Thank you to netgalley, Lake Union Publishing and the author Camille for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I LOVED THIS BOOK! This book and books like it are the reason i love reading. Every so often you find a book like this and you adore it from the outset.

It's a beautiful story and what i loved most was that i couldn't predict how it was going to end which meant i just couldn't put it down. Its written to well and is such a good read. At some points in the book i cried (unusual for me!), one of the events that happened to the main character has happened to me recently (no spoilers here!) but it was written so beautifully that i felt really connected to it.

I don't give away five stars easily but this book definitely deserved it and i would not hesitate recommending this book to all of my friends! In fact i will!

I really enjoyed this book! I liked the way the story developed and how realistic the relationships were portrayed. This story is about the friendship between Rob and James throughout the years. It is also about their personal relationships with the women in their lives, their parents, and their other friends. Be prepared for an emotional ride! You may think that you can guess what will happen, but you will be surprised. This is a story about relationships, commitments, beginnings, and endings. Simply, it is about life, love, and loss. It is about finding what gives you joy and following through with it before it is too late. There is a lot I can not say, because I don't want to spoil the story for you. The characters are fully developed. The story is written as a sort of nostalgic memoir. This would be a great selection for a book club! There is a lot to analyze about the characters feelings and actions.

FOREVER IS THE WORST LONG TIME by Camille Pagan blew me away. I try not to read the summaries before I start recommended ARCs and that really helped me appreciate the flow of this novel. I had no idea it would be emotional or insightful, but it was both. Pagan is able to craft the male narrator, James, with skill. His interactions with his best friend, Rob, and Rob's wife, Lou, is really well done. You know from the beginning that James feels a spark for Lou when they first meet and that spark grows through the novel. Instead of focusing on a small period of time, the author focuses on lengthy period which makes sense by the end. The story does not weave the intended path. There are so many purposeful choices made by the author as she crafted the storyline that by the end, you need a tissue and a little time for self-reflection. But during the read, you get a lot of humor and banter along with those life-changing moments no one sees coming. I didn't ugly cry with this book but it choked me up as a parent and a friend and as a person who was around the same age as Lou through the story. This is a well done novel.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book beautifully illustrates that nothing in life is exactly like we expect it to be. Beautifully written, beautiful story

Fabulous book! I really, really loved this book and it's going on my "Favorites" list for 2017! First of all, the title itself is amazing. The book was humorous in parts and heartbreaking in others with characters very likable and well developed. A story about the power of love, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness! This book had me captivated from the very beginning and was so hard to put down. If life hadn't gotten in the way, I probably would have read it in one sitting!! The writing was so very well done. I'm actually a bit sad that I'm done reading it as I wanted it to continue!! I highly recommend Forever is the Worst Long Time!!

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy.

While visiting Rob and and his fiancee Lou in New York City, James is asked to be the best man at their wedding. Rob and James have been best friends since childhood and went to college together in Michigan. James stayed near home working as a professor when Rob left to develop his career. An attraction is evident between James and Lou but neither pursue anything.

For many years Rob’s and Lou’s relationship flourish as does Rob’s career in finance. Meanwhile, James career path stalls when he isn’t successful at teaching or at finishing his novel. Any attempt at settling into a serious relationship is weakened by his thoughts of Lou.

I don’t want to spoil this terrific book for future readers so I am limiting the details. It is perfectly narrated in a male voice and I had to remind myself that it is written by a female author. The many different emotions shown by the characters are expressed flawlessly. It is a realistic depiction of friendship and how it changes as we move through time.

I preferred Pagan's last book, Life and Other Near-Death Experiences to this one, and I think it's because I liked the narrator more in the previous book. This narrator felt pretty wishy-washy.

The narrative structure of a book-written-to-his-young-child-to-be-read-after-he-died made me think the same thing I thought as I watched the show How I Met Your Mother: do you really want your child to know all the details you're telling?

A beautiful slower paced book. I enjoyed the stories and thought the characters were interesting. It wasn't always a fast read, and dragged on at other points. Overall, good.

I sort of didn't see this one coming. I wasn't so sure I was going to enjoy the book until about the 40% mark when the whole feel changed and really pulled me in. Normally first person POV isn't my favorite thing but this one worked really well. Pagan did a great job nailing the distinctively male voice of the narrator, something that is often a struggle for writers when writing a different gender.

The character of Lou could've been a little more fleshed out. It felt like the reader was told she was fabulous but not given many reasons for it. While the first person narrative, written for James' point of view understandably limits digging into Lou too deeply, he is supposed to be in love with her for much of the book but never really tells us why.

Overall, I stayed up to three in the morning, crying from 1:00 on. As soon as the first hint at THE THING (trying to avoid spoilers!) happened, I sort of gasped because I knew then what was coming. Having dealt with this matter personally in my family, I had a very real reaction to it. For someone unfamiliar with THE THING, the impact it had on James in its initial stages may not seem as significant as they should be. Though maybe the coverage THE THING has received over the last two years will help.

This book takes a hard and honest look at love, adulting, and a myriad of relationships in a very real way. What becomes of friendship when things shift dramatically? What happens when the person we idealize as perfect makes us realize they're just as human as we are? When are we settling? When are we foolishly holding out for dreams that aren't attainable? How do we define love and what happens when we redefine it? What constitutes family and who decides? Pagan covered each of these in a brilliant and incredibly real way that left the feeling like we're discovering those answers along with James.

This was the first I've read by Camille Pagan and I'll be picking up more in the future.



Required disclaimer: I received an advanced copy at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

James is in love with Lou from the moment he meets her, but she is engaged to his childhood and best friend Rob. Over the years he keeps his distance until there is trouble in the marriage and a fateful decision changes all their lives.

This story is told from James perspective. None of the characters are particularly likable. Lou is self centered and immature, although she does redeem herself towards the end of the book. Rob is self centered and all about money. James is weak and indecisive. Towards the end both Rob and James also redeem themselves. This is a story about relationships and is highly emotional. It will tug on your heart strings. The book is well written, but my 3* rating is basically because the characters irritated me quite often. Thank you to net galley for an advanced readers copy.

"Forever is the Worst Long Time" is filled with love and lust, soul-crushing heartbreak, and beginning anew. As a writer who often loses her muse and passion, I connected deeply with James and Lou. I found myself reading this novel in the depths of the night with so many mixed feelings: happiness, guilt for feeling happy (because, well, you know. . .), followed with melancholy and, lastly, hope. this story came to me at the absolute perfect time: it is about picking up the pieces. it is about the good that comes out of what may feel like the most unbearable situation imaginable. it is about love and loss and all of the above. It is a novel that I will hold very dear to my heart, highlighting the many passages that make me feel soft again.

The only "negative" feedback I have is that the language of the characters, particularly Lou, felt almost too sophisticated (some may take the language as slightly pretentious). Nearly every sentence spoken, regardless of the situation, felt like prose and/or poetry; I haven't ever encountered anyone who speaks in the same way that they write, if this makes any sense at all. Nevertheless, this was an excellent piece of fiction and I am absolutely thrilled to read more from this author.

Forever is the Worst Long Time just didn't work for me. I didn't like any of the characters. I didn't get the attraction between James and Lou, nor between James and Nora. I read the first 75% and skimmed the last part.

“Each story is different. Every story ends with loss.”

Camille Pagan is the author Life and Other Near Death Experiences. Thank you Net Galley and Lake Union Publishing for the DRC, which I received in exchange for an honest review. This title is for sale February 7, 2017.

The story starts in the second person, with the narrator speaking to us intimately; he is James Hernandez, and soon we realize that he is speaking to a child about her mother and his memories of her. The narrative is therefore intimate in tone, but also carefully measured and paced, beginning in 1998 when James meets Lou and unspooling toward the present. I have read oh so many novels in which alternating viewpoints are used to keep the reader’s attention from wandering, and this fresh approach had me at hello.

James is Rob’s best friend; James’s own childhood home was dysfunctional and bleak, and so Rob’s family included him on family vacations and other family-only events. They weren’t just close friends growing up; they were almost brothers. And so when James falls head over heels in love and decides to marry, the first thing he does is send for his BFF. They are introduced and James is asked to be best man at the wedding. But in one of those blind random moments of fate, James himself falls madly in love with Lou the minute he sees her.

What would you do in a similar circumstance? Get over it and do it fast, of course. It’s just not possible. But years later, when the marriage founders and Lou walks, James can’t help himself.

There is foreshadowing in plenitude here, and the voice at the outset and at the end are what keeps those pages turning. Of course, there’s also mystery, because the speaker is telling us some things, but clearly withholding others.

If you have to like a protagonist in order to enjoy a novel, then this may not be your book. James isn’t merely flawed; in the book’s middle, he’s whiny. I check my notes and find that in one place I wonder if Woody Allen will option the rights, and in another, I curse and request a violin. Seriously, I want to smack James upside the head and say sure, you shouldn’t have, but you did and it’s done, so man up and get over it already. But around the three-quarters mark, the whole thing takes another turn, one entirely consistent with what has gone before, and once again, it is a book I don’t want to put down till the last page is turned.

Those that enjoy fresh new fiction should consider this book even if romance is not generally a favorite genre. Pagan is an interesting writer, and now that I’ve read this, I want to go back and read the other things she’s written. She’s already gained a lot of buzz—and a movie deal—with her first title, and I suspect she will be someone to watch in the future.

Don’t get left out.

This has been called a tale of love and loss. Yes. But that doesn't begin to describe it. It feels something like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and something like Forrest Gump. And, at the same time, not like either of them. It is about unrequited love, depression, unconventional relationships and friendships that fail and resurrected. It is about parenting, writing a novel and about making peace with death. It is well written and heartfelt (keep a box of tissues handy). Brava, Camille Pagan!

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for my review. I thought this story would be the typical twist of one woman torn between two men, but this story was not typical in that respect. Lots of twists and turns. Great plot, however the characters would sometimes make an aside to the reader to explain things from the past like answering machines, and I found that very annoying. Otherwise a good story!

For a very lucky few, the first time they lay eyes on someone they just know - this person is meant to be in my life. For James, that moment happens when he meets Lou. The problem is that Lou is engaged to his best and oldest friend, Rob. Determined to keep his friendship in tact, James swallows his feelings and settles into his role as a supporting character in their lives. But years later, as Lou and Rob's relationship strains under the weight of betrayal James is there to help her pick up the pieces. What follows is a series of circumstances that leads to more strain, more heartbreak and most importantly at all, more love.

Forever is the Worst Long Time might sound like a funny title (believe me, I thought the same thing) but don't let it deter you from picking up this novel. While I found this story to be robust and stirring, I can understand how some of the themes may cause strong reactions in it's readers. Sure, there may be parts that could be viewed as trite or cheesy. However, if you can step away from the choices the characters make and the technicality of the writing I hope, if nothing else, you can view this novel the way I did - for the insights and examination it gave me into some very important emotions. What is love really? Are there, or should there be rules to the way you love or live? What is forgiveness? How do we understand grief and our ability to survive? What constitutes a full life and how to we react when the picture looks different than we expected?

There were so many passages that jumped off the page for me. So much that I found myself relating to and expanding upon in my own heart and mind. The journey through these pages, while not easy, was definitely more enjoyable than I originally expected.

Another author whose books I’ve devoured is Camille Pagan. I read this one quickly though it is from the viewpoint of a male and I typically don’t like stepping into a guys shoes. But its good!

Forever Is The Worst Long Time takes us into the life of James Hernandez, a struggling writer who is in love with his best friend’s wife. What a bummer, huh? His best friend is kind of a jerk and soon the wife, Lou, is crying on James’s shoulder and admitting she’s not happy. Lucky thing James is there to help her.

James and Lou dive into a relationship but its not exactly ideal. For one, James has betrayed his best friend and Lou, while great, isn’t really the woman for James. How are they going to move forward and heal from hurting?

Another great novel from Camille!

James is in love with Lou from the moment they meet, but she's engaged to his childhood best friend, Rob. For years, James loves Lou from afar, only wanting what's best for her, even if he believes that's a marriage to another man. From a distance, he watches Rob and Lou's love blossom, and then is witness as their relationship crashes and burns. In a moment of vulnerability, Lou and James act on their unspoken attraction to one another, and no one is spared the consequences, good or bad.

This book is emotionally manipulative. It wasn't terrible to read, and it is decently written, but there's no question that the author uses life and death as a plot device. It's a cheap trick to get readers to feel things for otherwise flat, uninspiring characters. Lou, the object of both James and Rob's affections, is kind of a brat. She's a mostly unpaid poet who complains that her husband at work all the time, but refuses to see that as the consequence of wanting to live a NYC lifestyle on one income. James is a little richer of a character, but still pretentious. Overall, this book was a little too close to a "Lifetime Movie of the Week" for me to truly enjoy. 2.5 stars.

I received an ARC of Forever is the Worst Long Time by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was the first of Camille Pagan's books which I have read, and I found it very good. This is told from a male perspective (I typically read Women's Fiction so this was a bit outside my box), and it reminded me of Jonathan Tropper's writing). Very witty, poignant, and sad at the same time. The characters were well developed and you could follow along easily with their stories, cry, and laugh with them as well.

This is the second book by Camila Pagan that I have read. I really liked this book. I had hoped for a little bit of humor like her previous book, but this storyline was so different. I won't be able to give away much to my friends when I recommend it, but I kept thinking that Lou would leave James, and I didn't expect to hear that James was ill.