I pretty much exclusively read unwell woman fiction and Herra is one of the most unwell women I've encountered, The writing is so compelling and I just tore through this. Really enjoyed and would highly recommend!

Thank you to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley!

Hera is struggling with adulthood but she finds a job as a social media moderator for a news outlet. While working there she starts to become friends with Arthur, an older, married, co-worker. This friendship evolves into a relationship. Hera finally sees herself as an adult and can picture a life with Arthur. She is content at first but soon wants more and Arthur continually promises it to her. Hera is repeatedly disappointed. She makes some big moves to breakaway from Arthur but they are drawn back to each other over and over.
This was a very interesting read. It was a little bit like watching a car accident where you don’t want to look but you can’t look away. I felt this understanding of Hera and the emotions she was feeling but also felt this heartbreak for her because you know what the outcome of the relationship is going to be. The writing really brought out the emotion of the story and I could feel it right along with the characters. There were times where I was so frustrated with their actions but I could still understand them; the angst, the desire, the hope, the longing, etc. This is definitely a different type of book than I have read recently but I really enjoyed it.

She is delulu but I was enraptured until the very last page. We KNEW this wouldn't end well - and of course so did she. Did we look away from the car crash at any point? Of course not.

Madeleine Gray did a great job of capturing the varying phases of friendship, the messiness that is post-grad life, and the way we're all just hoping to belong to someone at the end of the day.

What a ride!! I agree with the author's blurb. "Hera is a clump of unmet potential." She was absolutely someone I would want to smack upside the head with some sense. It was a bit frustrating at times and slow to read about her love affair with a married man, and you already knew the outcome so I had to push myself to finish. Overall, for a debut novel...the author's writing style is really great and I would read their future work based on that statement. This is not a favorite, but it was good.

3.5 / 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Dark, funny, albeit frustrating at times because the protagonist in a relationship that won't give her what she needs but really well-done coming-of-age story.

I received a free copy of Green Dot from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

From the blurb:
“At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup that Arthur has a wife—and that she has no idea Hera exists.”

What a delightful book! A very enjoyable read. Though my twenties are long gone, Hera reminded me of the challenges I too met all those years ago. Her affair with Arthur reminded me of some of the relationship missteps I made before I met my husband. I thoroughly enjoyed this books. Highly recommended.

A captivating exploration of obsessive love. It is a witty and thought provoking story that plunges into the complexities of human emotion, identity, and autonomy. The writing is energetic and captures the chemistry between Arthur and Hera. The story is thought provoking.
Many thanks to Henry Holt & Company and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Such a fantastic read! I loved the humor—it’s so rare to find a book this funny, and it balanced out the heavier topics and emotions very well. Even though I could see where the book was going, I was so invested in every twist and turn that I couldn’t put it down. One of the best reading experiences I’ve had in a while – I’ve continued thinking about it long after I’ve finished, and have now listened to many podcast interviews with the author as well because I couldn’t get enough.

In the summary it says how it’s a 24 year old who is a mess of on reached potential in by the end of this book not to spoil it for anyone but she doesn’t reach that potential she is a selfish self-absorbed 24-year-old who only thinks of herself and how things affect her I didn’t like her I finish this book a few weeks ago and kept trying to think of a way I could write the review with more creative statements then I didn’t like the book but sadly I cannot I did not like the book. Please forgive any mistakes I am blind and dictate my review I want to think the publisher and NetGalley for my free arc copy.

Another millennial malaise banger.

What this book does really, really well: Hera’s narration is pleasantly stream-of-consciousness, and so it’s very fun (and then, later, heartbreaking) to read. It feels extremely authentic, too; oftentimes books that are trying to write this kind of story, one where there are a lot of asides about pop culture and current events, come across as cringey, like the author isn’t entirely sure what they’re doing. In Green Dot, though, you can really tell Madeleine Gray has a finger on the pulse, so to speak. Hera is also—as a result of the authenticity of the writing, I think—an extremely relatable character. Not all the time, but enough that I felt seen by the book more often than I didn’t. Always a plus! So is the fact that it never overstays its welcome; it’s exactly as long as it should be, with a nice, quick pace that goes down easily.

What it doesn’t: honestly, not much. The only “flaw” it really has, at least in my eyes, is that it very much is what it stays it is. If you like slice-of-life stories about depressed, queer, twenty-somethings fumbling their way through the world, you’ll like this book, end of story. It’s very much for fans of books like Ripe, or My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Given how polarizing that particular niche can be, though, I’d steer clear if it’s not your thing! This book is amazing at what it’s doing, but I don’t think it’ll make someone love a genre or style that they usually can’t stand.

So, 4.5 stars/5, rounded up because it deserves it!

thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt for the eArc!

it goes kinda exactly how you expect it to but because it is so well written i didn’t mind that!

At first glance, this book seems hard-pushed to differentiate itself from all other stories of an affair. The young, naive protagonist spends far too much time begging her lover to leave his wife and then seems baffled when she inevitably ends up on her own.

While Green Dot does follow this premise, the writing is what made this book a five-star read for me.

I found myself relating to Hera, despite the fact that I have never had an affair nor have I ever worked as a comment moderator. Hera’s thought process is inherently flawed and she continuously falls victim to her own delusion, but for some reason, I found myself rooting for her. I attribute this to Gray’s writing. The language and style that she used were beyond sensational for me. She writes exactly the words that I want to read.

At the end of the day, Hera is lost in her twenties and I think we all relate to that in our own way.

The only downside to this book is the inclusion of the pandemic. I’m aware that you should write what you know, but since I lived it, I don’t feel like reading about it right now. This is personal preference and it didn’t damage the rest of the book in my eyes so it’s still a five-star read.

I’ll be "adrift in my own smug malaise" while I wait for Madeleine Gray to write my next favourite read ;)

I think this is closer to a 4.5 instead of a full five, but the more time that goes by since I finished this, the more I love this book. I saw a review on Goodreads that said "She is delulu but aren't we all?" and I think that really sums up the book. I always enjoy stories where we really just spend a bulk of the time in the MC's head in an almost stream of consciousness narrative structure as the MC navigates everyday problems (many of which created by the MC herself). This book really felt like I was listening to a friend make absolutely ridiculous life choices but you just lover her anyway.

Gray is a fresh and exciting author whose debut has a lot of truly relatable and endearing specifics. I found her MC to be appropriately flawed and at times annoying, but in a way that I appreciated were character choices and authentic. I would absolutely read more from her and am excited to have gotten an early look at this new talent.

I am OBSESSED with this book. Thank you to @henryholtbooks for the ARC—from the Taylor Swift epigraph to the wrap-around cover, I loved GREEN DOT. Gray’s voice is so unique; she really captures the verbal cadences of millennial women and the way in which technology saturates contemporary relationships. Not since Drake’s Hotline Bling has a millennial dramatized with such emotion the transference that happens between our generation and our phones. Due to the crucial role the latter play in our affairs of the heart, the phone itself becomes a kind of love object.

The Taylor Swift epigraph was 100% perfect. My only gripe was that I wish it was the only epigraph to the novel. I get what the Ginsburg is going for but the Taylor Swift is such a genius move here that it deserved to stand alone.

GREEN DOT perfectly depicts the type of relationship one has in their early-to-mid-twenties; Hera has so many anxieties about adult life and she pours herself into her doomed relationship with Arthur in order to avoid confronting how she will make meaning in her life. It’s SUCH a stage and Gray shows it perfectly—Hera decides that if she can lose herself in Arthur, she will be happy, but he is ever out of reach. And, of course, that is why he has been selected for Hera’s “blank space”; he is appealing because he makes concrete the relationship that Hera already has to fulfillment, purpose, and happiness: inconsistent and fleeting. I adored how, at the end of the novel, Gray turns Arthur into the green dot in a different way—he becomes merely a blip in Hera’s past, once she realizes that she has been using his unattainability as a distraction from bigger, more interesting questions about her life trajectory.

Overall, I highly recommend GREEN DOT. Readers who love millennial fiction will enjoy it immensely.

I enjoyed this sparkling little novel. The wit and humor was well-developed, and the main character (even though a bit un-likeable at times) was a star. For the first time I felt I understood most of the pop culture references an author was making, which I loved. The portion of the book that took place in England, while it felt important to the plot, fell flat for me. I look forward to seeing what Gray does next.

it is very hard to read a whole book without sympathizing with its main character once.

this is actually not because the character in question spends this entire book sleeping with a married man, and a large portion of it sleeping with a man married to a pregnant wife, and a slightly smaller portion of it sleeping with a man married to the mother of a newborn. i have sympathized with characters who have done worse. although not by much.

it's because this character is SO unfeeling, so shallow, and so cruel in the worst way — the way that comes from just not caring about the interior lives of others. i don't know if this character has no interior life or is just uninterested in showing it to us, but it is not on page. not even implied.

i liked the writing of this at first, but eventually the constant slang and pop culture and devil-may-care mentality got old. it reminded me of greta and valdin at first, and then bad greta and valdin, and then not at all.

time passes in this book without reference, feelings grow without reason, and the plot just bumbles on. it's a frustrating read, unfortunately.

"Green Dot" details a young woman's mental and emotional decline as her inappropriate relationship with a married man progresses. I felt for Hera because I understood her feelings but was also frustrated with her actions. But I understand that, as a reader, I am able to have more objectivity and am not emotionally tied like she was. I think Madeleine Gray captures Hera's feelings and actions effectively, making this a relatable book.

This book is hard to read, but it is to Madeleine Gray’s absolute credit that I was on Hera’s side the entire time, despite being a 40something wife and mother who’s seen way too many of my friends, marriages break up due to cheating while pregnant. You never hate her, even when you hate what she is doing. Gray’s writing allowed me to re-see the world through Hera’s jejune eyes.and remember what it felt like to be 25. I even cried for her when the inevitable happens. I will devour everything this woman writes moving forward.

4.25

I really enjoyed this book! It was excellently written. It’s the funniest book I’ve read in a while and made me laugh out loud several times. The humor reminded me of Melissa Broder, but in my opinion funnier. It also had a good balance of seriousness, though.

It was a very frustrating book. It’s essentially 300 pages of Hera (the main character) making the same horrible choice over and over. It made its point though and the ending brought it up from 4 to 4.25.

I definitely don’t think this book is for everyone, but I enjoyed it and will definitely read more from Madeleine Gray.