Hey everyone,
This is a little late than planned, I had been working all week and felt so tired that I haven’t been able to do a blog post early, so I am posting this on a Sunday.
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.
Published: March 2020
Publishers: Picador
Pages: 324
Genre: Contemporary, Ficiton
Goodreads Star Rating: 🌟🌟🌟.5
Review
I bought this book at the beginning of the year based on Noelle Gallagher’s love for this book, and I thought it would be interesting to read.
It has been some time since I’ve read a contemporary novel, and at the beginning I struggled. During the time of reading, I thought it was my mood preventing me from reading it when in fact it might have been the book. Casey gives off the vibes of a hopeless dreamer, she wants to be a published author but cringes if people ask to read it, she has been insecure about it because she is also dealing with the death of her mother. Casey is struggling in life, work and love, and she hasn’t been able to do much because all of her emotinal upbringing bubbles back to the surface and it then gets poured into her book. She’s conflicted over two men, one man who really cares for her and understands her to a father of two who cares for her but doesn’t connect to what she’s thinking.
I didn’t want to focus on the romance, even though it was shown alot, but what I had noticed was how the way the book was strucktured. It would look like short passages or long passages with very minimal description and there was even dialogue that had not added detail into the scene, it felt very much like something that a new writer would put in before adding description and context.
One of the things I appreciated, was how this is about a woman who is struggling with her life, her job, her loans, her love life and other things that keep climbing on top of another. She has never been able to find control in it because she is thinking of other things, and towards the end you do get to see her feel a little better. I also like the use of geese in this book, it felt more meaningful and understanding to how Casey felt throughout the book.
I gave this book 3.5 stars, while I enjoyed the final parts towards the end yet I couldn’t find myself motivated to pick this book up at the beginning. It might have been because I have been reading a lot of romance, fantasy books and even Manga/Manhwa so reading somthing that has no dragons or magical has now become unfamiliar to me. I think the last contemporary novel I read was Shelf Life or Saltwater but I have noticed that I don’t gravitate to that genre anymore.
I do receommend this book to people, maybe I’ll read it again and hope for a better opinion. I hope you had a good week, hopefully I will continue to keep up with a schedule next time.
Happy Reading xx
DreamingAndReading 