Writers & Lovers: A Read With Jenna Pick

What a strange book. It wasn't bad. It was just random. 🤣 I don't know what I expected but it wasn't what I got. Lol!The writing was good. The storyline was odd. I don't normally reach of literally fiction very much. I appreciated how normal the story was. It was just a girl, going through loss and love and confusion and kids and the everyday letdowns we don't see coming.

I wish this went on longer and I yearn for a sequel. I saw myself within the protagonist/antagonist. Watching life pass me by and everyone in it. Dissociation, something that is very real and very hard to ignore. I was still able to find beauty amongst the sadness. I loved how the story just seamlessly flew from one scene to another. The way in which Casey was written, the mental illness, the traumas, coasting through life and somehow pushing thru it all and how the gaping hole in her heart was sewn up with the help of friends and lovers. I am Casey. My only dislike were the amount of characters and trying to keep track, aside from her lovers and her best friend, I hadn’t a clue who anyone named was. Just ppl from a restaurant. Otherwise I couldn’t find fault or anything to truly dislike to where I wouldn’t recommend. Even as someone coasting through life expecting for something to just magically happen despite not doing anything to spark that certain something

A friend recommended Writers and Lovers to me at the beginning of the year, and upon seeing it available from Libby, I gave it a go, and am SO VERY HAPPY I did. While it took me less than 24 hours to read this book cover to cover, I know I must own it so that I may go back and re-read and annotate this novel by Lily King. The simple, yet captivating story about a young woman trying to succeed in life, love and work, Writers and Lovers is contemplative and heart-felt. I easily found myself not only relating to the MC often, but rallying for her throughout the novel. I truly loved the flow of this novel, and look forward to reading more of King's works.

There's a lot to like about this book. The book has some great highlightable one-liners about life in general, and the restaurant in the book feels like a very real place you're hanging out in. The writing is enjoyable overall. If you just want to kind of experience someone else's daily grind, it does take you on an interesting journey. If you're not someone who needs a book's plot to be realistic, you can just enjoy the maudlin vibe and contemplate all the ways your life is going better than the narrator's (I hope).But if you're the sort of person who throws books across the room anytime a deus ex machina appears ... just skip it, for your own sake. Almost anything good that happens to the protagonist feels painfully forced.** Many, many spoilers ahead **Maybe this is book a little bit too realistic, because the depressed/anxious narrator is SO depressed and anxious that she never manages to do anything likable. She just trudges through life in a slow-motion panic. If the book's aim were simply to be an accurate portrayal of grief, this might still be worth reading about -- hell, I loved The Road and it doesn't get more miserable than The Road, right?But no, against all odds, there's romance mixed in. This woman sounds like she's barely managing to stay upright, but somehow she manages to date not one, but two entire men, who somehow are really interested in her despite the fact that she is plainly decimated by grief to the point of not having a personality. What attracts these men? The exhaustion? The undereye circles? Because both are repeatedly described, by both the narrator and by other people who are startled by how bad the narrator is looking these days.The source of attraction for anyone involved, including the narrator, is not clear. We only get to witness a few snippets of conversation throughout both relationships, and it's all pretty dull with a few deviations into mild quirkiness. At one point, I was so startled by a man taking ahold of her arms and kissing her that I had to back up and read it again, because their entire brief conversation up until that point was so mundane that I thought I must have missed something. And it was their first conversation, it's not as if there was some additional context to make it believable. But no, he's just reaching for her in the park even though they barely know each other, and she's cheerfully rolling with it instead of screaming, which is what I would be doing if someone came at me after five boring minutes of our first conversation.Shortly afterward, this man tells her that she is the first woman he's cared about in years, and somehow it's not an epic red flag to this thirtysomething woman that a wealthy man is THIS interested in an exhausted sad waitress, all because they stood in a park and talked about trees for a few minutes.Eventually, of course, the narrator must make a choice between the man who is wealthy but clearly awful, and the underwhelming man who doesn't bother to communicate well or reassure her at times when anyone with half a brainwave would have been able to deduce that a little reassurance would be appropriate (such as when he doesn't get in touch because he is sick for several days). She chooses the underwhelming one who doesn't know how to use his words or his phone, and Mr. Radio Silence "forgives" her for not trusting him more despite the fact that he gave her zero reason to trust him in the first place. Yay?If the biggest conflict of the novel feels forced (woman's student loans have left her in dire financial straits because her discovery that her golf-coach dad was a misdemeanor-level perv somehow permanently ruined the entire sport of golf for her?? and also she just noped out to Spain for two years and defaulted on everything because it's fun to make bad situations way worse?), the resolution is even more so: she basically suddenly gets everything she wanted, including a job at an amazing school because somehow, again, there are all kinds of people sprinkled throughout this book who cannot get enough of this woman even though she's too busy stumbling bleakly through a grief-stricken existence to be confident, charming, or clever.It's at the point when this sad-sack protagonist asks for the exact amount of money she would need to solve all of her problems, and actually GETS THAT AMOUNT, that you start to wonder if you're being trolled. But it's too late now, because that's the end of the book.

I was so engrossed in this book I forgot to put my laundry in the dryer!Lily King pulled me right into the world of thirty-one-year old Casey Peabody as she struggles finishing the novel she’s been writing for six years, works exhausting sifts waiting tables in an upscale restaurant, juggles the men in her life, avoids bill collectors, and wonders if she’ll ever make her mark on the world.Casey’s day-to-day dilemmas bring back all the angst of living through those early years of adulthood, struggling to figure things out. Her ability to trust men and for attachments is tainted by a sickening revelation about her father when she was in high school, and the recent, untimely loss of her mother. She’s free floating and trying not to drown. Casey doesn’t even have an unwavering belief in herself to help keep her grounded. She suffers from panic attacks and serious bouts of self-doubt. But, through it all she is determined to continue to write and prove her value to both herself and the world through the creative process.The character of Casey is drawn with wit and intelligence. Because, underneath it all, Casey’s strength shines through, the reader doesn’t feel sorry for her situation but instead roots for her to overcome all obstacles and come out on top.I enjoyed this book much more than I expected too and definitely recommend giving it a read.