A quirky and eclectic contemporary fiction (not really a romance)! If you're looking for a little bit of chaos that reads as almost like an endless stream of thought, this will fill your cup.

Out On: September 24, 2024

This book was an easy read that I don't think will stick with me long term, which is honestly exactly what I needed at the present moment in a book! I thought that Rachel's life was certainly chaotic and that she had much to work on, so the fact that we got to witness her character growth throughout the book was entertaining.

I think that the mother in this story is rather toxic and I don't know if other Jewish mothers are like this, but if this is genuinely how they act about wanting their children to be married and are failures if they aren't... I'm sorry, because that is absurd. Most of the scenes with the mom made me actively frustrated for our FMC here and I genuinely didn't like those sections of the book.

If you are going into this book expecting it to be a romance, you may want to think again because the story takes a very long time to get into any form of romance that is wholesome, however it is still approached in a really strange way? I don't know, but I was not vibing with the way any of our FMC's relationships played out. They just felt weird to me.

Overall, this book was a nice read for my overtired postpartum brain, but I don't know if I would pick it up again now that I've read it. Complicated feelings about it to say the least.

Thank you so much to Forever Pub for this advanced copy on NetGalley and for the physical copy as well! 🤍

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
I thought this was a delightful romance novel with a lot of humor and charm. I thought Rachel was a really unique protagonist. I also enjoyed the side characters.

If you are looking for a cozy romance this fall, I highly recommend Rachel Weiss's Group Chat!

Many thanks again to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

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This humor reminded me of Georgia from angus thongs and full frontal snogging which I loved as a teen. Brash, sexual humor and a wild and somewhat self centered protagonist but besides the first few chapters where I felt it was a little forced I really enjoyed this character.

It’s a pride and prejudice retelling and for the most part I like it! But it felt a little rushed at time as we sped through a year in the life and some plot points (like the #metoo movement) felt totally out of the blue. I didn’t like the mom’s character at all, her dramatics at first felt funny but then they kept escalating until I stopped enjoying them. This novel straddled the line between serious topics like climate change and diversity and the me too movement and over the top humor and they just didn’t full gel together in my mind.

I REALLY wanted to like this book - I was so excited when I read the blurb but was sadly disappointed by the lack of depth of the main character. Rachel’s s of centered ways made her hard to connect with and find empathy for throughout the book.

There's a lot to like in Lauren Appelbaum's Rachel Weiss's Group Chat - a modern spin on Pride & Prejudice in a Tinder world, a charming tech CEO boy next door, a cast of delightful characters. But I think the story never quite hits its stride - is it a romance? Is it an exploration of friendship and figuring it out? It is about family? It's kind of about all three, but consequently never gets deep enough with any. Also, wow, some of the things these characters were doing to each other just felt kind of bad and not in a fun messy way - the way that Rachel just drops it and moves forward with her friend Amy was hard to see. I liked the writing here - the tone was funny and relatable and there is a lot of promise here. I would definitely read from this author again even if this one wasn't a home run for me!

3.5 out of 5 stars!

A book set in Seattle? Yes! The Emerald City was home for five years, so any and all books set there bring all kinds of nostaglia. I loved how Rachel had a friend group that saw each other through thick and thin. And while turning 30 didn't hit me nearly as hard as turning 40, I could see how Rachel was having a difficult time navigating life. The work mandated therapy may have just been the key to helping Rachel solve her life's problems. Except for the fact that she keeps running into Christopher Butkus, son of her parents' new neigbhors. She wants nothing to do with him, yet her racing heart every time she sees him doesn't seem to get the memo. I alternated between reading the e-book and listening to the audiobook. Dara Rosenberg did a stellar job narrating all the characters in the book. She brought them all to life and made this rom-com feel like a movie in my ears.

I received an advance copy of this book at my request and voluntarily left this review.

Just last week my sister and I were talking about how she loves Pride and Prejudice and I do not - including almost all modern adaptations (the exception being Bridget Jones’s Diary). While reading this, I was getting major Bridget vibes and post-reading I saw on @goodreads that it is an adaptation, which totally makes sense. Rachel, the Bridget character, is incredibly messy, self-centered and weirdly fails up with her job. Something about this made me like it more than other adaptations and while I enjoyed it and it’s quick readability, I didn’t love it.

I am always excited for stories with Jewish main characters and this one caught my attention as soon as it was announced. Overall this was funny and fast-moving, with fun nods to Pride and Prejudice. I think it might be especially appreciated by any Jewish fans of Bridget Jones's Diary, but without the focus on weight.
Rachel Weiss lives life to the fullest, and in this format we get her true thoughts about her family and her circle of close friends. These supporting characters go a long way in balancing out Rachel's intensity. I think the humor of this book almost requires a specific compatible mindset. Some times I was laughing out loud, but at other times I was really cringing. For any readers who get secondhand embarrassment, this book is probably a bit too much.
In many ways, this focuses more on Rachel's personal journey and her romantic pursuits are more along for the ride. Her self confidence and her basically disastrous experiences keep us constantly engaged. I honestly loved how Rachel ended up volunteering at the library and taking on additional work tasks. Her ultimate romantic pairing was sweet and earnest, but the P&P overlaps went from being charming to being a bit too precise. It made that character feel more two dimensional.
I supplemented with the audiobook, which was expertly and dramatically narrated.
Content notes: possible standardized test cheating, underage drinking, quick Harry Potter reference, public nudity, mention of smoking a bowl a day, parental matchmaking and pressure to marry, vomit, judgmental discussion of small penis size

I really wanted to like this one, but I couldn't get attached to the characters and story was very meh for me. I wanted something sweet and this felt too angsty with not enough characters I cared about.

Almost every reader has heard of Elizabeth Bennet but now booklovers have been introduced to Rachel Weiss in Lauren Appelbaum’s Pride and Prejudice-esque novel Rachel Weiss's Group Chat. I read it for the Austen vibes and, while it did deliver, the rest of the book left a little to be desired.

Here’s the book’s description:

The year is already off to a bad start. It’s not enough that Rachel Weiss is stuck in a job she despises and has an unfortunate attraction to men who disappoint her. It’s the Year of Turning Thirty . . . and now her mother won’t stop trying to set up Rachel with the millionaire buying the house next door.

Luckily Rachel has amazing friends and their juicy group chat to keep her going. But between work-mandated therapy, her thirteen gray hairs, and biking in the buff, she can’t help wondering why she isn’t moving forward like everyone else.

As Rachel’s life—and circle of friends—begins to fall apart, she confides in the last person she expects. The uptight, irritating—yet surprisingly funny and thoughtful—tech bro next door may be the one person who sees Rachel for the woman she wants to be. After random DMs turn into confessing letters, she begins to realize perhaps it was she who had him wrong all along.

As I said, there were Pride and Prejudice vibes in this book and I thought they were quite well done. It brought elements of the classic novel while also giving a nod to the way Bridget Jones’s Diary adapted the original text. While reading the notes/acknowledgements from Appelbaum at the end of her book, I realized my feelings were bang on. She also said she was inspired by the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series by Louise Rennison. Suddenly, things made a lot more sense. Rachel was…not Elizabeth. At all. She was reading way more like Emma to me - which is unfortunate because I really do not like Emma! Georgia is a teenager and incredibly self-absorbed, as you would expect from a teenager. She’s also clever and funny. Rachel was also all those things but it gets a bit wearing when it’s a grown woman acting like a teenage girl. Plus, she, like Emma, thinks she’s the best friend in the whole world and always wants to try to help but it’s still always all about her. I think this book would have worked so much better if it had been college/university aged characters because then I would have understood Rachel better. As it was, she drove me nuts and I didn’t really care if she ended up with “Darcy” at the end or if she figured out all her issues with her friends and her career. And I hate feeling like that.

One thing I tend to struggle with with a lot of P&P adaptations is the enemies to lovers storyline. It is not a trope I really like in modern books but Austen was a master at it with Elizabeth and Darcy. It’s just something modern writers can’t always replicate to appease my, perhaps too high, standards. So, it’s no surprise that I didn’t love the trope in this novel. Rachel was extremely prejudiced against Christopher for no real reason I could discern. I actually quite liked Christopher and thought he was too good for Rachel (as she was at the start of the novel - maybe she’s better for him at the end. Maybe.). I appreciated that he called her out for not being active enough with her beliefs and not putting her time and energy where her mouth was.

Rachel Weiss's Group Chat is a total rom com - full of hijinks, embarrassing moments, a swoony male lead, and a Happily Ever After. I wanted to love Lauren Appelbaum’s debut novel but it just didn’t thrill me as I expected it to. I think I’ll still check out what she writes next and hope I enjoy the main character more than I did this time around.

*An egalley was provided by the publisher, Forever, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*

Thanks to Forever for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This read was not as enjoyable as I had hoped. The humor didn't resonate with me, and I found the main character to be quite whiny. It felt strange for her to be having a midlife crisis at such a young age. I also didn't find her friends appealing, and the relationship pressures became quite exhausting.

I hope this doesn't come off too harshly. Perhaps the story isn't at fault; maybe I've just encountered too many similar narratives, and this one didn't stand out enough for me to truly appreciate it. It could also be that I'm in a different phase of life and wasn't in the right mindset to enjoy it. But honestly, if these characters were real, I wouldn't want to be friends with any of them, as they felt quite boring to me.

Rachel and Christopher keep running into each other and their dislike for each other grows…or does it? In a modern telling of Pride and Prejudice, we watch both characters attempt to work through their own character flaws (although Christopher’s main character flaw is that he likes Rachel).

Rachel definitely felt more Lydia than Lizzie (LBD Lydia, iykyk), but tried to redeem herself in the end. Rachel is definitely not the hero in this story and neither are any of her friends. The author glosses over the real harmful things that happen and we are supposed to accept it because they are young, drunk, or “respecting” their friend’s choices.

Any time Christopher and Rachel were actually together it definitely was sweet, but a lot of their communication happened randomly on Insta and I didn’t spend the whole book rooting for them to be together.

This was mainly a story of friendship and redefining your own expectations of yourself. I would recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind the romance not being a majority of the plot, anyone who has ever questioned their role in a friend group, and anyone who doesn’t mind characters being a little problematic.

Thank you to the author, Forever, and NetGalley for the ARC for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I really struggled to finish this one. I found the plot drawn out and boring and I couldn’t stand the main characters. Rachel was not very pleasant and I really didn’t want to hear any more of her story, sadly. Not the romance that I was expecting.

I really enjoyed this one! A solid, lovely debut that made me all warm and giggly! Definitely recommend this one!

At the start of a new year, and the last year in her twenties, the life that Rachel Weiss has built for herself is about to be completely upturned. At least she can count on her friends and their group chat to keep her grounded. Lately, though, it seems like everyone has their own stuff going on and their texts and hangouts have been coming more sporadically. Then there's her mother who is convinced that Rachel is a failure because she's not on her way to being married, doesn't even have a boyfriend.

When new neighbors move in, Rachel's mother is determined to play matchmaker with Rachel and their son, Christopher. As soon as Rachel learns that Christopher is in the tech industry, though, any interest she may have had quickly wanes. Regardless, Christopher continues to pop up randomly and as they continue to clash with one another, Rachel finds herself examining where she wants her life to go.

When I first started reading this book, I did not realize that it was a retelling of Pride & Prejudice. Once that fact was learned, however, I was even more invested and excited as I am apt to read any Pride & Prejudice retelling that I can get my hands on. I do believe that Rachel Weiss's Group Chat does a very good job of modernizing the story yet still keeping those inherent qualities of the original classic.

I appreciated that this wasn't necessarily a romance, yes it had romantic elements, but it more focused on Rachel trying to "figure it all out". Spoiler: no one ever has it all figured out. You can have a semblance of life worked to your desire, but then some bump in the road comes along and everything is thrown. Rachel is going through that very thing.

For me, Rachel was a very interesting character. For a bit of the book, I didn't care for her which I think speaks more to my uncomfortableness with life chaos than anything truly about Rachel herself. For all intents and purposes, she is a kind and considerate person. She loves her friends and, though challenging, she loves her family too. Up until this point, she hasn't taken too much seriously within her own life, but she's getting by (barely but still). Her exuberance makes her a force to be reckoned with at times which means that if she really puts her mind to something, she can have a plethora of choices in life. She just has to take the first step.

Of course this book is her journey so as we see her begin to acknowledge that she's not completely happy with her job and she's maybe a little lonely as her friends start to build separate lives, she genuinely wants to make a change. While those things that irked me about Rachel were still there - because I do not believe she can be completely chaos free - I started to go easy on her. I wanted to see things turn out good for her.

While I liked the back and forth between Rachel and Christopher, and their sparring had all the hallmarks from the source material, the real highlight is the friendship between Rachel and the group chat - consisting of her friends Eva, Amy, and Sumira. This is a friendship built on deep love, ride or die type of friendship. But when they all seem to be headed in different directions, that is when real heartbreak sets in. It's true, sometimes friendships come and go, but when it's the type of friendship that has become part of who you are, it cuts to the core when those go away.

Also, it would be a misstep for me to not at least mention her family. They are pretty comparative to the Bennets. The overbearing mother who is very focused on marrying her daughters off. The father who often sits quietly by. The eldest daughter - also Jane - refined, beautiful, and, likely, the most level-headed of the bunch. Then two much-younger twins replace the rambunctious Kitty and Lydia, and poor Mary is unaccounted for in this retelling. Rachel's mother's often shrill histrionics are almost too much for me especially in a more modern setting where women can be single and thrive just fine. More prodding on Rachel's part provides a little bit more context for her mother's very over-the-top attitudes, but honestly, it's still too much. Many times while reading I just wanted Rachel to get up and walk away from the toxicity.

Down to the point, though, I found the story immeasurably readable. The more things seemed like they weren't going to work out for Rachel, the more I wanted to read because I was invested in her journey.

This book was cute, light, and fun!

The characters were sassy but decidedly unlikeable, and unfortunately that pulled me out of the story a lot, along with some completely implausible plot points. For a romance reader looking for something cute and sassy, this will work well. If you’re looking for anything unique or deep, this is not it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance read of this book. All opinions are my own.

I totally get what this book was going for, but I feel like they just missed the mark on so many different things. I am a girly who has a close group of friends who I’ve been friends with for a very long time and so I love the idea of like sisterhood and girlhood in here with your friends. I also love the spontaneity and the vibrancy of Rachel throughout the story. However, this is feeling like a more dramatic version of sex in the city if it was based in Seattle. The fact that the two main characters fall in love with each other after barely having any conversations absolutely blows my mind. Rachael‘s whole family dynamic is just so dysfunctional and over the top. I mean, even just Rachael‘s response to one of her best friends sleeping with her boyfriend at the time just blows my mind. I really wanted to love this book and just struggled.

Thank you Net Galley for an ARC of this book!

This book was just ok for me. I did enjoy the group texts and would have enjoyed reading more of them. I will give this author another try if she writes more books.

Thank you to Forever Publishing for the eARC.

Absolutely fantastic plot! Could not put the book down once I began reading it. I am so glad it has finally been released. I will recommend it to everyone I know!