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icarlyred's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
heath_mocha's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
mschrock8's review against another edition
4.0
A sad story, & Hunter learned a lot. I don't that a woman would make that journey with her husband's ashes, but he made it work. I hope he eventually made peace with Kait's family.
sausome's review against another edition
3.0
As other have said, this book began pretty wonderfully -- I enjoyed the prose, the character interaction, the story -- but about halfway through I got pretty bored and kept waiting for something to happen but it never did. This book probably would have been better without maybe the last 1/3 of the book - it just didn't add anything. I understand trying to explain the nothingness of grief; the inability to move on and stop remembering, but also not wanting to move on. But the car characters were pretty useless, plot-wise, and Hunter's complete inability to have any backbone about nearly everything gets tiring and irritating.
3 stars for being halfway great.
Some excerpts I liked from the enjoyable first half:
"But even when things were ostensibly going well, when he made the guys laugh at the lunch table or danced with a girl at a mixer, he felt that distance between him and his peers, an understanding that although he’d forged a connection, it was only temporary. Mostly he read books and smoked pot and watched endless hours of TV."
"By the time he met Kait, he’d accepted isolation as his fate, as a punishment for whatever part of him had gone bad at birth. Willow had assured him college would help him to open up and find himself, but he spent most of his time there wondering how everyone else felt so comfortable and confident. Wondering how everyone else knew what to do. It seemed like there was some secret handshake you were taught at birth by the Illuminati or the Freemasons or someone, and some people just weren’t allowed to learn it. So he rejected the world in advance and erected a series of defense mechanisms that would exacerbate his problems. By this point, his every thought and action was a reaction to a perceived or expected slight. He was a prodigy at bitterness and cynicism."
"You miss the nagging (and you hate calling it nagging because it makes you feel too much like a stereotypical put-upon sitcom husband, but that’s what it was, it was nagging) about your career prospects and your inadequate levels of motivation. You miss the arguments, from the monumental (i.e., here’s why we need to stop spending time with your awful brothers) to the minuscule (i.e., how hard is it to close a drawer when you’re done with it?). It’s the arguments that breathed life into the relationship. It’s in the arguments that you ultimately felt the love. It’s the passion inculcated by such dramas that makes you wish you could just one more time hear her say, “Of course it’s pronounced liberry,” a smirk lurking beneath her defensive façade, letting you know that soon you can smile and she can smile and you can kiss her and she can kiss you and everything will be fine."
"He often argued that romance isn’t about Big Gestures, but rather about the accumulation of the so-called little things. Big Gestures are not repeatable and cannot solely be counted on to keep a marriage afloat. It’s not the candlelight dinner on the waterfront, he said to her, but the guarantee of leftovers warming on the stove for you when you get home from work. It’s not rose petals scattered across the bedroom floor, but the neatly made bed and the nights spent watching movies together while sharing popcorn. It’s not about hot air balloon rides and champagne, but the comfort of having someone holding your hand when you’re stuck in traffic."
"She was frantic then, embarrassed at having slept in, and here he saw the duality of Kait: she could carry herself with poise and confidence in any company, but it would sap all of her resources to do so. People who only knew her casually or through work didn’t understand how anxious she was, never realized that she woke up a half hour early on workdays just to do deep-breathing exercises and prepare herself for a full day of dealing with the world."
3 stars for being halfway great.
Some excerpts I liked from the enjoyable first half:
"But even when things were ostensibly going well, when he made the guys laugh at the lunch table or danced with a girl at a mixer, he felt that distance between him and his peers, an understanding that although he’d forged a connection, it was only temporary. Mostly he read books and smoked pot and watched endless hours of TV."
"By the time he met Kait, he’d accepted isolation as his fate, as a punishment for whatever part of him had gone bad at birth. Willow had assured him college would help him to open up and find himself, but he spent most of his time there wondering how everyone else felt so comfortable and confident. Wondering how everyone else knew what to do. It seemed like there was some secret handshake you were taught at birth by the Illuminati or the Freemasons or someone, and some people just weren’t allowed to learn it. So he rejected the world in advance and erected a series of defense mechanisms that would exacerbate his problems. By this point, his every thought and action was a reaction to a perceived or expected slight. He was a prodigy at bitterness and cynicism."
"You miss the nagging (and you hate calling it nagging because it makes you feel too much like a stereotypical put-upon sitcom husband, but that’s what it was, it was nagging) about your career prospects and your inadequate levels of motivation. You miss the arguments, from the monumental (i.e., here’s why we need to stop spending time with your awful brothers) to the minuscule (i.e., how hard is it to close a drawer when you’re done with it?). It’s the arguments that breathed life into the relationship. It’s in the arguments that you ultimately felt the love. It’s the passion inculcated by such dramas that makes you wish you could just one more time hear her say, “Of course it’s pronounced liberry,” a smirk lurking beneath her defensive façade, letting you know that soon you can smile and she can smile and you can kiss her and she can kiss you and everything will be fine."
"He often argued that romance isn’t about Big Gestures, but rather about the accumulation of the so-called little things. Big Gestures are not repeatable and cannot solely be counted on to keep a marriage afloat. It’s not the candlelight dinner on the waterfront, he said to her, but the guarantee of leftovers warming on the stove for you when you get home from work. It’s not rose petals scattered across the bedroom floor, but the neatly made bed and the nights spent watching movies together while sharing popcorn. It’s not about hot air balloon rides and champagne, but the comfort of having someone holding your hand when you’re stuck in traffic."
"She was frantic then, embarrassed at having slept in, and here he saw the duality of Kait: she could carry herself with poise and confidence in any company, but it would sap all of her resources to do so. People who only knew her casually or through work didn’t understand how anxious she was, never realized that she woke up a half hour early on workdays just to do deep-breathing exercises and prepare herself for a full day of dealing with the world."
marbooks88's review against another edition
3.0
Hunter and Kait have a life; a marriage, a house, and plans for the future. But when Kait unexpectedly dies Hunter is left a widow at 28 and has no idea what to do. Hunter is barely able to function and Kait’s family, who he has never gotten along with, wants to take her away from him. So Hunter does the only thing he can think of, flees on a road trip with Kait's ashes. The trip does not go as planned and Hunter struggles to make sense of the past and find a way to live with everything that has been left undone and unsaid. A story of life and love and surviving a tragedy.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book for my fair and honest review.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book for my fair and honest review.
marshaskrypuch's review against another edition
2.0
This novel started off brilliantly but seemed to fall apart once Kait died and Hunter decided to take her ashes on a road trip. I kept on waiting for something interesting to happen but the book flatlined pretty much when Kait did.
McAllister is clearly a gifted writer. It's just too bad that he didn't get more editorial guidance so that the rest of the story measured up to that early promise.
Thank you, Netgalley, for the review e-copy of this book.
McAllister is clearly a gifted writer. It's just too bad that he didn't get more editorial guidance so that the rest of the story measured up to that early promise.
Thank you, Netgalley, for the review e-copy of this book.
banjax451's review against another edition
5.0
Ignore the comparison to Tropper and Quick. This is an amazing first novel.
Now, I have to confess...I was predisposed give it a favorable review. McAllister is the co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, which I have been listening to since Episode 1. His co-host on Book Fight! is a high school friend of my wife (part of why I've been listening since ep 1 - I get to hear side tales of Mike from my wife all the time). This is also the kind of literary fiction I am generally drawn to. Not overly pretentious or experimental - just well crafted prose with interesting characters and a story to tell.
My wife bought a copy of the book for me for my birthday. And when I finished it, I said to her..."I cannot say how happy I am that you got me this book." Which is saying something, considering the subject matter. No, what thrilled me was that McAllister's novel is fantastic. Well written, moving, sad, funny...all that. This is the kind of book I love reading - and it just so happens to be by someone I "know" (if only on podcast and through my wife's HS friend). It thrilled me that it wasn't just a mediocre book - it's a wonderful book.
The jacket summary compares it to Jonathan Tropper and Matthew Quick. Which is odd since I don't think it's necessarily much like either. I'd read Quick long before Book Fight launched, and I'm aware of McAllister's "feud" with him (it's one of the more consistently hilarious things about the podcast). Matthew Quick WISHES his prose was this good. And while I like Jonathan Tropper quite a bit, this novel is not nearly as intentionally funny as those. It's far more melancholy and sad - certainly more painful (if I didn't know better, I'd think McAllister had lost his wife - the grief is that intense). In many ways, more moving. And certainly more realistic - McAllister doesn't wrap everything up in a neat bow. This is not a novel about pithy lessons learned or the power of football to overcome everything. This is a very real novel about how grief can consume you if you let it. About how hard (and how necessary) "letting go" can be. Mixed in with McAllister's wonderfully wry observations on the modern age - and on a certain kind of person. The characters are well developed, the interlude chapters are fantastic and the prose is often stunningly beautiful.
I was predisposed to like this novel. I loved it instead. And I would have loved it even if I didn't listen to Book Fight! or anything like that. No...this is just a fantastic first novel. I very much look forward to reading more from him.
Now, I have to confess...I was predisposed give it a favorable review. McAllister is the co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, which I have been listening to since Episode 1. His co-host on Book Fight! is a high school friend of my wife (part of why I've been listening since ep 1 - I get to hear side tales of Mike from my wife all the time). This is also the kind of literary fiction I am generally drawn to. Not overly pretentious or experimental - just well crafted prose with interesting characters and a story to tell.
My wife bought a copy of the book for me for my birthday. And when I finished it, I said to her..."I cannot say how happy I am that you got me this book." Which is saying something, considering the subject matter. No, what thrilled me was that McAllister's novel is fantastic. Well written, moving, sad, funny...all that. This is the kind of book I love reading - and it just so happens to be by someone I "know" (if only on podcast and through my wife's HS friend). It thrilled me that it wasn't just a mediocre book - it's a wonderful book.
The jacket summary compares it to Jonathan Tropper and Matthew Quick. Which is odd since I don't think it's necessarily much like either. I'd read Quick long before Book Fight launched, and I'm aware of McAllister's "feud" with him (it's one of the more consistently hilarious things about the podcast). Matthew Quick WISHES his prose was this good. And while I like Jonathan Tropper quite a bit, this novel is not nearly as intentionally funny as those. It's far more melancholy and sad - certainly more painful (if I didn't know better, I'd think McAllister had lost his wife - the grief is that intense). In many ways, more moving. And certainly more realistic - McAllister doesn't wrap everything up in a neat bow. This is not a novel about pithy lessons learned or the power of football to overcome everything. This is a very real novel about how grief can consume you if you let it. About how hard (and how necessary) "letting go" can be. Mixed in with McAllister's wonderfully wry observations on the modern age - and on a certain kind of person. The characters are well developed, the interlude chapters are fantastic and the prose is often stunningly beautiful.
I was predisposed to like this novel. I loved it instead. And I would have loved it even if I didn't listen to Book Fight! or anything like that. No...this is just a fantastic first novel. I very much look forward to reading more from him.
southernbellebooks's review against another edition
1.0
This is arguably one of my least favorite books I've ever read. It's just not my kind of book with hardly any dialogue which I prefer and I felt like I got bored almost immediately.
enjoyperiod's review against another edition
5.0
A lovely piece of writing. I picked this book up at the library and ended up buying it I loved it so much. It's a fast, engaging read but is so beautifully painful- one of those stories I couldn't stop thinking about for days afterward.