From the first lines of THE SECOND COMING, I dropped happily into the story reality created by Garth Risk Hallberg. The story of a supposed loser father and the daughter he is striving to save, THE SECOND COMING was excellent writing and a gripping tale of what happens when love conquers the supposed truths of a person's life. The characters were so believable I wouldn't be surprised to encounter them on the street -- and I was with them every step of the twists and turns they live. I haven't read work by Hallberg before this book, but now I will seek out his earlier stories. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

I always remember when I grabbed a galley copy of Garth Risk Hallberg's first book at Book Expo. It was the buzziest book that year and when it came out it was either you loved it r you hated it. The same can be said of his second novel The Second Coming. It's not an easy read but will be one for his fans. It's tough getting through certain aprts at times but don' worry you are rewarded with sentences that only he could write and get away with. It's a story about a father and daughter and tackles many issues of the past and today. The main story line is of redemption from a father who feels like he let his daughter down. The parts about addiction were great as well as the his dealing with his recovery. This is not going to be a book for everyone. Some readers and reviewers have had very mixed reviews but I think it's a book you should pick up if you're looking for a writer who wants to try something new and whether you think his attempt was successful or not at least he explored his writing and honestly put what he wanted on the page. Thank you to netgalley and Knopf for the read.

The Second Coming by Garth Risk Hallberg was a quick read.
I enjoyed the story and I thought the characters were wonderfully written.

Thank You NetGalley and Publisher for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

This was sadly a DNF for me. While I hate to DNF ARCs, the loooong and flowy sentences were just too much for me. I was starting to enjoy the pieces of storyline that were coming through, but it was too much of a chore to try go decipher the writing to get to the plot. Maybe this would be better to attempt in the fall/winter when longer books with more ostentatious prose are better to read. Thank you for the ARC!

4 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today.

This would have absolutely been a 5, but I really struggled to get through it. The writing was beautiful, challenging at times. The story took us through three generations of a family. It was a good book, but slow. So so slow. Maybe it was the heaviness of it all. The darkness of the characters and what they are hiding. The lack of timeline or mixed up one. I’m not really sure. I do know that I did enjoy this epic, but also disliked it in many ways.

Jolie is a teenager, the product of two other teenagers, now divorced and estranged. While her father, Ethan, is hiding out on Catalina Island in the Pacific Ocean, and her mother is hiding in plain view, Jolie is struggling to keep her life together. She’s recently found alcohol to be her best friend, blurring the realities of her world in New York City. Jolie is unhappy. Her father is gone, her mother virtually absent, and here she is, trying to navigate her teens, feeling all but alone.

Throughout the novel we will find out how Jolie’s parents got together. How her father ended up hiding out on an exclusive island off California. The grandparents, Albert & Eleanor, and their reluctance to accept their son-in-law, and their adoration of their granddaughter. Father Ethan’s long since passed mother & father, and his sister. The people who pass through all their lives and somehow shape Jolie’s in the process. And finally, how Jolie eventually finds herself.

As I said, this was an excruciatingly hard novel to finish. I don’t know why it felt like slogging through mud the entire time. Especially since the story was, in many ways, really quite amazing. It gets a 5 for the story, 3 for the pace. A novel that I’m happy I read, but glad I won’t be reading again.

This is the story of father, Ethan and daughter, Jolie and their lives and relationships. I think there was a good story in there somewhere, but it was all just too much. This book sounded interesting and several parts were, but other times it dragged on and I struggled to finish. This book was sooooo long. I would read more from this author because I do think the writing was well done. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader’s copy.

Unfortunately this one wasn't for me... I appreciated the eARC and opportunity to read it, but I felt the story just dragged and I never really felt for any of the characters despite really wanting to.

I was really intrigued by the premise of the book but the execution was hard to like. In essence, this is a book about people who have trouble connecting both with each other and with themselves. And it’s hard to underplay how frustrating and unsatisfying it is to read a book about characters who don’t communicate, won’t communicate, or can’t communicate. It’s disappointing too because this author is clearly talented but so much of this book felt like it was written for his own amusement, references or vocabulary interesting to him but with little effort to make it interesting to us. Such a bloated, self-indulgent opus that would have been infinitely more poignant and powerful had it been pared down to its essential parts.

I love coming of age and redemption stories. However, I read the first chapter and knew that this was not the 600-page book for me. Part of it might be the third person that was used to tell Jolie’s story. It was hard to square the author’s prose with that of a 13-year-old girl struggling to find her identity.

Tried to get into this one but, unlike his last offering which was also exceptionally long, I could not get fully immersed in this bleak tale. I appreciate the preview and still think he's a great writer, but I just wasnt grabbed the way I was with City on Fire which I powered through in a few days despite its bulky length.

This is not a review about the book content, as I couldn't get through the ebook galley due to formatting issues. Text messages were embedded in the text, and seldom readable in the ebook. They were clearly an important part of the plot, but as they were not viewable, I stopped trying to guess their content.

Might I suggest someone review the format prior to providing books as ebook galleys?

The Second Coming by Garth Risk Hallberg is a recommended family drama that examines the minutiae regarding the broken relationship and lives of a father and his teenage daughter.

In 2011 thirteen-year-old Jolie Aspern drops her phone onto the subway tracks and has a near-miss with a subway train when she jumps down to recover it. The thoughtless act was likely due to her drinking, but she is having other emotional issues. It does bring her estranged father back into her life. Her father, Ethan Aspern is a recovering addict and convicted felon. He believes he can help her navigate her problems and set her straight so he returns home to NYC.

The narrative negotiates between multiple time periods and perspectives including the present and in flashbacks following Ethan's relationship with Jolie's mother, Sarah Kupferberg, relationships with parents, his addiction and more. There are many, many details and emotional insights into the characters. There are many keen insights into the raw emotions of both father and daughter, who share, in part, a bond over anxiety and addiction.

But the novel itself is just too, too much. Too full of elaborate prose, too meandering, too long, too expansive, too detailed, too emotional, too overworked, too slow paced, and, well, you get my point. From the synopsis, this is seemingly a novel I would normally relish. Instead it felt like I slogged through it, starting and stopping while losing interest in the characters or the plot. Tighten it up, refine the focus, pick up the pacing, and make us care about these characters. Thanks to Knopf for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

The review will be published on Edelweiss, X, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

I have never not finished a book before, but this almost became my first. This book just wasn't for me at all. I had a hard time following and just didn't feel much for the characters. I had to read a few pages a day. I loved the last book Garth wrote, but this one was a fight to get through.

I was so excited to receive an early copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. City on Fire was such a great read that I think I expected too much from him the second time. Jolie was hard to connect with for me right off the bat and that set the tone for the whole book for me. When something is this many pages it's hard to recommend a commitment like that someone unless it's amazing and this just wasn't.
I'd give the author's next book a shot...third times a charm?

I’ve heard it said before that a writer has decades to perfect their first book and a year to write their second. As I picked up The Second Coming, I tried not to set my expectations too high for this novel against Hallberg’s City on Fire - a debut novel so brilliant and beautiful it holds a permanent place on my shelf. That proved a taller order than expected, however.

In The Second Coming we are dropped into the lives of a single fractured family as they attempt to navigate their way around the destruction small choices and big decisions have when compounded over time. Some of these choices, when it comes to Ethan, the father, have such a profound effect on his daughter Jolie that guilt propels as much as love. Or because of love, the guilt is so massive it overshadows everything else.

I struggled to connect with the characters in The Second Coming in spite of how Hallberg cracked open their inner lives on the page. I’m not a parent, or a recovering addict, but I shouldn't need to have those specific experiences to relate to the feelings of characters who are laid quite this bare either.

I did feel sad for these characters. However, the underlying emotions never got the chance to take root before getting lost in a change in narrative direction, or a tonal shift, or even just buried in exposition. If the two-ton brick of a book that was City on Fire had a pacing that was propulsive, The Second Coming feels like an intentional choice to move the opposite direction.

To force the reader to sit and wallow for a large chunk of 600+ pages and not have them give up was a tall order. I found myself glazing over, skimming, setting the book aside. This is a story which requires breaks from both the voice and the characters themselves.

The Second Coming is a novel I wanted to like. Should like. There is no question that Hallberg is an exceptional talent. If this was a tighter work, with different pacing, I believe I would have reached a different conclusion and could more easily recommend this novel to a larger audience.

Jolie is a troubled thirteen-year-old unknowingly seeking guidance from a parent who hasn’t recently been in the picture.

A convicted felon and recovering addict, Ethan is trying to start his life over but receives a call about his troubled teen in New York. Believing he could be the only one to help her, he decides to return home and rescue her.

This was an interesting and melancholy story about lost souls trying to survive as a family. I would have loved this novel if it wasn’t as slow-paced, as I gravitate towards novels set in New York. But in the end, the intricate and complex writing lost my interest. I was unable to finish this novel but will try to complete it at another time.

Overall, it could have been a good story about love, loss, redemption, and soul searching. It just got lost in translation.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

This book was horrible. I started it several times. Put it down went back read a couple more pages, put it down and on and on. Took me forever to wade through it.

It was horribly written and had no plot or rhyme or reason. Just a book to make the writer feel like he was way more intelligent than the reader.

Don't waste your time. Wish I hadn't.

If I could give zero stars I would.

A much welcomed improvement on the previous book. Fascinating read. Will absolutely be something of discussion over the summer and beyond, and hopefully solidifies Hallberg as a celebrated author.

Surprisingly banal. Depressing books can be good but this is not one of them. Could not even finish.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on May 28, 2024.