2.5 rounded up.

I wanted this to be so much more than it was. It started off well enough but then began to drag at about 65% or so and went downhill from there. The final chapter, a complete and total tone change that introduced entirely new characters, felt forced, unnecessary, and tbh, a bit corny. Life is messy, and trying to neatly tie up loose ends in the way the author did here kind of left me rolling my eyes so far back in my head that I could barely read the last 10% of the book. That may not annoy everyone, but it did me.

My other major bugaboo here was the way the author talks about age. I literally had to Google to see how old Sarah Blakely-Cartwright is (35, apparently) because I was convinced she must only be in her early 20s from the way she was talking about Celine. The character is meant to be 44.- NOT OLD in any way, shape, or form, by the way! - as if she was getting ready to start using a mobility scooter and cash her first social security check. At one point, she literally described her as being "fat and gray" now that she's in her 40s and I was reading it thinking, "Girl, no..." If this is how the author feels about ageing as a woman, I feel really bad for her.

I have to also take issue here with the descriptors of "sexy" and "hypnotic" as this was neither. Zero decent sex scenes (not what I'm reading for, but if you're pushing this as "sexy," help a sister out) and the story really focused very little on the relationship between Alice and Celine or anything that happened between them.

IDK, I feel like to have impact, this book would have needed to be twice as long and a bit more nuanced. However, I also felt the cookie-cutter cliche characters here - butch lesbo academic who's super emotionally withdrawn and a total dick, wannabe actress who's super pretty but doesn't have much more to offer, tortured daughter who seeks the "normal" life her mom could never give her - left a bit to be desired.

This review seems harsh, I know, but that's because the idea was so good that the bad execution was extra disappointing. Sigh!

What a story! Beautiful words to illustrate mother-daughter and friendship relationships. I enjoyed the setting and the detailed writing. Books like this don't come out as often as I desire so when they do I am reminded of what excellence is. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Five stars.

A great soy and a quick read. Thanks for the opportunity to read. The book kept me going and I finished it in one weekend.

I am definitely not obsessed with this book. Following a trio of women within a complicated, interwoven relationship, I was expecting this to be nuanced and propulsive, and instead I got shallow and boring. Despite centering on a mother and daughter, best friends, and lovers, the characters all feel devoid of emotion and flat. Blakley-Cartwright manages to not say anything of substance throughout the novel, any time there is an opportunity to add some sort of depth on subjects such as sex, gender, or feminism nothing seems to happen. This book was ultimately a huge let down.

This book read like a Greek tragedy. It was all just so very depressing and sucked the life out of me. I kept pushing on because I needed to hope something positive would happen. I saw all the hype on Instagram (for anyone that says it’s sexy, hypnotic, complex, an obsession- it’s not)- etc., and I just don’t get it. The writing itself was very surface level. These are a trio of sad women, but you don’t get much more depth. I was excited to have a lesbian main character… but the portrayal of lesbians in this story follows the trend of us just being miserable and cold. So that turned me off. My instant thoughts when getting to know the characters a bit more was, ‘this again?”

The story was short, so I’m glad I didn’t waste too much time. But it was a good reminder that the hype and description of a novel can be wayyyyyy off.

2.5 stars.

Celine, a tenured professor at Berkeley, a famous feminist, single mother to Sadie whose best friend is Alice. Told from all their perspectives, we get the history of each, their upbringings, their emotional tenors, their ways of dealing with themselves, life, and the world, the closeness and discord between mother and daughter, the best-friendship between Sadie and Alice, how it began, what it means, the story moving back and forth in time. Where it starts - Alice, from a wealthy family, and trying to be an actress in LA is back in the Bay area to play a role in a Shakespeare play being put on at a neighborhood playhouse. Sadie, in new first-time love, asks her mother, Celine, to go instead. Unwillingly, Celine does go, and then returns for a 2d and 3d show, taken with Alice. We learn much about these characters and I was engaged, but I also felt that it could have and should have gone much deeper. The writing is good, but rides on the surface, no matter what is revealed, and it all has the same register. The ending, that jumps forward in time, after the whole mess is over, after many years have passed, is told in first person by a character new to the novel, which felt like a strange authorial choice to make, moving away from the main characters, and though it neatly ties up the loose ends, it fails to satisfy. Still, a fun breezy novel run through with feminist polemics.

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC.

I wanted this book to grab me, but that never really happened. I imagine it’ll work better for other readers.

Thanks, NetGalley for the ARC!

First and foremost, this is brilliantly written. This book definitely has the right people doing the right things to bring this to print- it’s truly an enticing read rich with grammar and wonderful prose. But it didn’t do it for me. I don’t think it’s the fault of the author, this one just slogged on a little in the middle and the characters fell a little flat for me. I wanted Celine to be different but couldn’t decide if the magic of Celine is that she never changes- and I just had more hope for Sadie.

I think this is a wonderful book club book and will do well on the market- not a total dud, I swear!

This is such an enjoyable and original novel. The triangle at tge center of the book is a mother, daughter and the daughter’s best friend. The author has filled the book with unexpected variations. The romantic/erotic relationship is certainly unusual. There are consequences involved as the trio plays a game of moving relationships and oneupmanship.

Yet, the bond remain strong as these three and their progeny stumble through life. This is a very interesting and original novel that I highly recommend.

Thank you Netgalley for this original and fascinating novel.

I think my experience of this book had a lot to do with the fact that I read it on the heels of other lesbian lit fiction books, but I started off so enamored of it, and then so quickly the book turned into the same damn I’ve been reading all year. I guess I’m just fatigued, at this point, of these books promising to be sexy and electric and complex and all of them just being cold, barren of emotions, outright miserable. Is this all that lesbians are to publishers? Relationships without intimacy or warmth or frankly, even, love? Problematic older who seem to hate the new generation of queers? I don’t know, I’m all for queer characters getting to be messy, but can they also be human at the same time? Have emotions? Provoke emotions in the readers? Cause so many lesbian books portraying lesbians in almost dehumanized way feels like an off-putting trend.

Also, I hated Sadie and have no idea why she’s not only a POV character, but the only character written with any generosity, any kindness.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. I had high expectations for this book, but I was a bit underwhelmed by it. The setup is interesting and had a lot of promise but the execution wasn't great for me. I think what I disliked the most about this book was Celine, and every chapter from her POV was infuriating for me to read. I'm not sure if that was the point because apparently this book is "sexy" and "hypnotic," but honestly I didn't get that. I give this a 3/5 because it was just ok. The story kept me interested but the last chapter didn't seem to fit at all.