THE GUNCLE was my favorite book of 2021! 💛 His newest, THE CELEBRANTS, was one of my most anticipated releases of 2023 and I was thrilled to see it chosen as @readwithjenna’s June pick!

THE CELEBRANTS follows the decades-long friendship between Jordan, Jordy, Marielle, Naomi, and Craig. Over the years they’ve returned to Big Sur to honor a pact to throw each other living funerals so they would never have to wonder about the impact they made on others.

This character-driven novel is heartbreaking, warm, and filled with so much love. I enjoyed the glimpses into each character’s life and what the friendships and pact meant to each of them. Rowley takes you on an emotional journey while also sprinkling in great banter and hilarious jokes.

I knew THE GUNCLE would be near impossible to beat as it’s one of my all-time favorite books — but I sure enjoyed this one too. Now I need to pick up his two backlist titles!

The Celebrants is exactly what you expect of the author of Lily and the Octopus and The Guncle. It’s a book of joy, life, and grief. The humor of his books perfectly compliments the sadness unlike any book I’ve read. The characters are so well developed that you feel like you’ve known them your whole life. The setting of most of the book is Big Sur and it acts as another character. Rowley does a wonderful job of transporting the reader to wherever the characters are with his descriptions, especially at Sur La Vie. This is one of those books that you won’t easily forget. It’ll stick with you whether you recall every detail or just the feelings you had while reading. It prompts you to wonder if you would want a living funeral and what would your friends say about you? What would you say about your loved ones?

The narration is stellar! Rowley does an amazing job with the characters and delivering the lines as he wrote them - with humor, sarcasm, jest, and gravity.

Steven Rowley does it again with another amazing LGBTQIA+ unique novel! I thoroughly enjoyed The Celebrants, a novel about a group of college friends turned adults who hold living funerals for each other as part of a decades-old pact. Each person gets only one living funeral, and can trigger it at any time they want. The novel flawlessly weaves us from present to past, reliving funerals that have already happening, as well as staying current with the present. This novel will make you laugh, but it will also make you cry - in the best of ways. This is a perfect novel about friendship, published just in time for summer. 4.5 stars!

What a surprise if a book! This ended up bring such a tender story of friendship, loss, grief, love, and being okay with not being okay.
I listened to it on audio and really enjoyed it!
4.25 stars!

I started enjoying this book around 50%. Glad I stuck with it because it went from annoying to super interesting all at once. The ending was a bit cheesy but I enjoyed the descriptions of the scenery way more than the characters. I believe there was some thought provoking scenes that will come to me in the future but overall, it was a difficult read for me. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Why wait until a funeral to celebrate a person’s life and share all the things you love about them? Instead of leaving anything left unsaid, a group of college friends makes a pact after losing one of their friends right before graduation. The promise, each of them gets a “funeral” to use at a low point in their lives. When they need to call their funeral all of the friends will gather to lift that person up. They will celebrate that person’s life, share all the great things about them, and love on that person in their time of need. Jordan Vargas calls his friends together 28 years after graduation, only this reunion is different and Jordan is keeping a huge secret from his friends.

I fell in love with Steven Rowley’s writing after reading The Guncle and was very excited to read this book. I was not disappointed at all. This book is filled with so much heart and emotion right from the very first page. I loved the glimpses into their friendship over the years as I read about each “funeral” that happened in the past. It was beautiful to see how while each of the friends grew up and drifted away from each other, they were able to come back and pick up and be there for each other when one of them needed it. I love how despite all of the grief in this book, the characters were able to find moments of humor - it just felt so real. Be sure to have a box of tissues nearby, this beautiful story made me tear up multiple times.

Thank you to Putnam Books and NetGalley for the advance copy.

🌈Book Review🌈
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Summary; It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living—that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.

But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage.
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Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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My thoughts: this was a great follow up to Guncle but I just didn’t love it quite as much. I think the Jordans were such a sweet couple and I loved Craig’s character, I just didn’t like the girls in the friend group as much. It was such a powerful story and the ending made me cry, but it some ways I felt weirdly disconnected from the characters. I know this one has glowing reviews all over Bookstagram so maybe it’s just me 🤷🏼‍♀️but it wasn’t the perfect read I wanted it to be. Thank you @netgalley @putnambooks for the advanced copy of this one!

This book follows a set a friends that first met in their college dorm, and have continued their love and friendship. They came together once a long time ago after tragedy struck and one of them was lost, and made a pact to continue to get together afterwards to celebrate each others lives.
I felt so many emotions while reading this one (translation - I cried - a lot 😢) but the main one was love - love of your spouse, your friends, and of life.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book follows a set a friends that first met in their college dorm, and have continued their love and friendship. They came together once a long time ago after tragedy struck and one of them was lost, and made a pact to continue to get together afterwards to celebrate each others lives.

I felt so many emotions while reading this one (translation - I cried - a lot 😢) but the main one was love - love of your spouse, your friends, and of life.

Trigger Warnings: past divorce, prison time, cancer, terminal illness, drugs, nudity, death, grief, alcohol, sex, HIV, past overdose, death of a friend

Representation: Colombian, vegetarian, Gay, HIV+

The Celebrants is an adult contemporary about a gathering of friends. It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living—that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.

But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.

This is such a cool premise! I wish my high school friends and I started doing this years ago, but hey! Never too late, maybe! This author has such an amazing writing style and I love a good cast style stories. I loved each individual storyline and the overall theme of the story is very heart warming. These characters challenge you to truly take a deeper look at your life and cherish your loved ones.

The Celebrants is definitely as billed. It truly is the Gen X’s version of the “Big Chill”.
This book focuses on a group of college friends from Berkley. They make a pact to hold each others funerals while they are still alive. The premise behind this intriguing idea is that they lost one of their college friends and felt they never shared with him how they felt. By holding a living funeral you get to share your feelings while the person is still alive. The trigger to holding the funeral is usually when one of the characters is experiencing a crisis. The important part here is that family doesn’t have to be blood. These college friends became a family. The concept of the book truly focuses on friendship and mortality.

This book is my first from this author. It is extremely well thought out and well written. The characters are unique, caring, deep and loyal. The characters make this unique novel deeply moving and at times, somewhat humorous. I will be looking for other books by this author.

I would like to thank Putnam Group Penguin, Steven Rowley and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

Rowley's books have always been hit or miss for me - I was absolutely obsessed with The Guncle, but The Editor didn't wow me in the same way it did others. When I heard the synopsis for The Celebrants, I was incredibly excited to check it out, however, this one ultimately fell the way of The Editor for me. I didn't quite connect with the story and the character's friendship the way I had hoped. I hope Rowley's next book will be more along the lines of The Guncle for me!

Thank you to Putnam for an advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

The Celebrants by Steven Rowley focuses on college friends who meet up periodically to keep the pledge they made when one of their group died at the end of college. I enjoyed this book but kept wishing that each section had a bit more depth to it. It is hard to give the needed depth to help us care about the characters when each of their story time is equal and just stays somewhat surface.
All in all a good read.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The Celebrants is available now.

I will never understand how Steven Rowley can so expertly write novel after novel that makes me laugh out loud AND cry in public. I've already adopted the phrase "Always a pallbearer, never a corpse" into my vernacular, to my friends and family's delight (and by delight, I mean polite laughter.) I love the way he writes amazing banter yet brings in little details that make every character feel like a real person you (could) know. Not only is the humor is top notch but he has this knack for hitting you in the feelings with just the right amount of force so that you're emotionally devistated and ravenous for his next book.

In The Guncle, Rowley's voice really shined through when portraying Patrick's snarky but hilarious personality, a loud personality who was still very much mired in grief. In this new book, Rowley's skillful writing is undeniable, but the tone is much more somber overall. The premise is fascinating, and I was eager to get to know each of the individuals in this ensemble. After Alec's death, each person's accomplishments are challenges are unique, and their character development is evident. However, because every time the group gets together, it is in the midst of a difficult circumstance, the story lacks a strong foundational backstory of the friendship that was forged during their years at Berkeley that is continuing to bring them back together. Marissa comes off as needy and insecure, while Naomi seems abrasive and unhinged.

I really enjoyed the moments of tenderness that were sprinkled into the text, and there were many laugh-out-loud comedic moments as well. Humor is the area in which Rowley really seems to shine. Although it took an inordinately long time for me to get acquainted with the characters, I did feel like I knew them intimately by the end of the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Guncle but The Celebrants takes some patience and effort to appreciate. The premise is quite clever. Steven Rowley is a brilliant writer with an astounding ability to craft a beautiful novel. However, the characters in this story are particularly difficult to like. Initially, they're crass and self-absorbed. For most of the novel, I didn't understand why they cared about one another, But in the final chapters, it all starts to make more sense. I enjoyed the themes of friendship, found family, and appreciating the value of a life well lived. Even though I sort of anticipated the ending, it was more beautiful than I expected.

When I got this ARC, I squealed with delight. I love Stephen Rowley. I wanted to slowly read this one and devour it like a mug of cocoa. I couldn't. I got wrapped up in the lives of these 5 and didn't want it to end. I loved the secrets. I loved the pact. The whole idea of it was lovely. I wish that I had the opportunity to tell my loved ones how much they meant to me and how they impacted me as a person before they left us. It helped me with the grief that I still experience from losing someone very suddenly. I loved this story so much and could definitely see it becoming a movie, but if that happens....NOTHING needs to change about it, because it is perfection.

This book has a real "Big Chill" feel to it and that's only one thing that I loved about it. After the sudden death of a friend, the five remaining friends make a pact to have "living funerals" for each other, as needed, to remind each of them how important they are to each other and lift them when the need arises. I loved "The Guncle" and this made me feel just as good. I'll recommend it highly to my fellow readers.

I have read and loved several books by Steven Rowley, and I was so excited to be able to read his latest!
In this new work, he immediately draws readers into the lives of five friends from college who have lost touch over the years, but have come together for the important moments in each others lives.
I loved these people, and wanted to spend more time with them! Rowley is so good at writing about complex emotions in a genuine way! I laughed aloud and cried a couple times as I devoured this book, and I will be thinking about these characters for a while yet to come. Can't wait to recommend this to readers!!

Steven Rowley has such a unique way of making you laugh cry with his writing. The Guncle is one of my all time favorite books so I knew going into the Celebrants that I would be in for a great storyline with strong characters.

I adored reading about this chaotic group of friends and their ups and downs. The concept for this book was so original that I was really interested in what direction it would take and how it would end. I was surprised multiple times with the direction the storyline took.

I found myself connecting to some of the characters more than others and ultimately I found that although the story pacing was on slower end, it was still a wonderful read.

Thank you Net Galley and PRH for the ARC.