I seem to be in the minority here that as much as I thoroughly enjoyed The Nix, Nathan Hill's debut novel, his sophomore effort with Wellness fell completely flat for me. I am not denying that Hill is an excellent writer. His prose is gorgeous and he captures life and marriage extremely well. I just simply did not like the characters and although I've been married for nearly twenty years with two children, I could not relate to the problems that Jack and Elizabeth had. Basically, I found their relationship completely toxic and even though I know the point of the story is satirical, I did not care to learn what happened to them. Much of the plot seemed to wander and honestly, the extremely long chapter on social media algorithms, although interesting, was way way too long. I wish there had been a greater tie in with Elizabeth's Wellness clinic and her personality and childhood background like there was with Jack and his photography. I personally would have cut about 300 pages from the novel and it would have done a better job of achieving what I think it set out to do.

Obviously, this book has gotten a lot of acclaim and I truly believe it's more of me being a mood reader and just not feeling this one at the moment. However, I do see a lot of literary merit for the right reader. I just wasn't it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Nathan Hill, and Knopf for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Nathan Hill’s writing is extraordinary. I found myself asking if I was smart enough for this book multiple times. That said, there was SO much in depth exploration of every modern relationship and family concept known to our generation that I found myself bogged down in words many times—words and research. It made this lengthy novel feel even longer at certain points. That said, this is a BRILLIANT exploration of marriage, parenting, social media, community and “wellness”. I am haunted by multiple passages of this book, and know it will stay with me for years to come. If you get to page 80 and it isn’t working for you, it won’t work, so don’t attempt. Otherwise, the payoff is worth it.

This is my first Nathan Hill book. I absolutely loved the parts that I loved, but there were a few parts that I honestly just skimmed. He seemed to go off of tangents that didn’t add anything to the main story and its characters.

Wellness induced so many emotions in me. I felt bad for Jack, I was angry with Elizabeth, I almost cried at the end. Jack is a hopeless romantic and Elizabeth is a perfectionist who always thought she needed to do better. When they reach the best friend, comfortable phase of their marriage, she’s convinced that there has to be more.

Showing glimpses of their childhood, you see that they both grew up in quite dysfunctional families. Jack growing up poor, never feeling love and being blamed for everything. His mother resented him for even being born. Elizabeth growing up in a very wealthy household, being pushed to be the best at everything, but never being better than her short-fused father.

This book would have received 5 stars from me, had I not had to skim through about thirty percent of the book which added no real “nutritional value” to the story.

When I read what this book was about I knew I had to read it. Being married for over 30 yrs I could relate to what I was reading. The author writes with what I would say is a good insight into relationships and peoples behavior.
This is a long book so be ready.. I ended up read it a little at a time it’s one of those books you can put down and pick up where you left off at so don’t let the page count intimidate you.

Nathan Hill's "Wellness" is a beautifully written exploration of the ways in which a couple navigates the complexities of modern society without losing each other in the process.

Clocking in at 624 pages, “Wellness” is two books in one. Or, perhaps, ten books in one. While the love story remains the spine, Hill branches out into real estate, wellness culture, social media, monogamy, marriage, the arts as a profession, psychology, parenting, technology, late-stage capitalism, and American life in a way that does meander, but remains engaging enough for readers to accept the crooked path.

I lived in Chicago in the ‘90s, and Hill does a particularly good job of framing the music and art scene in that era. That was a rosy, oft unrealistically hopeful time just before 9/11, when much of the city was still accessible to artists and folks with a punk spirit and far less anxiety at the outer world.

We were never as free as we thought we were then and "Wellness" reads like a believable exploration of what would happen when an idealistic couple begins their journey in that time and space, but then must take on the subsequent years and find their place in the new normal.

Elizabeth and Jack start as voyeurs of each other, in that way two broke kids very easily could be when window treatment money is better served falling into a tip jar for the local band.

“And so here they are, lingering in the shadows. Outside, the snow falls plump and quiet. Inside, they are alone in their separate little studios, in their crumbling old buildings. Both their lights are off. They both watch for the other’s return. They sit near their windows and wait. They stare across the alley, into dark apartments, and they don’t know it, but they’re staring at each other.”

Elizabeth and Jack don’t stay in that gritty but also less complicated world. As they move up into different tax brackets, different neighborhoods, and out of the dilapidated warehouses, their own sense of self changes. By extension, their relationship must change and at times the growing is painful.

Hill wrote these two characters with a great amount of empathy and thankfully did not fall into the trap that the only way to tell a love story now is to make it a tragedy.

Nathan Hill’s voice in the fantastic novel “The Nix” is present here. His particular brand of midwestern sensibility combined with truly gorgeous turns of phrase made this another book to recommend digging into on a long weekend.
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Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication date Sep 19th, 2023.

The Nix by Nathan Hill was one of my favorite literary fiction reads in recent years. As a result, I was excited to read Wellness. Wellness is similarly well-written and has a lot of thought-provoking passages regarding current society. In some respects, it reads like a collection of random tangents addressing whatever happened to interest Hill at the time. I read enough (40%) to know that I would rate this about 4 stars, because it is well-written and interesting. I can definitely see this being a favorite for some people. Unfortunately, I don't think I will finish it just because it wasn't really keeping my interest at the moment. The criticism of modern society was dragging me down a bit, even if it was intelligent and frequently accurate. With that being said, I could see myself returning to it in the future. Thank you, Knopf and Netgalley, for the Advanced Reader Copy.

Thanks, NetGalley and Knopf, for the Digital Review Copy.

Last night, my husband explained why he doesn’t like soup. “There’s too much broth in the way of my protein.” That’s how I felt about this book. The protein was great, but there was too much broth, and I struggled to finish it. Parts were brilliant, others heartbreaking, and many were beautiful, but there was SO MUCH ELSE. But get this: The broth was great, too!

What made up the broth? Deep dives into medical placebo, parenthood, marriage, gentrification, real estate, and social media algorithms, just to name a few. Dives so deep that the author thanked “psychologists, sociologists, neurologists, evolutionary biologists, economists, sexologists, therapists, philosophers, doctors, data scientists” in the acknowledgments…right before the BIBLIOGRAPHY.

I’ve read books like this before and have been able to let the broth “wash over me” (@_robin.reads ), but I couldn’t here because the deep dives were…fascinating. I wanted the story but also wanted the data and kept getting bogged down. Though the ending was spectacular, and I enjoyed the story, I left the table feeling overfull.

Synopsis: “A poignant and witty novel about marriage, the often baffling pursuit of health and happiness, and the stories that bind us together. From the gritty '90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home-renovation hysteria, Wellness reimagines the love story with a healthy dose of insight, irony, and heart.” GoodReads

“People revealed themselves constantly, but unconsciously, and in the very smallest of ways.”

Wellness is an @Oprahsbookclub pick!

This is a loooong one guys, at more than 600 pages, but utterly engaging. It is like a peek into the bones of a marriage as it spans decades and changing times and social media. As it navigates past hurts and underlying weaknesses and the growing and changing of two people who vowed to be each others forever but who now see cracks starting to form.

Wellness is a commitment and almost like a slow burn character study but I enjoyed it immensely.

Thanks for the free #audiobook @PRHAudio #PRHAudioPartner and to Netgalley, Knopf Publishing, and the author for the ARC.

There's a love story here that anchors the narrative. Elizabeth and Jack meet when they are college students. It's the 90s, it's Chicago, they're going to dive bars and clubs and seeing bands - Hill captures the setting just perfectly with references from the Double Door and Lounge Ax to Urge Overkill and the Jesus Lizard. The rich detail brought that time and place to life and we fall in love with Elizabeth and Jack falling in love.

All of the book is told with that rich, exacting detail. A chapter when we've fast forwarded a few years and Elizabeth is trying to get her two year old toddler to eat his lunch, and then venture out to the grocery store is excruciating. It only spans a few hours but we feel the torture of their routine. A section where Jack goes through his employer's on-boarding process is excruciating in its accuracy. Talk about deep diving.

We learn a lot about placebo effect (her job) and art and photography (his job). We learn about their pasts, their families' pasts. There's a whole section on social media algorithms (Jack's father has gone the conspiracy rabbit hole). Lots of detailed, far reaching branches (we're over 600 pages here), but at the heart it's a love story. A sweet messy love story.

My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC.

I had previously read and loved Nathan Hill’s The Nix, so when I saw he had written a new book, I immediately asked for an advance reader’s copy. Hill is a talented writer with great insight into human nature. This book tells the story of Jack and Elizabeth, a couple who meet in college, get married, have a child, and find that they are drifting apart after twenty years. The storyline follows their relationship.

It starts in the 1990s in Chicago, and the setting is vividly described and easily visualized. We learn of Jack’s background in photographic art and Elizabeth’s work in psychology. It is character driven and, by the end, I felt like I knew these two. As the story progresses, we understand many of the reasons they were initially drawn together and the lingering impact of their childhood traumas.

The writing is top rate. The narrative is a mixture of social commentary and an easily relatable story about the ups and downs of married life. It touches on a variety of topics with humor and insight, including “new age” concepts, wellness, the placebo effect, parenting, and social media algorithms. I am impressed by the author’s ability to weave into the story a wide variety of topics. It is rather long but read it slowly and always looked forward to picking it up where I left off. I love Nathan Hill’s writing style and will read anything he writes.

I received a complimentary electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, author Nathan Hill, and publisher Knopf. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read Wellness of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.

Frankly, I came at this tale four different times before I muddled through it. It has a good, big beginning, but becomes so complex and nitty that I sat it aside and moved on more than once. Finally got to the end today, and it was - interesting. Occasionally it was funny. Usually, I'm the one saying don't cut even one word! They are all necessary ~! Not this time. I'm too old to waste 629 pages of story on a 300-page tale.

Smart layered on smart. There's so much to unearth, ponder and sit with in this novel--completely masterful! I loved it and I've been recommending it since well before I finished.

Nathan Hill’s new novel, Wellness, is a smart love story. There are no simple tropes, the obstacles the central couple, Jack, and Elizabeth, must overcome are largely of their own making, and mostly because they simply think too much. The couple is obsessed with the foundations of human behavior and teaching the nuances of it to the reader. While the relationship between Elizabeth and Jack is endearing and fascinating, their analysis, especially in the murky middle of the book, tends toward tedium. They dwell so intensely on the fields of their interest and research them so extensively…both the characters and the author…that the reader has to resist the temptation to treat the novel as a scholarly work and actually skip the long explanations and examples (footnoted!) and get to the parts where they remember that they CARE about Jack and Elizabeth, their heartbreaking childhoods and how they deal with the fallout as they try to raise their own son.

I urge you, if you get so far into the book that you want to put it aside, don’t. You will not be able to forget Jack and Elizabeth and Toby, and if you finish the book, you will find yourself wanting to have discussions with them, and everyone you meet, about the world you’ve left when you close the cover. The pay-off is worth it. Bravo, Nathan Hill.

This book was published September 19, 2023. Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for the review copy.

I absolutely adore this book and have already told everyone I know that they need to read it. The writing is amazing, but it’s the twisty timeline and multiple points of view that make this story unforgettable. The book follows the lives of Jack and Elizabeth through its ups and downs to create one of the most amazing romance adjacent stories. The two met under unusual circumstances in the Chicago art scene of the 1990’s. When they met their love felt limitless and all they wanted was to be close together. After twenty years of marriage, they both find themselves questioning the limit of their love and wanting more space. Theirs is a modern love story about all the “things” that get in the way, how the pursuit of happiness can lead the seeker to forget to be happy. This book says all of the things that you have probably thought throughout the years, but in such an informative and thoughtful way. Prior to reading this book I would never have guessed that a breakdown of Facebook’s various algorithms could be so tender and heartbreaking. I loved how the characters seemed to be living on the page and you were just the invisible observer. Everything felt so real, and I couldn’t help but be invested in the outcome of the story. This is a top 10 book of the decade and we’re only 3 years in.

QUICK TAKE: it's an instant classic. I couldn't put it down, and I loved every second of it. That's all.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

So I was a little nervous starting this 624 page novel and was really hoping it wouldn't be a slog. Most of the books I've read recently have been around 250-400 pages, so this seemed epic. Once I got started though, I was hooked from the first chapter, and was fully invested in the lives of Jack and Elizabeth. In fact, after finishing the book, I honestly would've read even more chapters about their lives.

Hill's writing style here is very wordy--sentences are long and rambling, but that doesn't seem to slow down the readability. In fact, I finished this novel in less days than some other recent shorter ones. This is definitely a character-driven novel, and by the end, the reader will likely feel like they thoroughly know the main characters. Even the secondary characters are well fleshed out. There were a couple of secondary characters that felt a bit too on-the-nose and stereotypical, but I understood the point the author was going for with them.

I do feel that the author could've trimmed down the story a little--perhaps not so much detailed and extended family history was needed? I still enjoyed reading it all, but in order to perhaps have a tighter and shorter novel than 624 pages, there's definitely room to cut without losing any real storyline. My only other critique is that there were a few times where I noticed the author reiterating ideas to the reader that were easy enough to infer from the previous interactions/dialogue--it was almost as if he didn't think the reader would come to those conclusions on their own and needed extra reminders.

This novel was just a great combination of qualities and themes that I enjoy reading about--modern love, wellness culture, family drama, soul-searching characters. I had not read Nathan Hill's earlier work, but I am excited to, and will be looking forward to future novels from him. I really enjoyed this novel and highly recommend!

At the center of this book is the story of a marriage. Jack and Elizabeth meet, fall in love, and we follow the trajectory of their romance and marriage over the course of twenty years. Nathan Hill's writing makes you want to keep turning the pages and he delves into the complexities of a modern marriage, monogamy, and parenthood. Like a longterm marriage, this book at over 600 pages is a commitment, but it's one that I'm glad I made.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for this ARC.

- WELLNESS is a book that is so sprawling and layered that I am having a hard time collecting my thoughts about it.
- Hill is such a master of slowly unspooling a story, giving us each piece of a character's life at the exact moment it's needed, which somehow makes a slow, character-based novel feel like a page turner.
- It's possibly I simply connect too deeply to this book, given that I'm someone who thought she'd be an artist of some kind who is now married in the suburbs...but I think even if you don't identify with that particular part of the story, there will be something in Jack and Elizabeth's lives that rings true to you.
- The more I think about this book, the more sure I am that I can't condense it into an Instagram caption. Consider this an open invitation to come chat with me about it if you've read it!

Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in Chicago in the 90s and fall madly in love. Twenty years later, they have moved to the suburbs and are struggling to make their marriage work.

I loved all of the scenes set in 90s Chicago - any book that has characters meet at the Empty Bottle is going to win at least a chunk of my heart. And I thought the commentary on long-term relationships would speak to me - and some of it did, but things went off the rails and not in a fun way - more like in a meandering, guy talking way too long in a college philosophy class way. If Hill had stuck with the snarky, hilarious bits and let the characters breathe a little, and left out the pages (and pages and PAGES) of existential Deep Thoughts, this would have been a perfect book. As it stands for me, I think it's a good book by a talented author, but I wish it had somehow been more and less at the same time (which makes no sense, I know).

Jack and Elizabeth fall in love as college students, are in sync with each other and so get married. Years later, they have both changed or evolved into slightly different persons from their youthful selves. They must work it out.

In between however, the author treats us to analyses of love, health, current beliefs and presumptions about how the real world and people really work. Most of the books deals with putting down our misguided beliefs about all manner of things.

Chief among the beliefs about our health, mental and otherwise, is the idea of how placebos work as well as or better than the real thing. We are given umpteen study results that show how placebos can change minds, and can heal what seemed a lost cause. Our minds and brains are complex things that determine how we think and believe.

Other real world ideas and beliefs are explained and shot down by innumerable examples of studies done and what they show. I became disheartened and didn't want to finish the book, it was so cluttered with these studies that disprove what we normally think or believe about all sorts of things.

The book was too intense with topics that had nothing to do with Jack and Elizabeth that I could see. These studies could have been put in a book separate from the story of a couple's progress in their marriage.

Re my rating, the value of the ideas is a four. The way it was presented makes it a three star read.