i wasn't really a huge fan of this book. i liked the concept but the writing seemed choppy and it made it very difficult to get through, i also don't like women fiction written by a men it makes me uncomfortable and it's weird that it is marketed that way to me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was mildly excited to read this book. The author was new to me, but I grew up with a label maker-wielding mother who loved the Container Store. I also loved a Christina Lauren novel centered around Hollywood agents, so I thought the setting would be fun.

But this book was incredibly dull and I despised the third-person narrator, Jane. I had to push myself to keep reading to give a full review.

The author had a horrible Frank Herbert-esque habit of choosing the longest and most obscure word or phrase when the context easily called for something simple and light. Example "The virtual world was scaling a nauseatingly steep exponential growth curve, and viral inanities were proliferating even faster. Another manifestation of the disease of indiscriminate abundance that was infecting everything." Is this a light, fictional novel or a gloomy psych textbook? "A useless agglomeration tethered by sentimental attachments." Ugh.

Jane has an opinion on everything and will go off on mental tangents detailing each client's past, their collecting habits, and how it relates to her boyfriend or her mean mother. Oh, and her brother has a "progressive disease". He's only seen in flashbacks or discussion and I was disturbed by the author using a disabled adult as a line item prop to give Jane mommy issues.

Jane Brown (even her name is dull) blushes often, weighs herself every day, resents her live-in boyfriend's carefree nature, and thinks she is better than practically everyone. She does yoga but doesn't like being told she's trying too hard. She thinks celebrities are a waste but knows all their movies. She claims to be a romantic but doesn't appreciate her partner's good qualities or learn from him.

Plenty of male authors can write women well. This Author's Note says he wrote with Chelsea Handler. Clearly, that work didn't translate to a fictional character. The dialogue is vapid, clunky, and entirely expositional like a cheap sitcom.

She had some redemption when she started trying to find good in people, actually talking to her colleagues instead of judging them as vapid and admitting that she STEALS from her rich client's houses. Like she feels she deserves a memento from each job. Honestly.

This story had lifeless characters, no sense of LA, and was clearly placed in 2019 for laziness. The author wanted to work within the pre-pandemic world but wanted to end with a sense of foreboding around the corner.

This one was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Mess definitely lives up to its name—chaotic, raw, and full of messy emotions. The writing has a sharp, edgy quality that works well, but at times, it felt a little all over the place. Some moments really hit, while others left me feeling disconnected. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either—it had its moments! If you’re into stories that embrace the chaos of life, this might be worth a read. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

I had high hopes for this book and I was sadly disappointed. The main character was very dull and the story did not keep my attention at all.

This book seems really cool, I loved the cover and was eager to read however I couldn’t connect to the fmc and there was no plot. Jane the fmc is insufferable, cynical and she steals from her clients with no backstory. Each chapter is a new client with her being judgey when she is an organizer/cleaner (think Marie Kondo method) I wouldn’t recommend this to my worst enemy! Please change the tone of the fmc

Based on the synopsis, this should have been a really good book but I knew from the first chapter I wasn’t going to like it. I hate a long winded author and my god was this painfully so. Even worse? The characters were all dull as dishwater. So it’s just dense, boring paragraphs about denser, boring characters.

This sat on my Kindle for probably a month because I just couldn’t bring myself to pick it up but I finally DNFed it at 25%.

This book was hard to get into and the main character just wasn't that interesting. I get the overall message though.

Thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the arc!

The synopsis of this sounded soooo good, unfortunately the good of this book ended there.

You follow Jane, a professional organizer and the most insufferable person you’ll ever meet. I usually deeply enjoy unlikable characters but she just fell flat in every area. There was no romance and she was just downright such a miserable person and it was awful to be in her mind. There was no drive in her or interesting characteristic. Her kleptomania had no substance, no background or anything that helped the story or her. She needed a therapist, because she had absolutely no growth the entire book.

Jane was, simply putting a cynical, judgmental, loathsome character. The entire book fed into basic stereotypes of what people think the Hollywood elite are like and was downright brutal to women in some of the scenes with how Jane viewed them. I feel like the author had some sort of bad experience with someone in the entertainment industry and decided to write a book with horrible writing. The authors voice just felt pretentious and instead of trying to get a real point across just came off as off-putting and arrogant. The entire book was lacking every department, story development, characters, writing and the overall tone of the book.

Overall, an extremely disappointing ready that had so much potential to be good but was once again failed.

First, thank you to Chessler, Harper Perennial, and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Yeah, I didn't like this one at all-- two stars feels a little generous. It's like the cover and the blurb lied to me.

With a stellar synopsis, Mess centers around a professional organiser, Jane, who realises that she needs to do some work with herself and organise herself too. The blurb conveniently left out that she's also stealing from the homes she organises and, throughout the novel, give no reason why. I was really hoping for a story about Jane's growth and a friendship that was the catalyst. Instead, she's annoying, cynical, and it's genuinely hard to read from her perspective as we have no reason to even try liking her.

It's not a "morally grey" moment where we can try to understand where she's coming from. This storyline would have been incredibly fascinating if she is introduced to us as a thief, or even slowly revealed to be a thief, with a backstory that makes sense. Instead, we find nothing-- she is the exact same person at the end of the book as the start of it.

This novel really made me question ever reading Women's lit by a male author. Jane makes quick, harsh, and unfounded judgments of the other women in this book every step of the way. Then she thinks about her perfectly fine boyfriend. She also has issues with her weight and her mother. Novel.

With the pretentiousness of the writing-- with no purpose, mind you-- this was a swing and a miss. I hope to have a better experience the next time I visit this genre.

I had a hard time finishing this. The main character is very unlikeable. The story is all over the place. It felt very disjointed and offensive.

This had almost no plot, which was not my cup of tea. Jane wasn’t fully developed enough for me so I ended up disliking everyone.

I did like the author’s writing style and some of his insights and quips were very funny and on point but overall it felt like it may have been better suited to a short story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for honest feedback. However, this book just wasn’t for me. There were so many times I wanted to DNF this book, but I am extremely appreciative of the opportunity to ARC read that I muscled through.

I found the FMC to be quite unlikable. Rather than a fun, professional organizer on an emotional journey, Jane came across as cynical, judgmental, and experienced no character arc. On top of that, I found her habit of taking something from every job to be the complete opposite of quirky. The blurb for this book was so promising but it was simply 200 pages of…nothing. We are at the same exact place at the end that we were at the beginning. I’m not quite sure what the purpose of this book was supposed to be.

This book was more than organizing client's closets. It looks at how one woman gets in touch with her messy feelings. I enjoyed how the author writes about this topic. I found that part to be authentic and important. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The premise of this book seemed promising, but the book itself was just not good. The main character, Jane was extremely unlikeable, and it was impossible to empathize with her. The story revolves around Jane’s job as a professional organizer to the rich and famous in Los Angeles. She’s overly judgmental of her clients and uses her judgements to justify stealing from them.

Additionally, the plot felt non-existent. It read more like a series of "day-in-the-life" vlogs, following Jane from one client to the next without any real direction or development.

Michael Chessler’s writing style also didn’t resonate with me. He often used unnecessarily complex words, and at times, the writing seemed like it had been run through one of those AI thesaurus programs. While I’m not sure if the intent was to make the writing sound more intelligent, it ended up detracting from the flow of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Harper Perennial & Paperbacks, for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This felt right up my alley- the chronic over thinker of an FMC, who thrives on structure looking to take back her life and shake things up. While that is the case, I struggled to like the FMC, who ended up coming off as a snob and unlikable, in all the ways that detaches the reader.
Though a quick read, i struggled to connect and buy into the main character overall, little insight into her story to allow the reader to build off an empathic approach and failed to show a growth arc by the end. Not the book for me, but well written and appreciate the angle the author was taking and think some radars will enjoy this story!

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for approving my request to read this book. The premise sounded super interesting, but the book didn't really deliver. I didn't understand or feel connected to the main character. The book kind of alluded to the main character's troubled history with her mother but never really explored or resolved the relationship. I'm also really not sure what the actual plot of the book was. After reading the whole thing, I couldn't really recall one specific plot point. The cover and synopsis really made me want to love this book but it was unfortunately pretty disappointing.

I had trouble getting into this book, was difficult for me to to keep up with the story. I was intrigued by the synopsis but the story didn’t seem to follow through.

Unfortunately, I did not like this book. At all. First, the language was way too pretentious for what this book is. I’m well read and feel that I have a decent vocabulary but I started highlighting words I didn’t know at the start of Chapter 3 and ended up with 50! The language just didn’t fit into a “lighthearted” novel about a professional organizer. While I get that the main character is cynical, it felt like the author was often inserting his own cynical viewpoints throughout and it felt like unsolicited PSAs. There is virtually no plot here and no real growth. At one point she wants to get a dog, then she decides she’s going to travel to Asia &Argentina only to walk through the door, see flowers from her guy, and “step into her future,” whatever that means. It was all over the place. I also did not like how Jane Brown (terrible name for main character too) would steal from each job. It didn’t jive with her character, who hated messiness, clutter, and seemed to want to be a minimalist. Why would she steal other people’s stuff, including kid sized overalls???

I thought the story had a good framework and premise and was sorry to see it just wasn’t executed well. Thanks for the ARC! Hope you have some time to make some changes before this goes to print.

What a sweet romantic comedy! I had a terrible time putting this book down because I loved it so much. The writing style was enjoyable to me. The plot was fantastic, and the characters got along so well. It was easy to identify with the characters. I'd suggest it to others!

This book is all over the place with the storyline. There is some overlap with the characters lives but it feels like they’re just plucked out of nowhere and don’t move the story along.

The cover makes you think this could be a quick beach read type book but then uses words like lugubrious, Teutonic, oleaginous, Brobdingnagian, anathema, and overusing of the word provenance, etc. The dialogue also feels very forced and not like real life.

The female main character Jane is very judgmental of her clients, their homes, their items. She calls Louis Vuitton bags “…nothing more than a hideous brown turd pockmarked by someone else’s initials”. For someone who used to be in the entertainment industry I feel that her hatred is actually jealousy.