Pool House

I didn't enjoy reading this. I want to be honest about that upfront. Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi is not a comfortable book. It doesn't care about your comfort. It's literary fiction that gets under your skin and stays there, even when you wish it wouldn't.And yet. Moon, Stevie, and Adam Dano were all deeply unlikeable for me. Even so, I wanted good things for every single one of them. That almost never happens to me as a reader. That's the whole magic trick of this book."It is an allegory for Los Angeles-how everyone is a self-conscious, striving idiot with absolutely no thought for who comes after them."One line wrecked me: "I think life is too hard to just make someone else do it."If you're doing the audio, Joy Osmanski’s narration is clear, crisp, and honestly fantastic. Get the audio.Do I recommend it? Reluctantly. Genuinely. It's off-putting in ways I can't fully explain, and I think that's entirely the point.

Moon and Adam played TV step-mother and son on a sitcom, brought together (alongside Moon's daughter, Stevie) by the death of their TV husband and father. These three characters are the book's protagonists. The story is interesting enough, but it's carried by the characters, who are all very flawed individuals, constantly standing in their own ways. The plot is somewhat mundane and meandering, but in a way that felt intriguing. The novel coasts on a vague sense of eroticism, lust, and familial adoration between the three characters, seeming somewhat incestuous at times (but it isn't...just TV family).I lost interest in the last third and admittedly struggled to complete the novel. There is a part where the characters split up and it splits up the narrative of the story in a way that doesn't feel as natural as the first part of the novel, like two separate stories, rather than the single story of all three characters. The characters began to make decisions that I couldn't fully comprehend from a storytelling standpoint. Plot points felt half-baked and ultimately uninteresting. The ending was lacking and disappointing, but I kept thinking about what could have been after it ended.The audiobook was enjoyable to listen to.

Do you ever wish you could dive into the psychology of a washed up Hollywood actor to understand how they view the world today? Well buckle up for Pool House, it's a shocking and uncomfortable ride.I'm going to be so honest, I feel like I am not cool-girl-lit-fic enough to appreciate this novel. Every character is awful and needs to go to therapy. If not that, at least sit down and have an honest conversation together. If you want to read about horrible people doing questionable things, then this is the one for you.

This book is AMAZING.I’m only halfway through but seriously can’t stop reading it (except to write this review).The writing is so amazingly detailed and funny and tragic all at once.Buy this book. Seriously.PS I stand to benefit zero if you buy this book. Just an enthusiastic new fan of this writer. Wow.PPS I’m a total prude so I appreciate that all the steamy stuff is brief. But warning to other prudes that it is indeed steamy at times.

This book is AMAZING.I’m only halfway through but seriously can’t stop reading it (except to write this review).The writing is so amazingly detailed and funny and tragic all at once.Buy this book. Seriously.PS I stand to benefit zero if you buy this book. Just an enthusiastic new fan of this writer. Wow.PPS I’m a total prude so I appreciate that all the steamy stuff is brief. But warning to other prudes that it is indeed steamy at times.