I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

This book was not for me. Could never really find my groove with the writing style. I was never drawn to pick it up which is not a good sign.

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

I've never read a book with so many words, yet nothing to grasp onto or love. I have nothing nice or constructive to say, so I'll just end things here.

Thank you @netgalley for the Advanced Reader Copy of The Second Coming by Garth Risk Hallberg. I am sorry to say that i couldn’t get into this and ended up DNFing. It’s the story of a girl and her father, he has been out of her life for a while but then they reconnect. I found it hard to follow.

Teen depression, estranged parents, a holiday road trip, and a lifetime of trouble form the framework for Garth RIsk Hallberg's second novel. Dad Ethan moved from New York to California in an attempt to get a grip on his addiction. Already a convicted felon and divorced from his daughter's mother, he heads east when he learns that Jolie seems to have considered throwing herself in front of a subway train. He sees himself at age 13 and fears he knows what might be to come.

Hallberg is a gorgeous writer, but there is too much of this book. It reminded me of Infinite Jest, another novel that it was very hard to get through; in fact, I'm not sure I did. I stuck with The Second Coming (the title has no religious significance but refers to a book by the artist known at that time as Prince.) There are some readers who may fall in love with this novel--I suspect they are guys who also love David Foster Wallace. There are some plangent observations about the human condition but the premise did not pay off for me.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for a DRC of this novel.

interesting family bonding / family relationship book tracing the path of a father and a daughter who are estranged. 4 stars

I was interested in reading this book because I liked the author’s previous work, “City on Fire”. I didn’t enjoy this one as much. The writing was quite dense.

This novel explores the complex dynamics of a fractured family, focusing on the tense relationships between a troubled teenage girl, her addicted father, and a mother who feels powerless. Despite the title, it’s not a religious book but rather a deeply introspective look at whether people can truly change.

The writing is choppy and demands patience but it is still a thoughtful, moving exploration of love, addiction, and transformation.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Not my cup of tea at all, but I could see how some readers would love this dense, strange novel about a father and a daughter. Had a hard time getting through but still glad I finished it to be sure.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an advance copy of this title in exchange for honest feedback.

A thought provoking exploration of family dynamics and redemption. The writing is rich and descriptive but can sometimes be dense which might be overwhelming for some, but there are moments of brilliance.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I can't say I enjoyed this book, so I had to DNF at 32%. I never ever DNF but I felt this book was going to push me into a reading slump. The Second Coming is the story of Jolie, a 14 year old who is subject to an accident on the NYC subway that causes her absent dad to come back into her life from California, where Ethan took off to rehab from drug addiction. This book had a good premise and some bits were interesting, but the majority of the book dragged badly. Definitely not engaging enough to read all 600+ pages. Thanks for the eARC, though.

Can the people we love ever really change?

Know going in that this is not a religious book, despite the title. This focuses on the estranged relationship between a troubled teenage girl, her addict father, and her helpless and hopeless mother. The reading is sophisticated and refined, it requires attention and focus, time to take in each word and page. I found parts to be difficult to get through more because of the writing style that I am not accustomed to, not because of the content. I am impressed by the talent the author has, and found that the style greatly affected the content to be something more grand and profound than another style would not have been able to do. Though it was not an easy read and was oftentimes complex, I was drawn to the story, to the characters and their lives, and to the mental and physical journey daughter and father endure and embrace.

“An intimate epic that plunges us deep into the lives of a teenage girl and her father as they navigate love, grief, betrayal, and redemption.”

#thesecondcoming #netgalley #bookreview

Ohmygawd this was so long. So much longer than it needed to be.
The story, about a screwed up dad trying to reconnect with his screwed up teenage daughter wasn’t bad, really, Just. Way .Too. Long.
Thanks to #netgalley and #knopf for this #arc of #thesecondcoming in exchange for an honest review.

The blurb by Nathan Hill pushed this up my list. I was hoping for a long story similar to Hill's "Wellness" but this isn't even close.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

Do you ever start a book and know within the first few pages that it's just not going to be a good book? That's this one. Immediately the word that comes to mind is pretentious. From the first page, I felt as though the author was talking down to me as the reader and preening about how intelligent he is. It was an immediate turn off.

This is a well written book. It has some fine lines, a few well-conceived set pieces, a fair share of perceptive and insightful observations, and lean dialogue. That said, try as I might I found neither the characters, nor their situations, nor the overall narrative engaging enough to arouse or hold my curiosity and attention. As a consequence, it doesn't seem fair to write much more of a review, apart from encouraging inquisitive readers to give the book a try.

This was a very interesting book and I like how the author to take the chapters and divide them in and tell a story about these 2 families. It starts out Ethan's daughter named J o l I e. My mother named Sarah.I need to return to school and this turned out to be very disastrous. She was fighting a lot different things.Her father wasn't really around. ETH AN Had problems with this past and his drug addiction. He grew up in eastern short maryland with a family when his mother died He became a very different person. My sister helped me out as much as she could. His father remarried and this really sent him off. You find out how much trouble he used to get into with his friends. His wife's name Sarah G r o w up in a very structured family. Ethan and sarah's marriage do not last. When His daughter started School. Things Got really bad. It would interesting how the daughter seemed to take after her father. I.
Can't see the frustration how people really didn't understand her. When her father took her to the Eastern shore. This was really interesting in the story because You get the whole list of the story.. The story also touched on some things.Teenagers have to deal with dude. The story has a happy ending.

DNF about 20% of the way through. This was very, very hard for me to feel engaged in but I may have been able to give it more of a chance if not for the pretty significant length of the book. Difficult to care about the characters, and I would argue that it is a bit overwritten - many long, trailing sentences without much in the way of plot or character development. Perhaps I'll come back to this at some point, but it is certainly not for me right now.

This review is a tricky one for me to write because this book was so middle of the road for me. There were things I really disliked but some parts really spoke to me and I found myself loving.

I really liked the author’s writing style! I think he is a very talented writer and with more editing, this book could have easily been 4-5 stars for me. However, it was way too long. I do not shy away from a long book when it works but this one didn’t need to be as long as it was to get the story told. Even with over 600 pages, the character development fell a bit flat for me. I found myself not understanding the character’s motivations or feeling like I was really getting in their head. The author had some really good insights on human nature at times but overall it seemed like it was pretty disjointed in the story telling. I found myself taking breaks from this book several times during the time I read it.

The whole end was a bit of a slog and confusing too. It jumped around so wildly that I found myself getting lost.

I don’t think this is a book that will work for most people but there will be a few out there that will love it.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the arc.