I loved the show Superstore and this really reminded me of that. It wasn't just this was set in a store. But I loved the quirky cast of characters that fought for themselves and fought for causes.

This is a study in people and the interactions between people. I really thought this hit spot on, on a work environment and regular people doing regular things.

I've always loved those TV shows that brought work employees that have nothing in common, doing ordinary things, but somehow the give and take between them. This is the first time I've read a novel that perfectly captured that.

It's nothing special that yet captivated me from start to finish. I hope the author finds another story like this in her.

Amanda Ronconi did a great job of bringing the diverse cast to life.

I really enjoyed Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman! I was looking forward to reading this since I’ve worked in retail before. This book gives The Office vibes as it’s about a group of ordinary people working in a big box store. I really enjoyed the coworker dynamics and the workplace politics. I liked the funny moments and the teamwork and the interesting cast of characters. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator Amanda Ronconi was great!

A quirky and illuminating novel of what life working in a big-box store is like, Help Wanted elicits all the emotions as we are walked through not only the trials and tribulations of each character within their personal lives, but also the complexities of the inner workings of a super store and the managerial hierarchy. Did I have flashbacks to my retail days? Oh yes. While this book may have been a bit too character driven even for me, I really appreciated this deep dive into small town, retail life.

Read if you like:
• character driven books
• small town life
• retail store setting
• quirky characters
• The Office

Thank you Spotify Audiobooks for the gifted copy.

This was an enjoyable read with an interesting perspective of working at a chain store in a seasonal town. The narrator was excellent at giving different voices to different characters.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties I worked for Target; it was fine and I enjoyed the discount, but do I miss it? Not even close. Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman brought me back to those days. I can picture certain coworkers within the host of characters and the role they all played. The ending was so realistic and made me laugh out loud. I don't normally connect with character driven plots so strongly so it took me by surprise how invested I became in each character and their backstory. Help Wanted isn't a book with a lot of obvious moving parts, it is heavy in dialogue but it's the dialogue that keeps it moving and entertaining. Great job to the narrator Amanda Ronconi for being able to convey these characters.

Thank you Spotify Books for the gifted ALC.

Help Wanted was such a great read! I really appreciated the insight into working at big box stores and it seems Waldman certainly did her research!

3.5 This book took me back to my early twenties when I worked, and I’m going to date myself here, at a newly opened Turnstyle. Does anyone remember those stores? Anyway, I could identify with the group Movement in this novel, with the truck on loading, time crunches and the feelings of these employees. A boss that isn’t well liked, not sufficient at their job, feeling under appreciated, overworked and frustrated with the hours or lack of.

This book hits the nail on the head, so to speak, as we get to learn about the employees of the Movement group and their backstories. Their plots to improve their lives through a group decision on the way they can improve their job. There is some dark, ironic humor and it compels one to keep reading to see how their plotting will turn out.

I listened to the audio which was well done.

I loved the behind the scenes view into big box stores and the toll they take on people's lives. The cast of characters were interesting but I kept thinking something more was going to happen, but it did not.

This was well written and I enjoyed the audiobook, but I was glad that it was as short as it was because there are many scenes where the story drags and the long chapters were a lot.

Overall, a different type of book, one that I do not normally read, but was interested to see where the story went even though it did not really go anywhere.

Thank you to NetGalley and Spotify Audiobooks for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

I spent my college years working retail (5:00am shipments for me!) so I knew I had to read this one. This was a well written and interesting story about the ins and outs of big box stores. Parts were highly relatable - I feel like any industry can appreciate the worker bees having more insight into how things should run vs the higher ups. It was fun getting to know the individual team members and their reasons behind their actions. Overall, this a a good, light read that criticizes the labor industry.

HELP WANTED focuses on a cast of characters working the early, unloading and unboxing shift at a big box store in a small town.

They get there in the dark of night to unload trucks from the corporate distribution center, then get the merchandise on store shelves.

Often wry, the book manages to cover consumerism, racism, economic struggles, and more. Basically I think you could both have a fun time reading this one and spend an hour discussing it with your book club.

I really liked all the little details Adelle Waldman included - a loved one has a similar job and it felt like a close peek at what he does every day! I also thought narrator Amanda Ronconi was fantastic - she somehow used different voices for the different characters, from Big Will to Ruby to Milo to Val.

Kirkus called this one "The workplace dramedy of the year" and I tend to agree.

Help Wanted remains one of my favorite releases of 2024. I was fortunate enough to receive a physical ARC of the book last year, and then an advanced listener copy more recently. While I highly recommend this book in any format, I will say that I personally preferred the physical copy, mostly so that I could savor the language. There is something about the pacing of the book (the intentional mundanity) that seems to lend itself better to reading at your own pace, rather than listening to it. I'm including my original review below.

I recently recommended a book to a colleague of mine. (It's not important what the book was.) He read half of it, returned it to me, and said, "This is the best possible example of a book about ordinary people doing ordinary things, but I hate books about ordinary people doing ordinary things. Why would I want to read about someone just like me?"

This was the moment that I realized my absolute favorite genre of book is "Ordinary People Doing Ordinary Things." I love when an author is able to capture the human experience in a way that feels deeply relatable and authentic. And Help Wanted is one of the best examples of this type of book that I have ever read.

In the same breath, I don't know how to recommend this book to anyone. What a challenge it is to explain that a fictional book about a logistics team for a Target-like superstore is one of my favorite books I've read this year (possibly ever). So far, when I've tried to do just that, the typical response is, "Ugh, what? That sounds so boring." But I think that's the beauty of it. Because life can be so mundane, so frustrating, so hard. And this book shows that amidst all that mundanity exist these tremendously complicated human beings with their specific hopes and dreams and individual histories and identities. I was rooting for so many of them, knowing that by rooting for one, I was simultaneously betting against the others.

By the last 50 pages of the book, I was intentionally slowing down my reading so I could savor the experience. I wasn't ready to be done with these characters. I found it tremendously comforting to read about their days, about their fictional lives. I am truly looking forward to reading Waldman's debut novel soon, as well as anything she may publish in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley for my advanced copy!

After over 10 years, we have another offering from Adelle Waldman. Those who have read her debut (and only other novel) The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. will recognize the lofty vocabulary, character driven storylines, and attention to even the most minute detail. In this novel, Waldman gives a scathing behind the scenes look at a big box store much like Walmart or Target. She focuses on the loading dock and late night/overnight crew. In the story, a new store manager is about to be named. The store employees show us how the politics of the retail industry work. Although heavy-handed at times, Waldman surely gets her point across in a sarcastic, sometimes meandering way. I loved the diverse characters and learning about their varied, realistic backgrounds, but the book dragged along through most of the middle. We get the intricate detail about EVERYTHING whether it mattered to the story or not.

The narrator was good and didn't try too hard to change the voices which I appreciated. And ultimately I did want to know what happened to the characters in the end. Overall, an okay read. I'm not mad I read it, but I don't know that it will be overly memorable moving forward.

This novel was simply alright for me, if a bit of a drag to get through at points. I think someone else could probably enjoy it a lot more, but it isn’t one of my favorite reads, although it has its positives.
It was at times repetitive and rambling, without seeming to take the reader to any conclusion or observation or adding to the story. I feel like the timing is never quite nailed down. Some parts drag along, other details are skimmed over, and all throughout the novel, there isn’t much action or climax at all. Things just happen, and then the book ends.
In a way, the issue with timing and lack of exciting events are similar to how life is, and the author does nail the point home that the story is rooted in real life. In my view, the characters in this novel are turned into caricatures of perpetually down-on-their-luck retail employees from a small town, alongside their corporate counterparts with their own list of personal setbacks, but a lot more money and social advantages. No character is held too high, nor are any of them safe from the snipes of the omniscient narrator.
I’ll willingly credit the novel for providing an effective commentary on some big, sometimes uncomfortable issues: the unfair and exploitative practices of retail employers; the impact of class, race, and gender on employment and interpersonal relations; and the fallout of the early 2000s recession, among other hard topics. I felt the author got the operations, practices, and many personalities right in the novel. But I also felt the novel as a whole fell flat for me. I couldn’t get used to the pacing of the story, and although the omniscient narrator was useful for the purposes of the novel’s commentary, it made the reader lurch between topics and mindsets a little too often. The description had a lot more potential than what the novel turned out to be.

DNF at 20%. Help Wanted is about the team working logistics at a big box store - unloading the trucks and getting the goods out on the floor. Unfortunately the execution just didn’t work for me and instead of feeling drawn in by the characters I just felt bored. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free ebook and audiobook to review.

Help Wanted aims to make the ordinary extraordinary in this tale of a team of employees at a big-box store. I don’t generally like to compare to other works, but this so strongly brought to mind both Nickel & Dimed and the tv show Superstore- if you combined the two, this book may well be what you’d get. It was definitely more character than plot driven, largely entertaining and a bit eye-opening.

Amanda Ronconi did a nice job narrating the audiobook.

Thank you Adelle Waldman, W. W. Norton & Company, Spotify Books, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

I received this audiobook in exchange for my honest review from Net Galley. So many people and storylines to keep track of- all with interesting backstories that kept you wanting more. The narrator did a good job keeping you engaged. The book felt a little like the show SuperStore. It illustrated the struggles of minimum wage workers dedicated and hard working but still struggling to make ends meat while the higher ups made 300% more. It's a story of ordinary people.

As someone who has worked retail for many years of my life, I was gravitated towards this book. The story of the employees working together to hopefully better their work environment, but while still focusing on each employee as an individual, was such a fun story, and all too relatable. It gives some insight on how the culture at big box retailers is, while still being a fun fiction book! If you’ve worked retail, you will be a fan of this book!

It's no secret to anyone who follows my reviews that I'm a sucker for nerdy work stories and that I love insider-business stuff. That's why Help Wanted was instantly on my TBR. I worked in a factory and in retail during my college years and remember so well the minutiae and drama of our shifts that kept us going and fueled our conversations. That's what I loved about this story, how we got to know each employee so well but recognized that we'd never see them again ~ relationships formed in those types of jobs simply aren't carried over when people leave. And having a supervisor to unite against is always the best situation, as it forms bonds between incredibly different people and gives everyone a reason to show up every day.

Waldman does a wonderful job of detailing the lives of the workers and how their situations have brought them to working in Movement (logistics) at a big box store with almost no other options. These people are real and deserving of having their lives understood. This isn't a story with major drama or events, but instead a novel that opens the door to a group of workers that are rarely depicted in fiction. I hope their story is read by many.

NOTE: the audio narration was excellent and perfect for the nature of the story

** This title will be featured on my Substack http://mindfullibrarian.substack.com later in April

While I found this enjoyable, witty, and very realistic - it lacked any emotionality and kept me thinking “what/who is this for?” I guess the point of the novel is that life is just sort of meandering and meaningless sometimes which is an honest and even interesting statement - it just overall left me cold.

Adelle Waldman’s sophomore novel, “Help Wanted,” centers around the logistics team at a big box store. Unusually and refreshingly, the book allots approximately equal space to all members of the Town Square “Team Movement.” Each character is well-developed with natural but distinct dialogue.
Waldman focuses on the people impacted by the downturn of retail and rise of internet shopping, but manages to offer keen commentary as the book follows the team’s struggle for autonomy after a shift in management is announced. Despite its somber undertones, “Help Wanted” does not fail to find some humor in difficult situations.

I listened to the audiobook and was impressed by Amanda Ranconi’s success making each character distinct and flawlessly using tone to balance the diametric themes of economic struggle and social commentary.

I have not read her debut, “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,” but “Help Wanted” has encouraged me to to so.

“Help Wanted” will be released in the US on April 2, 2024. Many thanks to Spotify Audiobooks and NetGalley for this audio ARC given in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.