Really captivating characters and stories told with propulsive style that conveys just how hot and sweaty this weekend in London is. The balance between all the stories was effortless.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Oisín McKenna, and Mariner Books for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I've been excited to read Evenings and Weekends after seeing so much buzz surrounding it on my side of litfic BookTok. It lived up to the hype for me, and it was refreshing to read a literary novel I enjoyed once more, as I've been in a slump. There are a LOT of characters here, and my one note was that I wish as the reader we could have spent some more time with several of the characters, such as Rosaleen, Holly, and even Callum. There is a lot of queerness in the novel and a lot of intersections of rumination and living. Each character felt very alive with very real thoughts and worries. I liked the pacing of the events unfolding during the heat of summer with the peak coming at night during a rainstorm, as that narrative imaging worked well for this particular story. I do think it is one I would have to revisit in the future to truly enjoy and get all the details of, but for the time being, it was a nice, deeper summertime read that I enjoyed as a whole.

Evenings and Weekends is a remarkable exploration of identity and human connection. McKenna's ability to weave together intricate narratives with raw emotional depth is impressive. The collection of stories delves into the lives of characters grappling with their sense of self amidst the backdrop of everyday challenges. Each story is a glimpse of human experience, capturing moments of joy, sorrow, and everything in between. McKenna's prose is both lyrical and evocative, painting vivid pictures of each character's inner struggles and triumphs. What struck me most about Evenings and Weekends is its ability to tackle complex themes such as relationships and personal growth with sensitivity and honesty. McKenna's narrative style is refreshingly unique, blending humor and melancholy in a way that keeps you engaged from start to finish. The pacing is perfect, allowing each story to unfold naturally while leaving a lasting impact. Overall, Evenings and Weekends is a collection that invites readers to reflect on their own lives and relationships. It's a testament to McKenna's talent as a storyteller and his deep understanding of the human condition. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for thought-provoking literature that stays with you long after the last page is turned.

4.5 stars. I went into this hoping it would be both highly readable and insightful, and it was! We follow a handful of interconnected characters over the course of one sweltering summer weekend in London. From the first page, I felt McKenna’s observations resonating deeply with me. He captured the feeling of living in a big city and the constant sense that your next big break might be right around the corner; the feeling of summer weekends and wanting to make the most of them and so you can feel like you are living life to its fullest; the phase of early adulthood when lives diverge as some friends get married and have kids at different times. Even his description of internet trends felt spot on. The characters, many of them queer, felt real and fleshed out. If you’re familiar with London, you’ll love this even more. It was a bit hard to keep track of all the characters at first, but you eventually get to know them each well enough that it’s not an issue.

Another win from an Irish author! This was an incredible debut and I can’t wait to see what McKenna writes next.

Thank you NetGalley and Mariner Books for the free copy in exchange for my honest review!

First, thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I'll start by saying that this book seems to be literally *everywhere* in LitFic circles. Everyone is talking about and recommending this book, and comparing it to Sally Rooney stylistically. It makes complete sense to me. Despite being a reasonably tight 350 pages, Oisín McKenna's Evenings and Weekends balances an expansive cast of Londoners and follows them primarily over the course of a single eventful weekend in June 2019 (notably before the pandemic, so the characters and we as readers are spared the discussion of COVID restrictions, masks, distancing, etc.). This is very much a character-driven novel, and one with a lot of nuance and insight into human interactions. I love a book that accurately depicts the awkwardness of friendships, parent-child relationships, and romantic relationships and really digs into their messiness. On that front, this book felt very visceral and truthful. I think the comparison to Rooney, in terms of style, is apt and I would 100% read whatever McKenna writes next.

In terms of the characters that we follow, there are:

Maggie, who is pregnant, and her boyfriend Ed, who may not be completely straight
Maggie's gay best friend, Phil, who is in love with his housemate Keith (who is in an open relationship)
Phil's unsteady brother, Callum
Phil's mum, Rosaleen - newly diagnosed with cancer
(as well as a few other characters along the way)

Though as I mentioned above, this is primarily a character-driven novel, what tension arises is primarily driven by what is unsaid which the characters desperately *want* to say.

Though the novel's focus was tipped toward the younger characters, I really enjoyed the character of Rosaleen, Phil's mum, especially learning more about her back story (to describe it would spoil the revelation), and I liked that McKenna chose to make her story a significant part of the book's resolution. As I'm thinking back on the book, I'm considering the ways in which the book highlights how the secrets that we keep and the choices that we make affect future generations. In each subsequent generation, we hope that we are making better or wiser choices than our parents - but in spite of our best efforts, are we really? Or is it human nature for us to fumble, to reach for better communication, and yet, sometimes, to fail?

As you can probably tell from reading this review so far, I really enjoyed this novel as a whole. I was engaged by the characters throughout, and finished the book within about 3 days because I was interested to see how each character's sections would resolve. The only reason I'm deducting a star is that I felt McKenna struggled a bit at the start of the book to efficiently and memorably lay out the characters whose through lines would eventually be so intertwined. Because there was such a multitude of rather prominent characters, I found myself struggling during the first third of the book to remember their relationships to one another. Once I found the groove of the book, it was off to the races, but that took a bit of acclimating that I thought McKenna could have alleviated by adding in more distinct characteristics for his cast of characters from the jump. In spite of the bumpy start, I thought Evenings and Weekends was well worth reading, and a good literary summer book to tide readers over until the new Rooney, Intermezzo, drops in September.

"Evenings and Weekends" by Oisin McKenna is an intriguing debut novel that tracks an ensemble of characters in London over a life-changing weekend. This highly character-driven narrative interweaves the lives of various individuals, with Phil and Maggie’s storylines standing out. The deep exploration of characters' pasts and personalities adds depth to the story. However, the whale subplot felt out of place, and the frequent switches between characters were sometimes confusing. This book definitely captured my attention and I recommend it to folks who enjoy literary fiction with LGBTQIA+ themes.

Ok, I really loved this book. when I got a copy of it I was very intrigued by the storyline. Boy meets boy, sleeps with boy, boy then meet girls gets her pregnant and then boy still likes to go to train stations and pick up men! It all takes place in one hot steamy summer in London. The three manin cahracters are Ed, Maggie, and Phil. All best friends and all trying to find there way in life. This book is very relatable to people who are gay or had freinds that were your besties and understood who your were as a gay person. There were scenes that really hit home. Men hitting on you and then saying they have to go home to their girlfriends. That is kind of the main storyline. Maggie who is marrying Ed and having a baby with her still likes men and we only know that because Phil saw him trying to pick up a guy at the train station. Does Phil tell Maggie or does he leave it alone and let her firnd out for herself. What would you do? It's a very timely novel since gay rights are starting to be threatened and will it force gay people to go back into the closet or deny who they are and marry women that they arent really in love with for the sake of what society thinks of them. It's a very provocative novel and is filled with intriguing opinions. I absolutely loved it! Great pick for a book club and even a LGTBQ book club. So much to discuss in this novel and I can't believe it's the author's debut. He is a huge talent and I can't wait to see what he writes next! Thanks to Netgalley and Mariner books for the read.

evenings & weekends is a story of interwoven characters set over the course of a weekend in London during an intense heatwave.

i throughly enjoyed this as a character driven plot lover. much like sally rooney, mckenna sets you within the mind of the characters within the story. allowing you to see how human and flawed each character is.

so much of this book showcases the idea that no one is thinking about you as much as you’re thinking about you. each character comes with there own fears, secrets, anxiety, and desires.

as things heat up over the course of the weekend, both figuratively and literally, tensions rise and everyone reaches a tipping point where life changing decisions must be made.

i thoroughly enjoyed this read and feel like this is one i’m going to need to come back to.

London is sweltering, a dying whale is stuck in the Thames, and Ed and Maggie are leaving the city to move back to their hometown and have a baby they cannot afford. After Maggie's best friend Phil sees Ed cruising in a public bathroom, he's torn between his loyalty to Maggie and desire to not out Ed. As the weekend reaches a boiling point, Ed, Maggie, Phil, and their families must reckon with who they are and what they really want.

I absolutely loved this book and how it treated sexuality, gender, trauma, and class. The prose is beautiful and the characters felt complex and real. It broke my heart without veering into melodrama. It's a gorgeous debut and I cannot recommend it enough.

It's about a million degrees in New York right now, so reading about a sweltering London was easy to do. Set over a weekend in 2019, Evenings and Weekends. is a tight story about people at changing points.

Ed and Maggie are a couple who are expecting a child soon. Maggie secretly dreams of a life as a full-time artist, while Ed is questioning his past and his sexuality.

Phil is Maggie's best friend, and in a weird relationship or "Situationship" (as the kids say) with one of his roommates, Carl. Carl is in a non-monogamous relationship with Louis.

Phil's mother, Rosaleen, has been diagnosed with cancer. She is worried about both of her sons, while also being haunted by her past. Her other son, Callum, is a drug dealer and about to marry his girlfriend, Holly.

There's ALSO a beached whale on a beach that has been rescued by a Princess Diana lookalike and newly crowned queer icon.

While there are many, many characters, and a tight-timeline for these stories, this book is full of humor, love, growth and heartache. It captures that time period that everything happens all at once, and you think you'll never be able to move forward.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A very honest, sometimes painfully honest, book about sexuality and growing up. I always found the characters relatable, even when I didn’t particularly like them. This book will meet with anyone who knows what it is to be young, and those of us remember.

Delicious, sexy, and truly compelling, this is the type of summer novel that makes a person feel alive.

This made a great literary summer read. It was fast-paced and was full of drama! I think this is a great choice for Sally Rooney fans to pick up while they are eagerly awaiting her next novel; it was full of some of the same emotional intensity in her books.

Evenings and Weekends is a heartfelt, sexually charged, and darkly comic exploration of young adulthood in the city. It’s a mesmerizing dive into the soul of London, examining the hurdles faced by young people trying to build their lives in a rapidly changing world.

All the smart, moody books written in the wake of Sally Rooney wish they could be as good as EVENINGS & WEEKENDS, a new book that holds its weight among other millennial-core titles. This story has immense heart, and McKenna writes with piercing emotional clarity. One of my top recommendations for this summer.

Wow wow wow!!!

This exquisitely written novel is the slice-of-life queer undoing I needed. As I turn 27 next week, these novels about reaching your thirties are hitting a little too close to home. 😭

But it’s so beautiful to feel represented by the joys and traumas of queer lit.

This was a brilliant and wonderful debut! I really enjoyed reading this and will be looking out for Oisin's next book. I am a fan!

I wanted to like this book. It has some funny moments, and it has some sharp lines of writing here and there that really catch attention, but it feels like those exist in contrast to rather predictable characters and setting. I will be curious to read what McKenna writes next, but this one wasn't quite for me.

This book is set in London in 2019 and follows two families who are intricately linked. Callum and Phil are brothers and their neighbor is Ed. Ed is engaged to another friend, Maggie, and they are expecting a baby. Callum is also getting married. All of these characters are struggling, though. They are all somewhat adrift, and Ed, in particular, is struggling with his identity. Phil and Callum are also contending with an ill mother. Tied into the story is a whale that becomes stranded during a heat wave in London. This is a character-driven novel, not much in terms of plot but we do slowly learn about the character and struggles of each person in this book. I felt somewhat ambivalent about them but the story did move along and kept my interest. Thank you, NetGalley, for the advanced copy.

I enjoyed this book. It was witty, nuanced, fun—and at some points— very serious. The story centers around an interconnected group of friends and their families that grew up in suburban England but now are struggling to stay afloat in London in the midst of a heatwave. The sense of place was grounded and believable, which helped to connect me to the story. I could feel the heat of the story while reading it—both the heatwave and the tension between characters. The tension that builds between Maggie, Ed, and Phil is incredibly well-developed and made me want to keep reading.

One of my favorite things in this book is the whale stuck in the Thames. The whale appeared to be a metaphor for all the big, heavy things that were stuck in the lives of the characters in this book. I don't want to give spoilers about it, but her fate felt fitting to the story. I loved the references to the whale and even the news anchor who may or may not look like Princess Diana.

I do wish we got to know Joan and Callum a bit better. These characters were fairly important to the story, but not as fully developed as the others.

This book deals with some pertinent issues and handles them with care, but also is not afraid to confront them. Mckenna wrote a timely and beautiful novel, perfect for summertime!