that her life might not have been as rosy as she once thought. Can the crystal blue waters of the French Riviera wash her pain away?

Many thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the eARC of this fantastic debut that features possibly one of the best opening lines I’ve ever read, which I won’t spoil here. As a fellow lawyer writing a novel about lawyers, I’m very happy to find more “about-lawyers-but-not-a-legal-thriller” contemporary fiction. (Lawyers are people, too!)

Among other things, this novel shines a light on one of the most notorious open secrets about the private practice of law of which most non-lawyers are unaware: success (at least in so-called “prestigious” large law firms) does not necessarily equal merit, and lack of success does not necessarily equal lack of merit. Of course this is true in every field to some extent, but nowhere more so than in the anachronistic, often-prejudiced universe of many law firms. Fictional depiction of law firm life is often as follows: lawyer works super hard—late nights, blah blah—and then, like clockwork, hardworking lawyer makes partner, yay! What happens here is much more realistic: Ellie is smart and has the grades and clerkships to show for it, yet it’s her middle-of-the-curve (charming, white, and conventionally good-looking) husband who easily makes partner at his firm, and Ellie who struggles at firms despite being demonstrably smarter than him and a very hard worker.

All that said, you don’t have to be a lawyer or work in law to enjoy this book. The heart of the novel is universal: Ellie’s complex grief over losing a spouse who was living a double life and how it affects the other important relationships in Ellie’s life, especially those with her mother, Mary, and best friend, Mable.

Great, fast read.

This cover is beautiful. The first line of this book hooks you immediately. “I was waiting for the J train when I found out my husband was dead.”
The next couple chapters are great. Love the story as it’s unfolding but then the story takes a turn I was not expecting. The book reads sort of like a reality tv show you just feel like you are watching their lives as they navigate this time. Ellie and Mable’s friendship was difficult to watch unfold. They have some really deep rooted things they need to work through and love how close they can be in the good times. The book covers some deep topics such as hating your job but continue to battle through even though you are miserable, mom/daughter relationship, toxic friendship, keeping secrets, race relations and culture in today’s society. The story kept me intrigued but finishing it with open ending seemed like I was left without the last few chapters. Many thanks to Harper and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Ellie Huang is an attorney living in San Francisco with her Caucasian husband, Ian Anderson, also a lawyer. Since college the two have had a competition for achievement and success, which lives under the surface of their complicated marriage. When Ian suddenly dies, a Ellie uncovers a disturbing truth about Ian - he has been unfaithful. Her life begins to unravel and she makes a quick decision to use his life insurance windfall to take a high end trip with her best friend, Mabel Chou to Antibes, on the French Riviera. It is there, through a relationship with an unmarried couple that befriends the two ladies, that many life lessons become apparent.

It is rare that I read a book in one day, as I did this one. This debut author manages to write a combination of an intriguing and compelling plot along with top notch characterization. I felt as if I knew each interesting character and fell in love with the beautiful descriptive setting of luxury at the sea.

Important issues were addressed by Katherine Lin, who is an attorney as well as a writer. These include race relations and cultural divide in the USA, the damage of keeping secrets, the meaning of friendship, the difficulty of mother/ daughter relationships and the importance of work:/job satisfaction.

You Can’t Stay Here Forever will be published on June 13, 2023. Look for it!!
My thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins publisher for gifting me an ARC in return for an honest review.

2.5 stars

Katherine Lin’s debut novel has a killer first sentence, an interesting premise, and a lush setting. But for me, this slow burn of a book fizzled out instead of building to a full-fledged fire.

After the death of her husband, Ellie Huang discovers that he was having a years-long affair with another lawyer at her firm. She impulsively decides to cash in his life insurance for a vacation with her best friend, Mable, to a luxurious resort in the French Riviera. This is a slow-paced story full of interesting observations about friendships, marriage, and race.

I enjoyed the first part of the book. The set up was promising and the characters were flawed in interesting ways. But as the story went on, I felt it never really reached its full potential. It appeared the novel was slowly building its way to an implosion of sorts; I expected repercussions for Ellie’s erratic and thoughtless behavior. But there weren’t any serious repercussions, even for a particularly glaring offense that I won’t reveal for spoiler reasons. Instead, the story felt anti-climactic. Ellie (and the other characters) did a lot of self-indulgent navel gazing, and what started out as a page-turner for me became almost boring, like reading a transcript of a therapy session instead of watching actual interactions between friends.

As a character, Ellie didn’t show much growth through the novel other than recognizing her own passivity. Sure, she started to take more control of her life, but in sort of a reckless and not particularly admirable way. There was also a subplot where Ellie battled her fear of the ocean, which felt significant early on but wasn’t ever fully developed.

I do think Katherine Lin’s writing has potential, and I appreciated this book’s running theme that there’s more depth and complexity to people than what you see at surface level. But unfortunately, overall this one fell a little flat for me.

Thanks to Harper and NetGalley for the DRC!

And to whoever designed the cover: it’s absolutely GORGEOUS.

What a pleasure to read and review "You Can't Stay Here Forever" by debut novelist Katherine Lin--I liked this book so much! There were no surprises or twists or really any significantly propulsive plot points in this novel, and yet I couldn't put it down--the perfect example of how well-drawn, believable and compelling characters can make a book compulsively readable. I loved the narrator, Ellie, and cringed and sympathized with her in equal measure as she went through the ups and downs (mostly downs) that she needed to experience in order to figure out what she wanted in life and how to achieve it. I also really enjoyed Ellie's relationship with her mother and how important it was; even though the entire story is triggered by Ellie's husband's death, "You Can't Stay Here Forever" is really a book about female relationships. And the French Riviera setting definitely made me want to go on holiday to the sunny coast and eat amazing food--the perfect beach read for summer escapism. I look forward to reading future books by Katherine Lin--she's an author to watch!

Thank you to NetGalley and to Harper Publishers for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

You Can't Stay Here Forever is a gorgeous character study of a woman experiencing a crisis of self-identity and purpose following the sudden death of her husband and the subsequent revelation that he was having an affair. In the aftermath, rocked by grief and numbness, she makes choices that force her to confront almost every aspect of her life, including her interpersonal relationships. A slow-paced, meditative book, this one will have you thinking about your own choices and their repercussions on your life and relationships long after you finish the last page.

enjoyable but it didn’t wow me like i wanted it to!!! i am a lawyer and felt there was too much law school/lawyer talk and not enough of the story and character building.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Contemporary

Ellie is a young Asian American widow. Just a few days after her husband’s death, she finds out that Ian might not have been the faithful husband she always thought he was. With her friend Mable’s help, Ellie will try to overcome all her struggles and have a vacation that will change the course of her life. She goes from California to French Riviera for some time off.

You Can't Stay Here Forever is a slow-paced novel that places more emphasis on developing the characters than on the actual storyline. So for that, you really need to like and root for the main character to be truly invested in the story. Despite the fact that the writing was fairly good for a first novel, I felt that the characters required more development, or perhaps it was just that they were not that compelling to me.

I believe there are women who will, at some point, find themselves in a predicament comparable to that of the main lady in this story, and they will certainly want some form of support. This is not the type of book you read for amusement; rather, you read it for the morals and insights it might teach you about life. If you are interested in reading about topics such as loss, grief, romance, and friendship, you should give this book a try since you have some likelihood of liking it.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

Unfortunately, this one was a complete miss. I finished it because I wanted so desperately for SOMETHING to happen, but nothing ever did. The characters were intriguing, but ultimately left me disappointed.

From the first page I was hooked by this book. I thought it was going in a totally different direction but then I found myself getting board. I had a hard time continuing. Maybe it was because I had a different thought in my head. With this being said, I would definately suggest you give this one a try.
Thank you Net Gally for allowing me to review this book.