This book is beautiful. The friendships are so complex and they feel so real. I loved hearing about each person, and I loved the scenes when they were all together. I actually recommended this book to a patron before I even finished it, because I knew it was a winner early on. I think it's a great book for those who are looking for something more character focused, rather than plot focused. I think it's great for fans of A Little Life (though less intense and depressing, but still emotional). Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for this ARC!

Everything Steven Rowley writes is fun, phenomenal, and emotional. This is no exception. A great book to take along on a trip, gossipy, with deep themes.

This one was unexpected in the best way! I felt all the feels with this one and will continually recommend it!

I greatly enjoyed The Guncle (and am looking forward to the sequel), so I was looking forward to reading The Celebrants. This book gives readers depth and levity and heart. This one introduces readers to a dynamic friend group that made a pact in college to provide memorial elegies in advance of their actual deaths - upon request.

It's an interesting premise and builds on themes of friendship and mortality.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

The Celebrants is the story of 5 best friends who develop a pact that they will arrange and attend each other’s funerals before they actually die.

Jordan, Jordy, Alec, Craig, Naomi, and Marielle meet and become best friends while attending Berkeley. When Alec tragically dies of an overdose as they are about to begin their adult lives they develop their funeral pact so that they can ensure that they never leave anything unsaid for each other.

Over time the “funerals” become more of a lifeline as each of them struggles with a different crisis.

The Celebrants is exactly that, a celebration of the friends, the family that we choose, and how we lift each other up to keep going along the way.

I felt as though this lacked some of the character development that we experienced with The Guncle but overall I enjoyed hanging out with these five friends and had some lol moments as they stumbled through life together.

The Celebrants is about a group of college friends who upon the death of their sixth friend make a pact to hold their funerals early to share how they feel about each other. The book is set up at each of the funerals.

What I liked: The overall message of friendship is so nice. It made me grateful for the college friends I’m still in touch with.

Rowley is able to craft five very different individuals who might not be friends if they hadn’t met when they did. When they came back together for each funeral seemed to make sense.

The ending made me tear up.

What didn’t work for me: I didn’t click with this book the way I hoped. I loved The Guncle and maybe I was expecting more humor but this book is much more sad and I felt a bit disconnected with how it’s set up.

Who should read it: You vwant a sort of sad look at adult friendships.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book, as this book has already been published, I will not share my review on Netgalley at this time.

I was interested in this book because I have enjoyed the previous books by this author. At first I was struggling to connect with the characters but by the end I was fully invested in the lives and deaths (both preemptive and real) of the core group of characters. Steven Rowley is gifted at writing with heart without getting overly saccharine. By the end of the novel the characters and their relationships felt fully fleshed out. I do wish we had more experience with them while they were younger at the front of the novel to better underline the impact of the death of Alec and how it impacted everyone.

The Celebrants 🌅
Thank you G.P. Putnam’s Sons for the advanced reading copy and @prhaudio for the listening copy, receipt of which did not impact my review. The Celebrants is available now!

QOTD:

The Celebrants features college friends, Marielle, Craig, Jordan, Jordy, and Naomi, who created a pact after their friend and housemate Alec passed after overdosing during their senior year in college.

“Do as many things as you can to remind yourself you’re alive.”

It’s grief with a side of humor and a love letter to Gen X - I’m about 7-8 years younger than the main characters and caught all the fun references (The Courtney Scale had me cackling, though I wasn’t allowed to watch Melrose Place). Their friendships are wobbly at times but solid, in a way that only those who’ve known you longest can be.

“Today has . . . been a day.”
“There’s always tomorrow,” Naomi said. And while she meant it literally, it was also a beautiful statement about hope.

Listening to the audiobook really enhanced the experience for me - author Steven Rowley did a fantastic job. After loving both this book and The Guncle, he’s now an auto-buy author for me.

I highly recommend it!
I Received an advanced reading copy, receipt of which did not impact my review.

I adore Steven Rowley so much, and The Celebrants broke my heart in all the wonderful ways he knows how to do. Not a day has gone by since finishing this one that I haven't thought about the characters and what I would be feeling put in their position.

Loved it! 4stars. The sarcasm, humor, love and life lessons make this book a wonderful read! Enjoyed reading about the individual characters in this friends group. Mr. Rowley has a way to pull on your emotions and with a sense of humor!

“Have an appetite for life, coupled with a genuine interest in others. That’s the secret to a successful life.”

The beauty this book holds. Steven does it again giving us a wonderful poetic book told through characters about the importance and beauty of living and honoring life before the inevitable death. I cried by the end not from sadness but by the way this book warmly held me in its clutches. The pact the friends invoked in the novel to have funerals for each other while alive was so sweet and poetic. By the end I could hear two things in my head. Barbie saying do you ever think about dying, and a quote from Tuck Everlasting. “Don’t be afraid of death, be afraid of the un-lived life!” As someone who has dealt with death more so than most, this book helped heal a part of me, and served as a reminder to the beauty of my life and how far I’ve come in my journey. Truly invigorating. So thank you to @mrstevenrowley for penning another fantastic wonderful novel for me to recommend to anyone, and for writing a beautiful shoutout to the Bookstagram community in your acknowledgments it was very kind of you.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this ebook!
This was (and still is) my first Steven Rowley book which I plan on remedying soon when I read The Guncle. I loved the very unique theme of friends having a “living funeral” when the need arose for any friend. I’ve never read such a thing elsewhere. I also appreciated how Rowley portrayed their friendships changing realistically with time, adulthood and life events. My only tiny nitpick is that the friends were often annoying with each other that it almost felt borderline toxic at times. Again, that’s to be expected with passage of time and life experiences but not with every single friend bickering at each other. That being said, I loved the ending and overall theme of the book and will definitely be exploring more of Rowley’s novels.

Steven Rowley has this wonderful and terrible ability to communicate extrordinarily life-like characters through his stories. What makes them so like-like is their belief that they are invincible when they are, in fact, vulnerable. And this vulnerability is communicated through humor, unlikeable and fallible character attributes, and some of the most trying and heartbreaking situations a person (real or fictional) can go through.

In The Celebrants, you get all of this packed together. Compared to The Guncle, this book has quite a bit of full-of-themselves characters. This is the only thing I disliked about this book. I felt there was too much "pick me" energy for everyone competing for attention when the one person who NEEDS the attention is being overlooked. In a way though, this is how some adult frienships are, especially when you don't see each other regularly. Everyone gets together and quietly competes for who has the most messed up life, who has it worse, who has it better, etc. I think for me that was the only reason I didn't enjoy this book more. I didn't have the connection they all have together, so as an outsider looking in I struggled to see past the faults to the meaningful relationship they all have together.

This was so charming! Though The Guncle was, for me, more emotional, I really enjoyed The Celebrants and can't wait to see what this author comes up with next!

I really like the authors style of writing, while this does not surpass his all time great, The Guncle, but it’s a good follow up.

I liked the different character and figuring out what’s happened. The writing is very good and I wish I got a little more of the gay couple life.

I loved this authors previous book so when I saw this one I jumped on it. I love the fun and punny writing style. Even in the harder moments there is a lightness while still showing depth and pain.

The Celebrants by Steven Rowley. Pub Date: May 30, 2023. Rating: 3 stars. I so wanted to love this story, but alas I only found it to be okay. With themes of death, cancer, living a fulfilling life and friendship, this is a somber and emotional read. I was intrigued by the premise of friends who made a pact for living funerals for each other and thought this novel would have more substance, but it fell flat for me. I felt there were too many characters and it was a struggle to really get to know each of them and their stories. I will still read Steven Rowley books though! Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review. #netgalley #thecelebrants

What a fun sophomore novel by the amazing Steven. I loved it and loved the cover I’ll continue to read more by the author.

I did not like any of these people. Since they did nothing but carp at each other constantly, I did not get the impression that they liked each other all that much either. And giving 2 of the men the same name was annoyingly twee, and just designed to ensure that I could never tell them apart. I made it to the 76% point of the book and couldn’t stand it anymore. I skipped to the last chapter. I really liked “The Editor” by this author, and “The Guncle” wasn’t bad, but this book was not for me. 2.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.