I LOVED Marcy Dermansky’s previous novel Hurricane Girl, so of course I had to read her latest offering. Like the author’s previous work, this book is short, sweet, and bizarre. I usually don’t like books with more than two POVs, but Dermansky’s use of POV-switching in this book serves the story, like puzzle pieces being put together to create the whole picture. Very interesting commentary on relationships, family, and class dynamics, and the interactions between the characters had me on the edge of my seat. However, I did find it a bit jarring to see Harry Potter so frequently referenced in a book coming out next year. The way it’s utilized works for the story, but part of me wishes we could just move on from all things Harry Potter. Other than that, a very complex and effective novel.

I love everything this author writes because it’s crazy and unhinged in the best way possible. I loved Hurricane Girl so I was so excited to read this one and it did not disappoint. It’s weird and fun and addicting and smart. A hot air balloon crashes into a backyard pool in the middle of a pandemic date and they decide to have become swingers. Sure why not? Sign me up. This book had a lot to say in a small, smart, crazily wrapped package. Love love love !!!

HOT AIR is a refreshing and fun-to-read novel. Once you get into the style of POV-switching and clipped, brusque sentences, the absurdity and comedy comes easy. Honest about wealth and selfishness and the warping powers of vast wealth, with a cast of characters with four J names which is sure to befuddle many readers...reminded me of Elizabeth McKenzie or Jessica Anthony, in that it's a little silly, but it's part of the fun.

Could of used more hot air balloon, though. Wanted to see that balloon come back in the third act.

Before I share my review, take a moment to look at that cover - I have never seen such a perfect cover!

I love everything Marcy Dermansky writes and this short book was no exception. Her characters, whether likable or despicable, are fully drawn people I want to spend time with - they become real to me. Joannie is a divorced mom and on a date for the first time in years with Johnny. She knows she could never have a long term relationship with with this man for many reasons, including that his name is so similar to hers. Then Julia and Jonathan - more J names - enter the picture in a clever way and the story takes off. This book made me chuckle. Loved the peek into the lives of bored rich people in contrast to the "regular people".

Grateful to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought the characters all have similar sounding names was fun and clever. I thought the pacing was fantastic. I had strong opinions on all the characters and I wanted to see what they would do next. I was sucked in the second I started the book and I finished it in one sitting. It was outlandish in a way that was still realistic. I thought that the relationship between Joannie and Lucy was very well done, as it reminded me a lot of my relationship with my mom at that age. I liked how everyone was kind of unlikeable but you still wanted to read about them. Marcy Dermansky has done it again!

This is the first book I have read by Marcy Dermansky and if her others are like HOT AIR, I am going to need to read her backlist stat! I love a quick paced tale with alternating points of view and am even more impressed when this is done in literary fiction. I just had to know what would happen after Jonathan and Julia's hot air balloon crashed into Johnny and Joannie's first date! The characters were so fully described that I felt like I had met them in real life. It was like reading a weird and witty dream about swingers. Think Indecent Proposal meets The Ice Storm with a dash The Hangover. And surprisingly a lot about Universal Studios in Florida.

First off, thank you, NetGalley, for this arc.
If you’re into fast-paced books with nonexistent plots, this book is for you. It was a quick and easy read, but I don’t think this book was for me. This was my introduction to this author, but I wouldn’t say I liked how it was written. It felt too choppy and had short sentences. It was sometimes hard to focus because it kept jumping from one thing to another. One thing that confused me so much was all the J names. I got Johnny and Jonathan mixed up a lot and had to start the chapter over cause I was thinking it was another person. It was a bouncy ride from the book's beginning to the second it ended. The hot air balloon falls in the pool, and an old crush arises out of it on the border of a failed marriage to the suggestion of swinging. Do I need to go on? Overall, this wasn’t my cup of tea. For someone else, this might be a banger. No pun intended (or was it).

Think Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, the 1969 film directed and written by Paul Mazursky . . . written in Dick, Jane and Sally short sentences in novel form with kids added in, where all the characters, at least in the beginning, seem to have a kind of Asperger’s Syndrome understanding in relationships.

This is a style that I’ve read in all of Marcy Dermansky’s work, only here it is even more heightened, and the effect is its own kind of music. Sometimes comical, sometimes sad.

Children’s book author Eric Carle was a family friend and he once said that he thought the whole human journey was about leaving home, epitomized by a child’s transition from home to school. I think Marcy Dermansky has an equally colorful (the cover is spectacular) twisted adult version of this theme in her books, and very much in this one where what starts out as stilted gradually reveals the gaping hole of need we all feel at some level, if we are willing to admit it—a hole of need and just wanting to fill it up with Home. Protagonist Joannie in this colorful drama of couples swapping, random sex, and a deflated hot-air balloon, personifies what we all are so desperately trying to hide—if not from others, from ourselves.

A fun and absurd romp into the chaos that straddles the lives of the rich and the wake that they leave behind them.

Will not add this to goodreads, but I have a civic duty to review this book!

I found it lacking in plenty of ways - we have a successful author who just can’t write anymore because she thinks shes unlovable, a love interest who was the popular guy in high school that she kissed behind the bleachers or whatever who is now a billionaire and has a smokin hot wife and finds her “poor me” situation adorable? No. Romance should be believable and this one fell real flat for me. I also had a huge problem with Joanie - if she truly was an author, I feel like her narrative and her inner dialogue would be a bit more robust than how she was portrayed.

No one was likable, the story was silly, and if this was satire I’d be all in but no. It is not.

I love Marcy Dermansky, she does no wrong in my eyes. This was no exception! A brilliant writer, and one that I don't hesitate to recommend to everyone.

Dermansky's sentences are short, sharp, and packed with action. You'll fall in love with each character through their own warped perspective, and then you'll hate some of them. A perfect pool read for anyone who's ever been jealous of the neighbors.