"Clickbait" by Holly Baxter is a fun and breezy summer read. Even though I thought the writing was pretty good, overall, I had a hard time connecting with the overall story. Some parts of the novel tended to drag. Also, the main character was rather irksome. I liked her former boyfriend, but I felt like they had no chemistry. I think I was expecting more depth and substance from the story, unfortunately, the novel came across as whiny and superficial. It's a mixed bag for me.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

Holly Baxter’s debut novel, Clickbait, is a sharp, darkly comedic exploration of the modern media landscape, wrapped in a story.

 The story follows Natasha, a journalist who finds herself demoted to a clickbait job at a Manhattan tabloid after a major professional blunder. At 35, newly divorced, and living in a less-than-ideal apartment in Rockaway Beach, Natasha’s life is not at all as she had hoped for. Her professional and personal lives are in shambles, and her only solace seems to be her ex-boyfriend Zach, who moves back to New York and into her spare bedroom. As Natasha beco obsessed with Zach and entangled in the world of “churnalism,” her life spirals into a chaotic and public spectacle.

For me, this book was a DNF as rather than find it funny, I found the sense of humor cruel and "cringe-worthy"; it reminded me of comedians who get laughs by either swearing or making sexual comments rather than due to talent or imagination.

I enjoy biting wit, as long as there is a reason for it and it is written in a clever manner but this didn't hit the target for me, much as I found the description intriguing. I didn't like the main character Tash at ALL, and I need to find a character sympathetic so that I can relate to them and care what happens to them - this connection wasn't' there for me. I attempted this book multiple times, but just could never find enough of a reason to continue reading, it just wasn't my cuppa.

That said, humor is subjective, and other reviewers have LOVED this book.

Baxter’s writing was solid, it was just a matter of content for me, so if the description appeals to you, give it a read and decide for yourself, it might "hit the ball out of the park" for you!

Solid story, plot, and character development! I particularly enjoyed the voice and the very beginning - I felt like I was very pulled in and entranced by the writing style from the get.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Perennial for the opportunity to read this ARC and provide my honest thoughts and review!

As someone who doesn’t read a lot of contemporary fiction, I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book! Maybe I felt like I connected a little too much with Natasha, our rather sharp and decidedly unlikeable at times female main character (what that says about me, we’ll just save that conversation for another day). We follow Natasha as she navigates a divorce and a demotion at her job as a journalist, where she goes from a big time news reporter to churning out straight-up clickbait articles and ads for those news sites we see every single day.

While she may not be the most likable character in the world, I feel like this book captured a lot of the feelings that many millennials have about work, jobs, life, and relationships, especially as we move from our twenties to our thirties. Or maybe it’s just me! But truthfully, the author did a great job of writing out the ways that women and girls sometimes build these elaborate daydreams and scenarios from nothing and somehow we just sometimes think they actually happened?!

Those clickbait titles throughout were so relatable, too - definitely reminded me of when I would scroll through those “articles” on Yahoo news that you know are fake but you kind of want to click anyway. I finished this book pretty much in one sitting (just a few hours) and it made me laugh at the dark humor and also think about the way we relate to people and how much our lives are now intertwined with social media. A solid debut novel, for sure!

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a seasoned journalist’s career crashes and burns, and they’re forced into the murky world of clickbait, Clickbait is here to provide a sharp, witty, and laugh-out-loud perspective. Drawing inspiration from the dark comedy and astute observations of Monica Heisey and Dolly Alderton, this debut novel offers a fresh, humorous take on the trials of professional disgrace and personal upheaval.

Natasha, the novel’s protagonist, is a journalist who has spectacularly fallen from grace. Her ethical misstep not only makes sensational headlines but also costs her a coveted position abroad, forcing her back to New York. At thirty-five, single, and freshly divorced, she finds herself demoted to the lowest rung of the media hierarchy: rewriting tabloid stories to ensure they dodge legal troubles. This setup creates a fertile ground for both humor and poignant commentary.

The novel excels in its portrayal of Natasha’s struggles and misadventures. Her choice to spend her hard-earned savings on a drab apartment in Rockaway Beach, instead of a cozy Brooklyn home, adds another layer of comic absurdity to her predicament. The contrast between her current situation and her former aspirations highlights her fall from a glamorous career to the mundane realities of tabloid journalism.

Enter Zach, Natasha’s ex-boyfriend, who moves back to New York and takes up residence in her spare bedroom. The arrangement is meant to be strictly platonic, but Natasha’s growing obsession with him and the unraveling of her personal and professional life create a perfect storm of comedic and dramatic tension. Their dynamic is both entertaining and fraught with the kind of complications that make for irresistible reading.

The novel's strength lies in its ability to blend sharp humor with genuine emotional depth. Natasha’s journey through the world of "churnalism" and her entanglement with Zach offer readers a rich exploration of personal failure, redemption, and the search for meaning. The collision of her professional and personal lives builds to a climax that is as unpredictable as it is satisfying.

In summary, Clickbait is a highly entertaining debut that combines wit, humor, and sharp social commentary. Natasha’s journey from journalistic disgrace to personal revelation is both hilarious and relatable, making this novel a standout in the genre of contemporary fiction. With its clever dialogue, engaging plot, and well-drawn characters, it’s a must-read for anyone who enjoys a good laugh paired with thoughtful reflections on life’s messier moments.

Great novel with a lot of social commentary. I recommend it for fans of unreliable narrators and messy characters.

Thank you to the publisher for the e-arc.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

This book follows a woman as she has a downfall in life. She is demoted in her job and she is recently divorced.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this book. I felt like nothing was going on and I was just bored. The main character was hard to root for and I just didn't like it.

I hope others love this one.

Natasha was forced to pick up the scraps of her life after causing a scandal with an interviewee at her once highly-regarded journalist job. As a result of her public misstep, she got divorced, fled back to New York, and was demoted to a clickbait article writer. Her ex-boyfriend moved into her basic home setup in the Rockaways, and she felt all sorts of pressure and frustration with her mother and younger sister.

I love books with complex, nuanced characters, and Natasha was certainly one of them. Many of her actions and decisions were a little bit uncomfortable to read. She had a somewhat predatory streak that made her interactions with the 20-year-old upcoming Olympics swimmer as well as her ex-boyfriend/roommate downright cringeworthy. She was clearly a woman that needed more help than she was getting, especially in a time where everything was falling apart.

I enjoyed following her journey, even if she wasn't a fully-changed person by the end. It felt like a more realistic outlook. Plus, the book was so compulsively readable, and I was always curious to know what turn the story would take.

At first I was on the fence about reading this one. The main character, Natasha (Tasha) seemed unlikeable (and she mostly was) and the cover kind of turned me off. But I thought what the heck, I’ll give it a go. I don’t regret it as it was a pretty entertaining read, despite being pretty cringe at times. But I mean, Michael Scott on The Office is pretty cringe and we all watched him for years, right?!

Tasha screwed up royally and became THE NEWS. Her marriage is ruined, her career is shambles and she’s demoted - all in her mid-30s. She walks this fine line between beating herself up and kind of feeling like a victim. To me it seems to only semi take responsibility for her actions.

Tasha’s demotion puts her in a content-creation position in basically the troll farm of her publication. But don’t call it clickbait!

On top of all this, her family life is complicated between her mom’s drinking and her complex relationship with her half sister. Not that any of this is rare, but Baxter does a good job of painting how difficult these relationships can be.

The height of cringe is that Tasha moves an ex-boyfriend into her apartment as he “needs a place to stay in the city,”. He is NOT relationship material but Natasha being Natasha, she obsessed over him and tries to gaslight herself into thinking they would make a good match.

I read this one pretty quick & it wasn’t complicated. It’s a good beach/vacation read for anyone who wants to read about a human that’s probably worse than them. Bonus that it had the dystopian elements of how much of the mainstream media works (unfortunately.)

Thank you to Holly Baxter, Netgalley and Harper Perennial for the opportunity to read an early e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

A solid 3 for me. Overall I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d ever reach for it again. The main character is self centered and essentially impossible to root for, and the story dragged at times, but I did find myself interested in seeing how everything wrapped up.

After a journalistic fall from grace, Holly Baxter finds herself a 30-something divorcee, working at a clickbait factory, living in Queens with her ex-boyfriend as a platonic roommate. The story itself in Clickbait is somewhat lacking. Not a lot happens plot-wise, and what little does happen is dragged out over the course of probably a few too many pages. Natasha herself is an interesting character study, written in an honest and at times frustrating way, she comes across as the beleaguered woman we could all be if everything went askew at just the right moment.

Clickbait is like if The Guest and My Year of Rest and Relaxation had a baby, and the protagonist of that book-baby actually had a job.

This has all Alex’s wandering-between-chaoses and need to micromanage other people’s actions and responses to her behavior combined with Unnamed MYOR&R Protagonist ennui and ignorance to the reality of being a horrible person. I know it won’t be the perfect book for everyone (my number one hobby is being an overzealous fan of divisive litfic about gross women), but I highly recommend this and think it’s a great addition to the female malaise subgenre.

The only thing I’d say you should know in advance is that Natasha is predatory in a way that may not be implied by the description. She’s disgraced for a very good reason and she clearly has undiagnosed issues. This is not a downside to the book or the character, but something to be aware of as I don’t think the blurbs quite capture how messed up and, again, predatory, Natasha’s actions will be.

This book is fun, but the setup is not a “lightly cancelled for iffy reasons” thing (read Perfume & Pain if you want that!), and Natasha is not someone we feel happy for or supportive of by the end (in my opinion/interpretation). The situation with Zach, the ex-boyfriend, moving in is deeply uncomfortable, not rom-com-ish. I found Natasha unbelievably frustrating, to the point where my blood pressure would go up, and yet I still wanted to know what happened to her and ‘liked’ spending time with her (the same way I ‘like’ rubbernecking at a car accident), which is an achievement on the author’s part.

And as much as I hate comparing every book in this subgenre to MYOR&R, I think this one is a really good companion to the points of that novel. Baxter hits a lot of the things Moshfegh does, just with more everyday, non-grody prose, and an interesting spin with the clickbait thing. Natasha’s character arc and where we leave her at the end is quite similar on the literary level to that of Unnamed Protagonist.

Clickbait is a character study: Natasha has been disgraced and heavily demoted for a good reason, and finds herself writing clickbait (and re-writing stolen clickbait) articles in an office where nobody is willing to take her seriously after her professional demise, and they’re constantly laying off fact-checkers and reviewers. Natasha spends a lot of time pointing out how messed up the articles and the practices are—but she just keeps plugging on, because it’s a living.

And, really, that’s the part that’s so interesting to explore: Natasha is a bad, manipulative, mildly terrifying person who also just so happens to do a great job reflecting the entire problem with this type of “news”. Nobody cares about the damage unless it’s impacting them and/or their reputation. Natasha is kicked down by shitty bosses, and she objects to writing some truly horrible articles that she thinks might further hurt her name, but that’s just it; it’s never too far if the story doesn’t make her personally look sketchy.

I will say there were a few things that felt slightly weak / like they could have been fleshed out, and a few that felt strange / like plot holes; some of which were resolved as red herrings and some of which weren’t, but it was honestly all overshadowed by how much fun I was having and how badly I wanted to yell at Natasha. I do wish a little more had been done with the direction Miriam’s story takes at the end, but I also ordered the paperback as soon as I put this down, so. There’s that. 4, maybe 4.5 stars. I had a blast.

I love an unlikeable protagonist and Natasha Bailey delivers. The self-sabotage and delusional behavior is rampant throughout this story and toxic relationships are dispersed throughout. Relatable and lovable.

Clickbait is a book where the unlikable main character really works rather than causing frustration. Natasha may be having a run of bad luck but she’s not going to get anyone stop her. There were plenty of funny parts and some very heartfelt ones.

This book is a main character just venting how much their life sucks and I was so lost. I dnfed it at 10%. SMP books are so hit or miss for me. The cover art could use work as well.

This one defintely had potential...I tried to see the Dolly Alderton comparison, but it wasn't that and it fell very flat. Natasha would have deserved to be fired from her job either way and I get we're trying to make her unlikable but it was just to the point you're dreading it.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book!

"Clickbait" follows the protagonist, Natasha, as she navigates her fall from grace. Once a promising journalist, Natasha finds herself demoted to a clickbait writer after an inexcusable incident at work. Her struggle to cope leads to a series of poor decisions, each compounding the next. While some parts of the book feel slow and aimless after her ex moves in with her, the story ultimately picks up towards the end.

Holly Bailey excels at crafting an unlikeable yet relatable character in Natasha. She is self-aware, flawed, and incredibly human, reflecting some of the worst traits in people. I appreciated Natasha's stream-of-consciousness and delusions.

Despite the frustrations I felt at various points, "Clickbait" was a compelling read. Natasha's messy decisions kept me engaged, and I couldn't help but be engaged.

Overall, this book is too long, and that’s my main issue. The whole London plot line was so much more interesting than the present day, and it wasn’t focused on at all.

Natasha is a successful journalist who makes an incredibly stupid decision that results, ultimately, in the loss of her career, her friends, her marriage, and what seems like her sanity. Because throughout the entire book, she keeps making stupid decisions.
This is one of those books that makes me incredibly anxious because while it's easy to watch Natasha snowball into more and more trouble, her thought processes are so relatable that I can't help but question what I'm doing with my own life. And one of my only little quibbles with Natasha, and this book, is that she doesn't seem to learn a damn thing or be capable of any sort of meaningful change.

Her “relationship” with Zach was infuriating. He's a piece of shit. He's not interested in her at all.
He's gross, she's obsessed, and the secondhand embarrassment | felt reading this develop made me put down the book at one point. But that's always easier to recognize when it's not you involved, right? The sheer poor-me-energy channeled by Natasha made me want to pull my hair out.

But anyways, thanks to the author/publisher/NetGalley for the eARC.

This book had potential, but it fell flat. The plot was slow and disjointed. Nothing much happens over the course of the book, mostly due to the main character. Tash is a bad friend, sister, stupid, and honestly extremely unlikeable. I typically enjoy a well-done unlikeable character, but Tash was not one of them. She is extremely harsh to everyone for no reason, and she is delusionally obtuse about Zach. The other characters felt very flat to me. Her mother seemed half-baked in the sense that her full character wasn’t fleshed out - I had a hard time getting a good feel for who she was. Normally, a plot point where an ex moves in would make a book better and messier, but it did neither in this case. I found this book tough to get through, as I was tired of being in Tash’s head as the book went on.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and NetGalley for the ARC.

📚 PRE-PUBLICATION BOOK REVIEW 📚

Clickbait By Holly Baxter
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
Publisher: Harper Perennial and Paperbacks

📚MY RATING: ⭐⭐⭐✨

📚MY REVIEW:

Let me begin this review by first saying that I thought - for some unknown reason - that this book was a thriller. I don't know why, but I did. So I spent the first third of the book waiting for the murder to happen and wondering when the creepiness was going to set in. #itwasnt

Then I re-read the synopsis.

And realized I was, in fact, NOT reading a thriller. Lol. But at that point, I was already a third of the way into the book and felt committed to seeing where Natasha's crazy life choices took her.

Once I stopped looking around the corner of every chapter for the murder that wasn't coming, this book became much more enjoyable. Though this book was labeled as laugh out loud funny, I only chuckled quietly a couple times. I found myself rolling my eyes far more often at Natasha and her bad attitude than laughing out loud. The other characters in the book were way more endearing to me than the book's MC...and I actually wanted to give them all props for putting up with Bad Vibes Tash (as I called her) throughout the whole book.

If I'm being honest, I probably would have rated this book higher if I didn't dislike Natasha as much as I did. No, if I didn't hate her as much. We just didn't vibe at all. Maybe it's not her, it's me. But ugh. The writing was great, the storyline entertained me, and I enjoyed the book overall. But Natasha? She's a "no thanks" for me.

As a general fiction, not-a-thriller read, this was enjoyable. Not my all-time favorite read, but they can't all be. It was mostly fun and entertaining. But would I like to see Natasha be the first one killed off if there's ever a thriller version of this book? Absolutely. 😂 This would be a fun, fairly mindless beach read this summer...Just don't expect a murder. 😉Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial and Paperbacks for gifting me this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

#Clickbait #HollyBaxter #NetGalley #ARC #bookreviews #bookrecommendations