Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
Tender is the Flesh meets Beautiful World Where Are You meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation but it’s just pointlessly miserable the whole time.

Pre-reading:
An incredible cover.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on)
Thick of it:
Is this in Montreal? I’ve been there. (Yes.)

Truly, it is unreal the way men pout when they can’t make you come like it’s your fault and not their spectacular lack of talent.

I love hyenas.

Now, I have not read Animal Farm, but I assume it’s something like this.

I’ve been to the biodome. I really liked it.

Sometimes I don’t know if I’m too much of a victim of the Tumblr era because sometimes these books and online are like look at this dumb poetry trying to be so edgy, and I’m like I kinda fuck with it, and then they show me something by like a very famous poet and I’m like lol this is stupid.

chilblains

Tender is the Flesh but more ennui and less horror.

No literally because Love and Other Drugs ruined my childhood.

It’s so odd to me how men hate cynical women, and it’s just like you’re the ones who make us this way because you refuse to change or make anything more fair for us or deign to give a shit. The men who don’t like cynical girls are uncomfortable that women do not exist just for their pleasure.

Jordan sucks.

If you hurt women, you don’t matter. Stop hurting people.

Daphne is an idiot, and I hate her.

This is Tender is the Flesh meets Beautiful World Where Are You meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation with none of the talent.

No, women just think about who has to clean up the mess when they’re done.

That was a horrifying little line. My mouth dropped open.

Post-reading:
What a weird and wacky little book. I think I liked it, but it’s also! pretty! miserable!

There’s a lot of violence against women in this and men absolving themselves of it which feels pretty fitting to societal commentary but again, pretty miserable!

It’s compulsively readable though. You’re just doggedly hanging in there waiting for a point and there’s not one, but it occasionally drops in little zingers of lines that you’re like surely there must be a purpose to all this? Can’t emphasize enough that there’s not one. It’s like a stream of consciousness thought experiment with hopelessly unlikable Gen Z characters.

If you like weird girl fiction and can stomach all the rape, it’s something to pick up. I’d be interested to see what other people get out of this.

Who should read this:
Weird girl fiction fans
Bunny girlies
Sally Rooney girlies who specifically liked Beautiful World
Existentialists
Misogyny commentary examiners

Ideal reading time:
January around the new year

Do I want to reread this:
Maybe with a book club. I feel like this is a hard book to consume by your lonesome.

Would I buy this:
Maybe? I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy it, but I wouldn’t turn down a finished copy.

Similar books:
* Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica-dystopian horror novel, social commentary
* Beautiful World Where Are You by Sally Rooney-lit fic character studies, unlikable characters
* My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh-OG angry sad girl lit fic character study
* Bunny by Mona Awad-weird girl lit fic, horror
* The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden-musey memoir, social commentary
* Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe-lit fic character study, family drama, social commentary
* Any Man by Amber Tamblyn-character studies, rape culture social commentary
* Shark Heart by Emily Habeck-lit fic character studies, dystopian horror, social commentary
* Big Swiss by Jen Beagin-lit fic character study, queer romance, social commentary
* How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu-interconnected short story collection, dystopian sci-fi, character studies

"Mood Swings" by Frankie Barnet is a poignant exploration of the complexities of mental health and emotional resilience. Through a blend of heartfelt narrative and sharp wit, Barnet captures the tumultuous nature of mood disorders, offering both insight and relatability. The characters are well-drawn and authentic, making their struggles and triumphs resonate deeply with readers. The book balances heavy themes with moments of humor and hope, making it an engaging read that encourages understanding and empathy. Barnet’s writing is both lyrical and accessible, ensuring that the message of compassion and awareness shines through. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the nuances of emotional well-being.

Mood Swings was a fun read! I loved the character study and the writing felt propulsive. I would read more from this author again.

DNF @ 15%

Unfortunately, I just couldn't connect to any of the humor in this which made it really hard to get through. I am sure this book is for someone else, just not for me!

The tone of the book is surreal and often satirical, with wry observations that hit surprisingly hard. Full review at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr309504

I love satire and this was a hit for me. I saw another reviewer refer to it as an offbeat litfic and I would completely agree. While the subject matter was pretty depressing as a whole, the author did a fantastic job of keeping the story lighthearted with a lot of humor.

This was very, very odd. It was an interesting concept, but the narrative was a bit hard to follow. I like quirky characters and odd storylines, but this was a little odd for my personal taste. I think a younger reader might enjoy more than me.

an existential MASTERPIECE 🦄

HAPPY PUB DAY to one of my new favorites, MOOD SWINGS by @francescafrancescafrancesca ! A huge thanks to @astrahousebooks for the arc ♥️

MOOD SWINGS opens in a preapocalyptic world where animals are rioting against humans for the planet’s environmental devastation. Forced into quarantine to protect themselves, humans find hope in none other than billionaire investor, Roderick Maeve. His solution? Eradicating all animals with a single, high-pitched noise. While no longer in immediate danger, general societal morale takes a plunge without their furry friends.

Amidst this new global depression, factions of radical environmental protestors gain momentum. To placate the people, Roderick Maeve pivots to a new solution: a time machine to undo both the extinction of fauna and our reliance on fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution. Following a band of connected characters and set in the not-so-distant future, MOOD SWINGS is both a cautionary tale of a global climate collapse and an allegory of late-stage capitalism and its absolute power of the one percent.

Y’all this book is 🤯. The opening chapter is the best literary hook that I’ve read in years. The diction is sharp, the humor is dark and witty, and the plot is accessibly speculative. MOOD SWINGS combines all the absurd, satirical, and existential elements I love from some of my absolute favorites: LAPVONA, INTERIOR CHINATOWN, and HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK.

This one still has me grappling with the pendulum swing of societal moods; as a species, humans love to dwell on the past and we love to forget it, too. But not to worry, a trick of the mind cures most! Distract with a shiny new toy (an iPhone? A time machine?), and you’ll have most citizens distracted enough from the corruption going on behind the curtain. While our current societal mood seems dire and galvanized, will it just swing back to contentment when the next shiny distraction comes along as a manipulation tactic, courtesy of those in power?

TL;DR- This book is a dark comedic metafiction with a full-circle plot that’s both satisfying and infuriating. A thought-provoking must read. Officially out on 5/21!

Thank you NetGalley and Astra publishing for the advanced copy of Mood Swings. I loved this, just everything about it. I'm going to be honest, I requested this solely based on the cover...I mean, look at it! This was smart, dark, unsettling and really funny. The characters were a little crazy, the whole premise is out there but that's what I've been into this year and the whole thing just completely worked for me. I don't think this will be for everyone, but if it sounds remotely interesting to you or you're into weird books as much as I am then go for it.

This utterly original novel is set in a recognizable future where the world is beset with massive droughts, a military coup, drowning migrants, starving children, multiple suicides on the world stage and “the siege,” an uprising of the animals, both domestic and wild, who revolt creating havoc (a woman in Spain was raped by dolphins, a pet rabbit tore out its owner’s eyes). A California billionaire Roderick Maeve (whose back story makes him a fully fleshed character) funded the manufacture of a sonic signal that killed them all. After defeating the animals, Maeve was initially feted on all the morning television shows, but then he was vilified.

Enter Jenlena and her roommate, Daphene. The two women met in college and “[i]t may have been the first time in history that a tall girl and a short girl had bonded so quickly.” Their other friends didn’t understand the relationship, “They’ll never be able to wear the same clothes.”

Jenlena lacked ambition. She said that when she graduated college she would “just probably well like, I dunno.” She believed in mediocrity. “Yes, it was a choice, but it also came naturally to her and it felt good.” She found “money a crude inconvenience, like going to the bathroom number two. Often, she skipped meals just to avoid thinking about it.” Jenlena’s lifestyle is supported by her stepfather who works in the oil industry. She supplements her stepfather’s generosity by selling stolen houseplants because, with the demise of the animals, people began to love plants “to a strange degree,” and by being paid to dress in a dog costume, which appealed to people who missed their pets.

By contrast, Daphene had always been “a good girl who studied hard and associated with the right people.” She won prizes for her poetry and had plans to attend graduate school, but something held her back, and she is working in a coffee shop. Daphene is dating a “canceled man,” Jordan Bellechasse, who found modest fame as a musician before it came out that he had punched his teenage girlfriend, Lisa Cicero, in the face, and that was it. “Firmly and irrevocably: canceled.”

This absurdist novel wouldn’t be complete without a cult, so Barnet presents the Moon Bethlehems, whose members jettison their first names, wear beige, and blame companies like Jenlena’s stepfather’s for climate change. Lisa Cicero joins the Moon Bethlehems, and her sister, Bonnie, claims it was because Jordan had showed her that the society where manipulation and violence were the norm was not worth participating in. “We’ve all become like someone on their deathbed, calling up our old transgressions and making apologies,” Lisa says. “It’s pretty easy, really, when you’ve got no real intention of changing. You know you don’t have to because you haven’t got the time.”

Jenlena accidentally meets Roderick in the lobby of a hotel and the two form an unlikely couple. Jenlena enjoys the exceptional privilege of being with Roderick while he focuses on building a time machine with the expectation that he can bring back both the animals and hope. The Moon Bethlehems protest Roderick’s plan because it would “erase the blame” of ecological collapse. This novel is playful and funny, but with genuinely sobering insights into a fraught world not much removed from our own. Thank you Astra House and Net Galley for an advance copy of a novel that I adored.

This novel tonally reminds me of Maniac (the Netflix show), Bojack Horseman, Derry Girls, No One is Talking about this by Patricia Lockwood, and Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, in a way that was utterly original. It covered topics like unethical billionaires, "cancelled" men, climate change, female friendships in your twenties, but in a new way that I appreciated, The author presents characters who are cancelled themselves and are dating cancelled people without judgment and allows the reader to experience their thoughts without a filter. I would recommend this book to anyone who regularly consumes social media content and listicles and enjoys novels that take place in apocalyptic worlds that are otherwise almost exactly like our own.

I love absurdist fiction and this was very much that. I loved the weirdly off world Barnet created and its anti-capitalist tone with a healthy dose of existential dread. Everything here was ridiculous and at the same time plausible.It took me a bit to get used to the writing style as it jumps around some. While some characters definitely had parallels to recognizable people, I thought the characterizations were still unique and well done. I can’t say I connected to any of the characters, but I think I got where they were coming from. I think this will really appeal to weird-lit connoisseurs.

Thank you co much to Astra House for the ARC of this one!

This is an amazing debut that blurs genre lines and creates a lyrically beautiful end of the world scenario. In this book the weather is changing, and the animals have started a revolt. Humanity is confined to their homes as towns are overtaken and residents are terrorized. The only way left to save humanity is to take away what we value most, the animals that sustain us. The story follows Jenlena and Daphne, two women in their early twenties trying to find their place in the post-fauna world. Daphne is stuck in a holding pattern, dating a cancelled man and shunned from her friends. When a billionaire promises to build a time machine to fix the environment, she sees it as her chance to reboot her life as well. Her depression begins to fade as she imagines a world in which she is saved. Jenlena is adapting to the new world. She finds ways to capitalize on the grief that is abundant in the world, but the time machine would leave her with nothing. When Jenlena meets a billionaire from California she begins to see the underbelly of extreme wealth and power, as well as a way out when things ultimately change again. This book is smart and moving. It touches on current issues in an absurd and almost comical way, while still giving the darker themes the grace they deserve. The entire story is the alarm bell of late-stage capitalism that forces the reader to think about where the world is heading. There is a reason the younger generations are disaffected, depressed and filled with dread, and chances are there will be no time machine to save humanity from itself. This is definitely a unique story that is just as wild as the cover.

this is my favorite book of 2024 so far! i loved the plot and the altering storylines. 10/10 - will be recommending to anyone who will listen!

Mood Swing had all the elements of a story I should love (fever dream-esque, unpredictable characters, uncommon structure) but at the end I just thought it was fine. I enjoyed bits and pieces, but not super memorable or impactful for me in the long run.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Astra House for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

This was absolutely absurd and completely unhinged. It was so much fun and at times hilarious but definitely will not be for everyone. I'd say read this if you enjoy satire and aren't looking to take something too seriously. Thank you @netgalley and Astra House publishing for the advanced copy!

Really wanted to like this due to the unique premise (all the animals randomly attacking people), but the structure was so all over the place that it was hard to stay engrossed. It’s definitely intentionally fragmented and whimsical, but it’s not my style.

Mood Swings by Frankie Barnet is an off-beat apocalyptic satire in which all of the nonhuman animals in the world rebel against humans. However, a tech billionaire develops a machine that kills all of the nonhuman animals and the planet is left with only humans and plants. This book is wickedly funny and contains many sharp observations about modern life as it follows some young adults who are stumbling through the world as the world is stumbling itself. Unfortunately, I found Barnet's desultory writings style to be frustrating, as it results in many themes being brought up but not explored, as if they exist merely for the author to make a couple of clever jokes. Additionally, I found the characters to be difficult to understand and annoying to follow. I would recommend this book to people who are looking for a funny and original take on climate fiction.

hmm. on the fence about this one.

let's get this out of the way, first: this was a cover pick-up for me. look at that cover. it's ridiculous. that, paired with a summary that promises dissections of capitalism, i really went into this thinking that it was going to be That Book for me.

this book is a dark comedy novel that begins with animals turning against all humanity, perhaps simply because they're "fed up". feral cats turn literally feral and attack people in the street. rodents can't be trusted. cows are turning against farmers. there's even a thing with bugs. i was incredibly not fond of this, as a person that considers violence against animals to be unnecessary, upsetting, and not entertaining at all. i almost put this book down at 10% because of it.

things only get worse as a billionaire with too much money and time decides that, since the animals are going wild and hurting people, he's going to kill all the animals on the planet. and is successful. yikes on several accounts.

obviously, the way of this choice was crazy - whole food sources are gone and people are painfully trying out new chickpea recipes. a very weird part of this story is people start to hire our main character, jenlena, to dress up in animal costumes to "play" the part of an animal - be it hissing and spitting when she's given a bath (in costume) or putting her fake paw on someone's leg when they're crying to provide companionship.

the more i think about this story, the more unsettling it gets. jenlena takes up and starts sleeping with the billionaire that started all the fuss and he's now working on building a time machine to reverse the choice, maybe reverse other things too.

all of the characters here have something that they regret and want to change back. for jenlena, perhaps ignoring formal education to write poetry into the void of an internet where no one bothers to read her work is hers. for others, a violent scuffle with a girlfriend who ultimately becomes an influential member of a post-animal cult. for the billionaire, the loss of a mother and not hunting down his father sooner.

i don't know. it's difficult for me to look at this book as a cumulative whole because frankly, some parts left me engaged and interested and others just confused me by their insertion into the story.

some stuff i did Get (capitalism bad) but i don't know if the story was told in a way that felt either complete or cogent to me. perhaps another read-through is in order.

cover is still too dope, though.

Mood Swings by Frankie Barnet primarily deals with two female main characters who are living in a dystopian time that is freakishly too close to the time we’re in now. The exception is that all the world’s animals turned on humans and then were eliminated by an eccentric billionaire entrepreneur. I feel that this man is meant to remind us of a certain entrepreneur living in our times, who’s last name rhymes with tusk. After eliminating the animals, the entrepreneur then embarks on creating a time machine to go back and set things on a better path. He and his crew want to prevent the awful climate change that starts happening at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The two main characters recently completed their undergraduate studies in Montreal, Quebec & are traversing life with little direction. At one point they end up as squatters. They’re “best friends” who often piss and moan about each other and each have their share of unhealthy relationships with men. The book also deals with abuse and assault across several characters.

To me, one of the most interesting themes in the book is that everyone knows something is weird and off, and that things will probably get worse, but just can’t put their finger on “IT.” Barnet made it feel a little too similar to today, which is pretty creepy & unsettling.

This book was pretty strange and weird, which is something I don’t have a problem with. I really embrace it. I did feel that the book struggled at times to meld the main characters “coming of age issues” with what was going on around then in pre-apocalyptic times. The main characters were pretty self-centered about what was going on, which I’m sure had to do with their stage in life. I’m trying to remember what I cared about at 22-25 years old. They were dealing with their own personal issues and a lot of the world’s issues were left unexplored. But, I assume the point of this book was to look into their lives as all hell was breaking loose around them.

By no means was this a bad book. But, I just didn’t quite get out of it what I hoped I would, which would be more exploration around the bigger issues in the book. I don’t mind character-driven books, but these characters frustrated me to a degree. I struggled to find much to like about them, their social lives (going to parties with Grimes) or their love interests.

Thanks to Netgalley, Frankie Barnet and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read the e-version of this book before release for an honest review in return!