What do you think?
Rate this book
Misrecognition
For fans of Rachel Cusk and Patricia Lockwood, an unflinchingly sharp and funny debut novel about the internet, post-postmodern adulthood, and queer identity.
Elsa is struggling. Her formative, exhilarating relationship—with a couple—has abruptly ended, leaving her depressed and directionless in her childhood bedroom. The man and the woman were her bosses, lovers, and cultural guideposts. In the relationship’s wake, Elsa scrolls aimlessly through the internet in search of meaning.
Faithfully, her screen provides a new obsession: a charismatic young actor whose latest feature is a gay love story that illuminates Elsa’s crisis. And then, as if she had conjured him, Elsa sees the actor in the flesh; he and an entourage of actors, writers, and directors have descended upon her hometown for the annual theater festival. When she is hired as a hostess at the one upscale restaurant in town, Elsa finds herself in frequent contact with the actor and his collaborators. But her obsession shifts from the actor to his frequent dinner companion—an alluring, androgynous person called Sam. As this confusing connection develops, Elsa is forced to grapple with her sexuality, the uncomfortable truths about the dramatic end of her last relationship, and the patterns that may be playing out once again.
Elsa is struggling. Her formative, exhilarating relationship—with a couple—has abruptly ended, leaving her depressed and directionless in her childhood bedroom. The man and the woman were her bosses, lovers, and cultural guideposts. In the relationship’s wake, Elsa scrolls aimlessly through the internet in search of meaning.
Faithfully, her screen provides a new obsession: a charismatic young actor whose latest feature is a gay love story that illuminates Elsa’s crisis. And then, as if she had conjured him, Elsa sees the actor in the flesh; he and an entourage of actors, writers, and directors have descended upon her hometown for the annual theater festival. When she is hired as a hostess at the one upscale restaurant in town, Elsa finds herself in frequent contact with the actor and his collaborators. But her obsession shifts from the actor to his frequent dinner companion—an alluring, androgynous person called Sam. As this confusing connection develops, Elsa is forced to grapple with her sexuality, the uncomfortable truths about the dramatic end of her last relationship, and the patterns that may be playing out once again.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published July 2, 2024
50 people are currently reading
7965 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 230 reviews
April 8, 2024
What started as an intriguing premise rapidly dissolved into a self-mythologizing mess that somehow manages to be desperately boring but also Timotheé Chalamet RPF (three words I never thought I would type into a Goodreads review!). The best I can say of this is that there are some interesting coming-of-age themes & a subversion of typical tropes you see in queer lit. It is unfortunate that these details are steamrolled beneath approximately 100 other pages of the protagonist 1) wandering aimlessly around Sephora 2) watching beauty influencers on Youtube 3) checking the social media page of the polyamorous couple who have recently dumped her. All of which are described in the extreme, excruciating detail typically reserved for 1000 page epic fantasy novels or gothic literary fiction from the 1800s. A feat considering that this entire book barley surpasses novella length. Are the protagonists's behaviors passably relatable? Perhaps! Does the novel speak on a broader scale to the dangers of being Chronically Online and filtering ones sense of self through social media and dating apps? Yes, in a confusing and abstract way! Does all of this together make for compelling literature? Unforutnalty, it does not! It would be easy to dunk on the admittedly unlikable girlfailure protagonist as the root cause of my problems but my real issue issue is the girlfailure stagnating within a plot that prioritizes performing a critique of society over creating a fulfilling narrative arc. I am however entertained by this book's representation of the specific subtype of fujoshi bisexual attracted exclusively to women, nb folks, and italian-twink era chalamet. Diversity win!
April 12, 2024
If you like weird sad books about weird sad misunderstood girls, this is for you. Imagine a mix of Emma Cline, Marlowe Granados, and Sally Rooney.
Our protagonist, Elsa, has feelings that any person in their 20s or 30s will relate to, even if the specific subject matter isn't relatable. The author did an incredible job of capturing the visceral sensations that come along with feelings, to the point where the reader feels like they're in Elsa's body, experiencing what she's going through.
Highly recommend. Would have been 5 stars but the ending left me really wanting some sort of resolution (good or bad!)
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
Our protagonist, Elsa, has feelings that any person in their 20s or 30s will relate to, even if the specific subject matter isn't relatable. The author did an incredible job of capturing the visceral sensations that come along with feelings, to the point where the reader feels like they're in Elsa's body, experiencing what she's going through.
Highly recommend. Would have been 5 stars but the ending left me really wanting some sort of resolution (good or bad!)
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
March 14, 2025
why is this rated so low??? 4.5 rounded up. i loved the writing, i felt stressed the whole time in the best way.
June 27, 2024
Besties, what do I even say?
If you are looking to read a book that feels as if someone asked chatGPT to write a book for the “Sad Girl Aesthetic”, then boy do I have the recommendation for you!
I am so sorry, but I am about to put my sour-grape hater hat on so if you dislike negativity, please do not continue to read my review.
Look, I love a “Sad Girl™️” book with aimless descriptions of the mundane. But this book? Was far, far too much. If your book is under 300 pages and you fill it with pages upon pages of recounting beat for best the movie Call Me By Your Name, detailed descriptions of scrolling through multiple instagram accounts (and I mean, there were PAGES of this), and a vlog of a girl going to Coachella with descriptions of everything down to the makeup products she uses? Maybe you shouldn’t be writing this story.
I’d say that there was essentially 50 pages total of plot in this book, and not even in a fun way. I’m down with a plotless book; as a girl with no life direction currently, I jive with it! But when you give inklings of interesting things that never come to fruition, give a fun concept for a book and only barely deliver on it in the last 10% of the book? You should not writing a novel, you should be writing a short story.
(This paragraph has some spoilers) The plot description of this book is a complete misdirect; the protagonist, Elsa, becomes attached to an “actor-character” that is very easily identifiable as Timothée Chalamet and a friend of his called Sam. But while the description would have you believe she explores her sexuality with them by coming into their orbit, she merely becomes obsessed with their photos online after a random run in with them at a coffee shop and barely, if at all, engages with them in reality.
There was nothing likable or rootable for our main character; she just sucked. Though we were in her point of view the entire book, we were, as readers, never *in her head* at all. The writing was extremely attached in a way that did not work for me at all.
There were a lot of interesting ideas that started: her friendship with Caro, the realities of being the third in a couple, being stuck in your hometown, parents learning to be accepting of your choices, figuring out one’s sexuality. But these ideas were either dropped suddenly and never brought up again or brought up so late in the book I could not bring myself to care (and then only one of these was resolved, if only a partial bit, by the end of the book).
Not to mention calling a non-binary person “the person called Sam” and the Timmy stand in character the “actor-character” the entire book gave me the ick. Severely.
I am sure there is someone this book will work for, but that person is not me.
Thank you to the publisher for the E-Arc on NetGalley.
If you are looking to read a book that feels as if someone asked chatGPT to write a book for the “Sad Girl Aesthetic”, then boy do I have the recommendation for you!
I am so sorry, but I am about to put my sour-grape hater hat on so if you dislike negativity, please do not continue to read my review.
Look, I love a “Sad Girl™️” book with aimless descriptions of the mundane. But this book? Was far, far too much. If your book is under 300 pages and you fill it with pages upon pages of recounting beat for best the movie Call Me By Your Name, detailed descriptions of scrolling through multiple instagram accounts (and I mean, there were PAGES of this), and a vlog of a girl going to Coachella with descriptions of everything down to the makeup products she uses? Maybe you shouldn’t be writing this story.
I’d say that there was essentially 50 pages total of plot in this book, and not even in a fun way. I’m down with a plotless book; as a girl with no life direction currently, I jive with it! But when you give inklings of interesting things that never come to fruition, give a fun concept for a book and only barely deliver on it in the last 10% of the book? You should not writing a novel, you should be writing a short story.
(This paragraph has some spoilers) The plot description of this book is a complete misdirect; the protagonist, Elsa, becomes attached to an “actor-character” that is very easily identifiable as Timothée Chalamet and a friend of his called Sam. But while the description would have you believe she explores her sexuality with them by coming into their orbit, she merely becomes obsessed with their photos online after a random run in with them at a coffee shop and barely, if at all, engages with them in reality.
There was nothing likable or rootable for our main character; she just sucked. Though we were in her point of view the entire book, we were, as readers, never *in her head* at all. The writing was extremely attached in a way that did not work for me at all.
There were a lot of interesting ideas that started: her friendship with Caro, the realities of being the third in a couple, being stuck in your hometown, parents learning to be accepting of your choices, figuring out one’s sexuality. But these ideas were either dropped suddenly and never brought up again or brought up so late in the book I could not bring myself to care (and then only one of these was resolved, if only a partial bit, by the end of the book).
Not to mention calling a non-binary person “the person called Sam” and the Timmy stand in character the “actor-character” the entire book gave me the ick. Severely.
I am sure there is someone this book will work for, but that person is not me.
Thank you to the publisher for the E-Arc on NetGalley.
July 12, 2024
*I was given an ARC of this book by Simon & Schuster through a Goodreads giveaway.
This book embodies the melancholy of early adulthood. Our main character is disconnected from her success which she had perviously found through her professional and romantic endeavors in a large city. She returns to her childhood home in a small town and doesn’t have the connection she once did to her parents because she is an adult and she makes choices that they don’t understand. She is lost. Full stop. She has the tools to better herself (a therapist), but instead of looking inward to begin the healing process, she drowns herself in the overconsumption of social media.
I liked how the main character has no life, no hobbies or friends. She has only YouTube and Instagram. She watches celebrity interviews and influencers content farming until she is numb to her own emotional distress. While it’s not ground breaking , it is relatable.
This book has a length of 259 pages, and would probably only be half as long if the unnecessary adjectives were removed. Every mundane description is needlessly wordy.
The main character uses Instagram and Tinder, although they are never named. They are just referred to as a “social media site” and a “dating app”. I am familiar with both and immediately understood to which she was referring. But I imagine someone like my mother reading this book- she wouldn’t know that Instagram is being described, and how the main character is blocked by her ex. She wouldn’t understand what swiping on tinder is. My mom wouldn’t know what to google to try and understand what’s going on.
The story ends as it begins. There is no growth. There is only the passing of time. There is meaning in that, and I resonate with the main character. I give this book 2.5 stars because I was a very numb semi-adult in my early 20s too.
This book embodies the melancholy of early adulthood. Our main character is disconnected from her success which she had perviously found through her professional and romantic endeavors in a large city. She returns to her childhood home in a small town and doesn’t have the connection she once did to her parents because she is an adult and she makes choices that they don’t understand. She is lost. Full stop. She has the tools to better herself (a therapist), but instead of looking inward to begin the healing process, she drowns herself in the overconsumption of social media.
I liked how the main character has no life, no hobbies or friends. She has only YouTube and Instagram. She watches celebrity interviews and influencers content farming until she is numb to her own emotional distress. While it’s not ground breaking , it is relatable.
This book has a length of 259 pages, and would probably only be half as long if the unnecessary adjectives were removed. Every mundane description is needlessly wordy.
The main character uses Instagram and Tinder, although they are never named. They are just referred to as a “social media site” and a “dating app”. I am familiar with both and immediately understood to which she was referring. But I imagine someone like my mother reading this book- she wouldn’t know that Instagram is being described, and how the main character is blocked by her ex. She wouldn’t understand what swiping on tinder is. My mom wouldn’t know what to google to try and understand what’s going on.
The story ends as it begins. There is no growth. There is only the passing of time. There is meaning in that, and I resonate with the main character. I give this book 2.5 stars because I was a very numb semi-adult in my early 20s too.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 15, 2024
2.5 stars
Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC to review before print.
After being dumped by the couple she lived, worked and was in a relationship with in New York City, Elsa finds herself in her small-town childhood bedroom—depressed, listless and wondering where to go from here. After a rising movie star and his cohort of friends arrive in city for a theatre festival, Elsa makes an unexpected connection.
I was so excited by this novel, which promised explorations of queer identity, commentary on the internet and overconsumption, and reflections of post-modern adulthood. Unfortunately, I feel like all of these things fell flat. When I reached the end of the novel, I said, “That’s it?” and felt like we had gotten no further into… any… explorations than we had at the start.
Elsa felt like an extremely flat character to me. We barely get any descriptions of her—physical or otherwise—to craft a mental image. While some might appreciate this opportunity for a self-insert, I was bored. From cover to cover, all I really felt like I gathered about her was that she was young-ish, depressed and had no idea what she was doing with her life. I didn’t root for her, or dislike her—I really felt nothing at all. Not a great feeling when I’m trying to invest myself in her coming-of-age story.
Queer identify certainly exists in this book, but there was very little depth to it. At one or two points, Elsa contemplates her identity as a reflection of her former and potential relationships. There’s a nonbinary character (redundantly referred to as “the person named Sam”), but how their identity intersects with Elsa’s is not really explored.
The writing in this book really turned me off. At the start, some sentences were so roundabout and overwritten, I genuinely had no idea what they were trying to say. It didn’t even feel pretentious—just confusing as to why the author chose to find the weirdest, lengthiest ways to say very simple things. The further in I got, this either didn’t happen as often, or I simply got used to skimming lengthy nonsense. Either way, it felt less painful in the second half, which I appreciated.
This was exacerbated by the vague descriptions of extremely obvious modern technologies and apps, like Netflix and Instagram. At one point, the author provides an exact description of Instagram’s “blocked” screen graphics without naming the app—wholly unnecessary and grating, in my opinion. Weirder still, “Tinder” was the only named app. Maybe this changed between ARC and publication, but I found the whole ordeal very strange.
Altogether, I found myself just not caring about anything in MISRECOGNITION—the characters, their relationships, their obsessions with their phones, nothing. It didn’t feel like the characters grew at all or did anything of interest, and I was left wondering what was the point of it all.
Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC to review before print.
After being dumped by the couple she lived, worked and was in a relationship with in New York City, Elsa finds herself in her small-town childhood bedroom—depressed, listless and wondering where to go from here. After a rising movie star and his cohort of friends arrive in city for a theatre festival, Elsa makes an unexpected connection.
I was so excited by this novel, which promised explorations of queer identity, commentary on the internet and overconsumption, and reflections of post-modern adulthood. Unfortunately, I feel like all of these things fell flat. When I reached the end of the novel, I said, “That’s it?” and felt like we had gotten no further into… any… explorations than we had at the start.
Elsa felt like an extremely flat character to me. We barely get any descriptions of her—physical or otherwise—to craft a mental image. While some might appreciate this opportunity for a self-insert, I was bored. From cover to cover, all I really felt like I gathered about her was that she was young-ish, depressed and had no idea what she was doing with her life. I didn’t root for her, or dislike her—I really felt nothing at all. Not a great feeling when I’m trying to invest myself in her coming-of-age story.
Queer identify certainly exists in this book, but there was very little depth to it. At one or two points, Elsa contemplates her identity as a reflection of her former and potential relationships. There’s a nonbinary character (redundantly referred to as “the person named Sam”), but how their identity intersects with Elsa’s is not really explored.
The writing in this book really turned me off. At the start, some sentences were so roundabout and overwritten, I genuinely had no idea what they were trying to say. It didn’t even feel pretentious—just confusing as to why the author chose to find the weirdest, lengthiest ways to say very simple things. The further in I got, this either didn’t happen as often, or I simply got used to skimming lengthy nonsense. Either way, it felt less painful in the second half, which I appreciated.
This was exacerbated by the vague descriptions of extremely obvious modern technologies and apps, like Netflix and Instagram. At one point, the author provides an exact description of Instagram’s “blocked” screen graphics without naming the app—wholly unnecessary and grating, in my opinion. Weirder still, “Tinder” was the only named app. Maybe this changed between ARC and publication, but I found the whole ordeal very strange.
Altogether, I found myself just not caring about anything in MISRECOGNITION—the characters, their relationships, their obsessions with their phones, nothing. It didn’t feel like the characters grew at all or did anything of interest, and I was left wondering what was the point of it all.
August 24, 2024
2.5⭐️ this took me forever to finish and i was so bored….
Read
December 16, 2024photo real williamstown — fun!
July 22, 2024
I didn’t particularly enjoy this book, but I think that that is a result of its being effective.
Elsa, our lead, is a woman transfixed by nostalgia, specifically the sort which we can at times assert onto, into, other people–it lodges into her, holds her in place as she moves back in with her parents, scrolls endlessly through Instagram and YouTube, shops online for products she neither wants nor can afford, works mindlessly as a host in her small hometown’s only restaurant.
If this sounds numbing it’s because it is. Newbound is a talented, scrupulous writer, and as a result Elsa is a painstakingly boring character, rich with interiority but able only to fill that space with fantasies and memories of others. And so her wealth becomes a vacuum as she orchestrates endlessly to draw people into her.
It is unclear what others derive from being with Elsa. She is not funny or interesting or thoughtful. But people, interesting people, are still attracted to her.
And so Newbound creates a sort of pressure gradient, where personality flows from its highest to its lowest concentrations, from an artistic couple or a sophisticated them into Elsa, who doesn’t want to be seen so much as occupied, projected into–the story is in the lengths to which Elsa will deploy her limited agency in order to accomplish this transaction.
Hence the problem: when a character, by design, has only a wisp of personality, that wisp is not enough to sustain interest. But the wisp is also the point. Elsa feels more realistic for it, and its ghostly energy is the force behind the sporadic plot. It ends up a book that is simultaneously good and not, absorbing and not. But isn’t that also a form of misrecognition, to find something captivating only when we see ourselves in it.
Elsa, our lead, is a woman transfixed by nostalgia, specifically the sort which we can at times assert onto, into, other people–it lodges into her, holds her in place as she moves back in with her parents, scrolls endlessly through Instagram and YouTube, shops online for products she neither wants nor can afford, works mindlessly as a host in her small hometown’s only restaurant.
If this sounds numbing it’s because it is. Newbound is a talented, scrupulous writer, and as a result Elsa is a painstakingly boring character, rich with interiority but able only to fill that space with fantasies and memories of others. And so her wealth becomes a vacuum as she orchestrates endlessly to draw people into her.
It is unclear what others derive from being with Elsa. She is not funny or interesting or thoughtful. But people, interesting people, are still attracted to her.
And so Newbound creates a sort of pressure gradient, where personality flows from its highest to its lowest concentrations, from an artistic couple or a sophisticated them into Elsa, who doesn’t want to be seen so much as occupied, projected into–the story is in the lengths to which Elsa will deploy her limited agency in order to accomplish this transaction.
Hence the problem: when a character, by design, has only a wisp of personality, that wisp is not enough to sustain interest. But the wisp is also the point. Elsa feels more realistic for it, and its ghostly energy is the force behind the sporadic plot. It ends up a book that is simultaneously good and not, absorbing and not. But isn’t that also a form of misrecognition, to find something captivating only when we see ourselves in it.
December 30, 2024
Mochte es, hat mich auf lustige Art meine Handynutzung bzw Scrollverhalten hinterfragen lassen (das Lesen hat sich angefühlt wie ein kl outcall, aber nett) Außerdem spielt "Misrecognition" mit der Wahrnehmung der Leser*in in Bezug auf die Figuren, sehr schöner Titel dafür.
July 26, 2025
This book is best summed up as ambling. Ambling toward a point, ambling through the plot, the main character ambling through life. There was just a lot of conjecture and thought and little to no trajectory. While the writing was decent, I think it’s noticeably a debut. I’d be interested to see what Newbound produces next, but if I’m as disconnected from the story as I was with this, it might be a DNF.
Also; I definitely got duped by the gorgeous cover so shout out to Gérard Schlosser!
Also; I definitely got duped by the gorgeous cover so shout out to Gérard Schlosser!
June 24, 2024
Thank you so much to Simon & Schuster for sending me this arc! 🫶
What had grabbed me as a story about finding solace in the Marie Kondo method and maladaptive day dreaming about Timothee Chalamet, this novel turned into something much deeper and formed itself as commentary on the siege of adulthood. I found a lot of Elsa’s shortcomings relatable, that postgrad/mid to late 20’s undercoming of the mundane and uncertain.
With that, I do believe the novel leans into that so heavily that it begins to rely on it to tell a cohesive story- to the point where the plot comes off uninformed. There are so many interesting themes and happenstances in Elsa’s life that if they had been explored more thoroughly or through a different perspective, there could have been a much greater understanding and impact. There’s not really a conclusion to it all, and while I felt unfulfilled, I believe that might be part of the point as well. This novel is definitely a nod to other queer lit as well and I do appreciate the way the exploration of sexuality was handled.
What had grabbed me as a story about finding solace in the Marie Kondo method and maladaptive day dreaming about Timothee Chalamet, this novel turned into something much deeper and formed itself as commentary on the siege of adulthood. I found a lot of Elsa’s shortcomings relatable, that postgrad/mid to late 20’s undercoming of the mundane and uncertain.
With that, I do believe the novel leans into that so heavily that it begins to rely on it to tell a cohesive story- to the point where the plot comes off uninformed. There are so many interesting themes and happenstances in Elsa’s life that if they had been explored more thoroughly or through a different perspective, there could have been a much greater understanding and impact. There’s not really a conclusion to it all, and while I felt unfulfilled, I believe that might be part of the point as well. This novel is definitely a nod to other queer lit as well and I do appreciate the way the exploration of sexuality was handled.
Read
April 25, 2025Sucked - DNF half way through
October 8, 2025
Literally nothing happens but god do I get it
April 2, 2024
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review!
2 stars???
Let me say this first, I read the premise of this and LOVED the sound of it. And to be honest it started off okay for me and I also liked Elsa as a character, even if did annoy me most of the time but she just fascinated me with how I was witnessing her deal.with her heartbreak and life. It's a slow read, and that's probably why my rating is low. I wanted just a little bit more. I also wanted more from Ella's past relationship with the man and woman. And the problem for me was ending up picturing who the actor celeb was from the obvious hints given. I kept taking myself out of really engaging more with the story. This sadly wasn't for me but might be someone else's ideal read.
2 stars???
Let me say this first, I read the premise of this and LOVED the sound of it. And to be honest it started off okay for me and I also liked Elsa as a character, even if did annoy me most of the time but she just fascinated me with how I was witnessing her deal.with her heartbreak and life. It's a slow read, and that's probably why my rating is low. I wanted just a little bit more. I also wanted more from Ella's past relationship with the man and woman. And the problem for me was ending up picturing who the actor celeb was from the obvious hints given. I kept taking myself out of really engaging more with the story. This sadly wasn't for me but might be someone else's ideal read.
May 2, 2024
3.5 stars: i love the fact that one of the inciting incidents in this book is that the protagonist watches call me by your name with her parents
June 6, 2025
i really have no idea why there’s so many negative reviews like you guys just don’t get it at allllll. this is kinda like a modern the bell jar if it was actually good and not racist, except exploring gender & sexuality more than white cishet feminism. it’s definitely an evocative read exploring the effects of the internet age & how it can interact with modern queer identity… so interesting. its definitely a more internal novel & not one about the plot really but what our main character is feeling, which i love, so maybe that’s why some people didn’t grab onto it. also the beginning when she watched cmbyn is so fucking relatable like why is elsa actually a transfag? oh! it’s making me wanna rewatch oh godothée chalamet.
June 15, 2024
I enjoyed this a great deal even though I had no idea where it was going! Elsa lives with her parents and gets a new job at a restaurant after getting out of a long-term relationship with a man and a woman. Then she sees a man she calls the "actor-character" and a woman who introduces herself as Sam. Much of the novel is Elsa going through social media as she obsesses over a vlogger's make-up routine and buys the same products. It's sometimes slow moving but I liked how Elsa lives vicariously through those she sees or meets as she's clearly trying to "find" herself in this world of internet dating and chance encounters!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
Read
August 25, 2024…what was the point
August 20, 2024
What in the name of fanfiction was this?! For the girlies who ship costars and read Y/N actor stories, I guess...
August 29, 2024
i’d rate this 2.5 stars.. this book definitely won’t be for everyone because it’s mostly just no plot just vibes and the little plot it does have is entirely predictable. i did think that the prose was decent enough and some writing style decisions very interesting but at the end of all this i cannot help but wonder where and why we even went here with all this
January 7, 2025
At first I found this book really hard to get into and feared I would not even finish it or that it would be a chore. I’m glad I persisted in the end as it seemed super interesting, but it definitely took a while to get into the good stuff!! Nonetheless I enjoy it as a pretty quick and easy beach read once half way through!
August 1, 2024
Misrecognition by Madison Newbound
(spoiler alert!)
i’m the kind of reader that is biased and easily influenced by goodreads and instagram reviews of books - a habit that i am working on because sometimes the best way to find books is to browse a bookstore and picking up a book that you haven’t seen or googled before. i found misrecognition by madison newbound the other day and i was immediately intrigued - beautiful cover, sad girl litfic with queer representation, themes like ‘women against the void’ and overconsumption. perfect!!! however, i was greatly disappointed.
the novel follows the protagonist Elsa, who just got out of a relationship with a couple and has moved from new york to her small town, back with her parents. she is unemployed, depressed and generally very messy. almost every single chapter (and there are LOADS of short chapters in this book - usually a plus for me personally but in this case it never made any sense) starts with her name, ‘Elsa’, but if you were to ask me for a description of her - i wouldn’t be able to give you a single one. she was so … bland. we never got to the inside of her mind, she was just so incredibly boring.
there were loads of ideas that started out great but there was essentially no plot and nothing ever led ANYWHERE. i think half of this book was a description of either her scrolling through social media and watching videos on the internet. the other half was her obsessing over a character that was very obviously Timothee Chalamet or a non-binary person named Sam (who was ALWAYS referred to ‘the person named Sam’ (????????)). personally i found that the most interesting part of this book was when she was wandering through sephora for like 20 pages.
this was a big no from me - it had so much potential but i was left disappointed and bored.
perhaps i just didn’t get it??
(spoiler alert!)
i’m the kind of reader that is biased and easily influenced by goodreads and instagram reviews of books - a habit that i am working on because sometimes the best way to find books is to browse a bookstore and picking up a book that you haven’t seen or googled before. i found misrecognition by madison newbound the other day and i was immediately intrigued - beautiful cover, sad girl litfic with queer representation, themes like ‘women against the void’ and overconsumption. perfect!!! however, i was greatly disappointed.
the novel follows the protagonist Elsa, who just got out of a relationship with a couple and has moved from new york to her small town, back with her parents. she is unemployed, depressed and generally very messy. almost every single chapter (and there are LOADS of short chapters in this book - usually a plus for me personally but in this case it never made any sense) starts with her name, ‘Elsa’, but if you were to ask me for a description of her - i wouldn’t be able to give you a single one. she was so … bland. we never got to the inside of her mind, she was just so incredibly boring.
there were loads of ideas that started out great but there was essentially no plot and nothing ever led ANYWHERE. i think half of this book was a description of either her scrolling through social media and watching videos on the internet. the other half was her obsessing over a character that was very obviously Timothee Chalamet or a non-binary person named Sam (who was ALWAYS referred to ‘the person named Sam’ (????????)). personally i found that the most interesting part of this book was when she was wandering through sephora for like 20 pages.
this was a big no from me - it had so much potential but i was left disappointed and bored.
perhaps i just didn’t get it??
October 23, 2024
This book gripped me from the start and the whole way through, which is not easily done and especially surprising giving the slow pace and the often boring plot.
Not much happens through the course of the book, the protagonist has no life, no friends, no hobbies other than being chronically online, a fuel to her obsessive fires, but I found this strangely enjoyable to absorb.
At times the character frustrated me, I didn’t relate to her. But I felt for her as well.
What I really loved was the writing and the authors use of anonymity in a distinct, if you know you know, way.
Overall I would recommend, but you have to be prepared for how slow it is.
Not much happens through the course of the book, the protagonist has no life, no friends, no hobbies other than being chronically online, a fuel to her obsessive fires, but I found this strangely enjoyable to absorb.
At times the character frustrated me, I didn’t relate to her. But I felt for her as well.
What I really loved was the writing and the authors use of anonymity in a distinct, if you know you know, way.
Overall I would recommend, but you have to be prepared for how slow it is.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 7, 2024
This book was honestly bizarre. It was way overdone in some places and way under-developed in others. It seems like the author just wanted an excuse to write about her inner life without much of a plot. I wish I found something redeeming about it apart from the fact that it is queer literature, but I did not. Elsa was irritating and thought way too much. She was selfish in ways that I would like a protagonist to not be. Sam was likable, but felt like they barely merited a mention. Sam felt like an afterthought.
September 4, 2024
audiobook! elsa would love club chalamet, the lesbian masterdoc, bushwick, and cognitive behavioral therapy in that order. this book had a real potential to touch on parasocial relationships, both in real life and celebrity-wise, but fell flat. every time i thought we would discover smth or have a lightbulb moment elsa instead turned back into a depressed manic pixie dream girl in the worst way possible :/
February 5, 2025
kind of classic nothing-happens-lit. another reviewer put it well that it’d be easy to dunk on the unlikeable ‘girlfailure’ of it all, when the real issue is like a lack of any kind of character arc or really anything to say. I will say I thought many times throughout that the cosmic and encompassing pull of the phone and the delusion throughout was relatable in a bad way lol. but who among us has not been a little stagnant in one’s twenties, right
October 8, 2024
honestly really liked the writing and style but the choice to make Timothee Chalamet a central character (!!???) seemed super unnecessary and ended up being really distracting for me - I couldn’t get past it feeling like a weirdly well-written fanfiction
March 31, 2024
loved: elsa’s slipperiness, the preciseness of the writing, the constant but elusive possibility for a revelation about the self. fascinating read
August 30, 2024
The main character’s life is boring, stagnant, embarrassingly meaningless — must the book also be? Perhaps.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 230 reviews