I would like to preface my review by thanking Simon and Schuster for an ARC of Misrecognition in exchange for my honest review.

I went into this book feeling excited and hopeful but finished feeling unsatisfied. I was immediately drawn by the unreliable narrator. I found her to be insufferable at first but as you learn more about her, she becomes more likable. Elsa reminded me a lot of the main character in "My Year of Rest and Relaxation", but more charming. But, what fell short for me was the abrupt ending. I think this book had a lot of potential and the ending just kind of killed it for me. I liked the queer representation and the mundaneness of this book, hence my rating, but I've sat here feeling like this was missing something. I guess I just wanted more from this book than I actually got.

I still recommend this for fans of Otessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney who are looking for a quick and sultry read to complete their reading challenge this year!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Misrecognition follows Elsa, a newly single woman who has a crisis of identity following the end of her polyamorous relationship.

Misrecognition is one of those books I almost don't know what to do with. Elsa's story is strange and sad, shrouded in this air of the same melancholic numbness I think most modern people in their 20s are familiar with. For that, I think this book excels. Still, I also found it difficult to feel engaged in the end, partly because it felt like the book was doing a bit of posturing, trying to look like the kind of book it desperately wants to be, and partly because the journey that Elsa goes on ends up being one of almost stagnation. Maybe there's something to be said about that, about the way the book never quite becomes what it thinks it ought to be, but it did make for a frustrating reading experience in the end.

I'm ultimately glad I read this book, and I think there are plenty of readers who will find something to like, especially with the Timothee Chalamet-fanfic of it all, but I do think it didn't really live up to the full breadth its potential.

Despondent Girl Novel – Again

It’s not so shocking anymore to read a novel about a young woman/girl who has not “found’ herself. This debut introduces us to Elsa who recently was discarded by a modish older couple. They were her employers and lovers (!) and being abandoned, she initially moves back with her parents. She discovers a young, handsome actor while watching a film on TV. The author uses his real name: Timothee Chalamet. She becomes obsessed with him, and by coincidence, she sees him at her local coffee shop.

She stalks him to encourage a meeting while watching his other hangers-on and her attention turns to an androgynous friend of the actor, Sam. Elsa’s attentions are now going in a different direction, and the reader is included as she ponders these confusing emotions.

The nonbinary love interest is rather unique; the obsession with a celebrity is not. It’s a story of a dejected young woman once again.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

This was okay, the premise reminded me of Writers and Lovers by Lily King but unfortunately it didn’t hold my attention. It was a bit slow and slower paced books aren’t really my thing. I finished it and was left wanting more. It lacked in substance for me.

Things I like about this book:
- the matter-of-fact writing style;
- the nuance;
- the longing, the loneliness, and the depressing adulthood.

Things I don't like:
- the Timothée Chalamet fantasy;
- endlessly mentioning him;
- constantly reminds me of Haruki Murakami's work

A melancholic exploration of coping, parasocial relationships, what it means to move on, and a comparison between healthy and unhealthy polyamorous relationships.

Elsa is lost. Her relationship with a couple recently ended and it also meant the loss of her job. After being under their thumb as much as in their embrace, Elsa has moved home with her parents and is trying to figure out what to do with her life. Being the thing that fixed their marriage gave her purpose, and she's now purposeless.

Then she watches a movie about a boy's first love with a man and gets obsessed with a certain famous dark haired gangly actor who is never named; then he appears in her town for a theater festival. While she still finds reassurance from his existence, she's drawn to a member of his entourage - a non-binary person named Sam. Sam is in a relationship with a co-star of the actor, but they are ethically and healthily open. It's through this relationship that Elsa begins to see how harmful her previous relationship was, and the betrayal she experienced, as well as her immaturity, is unveiled to us.

If you're looking for a clear resolution, you won't find one, but I did feel as if a weight lifted off my chest by the end, and I feel hopeful for Elsa.

I got 23 pages in and I couldn’t take it anymore. The part where she’s like “it was impossible for Timothee Chalamet to have not fallen in love with his costar I can TELL” is like, girl…even if I didn’t know who that costar is, it just makes me cringe. Granted, I already think he’s deeply overhyped as an actor, so I know I won’t be able to be objective on that front, but putting that aside, I just know the second-hand embarrassment is going to kill me and I had to DNF.

Thanks to NetGalley and Anna at Summit Books for the digital ARC, all opinions are my own. Tbh, I should have done more research before accepting the ARC, but I got excited because it was the first time I actually got offered one instead of requesting it myself, but if I had looked at reviews, I probably wouldn’t have even tried to read it.

This book was a quick and engaging read, I read it all in one night. However I went back and forth between finding the lead character annoying for being far too angsty and rooting for her which kept it from being a 5 star review for me.

I don't have much to say about this book because it didn't have much to say.

Misrecognition follows Elsa post-break up with a couple. After a breakdown, she's living in her childhood bedroom, unsuccessfully masturbating, and nursing an obsession with an unnamed actor who is presumably Timothée Chalamet that she cannot separate from his character in Call Me By Your Name.

She gets a job as a host at a restaurant and matches on Tinder with someone in her actor-character's orbit. She develops parasocial relationships with beauty influencers and Marie Kondo. She goes to Sephora. Her best friend won't text her back. Her parents are distant.

And that's it. That's the book.

I didn't enjoy the prose, which was cold and stilted to the point of almost being pretentious. I wish I could say something nice about this title, but it just wasn't for me.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a review.

This was an extremely plotless and meandering book (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing!) but I felt like it still could’ve used *more.* Elsa as a main character is very one dimensional, and the writing at times is a bit much. This is definitely the book for anyone who likes a unlikeable female main character lost in life with no plot just vibes.

Besties, what do I even say?

If you are looking to read a book that feels as if someone asked chatGPT to write a book for the “Sad Girl Aesthetic”, then boy do I have the recommendation for you!

I am so sorry, but I am about to put my sour-grape hater hat on so if you dislike negativity, please do not continue to read my review.

Look, I love a “Sad Girl™️” book with aimless descriptions of the mundane. But this book? Was far, far too much. If your book is under 300 pages and you fill it with pages upon pages of recounting beat for best the movie Call Me By Your Name, detailed descriptions of scrolling through multiple instagram accounts (and I mean, there were PAGES of this), and a vlog of a girl going to Coachella with descriptions of everything down to the makeup products she uses? Maybe you shouldn’t be writing this story.

I’d say that there was essentially 50 pages total of plot in this book, and not even in a fun way. I’m down with a plotless book; as a girl with no life direction currently, I jive with it! But when you give inklings of interesting things that never come to fruition, give a fun concept for a book and only barely deliver on it in the last 10% of the book? You should not writing a novel, you should be writing a short story.

(This paragraph has some spoilers) The plot description of this book is a complete misdirect; the protagonist, Elsa, becomes attached to an “actor-character” that is very easily identifiable as Timothée Chalamet and a friend of his called Sam. But while the description would have you believe she explores her sexuality with them by coming into their orbit, she merely becomes obsessed with their photos online after a random run in with them at a coffee shop and barely, if at all, engages with them in reality.

There was nothing likable or rootable for our main character; she just sucked. Though we were in her point of view the entire book, we were, as readers, never *in her head* at all. The writing was extremely attached in a way that did not work for me at all.

There were a lot of interesting ideas that started: her friendship with Caro, the realities of being the third in a couple, being stuck in your hometown, parents learning to be accepting of your choices, figuring out one’s sexuality. But these ideas were either dropped suddenly and never brought up again or brought up so late in the book I could not bring myself to care (and then only one of these was resolved, if only a partial bit, by the end of the book).

Not to mention calling a non-binary person “the person called Sam” and the Timmy stand in character the “actor-character” the entire book gave me the ick. Severely.

I am sure there is someone this book will work for, but that person is not me.

Thank you to the publisher for the E-Arc on NetGalley.

I understand why this won't work for everyone, but I found this book really interesting as well as funny! Characters aren't the most likable and it's kind of no plot all vibes but I think that works for a lot of readers, myself included!

I love a lot of Sad Girl lit but this was a weird one. I didn't understand the Timotheé Chalamet of it all and it lacked a lot of the chaos I was expecting considering it's about a girl moving back in with her parents after the end of her relationship with a poly couple.


Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.

A young woman of undetermined age leaves a relationship with "a man and a woman" (we never get their names or the reason for the breakup), moves back in with her parents in a small Upstate New York town, watches "Call Me by Your Name," gets a crush on Timothée Chalamet. Then she sees Timothée Chalamet (never once identified by his name) at a local cafe and realizes he is in town for the summer to star in a play. She stalks him online, gets a crush on his non-binary friend, stalks them online as well.
She watches Maria Kondo's show and color coordinates her drawers. Bing-watches videos of a beauty influencer and shops at Sephora (and buys a wrong share foundation despite a kind employee telling her what to get instead - this girl is a mess.) She has a sexual fantasy about the kind employee and Timothée Chalamet.
She spends lots of time scrolling through social media. We get an explanation of how Instagram works. She reluctantly gets a hostessing job at a restaurant.
She matches with the non-binary friend on Tinder; they hook up. All the theater people eventually leave.
That's it. That's the whole book; now you don't have to read it if you don't want to.
I read this in one day because I started skipping long play-by-play descriptions of reels/Netflix show episodes, etc. This reads like fan fiction that was run through ChatGPT with a request to "bring it up a reading level" and "insert some SAT words." Instead of being intricate and smart, as I assume the goal was, it is just convoluted and boring.
There is a strange way that the author deals with the names of people, places, and concepts. Things stay largely unnamed, and we mostly get roundabout explanations about the character's world and everything in it.
What kept coming back from me as a weird refrain was a touch of incestuous curiosity, the main character's interest in sexual situations involving adults and "young" boys/girls. (She does not say children.) There is a flash to her usual fantasy of a small girl on the lap of adult man, she compares her parents to the couple she used to date, etc.

I was not a fan. It is somewhat of an easy read due to the book's length once you get used to the language or learn to glide past it, but I don't see the point.

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Elsa is struggling with her identity after a failed relationship with a couple. Trying to find meaning in her life once again, she sets her sights on a young actor who is in town, and as her obsession grows, their paths frequently begin to cross, leaving her confused as her obsession shifts to the actor’s androgynous companion.

I wanted to like this book, but the story was a little too slow-paced. While the writing was smart and the characters interesting, I just couldn’t get into it.

Overall, this is a decent narrative with a setting that really places the characters in an authentic space. It felt like I was reading this on a bus stop bench, with the gritty city as the perfect accompaniment.

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

Thank you so much to Simon & Schuster for sending me this arc!
What had grabbed me as a story about finding solace in the Marie Kondo method and maladaptive day dreaming about Timothee Chalamet, this novel turned into something much deeper and formed itself as commentary on the siege of adulthood. I found a lot of Elsa’s shortcomings relatable, that postgrad/mid to late 20’s undercoming of the mundane and uncertain.
With that, I do believe the novel leans into that so heavily that it begins to rely on it to tell a cohesive story- to the point where the plot comes off uninformed. There are so many interesting themes and happenstances in Elsa’s life that if they had been explored more thoroughly or through a different perspective, there could have been a much greater understanding and impact. There’s not really a conclusion to it all, and while I felt unfulfilled, I believe that might be part of the point as well. This novel is definitely a nod to other queer lit as well and I do appreciate the way the exploration of sexuality was handled.

A novel about a struggling twenty something woman who becomes obsessed with a movie star. Elsa's been dumped by her love interests, she's living at home, she's cobbling together an income and a life when she realizes that a movie star speaks to her- and now he's in her town. You know this isn't going to be a rom com (not given Elsa) but what does it become? It's a character driven tale that will appeal to Elsa's peers.. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

It lingered too long in some areas and felt overly written. There is a character referred to as "the person called Sam" long after being introduced and with no indication that for some reason we should doubt they are actually Sam. I'm not sure what kind of angle the author was going for with this other than increasing the word count, but it got very annoying during a scene as every other sentence used "the person called Sam" to describe Sam, instead of just saying Sam. In general, it tried to have this ethereal/detached tone that didn't always work. Sometimes it was fine, other times I just wanted a straight answer on what happened or to move forward consistently. Definitely will be great for people who want that detached, yearning kind of novel. It just wasn't my speed.

A new entry into the genre of sad girl lit, Elsa has moved back home after breaking up with a couple. She’s depressed. She’s alone. She spends her days scrolling the internet forming parasocial attachments to the people she comes across.

It’s an entry into the cannon, but I don’t think it’s destined to become a classic. It’s a short book, but the detailed descriptions of well-known movies and TV shows make it feel much longer. It also falls into the category of no plot, just vibes, but I just wasn’t vibing with it.

Oof. I almost DNF’ed this, managed to make it through because it’s kind of short? Or it felt short? One of those. Anyway, looking at the synopsis provided for Misrecognition, I would cut out everything but this line: “Elsa scrolls aimlessly through the internet in search of meaning.” That’s it. That’s all that happens. In great detail. Over and over again. I give this book two stars instead of one, because it is a very well written description of being depression-locked into a never-ending doomscroll, but I mean, I can just do that on my own. I don’t need or want to do it via proxy. The author also does a good job of making Elsa feel completely detached and distant from everything, but unfortunately it meant I was also detached and distant from everything happening in the book.
The reason I wanted to read it in the first place was because of this line from the synopsis: “Elsa is forced to grapple with her sexuality, the uncomfortable truths about the dramatic end of her last relationship, and the patterns that may be playing out once again.” If any of that happens, it is incredibly subtle, takes place in a couple of sentences, and does not come to any kind of resolution.
I’m not sure who I would recommend this for.