Interesting look into Berlin's party scene from a young adult from Türkiye. An exploration into what it means to be an outsider, what it means to censor yourself, what it takes for you to compromise. Would hope to read a sequel!

Leyla is a young Turkish woman living in Berlin, working menial jobs after failing her thesis and losing her student Visa. Leyla struggles to come to terms with her new life as her dreams of being a writer seem further and further out of reach. Feeling wronged by the University, Leyla sues, and her life and future are in the hands of the courts. Meanwhile, Leyla attempts to find happiness and contentment in a life that was never supposed to be hers.

The Applicant is a provocative debut novel, it's engrossing and well written, with dark humor woven throughout. It's provides a lens into the life of an immigrant woman and the struggles she faces, both outwardly and inwardly.
The narrator did a fantastic job, though there were some production issues that I hope will be ironed out in the final copy.

Story: 4 stars
Narration: 4 stars
Audiobook quality: 3-4 stars depending on whether these issues will be fixed. 💕

I do still recommend!

Big thank you to Grove for my Goodreads giveaway win, and to RB media for my ALC.

Thank you Net Galley for an audio copy of The Applicant by Nazli Koca. This book covered many topics that were foreign to me. I felt the book was not relatable. I struggled with this one.

Thank you NetGalley and .RB Media Audio for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook.

I generally liked this. Listened to the whole thing. Ending seem lacking to me. I prefer more of a closing.

BUT give it a shot!!!!!

It's sometimes hard for me to rate Turkish authors as I feel like I judge on a different scale, so I'll start with the narration, I thought the narrator for this book was a great pick. I thought the switch between Turkish and English was seamless and the tone fit the tone of the novel very well.
I think this book took a great look at a sense of identity, dealing with stereotypes as an immigrant and belonging. With that, I found it really hard to relate to Leyla, the MC and the person who pens the diary entries in this novel and her decisions.

3.5/5 A very deep, provocative and progressive story. The voice of the main character is we’ll defined. Her twenty something voice showcases her personality and deep inner thoughts. She deals with very large issues as a Turkish immigrant in Germany, but is very self destructive and her tendencies can be repetitive. As a reader, you’re immersed into her life, and relate to her being stuck and up against the odds. Told through her diary, her days are never mundane. The first half is stronger than the second half, which is why I give it a 3.5/5.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61359016

Thank you to NetGalley for an arc of The Applicant in exchange for an honest review. This review is wholly my own & may not be reproduced.

To be honest, I thought this novel was a different novel when I requested the audio. But I had it so thought I might as well give it a go!

Leyla is a foreign exchange student in Berlin and when her thesis is rejected, her student visa is in jeopardy. She turns to the nightlife of partying, drugs & sex. She then kind of falls in love with a Swedish tourist, but there are lots of things she questions there as well.

This was a weird one for me & I didn’t love it – like, at all. Again, I thought I was getting something else, but gave it a go anyway.

I will say that it was different than anything I’ve ever read or seen out there right now and it touched on several important issues such as immigration & morality to name a couple. And the narrator was good, but other than that, it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I am rating it down the middle at 3 Stars.

The Applicant introduces Leyla, a Turkish immigrant in Berlin. Caught in bureaucratic tangles, her story is told in diary-like entries. And while the best parts of the book were scenes describing her every day struggles, ultimately, she is a character in need of a plot.

The Applicant is a compelling novel about immigration, belonging, and the complicated relationships we have with our homes, however we define them. The story moves along at a quick pace, and it's a fairly short novel, but nevertheless you get a good sense of the narrator, Leyla, and her voice. Given its brevity, the fact that the novel is written in a diary format also works to its advantage as it allows us to get to know its main character in a more direct, intimate way. As a novel, The Applicant can also be considered as part of the string of Disaster Woman novels that have been so prominent as of late; if you tend to enjoy those novels, I think there's a good chance you'd enjoy The Applicant. But even if you don't--and I generally don't--I think this novel still has plenty to recommend it over and above the general tropes of the Disaster Woman story.

So far, so good. For the first 70 pages or so of this novel, I was really enjoying it, a few minor issues notwithstanding. The more I read The Applicant, though, the more those minor issues became...not minor. What I was willing to overlook in the first third or so of the novel became virtually impossible for me to ignore by its end: namely, the writing. Simply put, the writing of The Applicant lacks finesse. It feels clumsy: in the moments where you want it to stop because it's made its point, it keeps going; or just when you think a passage has struck home, there's some cliched phrase or wording that undermines it. Parts of the story read more like posts than as narrative, as though they were a product of the author's thoughts and opinions rather than those of the story's protagonist. And it's not even that I disagreed with those thoughts and opinions--I didn't--but rather that they disrupted the narrative and effectively took me out of the story.

(Also: I felt like the plotline with the Swedish love interest was really random, and I did not like the ending at all; it felt like it came completely out of nowhere and was so tonally discordant with the rest of the story.)

I appreciate what this novel was trying to do, and I did enjoy parts of it, but as a whole it just didn't quite hit the mark for me.

Thank you to RB Media for providing me with an audiobook ARC of this via NetGalley!

I really enjoyed the conflict the main character has with her past in Turkey and her current life in Berlin. Often she would act in ways I didn't understand or got frustrated with, but I appreciated the journey the book took me on with her. I think this is a great novel about struggling with the past and your identity.