Book Review: The Immortalists
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin 
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on January 9th 2018
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 352
Source: Netgalley
Amazon
Goodreads
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
MY REVIEW:
Based on all of the 4 and 5 star ratings I’m seeing on Goodreads for this book, I think I’m going to be the “unpopular opinion” when it comes to Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists. Let me start off by saying I didn’t hate it – it was a solid read for me and I was able to finish it in just a few days. It just didn’t wow me like I thought it would based on the synopsis, which hooked me as soon as I read it.
The Immortalists begins its journey in New York, the Lower East Side, in 1969. The story follows the Gold siblings – teenagers Simon, Klara, Daniel, and Varya – as they set out to meet a traveling fortune teller. Rumor has it that this fortune teller has the ability to predict the exact day a person will die, and the Golds can’t resist going to see her to hear what she has to say about each of them.
Armed with this information – if the fortune teller is to be believed – the Gold siblings begin to make their way in the world. They choose not to share their dates with one another, although the youngest, Simon, hints that the fortune teller has said he will die young. The novel then follows the siblings, one by one, over the next five decades, from the moment they each know their date of death until that date actually arrives so that we can see how (or if) knowing that information has any impact on choices they make in life.
My favorite part of The Immortalists is its central question: “Would you live your life any differently if you knew the exact date you would die?” This was the question in the synopsis that initially hooked me. It’s just one of those questions that immediately makes you reflect on your own life and mortality. As soon as I began following these siblings and seeing some of the choices they were making, it really made me think about what I would do if I was armed with the same knowledge they were. Would I do anything differently? Pursue my dreams more aggressively, take more risks, etc. The thought provoking aspect of this book was its biggest asset for me. I could see this being a fantastic book club choice because of the discussion it naturally lends itself to.
I also enjoyed the way the story was presented. In many ways it could be considered an extensive epic history of the Gold family. At the same time, however, because of the way we follow each sibling one at a time, it manages to be an intimate exploration of their individual personal lives as well. I liked that combination.
I think my biggest issue with The Immortalists was with the characters themselves. I just didn’t feel like I really connected with any of them. Even though I was getting an in-depth look at each of their lives, I still somehow felt like an outsider just observing them, almost as if they were a psychology experiment. I’m the kind of reader that really wants to connect with and relate to the characters in a book, so this just made it a little difficult for me to feel completely invested in their lives.
A second issue I had was with the predictability of Simon’s storyline. As I mentioned, he hints that he will die young. He chooses to quit school and move across the country to San Francisco. I don’t want to give away too many details so I’ll just say that we learn he is gay and looking for love. Since much of his story takes place in the early 1980s, based on some rather reckless choices he makes, it became instantly clear to me what was going to happen to him if the fortune teller’s prediction turned out to be true. It was still sad to read, but the predictability took some of the emotional punch out of it for me. Thankfully, the other three siblings had less predictable storylines, but this one was definitely an easy guess for me.
A final issue I had was with the story of Varya, primarily because it features some pretty horrifying animal experimentation that I wish I hadn’t read about. I found it so disturbing that it made it hard to make it to the end of the book. There is an author’s note at the end to address the experimentation, which I was very grateful for, but it was just still so jarring to read about.
While I wish The Immortalists has been a better read for me, it still has a lot of good points and I’m sure plenty of others will love it. Even with the issues I had with it, I was still pleased that it was such a thought-provoking read overall. I predict that it will become a book club favorite this year!
GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:
If you were told the date of your death, how would it shape your present?
It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.
Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
About Chloe Benjamin
Chloe Benjamin is an author from San Francisco, CA. Her first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2014), received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her second novel, The Immortalists, is forthcoming from Putnam/Penguin Random House in January 2018. The Immortalists will be published in over thirteen countries, and TV/film rights have sold to the Jackal Group.
A graduate of Vassar College and of the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chloe also teaches workshops on the business of publishing, from writing a novel to finding a literary agent. She lives with her husband in Madison, WI.
Release Week Blitz: Pretty Dead Girls by Monica Murphy
Welcome to the Release Week Blitz for
Pretty Dead Girls by Monica Murphy
presented by Entangled Teen!
Grab your copy today!
Congratulations Monica!
Beautiful. Perfect. Dead.
In the peaceful seaside town of Cape Bonita, wicked secrets and lies are hidden just beneath the surface. But all it takes is one tragedy for them to be exposed.
The most popular girls in school are turning up dead, and Penelope Malone is terrified she’s next. All the victims so far have been linked to Penelope—and to a boy from her physics class. The one she’s never really noticed before, with the rumored dark past and a brooding stare that cuts right through her.
There’s something he isn’t telling her. But there’s something she’s not telling him, either.
Everyone has secrets, and theirs might get them killed.
Pretty Dead Girls by Monica Murphy
Publication Date: January 2, 2018
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Amazon | Amazon Australia | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | B&N | iBooks | Kobo
Monica Murphy is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 international bestselling author of the One Week Girlfriend series, the Billionaire Bachelors and The Rules series. Her books have been translated in almost a dozen languages and has sold over one million copies worldwide. She is a traditionally published author with Bantam/Random House and Harper Collins/Avon, as well as an independently published author. She writes new adult, young adult and contemporary romance. She is also USA Today bestselling romance author Karen Erickson. She is a wife and a mother of three who lives with her family in central California on fourteen acres in the middle of nowhere, along with their one dog and too many cats. A self-confessed workaholic, when she’s not writing, she’s reading or hanging out with her husband and kids. She’s a firm believer in happy endings, though she will admit to putting her characters through many angst-filled moments before they finally get that hard won HEA.
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Book Review & Giveaway: Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke
Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke 
Published by Clarion Books on January 9th 2018
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 432
Source: Netgalley
Amazon
Goodreads
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
*
8
MY REVIEW:
If you’re looking for a fun and fresh read to start the new year off right, I’d like to highly recommend Lianne Oelke’s Nice Try, Jane Sinner. Nice Try, Jane Sinner follows the life of main character, Jane Sinner, a 17 year old who has just gone through a personal crisis, a crisis that has actually led to her being expelled from high school just shy of her graduation.
When the novel opens, Jane is at a loss. Her friends are in their senior year of high school and getting ready to graduate and go to college, while Jane is on the sidelines. Her friends keep trying to include her in school activities, but it just leads to endless awkward moments because everyone now only thinks of her as the girl from ‘the Incident.’ Jane is desperate to reinvent herself so when her parents push her enroll in a high school completion program at the nearby Elbow River Community College, Jane agrees – on one condition. The only way she will attend the program is if her parents agree to let her move out on her own. Jane’s parents aren’t totally excited about the idea but desperate to help her get back on her feet again, they agree.
Jane secures housing for herself by signing up to participate in House of Orange, which is a student-run reality TV show that is basically Big Brother, but for Elbow River Students. At first, House of Orange is just a means to an end — i.e. the rent is cheap. But as the competition gets under way and the show’s audience grows, Jane’s competitive nature kicks in and she begins to see House of Orange as a way to reinvent herself. She can be a winner and prove to herself (and of course everyone else) that she is not just the girl from ‘the Incident.’
The main character Jane Sinner was, by far, my favorite part of this novel. Jane drew me in right away with her hilarious brand of dry humor. It especially cracked me up the way she drove her dad crazy by intentionally using common idioms improperly: “You’re meowing up the wrong tree,” “I’m trying to turn over a new silver lining,” etc. I could practically feel his eyes roll every time she did it, and it made me laugh out loud several times as I was reading, as did the full blown psychotherapy sessions she conducted in her head throughout the story. Jane is a funny girl, no doubt about it!
What appealed to me most about Jane though was that underneath of all that humor, she has a lot going on. She’s a complex and very realistically drawn character and it turns out that a lot of her humor is actually a coping mechanism that she uses to deal with some pretty major issues that she is going through, including depression. Yes, in addition to being a hilarious and entertaining book about living in a Big Brother-style reality TV house, Nice Try, Jane Sinner also delves into some more serious and important topics, such as mental health. To that end, even more so than her humor, I came to admire Jane’s spunk and her determination to reinvent herself and make the most of the second chance she has been given. That’s not to say that she is perfect either. She is most definitely a flawed character who makes plenty of mistakes along the way, but that just adds to her overall appeal because who doesn’t make mistakes?
Aside from Jane herself, I also really enjoyed the college setting. It doesn’t seem like there are many books out there that really capture college life and all that it entails. (I’m sure there are others, but Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl is the only one that comes to mind at the moment). I love books that focus on this time in a young adult’s life because I think it’s something we can all relate to – that defining moment when we’re turning 18 and starting out on our own, trying to define ourselves independently, and out from under our parents’ rules, etc. I know, for me, that was a messy time so it definitely made sense to me why Jane wanted to be out on her own, no matter what she had to do to make it happen.
I’m not even going to call these dislikes, more like just a couple of places that gave me pause as I was reading.
Journal Format: Overall, I think the journal format is fabulous in that it is unique and because with the way the dialogue is presented, in a script-like format, it makes for a quick-paced read. I also loved being in Jane’s head and seeing all of her innermost thoughts. I found it a very effective way to present this kind of story. That said, however, and this is just probably a nitpick/personal quirk with me, but I’m always a little confused when I see entire conversations recounted in what is supposed to be a journal. Do people who keep journals actually jot down conversations? I didn’t dwell on it too much and ultimately decided “It’s Jane’s journal. She can write whatever the heck she wants to in it” but I’ll admit thinking about that did distract me a little as I was reading.
Secondary Characters: Again, this is just me because I always enjoy getting to know secondary characters almost as much as I enjoy following the main character, but I definitely would have liked to learn a little more about some of the other students Jane interacted with throughout the novel. We barely scratched the surface when it came to Jane’s housemates and Alexander Park, the student who is the mastermind behind the whole House of Orange project. The few details we got were great, but they left me wanting to know more.
I went into Nice Try, Jane Sinner expecting a fluffy and entertaining read about trying to attend college while simultaneously taking part in a reality TV series. The reality (no pun intended) is that I got so much more than that. Yes, it is an often hilarious read filled with reality TV-style pranks and shenanigans, but, more importantly, it is a moving read because of its focus on Jane’s mental health and second chances. Nice Try, Jane Sinner shows readers that although the road to recovery is often difficult, it is definitely possible.
Thanks to Netgalley, Clarion Books, and of course, Lianne Oelke for allowing me to read and review this book on my blog in exchange for an honest review. This in no way impacts my review.
SYNOPSIS
The only thing 17-year-old Jane Sinner hates more than failure is pity. After a personal crisis and her subsequent expulsion from high school, she’s going nowhere fast. Jane’s well-meaning parents push her to attend a high school completion program at the nearby Elbow River Community College, and she agrees, on one condition: she gets to move out.
Jane tackles her housing problem by signing up for House of Orange, a student-run reality show that is basically Big Brother, but for Elbow River Students. Living away from home, the chance to win a car (used, but whatever), and a campus full of people who don’t know what she did in high school… what more could she want? Okay, maybe a family that understands why she’d rather turn to Freud than Jesus to make sense of her life, but she’ll settle for fifteen minutes in the proverbial spotlight.
As House of Orange grows from a low-budget web series to a local TV show with fans and shoddy T-shirts, Jane finally has the chance to let her cynical, competitive nature thrive. She’ll use her growing fan base, and whatever Intro to Psychology can teach her, to prove to the world—or at least viewers of substandard TV—that she has what it takes to win.
Formats: Hardcover, eBook
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, iBooks, TBD
Giveaway Details:
3 winners will receive a finished copy of NICE TRY JANE SINNER, US Only.
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
1/1/2018- Emily Reads Everything– Spotlight
1/2/2018- The Hermit Librarian– Review
1/3/2018- A Dream Within A Dream– Excerpt
1/4/2018- The Bookish Libra– Review
1/5/2018- Tales of the Ravenous Reader– Interview
Week Two:
1/8/2018- The Book Nut– Review
1/9/2018- Margie’s Must Reads– Guest Post
1/10/2018- Book-Keeping– Review
1/11/2018- BookHounds YA– Interview
1/12/2018- JustAddaWord– Review
About Lianne Oelke
Lianne lives in Vancouver, BC. A mere three years of working in the film industry has left her far more jaded, bitter, and misanthropic than she could have dreamed possible. Having worked on one too many made-for-TV movies featuring the mild romantic antics of generically attractive white people, she’s taken it upon herself to push back with some pretty substandard stories of her own.
Besides books, her three great passions in life are cats, craft beer, and camping. When she’s not working, Lianne likes to take off, eh in her ‘83 camper van. She maintains a steady hate/ love relationship with hiking, but is always up for exploring British Columbia- whatever it takes to find a nice spot to set up her hammock. Her hammock is her favorite place in the world.