Wow was this terrible! Why did I think Emma Straub was an amazing writer all this time? I think I was fooled by her classy author photo, she looks fantastic.These people drove me fucking crazy. They are the most annoying caricatures of Oberlin students you could possibly imagine. And I don't care if that was Straub's intent, it literally pained me to think I was respecting them by giving them my attention. Their problems were so boring and were tied up so neatly. (I actually cannot decide who ha...

Calling it quits on this one! I really didn't expect to dislike it but gosh, these characters are dull. And you know what? Just once I'd like to read about someone who's happy in their marriage. Is it an impossible story-line? Anytime I pick up a book depicting characters in their forties they're always having a midlife crisis that revolves around their significant other and tedious suburban life. Yawn. Poor you. Next!

At some moments in our life it's just our right to be completely irrational right??? I mean I know in my heart and soul that this book deserves more than one star.I know it. The author invested so much time in writing it, there were developed characters, a plot, good writing..... Surely I should award this two stars at least and be on my merry way??? But there's just one teeny, tiny little problem.... I hated it. Okay. So maybe I didn't completely hate "it" but more the whole reading experie...

I really like writing book reviews, and I’d like to think I’m not so bad at it. But I think I struggle the most with reviews of three-star books. That’s because they tend to be very average books that leave me with very little emotion one way or another. I’m not so excited about them that I have to tell everyone to read them right now, but they didn’t piss me off enough that I have anything to rant about. And that’s exactly how I feel about Modern Lovers. It just didn't leave an impression with

This novel examines the nature of friendship, relationships, sex and love, as they affect two families living in Brooklyn, New York. Elizabeth, Andrew, Zoe and Lydia met in college and together formed their band, Kitty's Mustache. They were the height of cutting edge cool. Zoe is a lesbian, Lydia kept her distance from the others, whilst Elizabeth and Andrew became a couple. The band fell apart, Elizabeth and Andrew got married, and Lydia forged a separate successful career. Now Andrew and Eliza...

If as The Beatles said, "All you need is love," then why does it make everyone so crazy? Emma Straub's tremendously enjoyable Modern Lovers looks at love and sex and relationships among two intertwined families, and how we sometimes let our past history affect our present and our future.Zoe, Elizabeth, and Andrew met in college, and the three of them, along with another fellow student, Lydia, formed a band called Kitty's Mustache, which gained some notoriety while they were at Oberlin. Eliza...

3 stars If you strip Emma Straub's novel Modern Lovers down to its essence, you're left with a contextually similar midlife crisis novel as her earlier The Vacationers, with a little less humor, and a much less enchanting locale (I've nothing against Brooklyn, or the gentrified, artsy section of Flatbush known as Ditmas Park, but it can't possibly compare to the exotic surroundings of Mallorca.) This is not to say I disliked this book; I was just hoping for something a little more substantive th...

Really a 4.5 star book. I've been a huge fan of Emma Straub's writing for a while, and this one is her best yet. Set in a Brooklyn that's so recognizable to me that I actually checked to see if some of the restaurants exist in real life (not that I can tell), this story of teenage love and married parents manages to be both funny and deeply true about love and relationships. I simultaneously wanted to be the teenagers, with their understanding but deeply involved parents, and the adults, with th...

Please note that I gave this book 1.5 stars and rounded it up to 2 stars on Goodreads.Something nice: I liked the cover and the first few chapters of the book actually flowed together okay. That said, this book was too all over the place for me to ever get a handle on while reading. I am going to try to quickly summarize and apologize in advance if nothing makes any sense. Three longtime friends (Elizabeth, Andrew, and Zoe) all were part of a college band that wrote a hit song that their now dea...

The thing about this book is it is largely about adults reminiscing on how much cooler they were when they were young. I found myself wishing I were reading a different book, one about their younger years, so I could better understand how each of them became so self-centered and insufferable. Especially Andrew. Yet I still read it to the end. Have no idea whether I loved or hated it, but I finished it, so that's something.

For fans of Emma Straub’s “Vacationers”, this new novel will not disappoint. Straub captures contemporary life and makes us laugh at ourselves.In this novel, Straub explores the impact of college friends who stay close through middle life. Three friends who met at Oberlin College started a punk band called “Kitty’s Mustache” with a fourth member, Lydia (who later died at twenty-seven). The band was popular around the college and became known for one song that Lydia recorded after the band disban...

Modern Lovers is a beautifully nuanced story about friendship, love, and meaning that follows the curves of adolescence, young adulthood, and middle age. Elizabeth, Andrew, and Zoe are former college roommates who have lived next door to one another throughout their adult lives. They have watched each other marry, shuffle through careers, and try on selves over many years. As their children, Ruby and Harry, move into the twilight of adolescence and towards the adulthood that waits beyond it, Eli...

Modern Lovers is a good, fresh, fast, funny, perfect summer beach or pool read if you can overlook the unnecessary crudeness and overuse of profanity - which I mostly can. Straub definitely has a talent for creating smooth plots that carry the reader along with her flawed and muddled characters. In this novel I don't think she quite hits the sweet spot like she did in The Vacationers, but you know what - I continued reading and I cared and I wanted to see it through to the end so she obviously m...