A heck of a book. The plot is alternately kinda nothing and painfully cringe-inducing (count me out for plot arcs driven by awkward social interactions and anxiety porn) but the book is littered with moments that, as a person in a marriage and with children, really hit home. The book bounces back and forth throughout the main characters' lives, which meant it was often bracketing my own stage in life; the bits about parts I've lived through were very resonant, which meant the bits about parts that are still in my future needled into my brain as things to look forward to (and/or work to forestall). In particular this book had some of the best writing about very-early-parenthood that I've encountered. Not sure if it'll hit as hard for people outside of that age or choice of lifestyle, but for me it really worked.

Absolutely one of the best books I have read this year. This book is devastating and beautiful at the same time. We learn about the main characters Jack and Elizabeth through flashbacks to their childhoods throughout the book. When we first meet them, they are living separately n Wicker Park in Chicago in the 1900's (a place I lived briefly and definitely hung out in at the same time), and I enjoyed the nostalgia trip to places I had been and only a few still are going strong today. At times, this book was hard to read and the reason I say this is it was like holding a mirror up to myself and seeing the parts of me I don't like to see - particularly the passages of Elizabeth being a mother to a son and her need for control, perfection, needing to obsess about how to be a perfect mother to set your son up for future success in life. This book is a moving journey on what it means to be a child, a parent, a partner who keeps reaching for the brass ring of the American Dream. In the midst of this book is an incredible passage about how Facebook and social media creates algorithms that change what you see and from whom to create confirmation biases. This was a book I kept putting down because I did not want it to end even though as I mentioned, it was an emotionally difficult read for me. I ended up caring for the characters and cried at the end. I highly recommend this book!
Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

I found this a really compelling book. It's well-written with complicated characters with difficult pasts that are brought to light at various points of the book. The timeline moves through several years of a married couple's lives interspersed with flashbacks, letting you get to know the character a little at a time and really only understanding them at the end.

One thing I found distracting was the in-depth tangents that happened periodically throughout the book, the largest of which was tens of pages about how the Facebook/social media algorithms work. The female lead is a psychology researcher and often talks about studies, but it makes sense in the context of the story and and is revealing about the character. The algorithm section felt a bit overextended.

Overall, though, it's well-worth a read, especially if you're a fan of stories that take place across someone's life. There are mundane, everyday life parts and there are shocking event flashbacks. Thanks to the author, both are interesting to read.

Wellness follows Jack and Elizabeth, a couple that’s been married for 20 years. Their relationship is falling apart, and the reader watches as they try to heal their marriage. Jack and Elizabeth’s marriage is at the center of this story, but this is also a book about the absurd ways our society pursues wellness and happiness.

I thought the writing in this book was wonderful. I love how detailed it is. The writing style made me want to slow down and make sure I appreciated every single word, every single description. It held my attention so well that I finished it in 5 days. I never finish long books quickly (for me a “long” book is anything over 450 pages) because of my aversion to them, but I never wanted to put this one down. Elizabeth was a very well written woman, and if you’re a woman you know that reading women who have been written by men can be a nightmare. The way information is slowly revealed about the characters’ backgrounds and motivations made me feel like I was reading a book full of mini “plot twists,” and it made this very long read feel more satisfying and rewarding.

The representation of a struggling longterm marriage here felt very realistic to me. I am far too young to have any personal experience with a 20 year marriage or to have had friends to share stories of their own 20 year marriages with me. This felt like a look into the future for myself and my peers. I don’t actually know that this really was realistic but it certainly felt believable.

Elizabeth does research in psychology which is what I also want to do. Nathan Hill did a great job at demonstrating the ways that being completely obsessed with psych research can make you a little ridiculous and unrealistic. And I say this as someone who is also obsessed with psych research and had to pull herself away from it a little once she realized how ridiculous and unrealistic that environment can be. Knowing too much about psychology can be rough. For example I am always extremely stressed and my sleep hygiene is terrible. Unfortunately I know that always being stressed and having terrible sleep hygiene is quite literally deadly. Obviously this made me even more stressed. In college I was less stressed than I am now, but I slept terribly and spent so much energy on trying to improve that. Looking back I believe it did more harm than good. Elizabeth spends this entire book making her own life harder because she gets a little too intense over psych studies. It was fascinating and relatable. This book is full of an interesting combination of accurate psych information and inaccurate/outdated information. Based on information that’s revealed near the end of the book I believe this was intentional. Watching the way Elizabeth’s behavior is equally affected by both accurate and inaccurate research added another layer to the representation of how dangerous getting a little too obsessive about psych research can be.

Her behavior also reminded me of how in the past few years many people have become obsessed with learning (often inaccurate) pop psychology from TikTok and have adjusted their lives and mentalities in extreme ways based on the information they find there. That trend has been so disturbing to me, and I hope that in the next few years I start to see that topic being addressed in fiction books. Since making this account I’ve read a lot of books that satirized wellness, self help, and self care culture, but I’ve never read a book that’s done that with the world of experimental psychology. Like I said I hope I find many more books that do that. Please let me know if you’ve read any. I also love stories about marriage, so the reason I love this book is that it felt like it was written for me.

I was so rattled by the “impact score” for professors the COO of the university Jack works at created that I had to bring it up in this review. It really got to me and it’s stuck with me ever since. As someone who wants to work in academia I also become frustrated by the fact that academics often communicate in ways that are only relevant, accessible, and/or interesting to fellow academics (this can be intentional or it can be because they don’t have the resources to make their work more accessible to the public). It’s interesting how his “solution” to that issue was so cold and sinister. I don’t want to give specifics about what exactly this impact score is I’m referring to. If you read this book I want that to be the first time you encounter it. I want you to be as shocked as I was. Protecting education is something that’s so important to me, as it should be to everyone, so this was something that really bothered me.

Wellness isn’t a plot heavy book. It isn’t good for people who need solid plots. It has lots of deviations from the main story. Nathan Hill addresses so many topics in this book that have nothing to do with Jack and Elizabeth. It felt like he used this book as an excuse to discuss many of his personal interests. I love that but I know a lot of people don’t. At a certain point he spends a VERY long time talking about social media algorithms. I cannot express strongly enough how little I care about social media algorithms. Reading that chapter gave me a picture of how tedious this book must be for people who don’t care about wellness culture, psychology, or marriage. I encourage you to stay far far away from this book if you have no interest in those topics constant deviations from the central plot will bother you.

My biggest complaint is that I could tell that that big bad thing that happened in Jack’s past was supposed to heavily impact me and my perspective of the characters and story. I thought it was anticlimactic. I didn’t care.

As I’m sure you can tell, I highly recommend this book if it sounds interesting to you and you don’t mind when authors go on… tangents (for lack of a better word). I also recommend reading it as an audiobook. Ari Fliakos is excellent.

What. A. Masterpiece. This novel is nearly perfection. I have not read a book that had me so gripped, so moved, so invested in nearly 6 months. This is the kind of book that reminds me of why I identify as a reader. Brilliant! If I could change anything, it would’ve been that last chapter. Beautiful? Sure. But it just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the book. But this will easily be a top 3 book of the year for me.

wellness was excellent. Even though it was long, the pages flew by. I loved the exploration of a relationship over decades, and the ups and downs of marriage. Also loved the Wellness culture exploration.

4.5 stars.

This is a long, ambitious novel, and it kept me locked in the whole time. At its most basic level, it’s a love story about a man and woman, who meet as young people after both moving to Chicago from their respective childhood homes, and who then get married, have a kid, and grow into middle age. We jump back in each of their histories to learn about their families and upbringings, we’re inside both of their heads in the present day, and we gradually start to see a more complete picture of a relationship that is going awry.

Hill writes about so many different subjects in the process of weaving this tale—art, gentrification, parenting, aging, social media algorithms, parent-child relationships, the psychology behind picky eaters, controlled burns in the American prairie, grief, personal reinvention, health fads, the placebo effect, and so much more.

I went in a little intimidated by the book’s length, but once I dove in, I never felt bored or disinterested. The ending felt satisfying and earned, but not unrealistically tidy. I loved The Nix (Hill’s previous novel) as well, and I’m already eagerly awaiting whatever he writes next.

I thought Nathan Hill's first book, The Nix, was a masterpiece of a book so I was so excited about this book. And I'm happy to say it did not disappoint. It is yet another masterpiece of a book. I was so impressed with the research he did for this book and the way he put together the story. The writing is fantastic. The exploration of marriage and family is wonderfully done. It's a big book and I do think some editing could have cut the total page count but, overall, I thought it was well worth the hype it's getting. Highly recommend.

I was very excited to hear that Nathan Hill was coming out with another book. I loved The Nix.
It was a complex book with a lot of moving parts, that in the end all fit nicely together. I didn't know what to expect this time. While it wasn't as good as the first, it really isn't fair to compare the two. I think the best way to put is- it was great, but in a different way. One of the things I most enjoyed about this book was the ever so slow way he developed the characters. They start as simple people looking to escape their troubled family life just as people do, only to turn into pretentious aspirational people of the new millennium, in many ways end up very much like that which they thought they were escaping. The book is also a hilarious, but scathing, rebuke of the "wellness" quest so common in recent years, which launch products that are sure to change your life, when in fact, they do nothing. We've all seen the ads maybe have fallen for some of them. It is also a cautionary tale about allowing ourselves to get sucked in social media because we are being allegedly controlled by algorithms who know everything about us. Also, atmospherically, the Chicago art scene 90s was vividly represented and as a reader you felt like you were there, or that you remember it well, which is one of Hill's true gifts as a writer. When I encounter a long book, I sometimes feel inclined to skim over less important parts to save time. This is not a book you want to do that with. Settle in, sit back, and enjoy the ride at your own pace. That would be a gift you give to yourself. Thanks Net Galley for this ARC opportunity!

This is an introspective look at a marriage and how a relationship morphs and changes over time. Recommended on audio.

I wasn’t a huge fan of this book. It was kind of heavy and didn’t have a lot of surprising moments that I like in a book.

I loved Wellness by Nathan Hill - and while it’s a long read it went by very quickly for me.

The TL;DR: boy meets girl and we see how wellness, in all ways, affects and transforms their relationship to each other, the world, and themselves.

Very well written and engaging. Don’t miss this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC. Wellness is out now!

I was a fan of The Nix and knew I wanted to read Nathan Hill's latest novel, Wellness. I really really liked it! But I will say, I don't think it will be for everyone. I related to the characters being that I am in a similar stage of life, but if you don't connect with the characters or if long-winded rants/tangents get to you, you may pass on this one.

Wellness is the definition of a character driven novel. The plot is really going nowhere fast and is more about the concept of everyday life as a middle-aged married person with a young child. It takes a great writer to make the mundaneness of life interesting and Hill has a way of writing that makes you empathetic to his characters and creates space for self-reflection. If you’ve read The Nix, you know that Hill loves a tangent. If you aren’t ok with veering off course and going down rabbit holes, this book might frustrate you, but it is one thing I love about his writing.

When I say that I felt like Hill has stalked me for the past ten years and documented my life, I truly mean it, down to how Elizabeth tells her Minecraft and YouTube obsessed possibly neurodivergent child to ‘like and subscribe’ when he goes to bed. It was like they were talking about my kids! I could not get over how much he nailed the repetitiveness that comes when you are married to your partner for years and are parenting a young child. I have been married for ten years now and we have three beautiful children, but life is monotonous most days and I can completely relate to the unrest that Jack and Elizabeth are facing. It’s hard to not look back at your younger years and fall into a nostalgic depression, but how do you fully embrace the beauty that is your current life? I loved the messages that this story shared. It isn’t one that wraps up all pretty with a bow, because life doesn’t work that way, but the ending is exactly what it should be.

I didn't love all of this (the algorithm bit went on a touch long), but I loved a lot of it. A brilliant, provocative, funny, emotional examination of contemporary life in America, marriage, parenting, love, loss, art, the list goes on. The chapter on better parenting through scientific research is, to me, practically perfect. If we have to wait another 11 years for another novel from Nathan Hill, save me a spot in line.

Jack and Elizabeth meet in an adorable way while attending college in the ‘90s. They get married, they have a kid, they become…well, like most of us. They have jobs, dirty dishes, play dates, anxiety, and bills. Soon, they’re overwhelmed, overbooked, overstimulated. And, just like most of us, they attempt to cope through the use of delusional beliefs, placebos, the internet, “a change of pace,” and when all else fails, good old isolation. Nathan Hill, in the way only Nathan Hill can, tackles all of this while also teaching us how to burn Kansas prairie fields, the chemical reactions possible with photographic paper, and why we really should not be on Facebook. Among many other things. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll relate, you’ll definitely ask yourself “what in the hell…” at least once every couple chapters (and in a 600 page book, that’s saying a lot).

I liked the book. I didn’t like it quite as well as I liked The Nix, but there are few books that could measure up to The Nix. For a sophomore effort, it’s excellent. Well worth the time invested. Highly recommend.

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC in return for my honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Wellness by Nathan Hill.

Holy cow, just read this book, that's my review. It's long, but honestly, it could have been longer, and I still would have loved it so much. It got under my skin immediately. The way it unfolds in a way that is so unexpected, yet so painfully satisfying, slowly explaining questions that you didn't even know you had. It's just a rich, heartfelt, well written book, Hill puts so much care into his storytelling, it's worth the time.

A great piece of literature. I have not read Nathan Hill's debut novel The Nix, but after reading Wellness, his new release, I will definitely put The Nix on my TBR list. I do not usually read in this genre. I am a police procedural, mystery, women's fiction, and contemporary romance reader. But once in a while, I do step out of my comfort zone. In this case, I am glad that I did. This novel is deep. Having been through two divorces myself, the intricacies of marriage and family dynamics were not lost on me. Highly recommend.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

3.5 stars (rounded up to 4).

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for providing me with an ARC of Nathan Hill's highly anticipated second book, Wellness.

Like so many other readers, I was absolutely enthralled with Hill's first book, The Nix, when it hit the shelves in 2016. I was amazed at Hill's ability to create deeply flawed characters who were still loveable. He's truly a master of brilliant run-on sentences. (Surely I am not the only one who still thinks about that one multipage run-on sentence of the internal dialog of the master gamer as he copes with the game's servers being down, right?) Needless to say, I had very high (and arguably unfair) expectations for Wellness. If the only considerations to the makings of a good novel were prose and character development, I would say Wellness is a 5-star read. Unfortunately, it's not (at least, not for me)--the story needs to be intriguing, too.

Before I go into more detail, I should mention that I had the opportunity to meet Nathan Hill on his book tour this month, when I was about halfway through Wellness. He was lovely, funny, and exactly what you would expect if you ever read any of his work. I learned that the idea for this book came from a short story he wrote back in college at the University of Iowa (in fact, I believe the first chapter is that short story). The two characters--Jack and Elizabeth--are college students who live directly across from each other in Chicago. Jack was an artist and Elizabeth was an aspiring psychologist. Their fascination for one another developed before they ever met--watching each other through their facing windows. (Side note: While I generally find Peeping Toms to be creepy AF, I think this was more tolerable because they were both spying on each other, unlike Joe Goldberg in You.) When Jack and Elizabeth finally wound up at the same bar one night, their whirlwind romance begins. Flash forward to twenty years later, Elizabeth and Jack are now married with a child (named Toby), living a life that is far from what they envisioned. When they first met, they could not untangle themselves from each other. Now, twenty years later, they are building their "dream home" with separate master bedrooms.

From the reader's perspective, their spark is gone. From Elizabeth's POV, she secretly contemplates whether there was even a genuine spark to begin with between them. "Every couple has a story they tell themselves about themselves . . . . For Jack and Elizabeth, that story was about falling in love at first sight . . . . But stories have power only insofar as they're believed, and suddenly, sitting there, . . . Elizabeth wondered if her and Jack's story wasn't in fact just another highly embellished placebo, just a fiction they both believed because of how good and special it made them feel."
Jack, feeling the shift in their relationship, does what any rejected (but desperate) person would do in his situation: He puts in the extra effort. This only makes him seem spineless/clingy/needy to Elizabeth.

Ultimately, I think this book is about love, marriage, the stories we tell ourselves, and how time wears away at all three of those things. Hill does a wonderful job playing with these themes in the book. However, he lost me with all the unnecessary excursions he took us on. I feel like he did this somewhat in The Nix, too, but they somehow tied into the plot or were entertaining enough to make me enjoy the diversions. I did not have the same experience reading Wellness. For example, there is a 40-page (!!!) section going into *excruciating* detail about Facebook's algorithm for promoting user engagement. Hill, at his book event, said he read through Facebook's patents to write this section. As a patent lawyer, I really commend him for doing that without getting paid to do it. Patents are boring AF and aren't written for those who do not possess ordinary skills in the art. Knowing how Facebook increases engagement to make more money through advertising added absolutely nothing to the story. I truly think that he wanted to include that section in his book so he could justify reading those boring, tear-inducing, utility patents. (Side note: Facebook's patents on their algorithms aren't actually telling of their code (which they keep as trade secrets). There is no requirement for a company to use the technology they disclose in a patent application, so I personally wouldn't consider a tech company's patents as a reliable source for determining anything about how their code is actually written.)

Facebook algorithms aside, I think there is a lot of good stuff in this book. He has an incredible ability to make his characters (and their multitude of issues) feel so relatable. There were parts that made me laugh out loud and others that made my heart wrench.

This novel tells the story of a relationship, from its heady beginnings between two very young people who felt out of place and lonely until they found each other, and afterwards were able to enter into the world of art students and college students who were part of a slowly gentrifying Wicker Park in Chicago. They were entirely wrapped up in each other, but in the present day, after marriage and a child and having put a sizable down payment on a condo in a renovated factory in a prestigious neighborhood, things begin to fall apart. Elizabeth, the scientist, points out that they are just at a natural low point in their relationship and she's happy to put space between them, insisting that the new place have separate master bedrooms. Jack, an artist and adjunct professor, is much less sanguine about the distancing. As they veer apart and then come together to try to refresh their marriage, it's not clear if they can stay together or if their relationship was ever on solid ground.

There's very little that author Nathan Hill isn't interested in and this novel digresses all over the place. Luckily, when he wanders off into, say, the history of artists depicting the American prairies or even how the Facebook algorithms work (something I have negative interest in) it is all worth reading and well-incorporated into the novel. Yes, this novel is longer than it *needs* to be, but cutting everything unnecessary out would make for a far less rich and entertaining book. He occasionally sends up people and situations in ridiculous ways, but always pulls the story back into its grounded center. And by taking the time to fully draw both Jack and Elizabeth's childhoods, as well as how their relationship and daily lives function, Hill makes this portrait of a marriage feel very real.

I was intimidated by the length of this book the first time I picked it up, but my goodness - I was wrong. I would have read this book for 200 more pages. The author clearly worked in all of the niche things in the world that interest him and this caused ME to be interested in these things, as well! It was just so darn fascinating and REAL feeling at every turn. The insight and introspection that Nathan Hill brings into his work is remarkable and I just really loved this book from start to finish. I will be buying everything he writes.