Well-written, interesting, but dense. And long. Some sections were interminably long…tempted me to DNF.

This was tough, but I finally opted to cut my losses and DNF’d Wellness at 30%. It started out great but quickly became overly verbose and I lost interest. I had to laugh at some parts I read such as the “onboarding” process at the university. (I’ve worked at universities and understood completely!) The final straw for me was a long chapter about a toddler meltdown, complete with reference citations. Who puts reference citations in a novel? And there’s even a bibliography at the end of the book. A good editor really needed to cut a lot of the non-essential content, which took readers out of the plot line. My 30% was the equivalent of a short book, given that Wellness is almost 700 pages long.

Giving up on this one makes me sad, but I had to do it. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the opportunity to read an advance readers copy of this book, although I was rather late to it. I bounced between the ARC and the published audiobook, courtesy of my public library. The narrator, Ari Fliakos, did a good job with the various voices for the portion that I listened to All opinions are my own.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. This is a great read for anyone who was a teen or in their early 20s in the 1990s. This story centers around a couple, Jack and Elizabeth who meet in the 90s, while both are in college. Their story continues as they marry and go about life together, navigating the world together. I highly enjoyed this book. I think this book would make a great gift because I think it would appeal to a broad group of people.

I was super super excited for this, and it did not disappoint! Wellness dealt with a topic that I really enjoy reading about, & that’s aging, the gradual shifts in romantic relationships, the restlessness & dissatisfaction that time passing by can bring. This was a beautiful story about very flawed people going through a journey of self discovery & figuring out what really means the most to them. I loved every second of this and think it’s as good as the Nix. I hope Nathan Hill comes out with another book quickly, he’s become a favorite author!

Wellness book explores the evolution of the marriage of Jack and Elizabeth, from their vibrant involvement in the '90s Chicago art scene to the challenges of suburban life, parenting, and navigating modern. As they grapple with identity, unfulfilled ambitions, and past traumas, the couple faces an oddly humorous and moving journey to rediscover each other. Really gave my number 1 book of 2023 a run for its money- these characters will stay with me. It was clever and I loved that I was able to sink into it without worrying where it was going.

Wellness by Nathan Hill is the story of a married couple and how they originally met and how their marriage continued growing and changing throughout the years. I enjoyed the setting of Chicago. However, this story is very long. I enjoyed some of the extra information that was given while telling this couple’s story, but I didn’t feel invested enough in their story to appreciate the length of this book. Thanks to NetGalley for free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

Wellness is a story of relationships, love, marriage, and what we value for our lives vs what society expects us to value in our lives. It encompasses growing up, growing older, changing perspectives and growing as a person, to try to live the lives we envision, but sometimes cannot control or plan. As a person of similar age as the couple depicted in the book, I felt so many of the conflicts and concerns were very similar to my experience in midlife, often funny, sometimes tragic, but very hopeful at the end. I loved the research embedded within the stories, and learned many interesting things along the way about art, history, relationships and psychology. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book (would make an excellent movie or mini-series!!) and look forward to reading other works by this author.

This book checks a lot of boxes for me: chunky book full of family drama, references to art, and smart writing. So it’s no surprise that I loved it.

Jack and Elizabeth are soul mates, or are they? Having met in their 20s in the thriving Chicago art scene, they are now parents to Toby and wondering what they are doing with their lives and each other. Their marriage has gone stale and their careers are at a standstill. Both go on a journey of self discovery to understand if marriage is really something they wish to continue in together.

One of my favorite parts of this book is how Hill is able to seamlessly transition between flashbacks to Jack and Elizabeth’s youth and their current lives. He seamlessly weaves threads through these different periods that all magically end up connecting in the end. I enjoyed watching everything come together in the plot as the book unfolded. 600 pages is a lot for a novel but Hill needed that space to take the journey we did with Elizabeth and Jack. There were a few places that felt unnecessarily repetitive, but otherwise it was a tight story.

I think if you enjoy other family sagas, like Franzen’s books or the recent sensation, The Bee Sting, this is another great one to check out!

The first book by Nathan Hill that I read. I flew through this book, the page count meant nothing to me. As a native Kansan, it was fun to see familiar places portrayed in a deep and meaningful way, normally these places are mocked or misunderstood. I definitely flip-flopped between liking and not liking the characters but happy with the character development throughout. I felt like I lived in their community and knew all the gossip!

What an absolutely lovely and charming novel. Nathan Hill has done it again! This book is somehow about both everything and nothing. It is a study of the human condition and yet not in a nerdy or boring way. It is fascinating. It is both hopeless and hopeful. Because every time something seems hopeless, the author shows you another side.

And let’s talk about the audiobook! Because Ari Flacos is one of my all-time favorite narrators, and he increases the level of charm tenfold. Do yourself a favor and get the audio.

Nathan Hill does it again. This was well worth the wait after The Nix.

The characters and relationships Nathan Hill builds are just incomparable. They are relatable and realistic. I will be recommending both books as must reads.

A very thought provoking, deep and witty novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion

Elizabeth and Jack meet in Chicago as college students. It’s love at first sight, or so they believe. Both are leaving behind a toxic home environment, his poor and her’s rich. Jack advances this art career through stylized photography and picks up a teaching position at his university. His school is run by a CFO rather than a traditional dean so faculty are gauged by their ability to draw research grant money: he says departments need to “earn their keep.”

Elizabeth’s works at a DePaul research lab that is researching the placebo effect. The name of their clinic is Wellness and they “test claims made by specious health-related products to see if the products achieved results any better than placebo.” For instance, the effect is more powerful when a (sugar) pill is given by a doctor in white lab coat then when it is given by a doctor in a dirty t-shirt. “The neurobiological mechanism for all of this was still a bit murky, everyone understood that the key to placebo’s strange and remarkable effectiveness was belief.”

Jack and Elizabeth are battling their own crisis of careers, but then there’s their son Toby, whom they’re trying to parent without ever having good parenting modeled for them. Nathan Hill hits another one out of the ballpark with this one.

After The Nix, I am 100% invested in whatever Nathan Hill is dreaming up. He has a knack for characters that feel so real they inevitably remind me of friends or heaven forbid, me. This was another flawless page turner from him.

Really enjoyed this. Parts lagged, like the dads dive into Facebook, and the end in terms of their relationship exploration felt rushed, but loved overall!

I'm currently getting my PhD in Health Behavior, so reading this novel felt like a personal affront (in a good way). I cannot say enough good things about this book, except that I want to take Nathan Hill out for coffee and tell him more literature about child feeding practices, and that I'm assigning it to my undergraduate class in Epidemiology to see if they can apply the principles of study design and the social determinants of health to the novel. I want a classroom set. Nathan please hit my line.

In his sophomore novel, Hill took a very interesting route in exploring a relationship. Jack and Elizabeth have specific ideals when they are in their 20s. But after 20 years of marriage, they need to explore themselves and their relationship to understand who and where they are.
I had a lot of trouble relating to the personalities and communication styles of the main characters while reading this novel. I wanted to know a lot more about how things would end up for them, but the novel explored the characters' and the characters' family's pasts a lot more than I would have anticipated, providing a rather Freudian reasoning to their issues. While I might sound frustrated with this novel, all the points I make are more for discussions sake and I really wish I could discuss things with the author! I did really like the way things were explored and found it extremely unique. I also really loved the psychology trivia that came with it. I have a feeling this will be making my Top 10 of 2023.
The audiobook really made this chunky novel fly by, otherwise I might have been intimidated by the length of it.

As much as I loved Nathan Hill's The Nix, I expected this book to be a home run for me. Unfortunately, it missed the mark entirely. I know that I have the unpopular opinion here, and in reading other people's reviews, it almost makes me want to give it another chance...almost. Perhaps when I'm in a different headspace it'll connect with me.

But for now, I cannot even force myself to finish the book. Usually if I'm not loving a book by page 100, I'll DNF (but keep in mind this is extremely rare for me, and I probably only DNF 1 out of every 200 books I read). With this book, because I really enjoyed the opening chapters and knew I was a fan of this author, I read over 300 pages before calling it quits. But I was bored out of my mind for most of them. While I appreciated the points the author was trying to make about so many different topics, many of the tangents were so long, detailed, and involved that I just completely lost interest. I found myself skipping paragraphs, which then led to me skipping pages. It was at that point that I realized that I didn't care about the characters or what happened to them (which bummed me out because I was initially very invested in their story). I couldn't see the book going anywhere in the next 300 pages if it hadn't gone anywhere in the first 300.

If the story and writing style that the book started with had continued throughout, I think I could've enjoyed the story that was being told. But something about this style of storytelling just didn't connect with me and it just became really unenjoyable for me.

That all being said, the vast majority of the reviews for this book are glowing, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

We come into this story getting a part of the backstory about how Elizabeth and Jack met. While the initial story grabbed my attention, the story itself felt disjointed and way longer than it needed to be. There were a lot of deeply important topics and conversations that were discussed throughout this book, but the manner of the storytelling just wasn't my cup of tea.

I would definitely recommend this title to anyone looking to explore modern marriages, relationships, and families.

I haven’t stopped thinking about this book since finishing it! This is a book that has me constantly talking about it with my partner.
I loved the reflections on aging, parenting, marriage, and friendships. The mom’s approach to research and parenting hit a little too close to home. It was wonderful! This is a looong book but I loved every page. A favorite of 2023 for sure.