2026 Reading Challenge discussion

This thread is to discuss Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.

Pages: 464 pages

Length: 1 month (February)

Participants: Missy, Janine, Lina, Min

Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.

Here are some questions to help get the conversation started! Feel free to look up discussion questions specific to this book or come up with your own. Just make sure any questions that contain spoilers are under spoiler tags.
Discussion questions are not required but may be a fun way to talk about the book and get to know each other!

Prior to starting:
What prompted you to join this buddy read?
Have you read this author before? What do you think of their other books?

Mid-read:
What character or ideas do you relate to the most and why?
Do you have any favorite quotes or scenes?

After reading:
What was enjoyable or not-so-enjoyable about this book?
Did this book change your perception about anything, either within the book (character development) or in real life?

Hello,
I needed a book that would match 3 challenges (yellow, 3+ objects on the cover and contained romance) and this book fit all 3. I’ve never read the writer’s stuff before. Hopefully it ends up being decent or at least better than A Tale of Two Cities (I struggled through that boredom in 2025 so it’s my lowest ranked book I compare things to).
Looking forward to reading with you all in February!

Hi all! I'm looking forward to reading this with you. I've had this on my tbr for a little while, since it was nominated for the goodreads choice award in 2024. I like doing the Goodreads Challenges, and I saw this book was on the list of possible reads for two of the winter ones (Challenge Faves and Star Selections) so it felt like a good time to finally pick it up.

Great that it so perfectly fits those three challenges for you Missy :)

I've only read one of the author's previous works before, Normal People which I was in two minds about. It'll be interesting to see how I feel about this one!

Hello! I don't read a lot of literary fiction (fantasy/romance reader here), and I've never read anything by Sally Rooney so Intermezzo will be a little out of my comfort zone. I'm reading this book as part of the Read and Roam yearly challenge.

Looking forward to sharing my thoughts with my new reading buddies :)

I decided to try audiobooks for February so I can work on my other hobbies (ended up slacking to get through my 48 planned - managed 44), so I’ll have the audio version of this (16 hour) and The Goldfinch (32 hour audio oh my!)

That's going to be many hours of listening Missy! I'm going to be reading a physical copy I've snagged from the library. Will be starting tomorrow, how exciting!

Thanks for the friend invite Min!

And I got my copy of the audio this morning so I’ll start that tomorrow. Still waiting on the Goldfinch copy.
(Also got the physical version of Where the Red Fern Grows which I’m not looking forward to. I refused to read that or watch the movie in 5th grade - and all these years later - but now I’m going to need it for challenges 😣😣)

Good luck with all of your February plans all of you!

(I’m hoping my planned books actually work for that Readathon this month because I don’t plan to add anything new)

This sounds great. Intermezzo has been in my list since my daughter suggested it, so now’s the time. Thank you!

Blākie