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Clutch
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Emily Nemens’s Clutch follows a group of five women, friends for twenty years, as they go through the biggest challenges of their lives, asking: When you’re hanging on by your fingernails, how can you extend a hand to the ones you love?
As undergrads, Reba, Hillary, Carson, Gregg, and Bella formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.
The five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognizes. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great—but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.
Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves.
As undergrads, Reba, Hillary, Carson, Gregg, and Bella formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.
The five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognizes. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great—but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.
Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves.
400 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication February 3, 2026
10726 people want to read
About the author
Emily Nemens
26 books138 followersEmily Nemens’s debut novel, The Cactus League, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and named one of NPR’s and Lit Hub’s favorite books of 2020. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, The Gettysburg Review, n+1, and elsewhere; her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker and in collaboration with Harvey Pekar. Nemens spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review. She held the 2022–23 Picador Professorship (University of Leipzig) and teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College. She lives in central New Jersey with her husband and dog.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
November 3, 2025
This is a big-hearted, clear-eyed novel about five women—Reba, Hillary, Carson, Gregg, and Bella—who’ve known one another long enough to finish each other’s sentences and still be shocked by what the next season of life demands. Nemens builds a whole ecosystem of work, love, caregiving, ambition, and regret, then throws a reunion in Palm Springs like a match into dry grass. From there, she follows each woman across cities and crises—a politician weighing power and principle, a doctor holding a marriage together while addiction razes the foundation, a lawyer chasing a career-defining case as the home front splinters, a writer reaching for the page and a parent she’s never had, and a daughter juggling IVF with elder care. The book keeps asking the question that undoes me: when your own fingernails are barely hanging on, how do you still reach for your people?
What dazzled me most is the precision: scene to scene, Nemens slides between perspectives with the confidence of a director who knows every blocking mark. The observations are knife-clean but generous—smart without sneer, tender without treacle. The group dynamic rings painfully true: the splintering into duos and trios, the micro-alliances, the unspoken tallies, the way one phone buzz can reroute a day. It’s also refreshingly honest about trade-offs: how “having it all” often means “holding too much,” and how friendship can be the clutch—both the grasp and the mechanism—that keeps the engine from stalling. If you love contemporary fiction that respects adult complexity (careers, money, health, politics, parenting, desire) and still believes in joy, this is your lane.
Tiny quibbles? With five voices, the on-ramp takes a couple chapters to settle (worth it), and a thread or two lingers in a purposeful gray that invites discussion. But the cumulative effect is immersive and deeply human. I closed the book feeling wrung out in the best way and weirdly hopeful—like I’d watched five separate storms blow through and leave a clearer sky.
Verdict: absorbing, thoughtful, and emotionally aerobic. Perfect for readers who crave character-driven storytelling with real stakes, real consequences, and a sincere belief that friendship—imperfect, evolving, stubborn—still saves us.
A very huge thanks to NetGalley and Zando | Tin House for sharing this meaningful, beautifully written women’s fiction digital reviewer copy in exchange for my honest opinions.
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What dazzled me most is the precision: scene to scene, Nemens slides between perspectives with the confidence of a director who knows every blocking mark. The observations are knife-clean but generous—smart without sneer, tender without treacle. The group dynamic rings painfully true: the splintering into duos and trios, the micro-alliances, the unspoken tallies, the way one phone buzz can reroute a day. It’s also refreshingly honest about trade-offs: how “having it all” often means “holding too much,” and how friendship can be the clutch—both the grasp and the mechanism—that keeps the engine from stalling. If you love contemporary fiction that respects adult complexity (careers, money, health, politics, parenting, desire) and still believes in joy, this is your lane.
Tiny quibbles? With five voices, the on-ramp takes a couple chapters to settle (worth it), and a thread or two lingers in a purposeful gray that invites discussion. But the cumulative effect is immersive and deeply human. I closed the book feeling wrung out in the best way and weirdly hopeful—like I’d watched five separate storms blow through and leave a clearer sky.
Verdict: absorbing, thoughtful, and emotionally aerobic. Perfect for readers who crave character-driven storytelling with real stakes, real consequences, and a sincere belief that friendship—imperfect, evolving, stubborn—still saves us.
A very huge thanks to NetGalley and Zando | Tin House for sharing this meaningful, beautifully written women’s fiction digital reviewer copy in exchange for my honest opinions.
Follow me on medium.com to read my articles about books, movies, streaming series, astrology:
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Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Well I can breathe a sigh of relief now that's over. I'm afraid this book simply wasn't for me despite thinking the premise sounded interesting.
Five college friends get together for a weekend. They have been friends for twenty years but this year will bring more challenges and shocks than they have dealt with for a long time. Gregg is unhappily pregnant and wanting to run for Congress; Reba is desperate to become pregnant and worried about her ageing parents; Hillary is dealing with her estranged husband's drug addiction; Carson has just sent her latest novel to her agent but has heard nothing back; and Bella is running on empty dealing with two young children, a selfish husband and with a big trial to prepare for. Whilst the women are always "there" for each other their own lives will be tested to breaking point.
I am afraid that I found each of the women incredibly unlikeable and didn't warm to any. They all seemed incredibly privileged, one way or another (except perhaps Hillary) but none of them appreciated their good fortune. I have to confess to being somewhat sympathetic to the men in their lives and yet really quite irritated with the women for taking the consequences of their past decisions lying down.
I confess to having yelled at this book quite a lot and also speed reading quite lengthy sections towards the end.
Not my cup of tea at all.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Zando Projects for the advance review copy.
Five college friends get together for a weekend. They have been friends for twenty years but this year will bring more challenges and shocks than they have dealt with for a long time. Gregg is unhappily pregnant and wanting to run for Congress; Reba is desperate to become pregnant and worried about her ageing parents; Hillary is dealing with her estranged husband's drug addiction; Carson has just sent her latest novel to her agent but has heard nothing back; and Bella is running on empty dealing with two young children, a selfish husband and with a big trial to prepare for. Whilst the women are always "there" for each other their own lives will be tested to breaking point.
I am afraid that I found each of the women incredibly unlikeable and didn't warm to any. They all seemed incredibly privileged, one way or another (except perhaps Hillary) but none of them appreciated their good fortune. I have to confess to being somewhat sympathetic to the men in their lives and yet really quite irritated with the women for taking the consequences of their past decisions lying down.
I confess to having yelled at this book quite a lot and also speed reading quite lengthy sections towards the end.
Not my cup of tea at all.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Zando Projects for the advance review copy.
September 4, 2025
This was a great book! I love books that follow friendships over several decades. It’s so relatable with the issues they’re all trying to navigate. Also very relevant given that it covers Covid and beyond to current times. As their lives ebb and flow, they try to lean on each other. I loved the character development and the relationships between the friend group. This is a book I will always treasure.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
dnf
December 30, 2025Unfortunately I have to dnf this at 20%. I find it very hard to remember who is who, and I dislike the narration style. There is a lot of text in past perfect tense, giving you pieces of backstory of a character during the current scene, which is in past simple tense, it was kind of exhausting to read. I think I could have followed this better if we first established each character and their backstory separately, then entered the current events. As it is, I can't get invested in the characters and keep zoning out of the storyline.
October 5, 2025
This book about a group of 5 women friends and their ties to each other since college, and now as they are turning 40, reads like a frenetic stream of consciousness. Sometimes the narrator switched from one paragraph to another as the intertwined stories careened along.
Millennials will relate to all the angst of parenthood and infertility and “having it all” and making one’s mark in whatever profession you’ve chosen or rejected.
The men in the story are albatrosses and sometimes shockingly cruel.
The end left me reeling and I was relieved to step off this wild ride.
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Millennials will relate to all the angst of parenthood and infertility and “having it all” and making one’s mark in whatever profession you’ve chosen or rejected.
The men in the story are albatrosses and sometimes shockingly cruel.
The end left me reeling and I was relieved to step off this wild ride.
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
September 28, 2025
Clutch by Emily Nemens is a sprawling novel that details the lives of five women who have just turned 40, having been best friends since college. It was laconic, gorgeous writing; I was grateful to have a long plane ride to plow through Clutch because otherwise it would have taken me a week. The story grabbed me, I loved the characters, and yet, it moved slowly.
I found Nemens’s writing remarkable: the way she can tell what’s happening for multiple characters simultaneously in any given moment felt unique and skillful. A small example:
“(Some of the women thought this was the ultimate settled, while others considered it settling … that wee gerund bore so much judgment.)”
And it’s not lost on me that part of why this book rang so true is life stage. These women turned 40 the same year as me. Their twenties were filled with the same cultural moments as my own. Their 40s, the same (now-ish).
Gregg is a Texas politician, a la Wendy Davis, championing for reproductive rights while married to an Elon Musk lookalike. Carson is a novelist, who isn’t exactly successful or unsuccessful, but hopes to hit it big with book 2. Bella is a lawyer at a cutthroat firm, but her pregnancy history and time as a mother have made it hard for her to make a name for herself. Reba, independently wealthy and already retired, is aiding her aging parents in the Bay Area while working overtime to become a mother. And Hillary, a physician and mother married to a drug addict.
After not seeing each other as a quintet for years, they get together in Palm Springs. It’s lovely and bittersweet. They’re the same and not. And so they make a commitment to see each other more, not realizing how soon life will spiral for each of them, requiring a lot more face time than anyone could have imagined. This also rang true for me, as one of my best childhood friends had an analogous experience to one of the characters this year, pushing us together across thousands of miles three times in close succession.
Overall, I loved Clutch and now want to read Nemens’s other work. It was long, happy, hard, sad, victorious, and ultimately, worth it. I’ll be thinking about these characters for a while.
Highly recommended. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Some favorite passages:
“But there is cognizance, and there is self-regulation, and sometimes, despite the former, her bossiness still showed up like a flash of gold in the back of her mouth.”
“‘Why do you think Tim Cook created that screen time report?’
“To make us feel inadequate anew, Bella thought.”
“That algorithm knew her so well. Better than Bill, anyway…”
“‘Live shooter training,’ Gregg said, adding that everyone in the capitol complex had to do it, along with modules on sexual harassment and anticorruption. Gregg spat into the sink before she continued. ‘I know how to identify nepotism and avoid getting stabbed in the neck.’”
“Of course Reba had regrets. They all did, and more would invariably come. Steering clear wasn’t the project, it was accepting them and finding ways to make them productively dissipate. Theirs was a long-term project of regret management, supporting one another as each tried to control her remorse like it was the water level on some persnickety reservoir. They each had access to a series of spigots, inflows and out-, and had to factor in evaporation. That they might have total control of their emotional lake was as likely as claiming the control of nature, which was unattainable…”
“That getting high did not make him happy, but he could not be happy when all he thought of was his next score?”
“Bella gathered their mail from the mail room: a package (a pair of sneakers, another Instagram impulse buy; it was remarkable what she could purchase on days when it felt like she was too busy to chew, much less swallow)…”
I found Nemens’s writing remarkable: the way she can tell what’s happening for multiple characters simultaneously in any given moment felt unique and skillful. A small example:
“(Some of the women thought this was the ultimate settled, while others considered it settling … that wee gerund bore so much judgment.)”
And it’s not lost on me that part of why this book rang so true is life stage. These women turned 40 the same year as me. Their twenties were filled with the same cultural moments as my own. Their 40s, the same (now-ish).
Gregg is a Texas politician, a la Wendy Davis, championing for reproductive rights while married to an Elon Musk lookalike. Carson is a novelist, who isn’t exactly successful or unsuccessful, but hopes to hit it big with book 2. Bella is a lawyer at a cutthroat firm, but her pregnancy history and time as a mother have made it hard for her to make a name for herself. Reba, independently wealthy and already retired, is aiding her aging parents in the Bay Area while working overtime to become a mother. And Hillary, a physician and mother married to a drug addict.
After not seeing each other as a quintet for years, they get together in Palm Springs. It’s lovely and bittersweet. They’re the same and not. And so they make a commitment to see each other more, not realizing how soon life will spiral for each of them, requiring a lot more face time than anyone could have imagined. This also rang true for me, as one of my best childhood friends had an analogous experience to one of the characters this year, pushing us together across thousands of miles three times in close succession.
Overall, I loved Clutch and now want to read Nemens’s other work. It was long, happy, hard, sad, victorious, and ultimately, worth it. I’ll be thinking about these characters for a while.
Highly recommended. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Some favorite passages:
“But there is cognizance, and there is self-regulation, and sometimes, despite the former, her bossiness still showed up like a flash of gold in the back of her mouth.”
“‘Why do you think Tim Cook created that screen time report?’
“To make us feel inadequate anew, Bella thought.”
“That algorithm knew her so well. Better than Bill, anyway…”
“‘Live shooter training,’ Gregg said, adding that everyone in the capitol complex had to do it, along with modules on sexual harassment and anticorruption. Gregg spat into the sink before she continued. ‘I know how to identify nepotism and avoid getting stabbed in the neck.’”
“Of course Reba had regrets. They all did, and more would invariably come. Steering clear wasn’t the project, it was accepting them and finding ways to make them productively dissipate. Theirs was a long-term project of regret management, supporting one another as each tried to control her remorse like it was the water level on some persnickety reservoir. They each had access to a series of spigots, inflows and out-, and had to factor in evaporation. That they might have total control of their emotional lake was as likely as claiming the control of nature, which was unattainable…”
“That getting high did not make him happy, but he could not be happy when all he thought of was his next score?”
“Bella gathered their mail from the mail room: a package (a pair of sneakers, another Instagram impulse buy; it was remarkable what she could purchase on days when it felt like she was too busy to chew, much less swallow)…”
November 19, 2025
Thank you to Zando for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Clutch by Emily Nemens is a contemporary fiction story about five friends-since-college in their second decade of friendship. All hovering around forty, they’re a decidedly elite group of politicians, litigators, ENT physicians, and talented yet underexposed writers. The book follows a pivotal six-month or so period in their lives as they all grapple with challenges that test, strengthen, and define their friendship.
There’s a phrase in creative writing that gets thrown around “murder your darlings.” An author that treats their characters with kid gloves is no fun, being the point. While Nemens “darling” may make it to the end of the book alive, they are far from unscathed. A litany of blows reigns down on the women from every direction. While not EVERY one of these miseries springs forth from a man, a sure lot of them do. Whether it’s from perimenopause, mental health, or their aging parents, these women know no peace. If you don’t enjoy a book in which there’s no respite from miniature tortures, this could be something off putting. However, if you’ve got the stomach for a book that leaves you thinking “dear GOD, NOW WHAT?” Then this is the exact sort of quotidienne sadism you may enjoy.
And yet, there’s one issue from this book that made it somewhat off putting to me. Despite failed marriages and tanking libidos, these women are all either white or their racial makeup is unimportant and wealthy. Even Carson, the “poor” character is a starving artist. Her rent, while split, is paid, and she has the ability to change her social situation if she wasn’t singlemindedly dogged in pursuit of artistic purity. Is it realistic that five women in their early forties who graduated from an elite college would go on to being either wealthy or very successful? Sure. But at times there felt like there was a donut hole or blindness towards the relative ease and wealth these women lived with. Sure some had absentee parents, but they also could afford in home child care, cocktails at the Met, and advanced degrees.
This book is well written. The friendships are structured in a way that are both tender and fraught with human error. The stories are relatively gripping, which can be a difficult balancing with five main characters. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, it was a difficult rating to achieve. I didn’t dislike the book, and if fact finished it quite quickly. But I didn’t love it. I didn’t feel myself motivated to emotionally connect with a billionaire’s wife or a slick corporate lawyer. I think it’s well written, but it simply wasn’t a selection I’d make again. 3/5 with the recommendation that for someone in search of a realistic story of female friendship this may be much more your speed.
Clutch by Emily Nemens is a contemporary fiction story about five friends-since-college in their second decade of friendship. All hovering around forty, they’re a decidedly elite group of politicians, litigators, ENT physicians, and talented yet underexposed writers. The book follows a pivotal six-month or so period in their lives as they all grapple with challenges that test, strengthen, and define their friendship.
There’s a phrase in creative writing that gets thrown around “murder your darlings.” An author that treats their characters with kid gloves is no fun, being the point. While Nemens “darling” may make it to the end of the book alive, they are far from unscathed. A litany of blows reigns down on the women from every direction. While not EVERY one of these miseries springs forth from a man, a sure lot of them do. Whether it’s from perimenopause, mental health, or their aging parents, these women know no peace. If you don’t enjoy a book in which there’s no respite from miniature tortures, this could be something off putting. However, if you’ve got the stomach for a book that leaves you thinking “dear GOD, NOW WHAT?” Then this is the exact sort of quotidienne sadism you may enjoy.
And yet, there’s one issue from this book that made it somewhat off putting to me. Despite failed marriages and tanking libidos, these women are all either white or their racial makeup is unimportant and wealthy. Even Carson, the “poor” character is a starving artist. Her rent, while split, is paid, and she has the ability to change her social situation if she wasn’t singlemindedly dogged in pursuit of artistic purity. Is it realistic that five women in their early forties who graduated from an elite college would go on to being either wealthy or very successful? Sure. But at times there felt like there was a donut hole or blindness towards the relative ease and wealth these women lived with. Sure some had absentee parents, but they also could afford in home child care, cocktails at the Met, and advanced degrees.
This book is well written. The friendships are structured in a way that are both tender and fraught with human error. The stories are relatively gripping, which can be a difficult balancing with five main characters. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, it was a difficult rating to achieve. I didn’t dislike the book, and if fact finished it quite quickly. But I didn’t love it. I didn’t feel myself motivated to emotionally connect with a billionaire’s wife or a slick corporate lawyer. I think it’s well written, but it simply wasn’t a selection I’d make again. 3/5 with the recommendation that for someone in search of a realistic story of female friendship this may be much more your speed.
October 3, 2025
A women's fiction novel about lifelong friendship. I really liked the characters and their stories. The storeylines were relatable. The book sucks you in and is such an easy read.
January 10, 2026
3.5 need to unpack why dislikable characters affected my reading experience more than normal here. But one line made me cry, so obviously something clicked. The men in this book, oof.
October 29, 2025
* thanks to Zando / Tin House for the NetGalley review copy (pub date: February 3, 2026)
Review TK
Review TK
November 21, 2025
I really tried to get into this book. I read up to 40% but I just found the characters so bland and uninteresting. I received an ARC from the publisher and Netgalley. I am sorry but this book just did not hold my interest.
October 29, 2025
This was an absolute grower of a story. At first, I wasn’t fully sold. I thought the women were self-absorbed, and the narrative style wasn’t necessarily working for me. Until suddenly it did. Suddenly the friendship shone through, and it hit beautifully. I love the way this group (or at times segments of this group) support and show up for one another. The acknowledgment that friendships ebb and flow with life changes and chaos. It’s a very real depiction of adult friendship (Reba literally yelling at the group that she just wanted one day back with her friends who cared about things other than the consistency of their kids’ crap = relatable af). The men were pretty uniformly awful, the women won me over. Ladies rock. 3.75 ⭐️
Thanks to NetGalley and Zando for the opportunity to read this ARC!
Thanks to NetGalley and Zando for the opportunity to read this ARC!
October 15, 2025
Thank you to Net Galley and the Publishers for the ARC !
Clutch is a layered story about friendship over the years, full of tension, hurt, and the beauty of sticking together. Nemens shows that friendship isn’t always safe—it’s messy, full of cracks, repair, and tenderness.
That said, this book wasn’t for me. I couldn’t keep the characters or plot straight, and even the bigger events felt distant. I could see the story was strong, but I just couldn’t care enough about the characters’ lives. I really wanted to like this book more.
Clutch is a layered story about friendship over the years, full of tension, hurt, and the beauty of sticking together. Nemens shows that friendship isn’t always safe—it’s messy, full of cracks, repair, and tenderness.
That said, this book wasn’t for me. I couldn’t keep the characters or plot straight, and even the bigger events felt distant. I could see the story was strong, but I just couldn’t care enough about the characters’ lives. I really wanted to like this book more.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Almost immediately, I could tell this novel was not for me. I have read stream of consciousness writing before, but it is always a bit of a slog. When combined with characters that are unsympathetic, it became hard to continue. This may get many plaudits from critics. I just did not care for it.
Want to read
October 1, 2025A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
CLUTCH
BY: EMILY NEMENS
Closer to a 4.50 Not Rounded Up!
I loved this character driven beautifully written novel that examines and explores much to reflect on while reading as Literary Fiction often can be relied upon for its depth. Some readers found this difficult to relate to because they didn't like the characters which for me as an older reader admit that there's a theme among them being affluent for the most part. I could tell right within the first few pages that this new to me Author, EMILY NEVENS wrote from the expertise of highly sophisticated style that signified to me that this was going to be a narrative that I was going to love. I was rewarded by a reading experience of, "CLUTCH, by my instincts proven correct by her masterful approach that followed from beginning to end. I'm still thinking about these intriguing relationships that were so well developed that linger about five women who met in College, and how often those connections stay with us as we carry those friendships into our future. That's the case with these five women who have stayed in touch for two decades with them sharply distinctive making them easy for me to keep their initial appearance of some in this quintet having achieved various success at one aspect of their respective lives. The very heart of the story that upon closer examination of each of these five friends who decide to gather together in Palm Springs reveals that what some have accomplished that on the surface some have as the novel depicts would be that each individual has underlying issues that everything is not what it seems. While they are younger than I am they reminded me to be Millennial's who came of age during the millennium that navigated their way through the earlier digital era with the early period of the Internet or the early social media which it's impossible to deny since the very beginning of the novel there's a am example of their communication through a Group Chat. They are also associated with their generation with Millennial also comes to mind which are also referred to as Generation Y, or Gen Y They are mentioned as surviving COVID which didn't we all, but they are to have experienced other significant historical events such as 911, and the Great Recession which I thought influenced how I gathered what caused their widely original life circumstances which ranged from varying degrees of vocations, relationship status, living arrangements, etc. For example: one being an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialization doctor, one a lawyer, one being a writer, one in Texas Politics, some married with children, with serious problems. Crumbling marriages, imploding careers, the messiness of life takes place with both realism, but ultimately hopeful since there's sharp humor so I never felt this was too heavy. The last time these five women were all together was four years ago, when celebrating a baby shower. Two of these five best friends are still in New York that gives them the opportunity to meet much more often. Even though the other three are further away what struck me was their generation had it harder financially than the previous generation, but the current one has it harder than all the previous ones. I was also struck with how technologically savvy they are when the author goes back in forth in time within the same pages providing their backstory. I think that I admired this author's sophisticated writing prowess, it is not going to be appreciated by the wider audience of readers. While the Author, Emily Nevens wrote a captivating narrative, and I marveled at her fantastic vocabulary I was shocked that when I posted my review to see that there were only one reviewer friend agreed with my rating. The Author does provide a thoughtful and helpful chart in the beginning, my biggest piece of advice to future readers to enjoy this Exquisite superbly crafted novel named "CLUTCH," is to take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with that chart, since it will be informative of all five friends, and their associated side characters, Reba, Hillary. Carson, Bella, and Gregg. The writing is incisive, razor sharp, and incredibly witty. Ultimately this should resonate with most women that is enjoyable and entertaining that delivers how much as to paraphrase another author that I agree with which there's plenty of dysfunction that this author writes both from a pen that contains both the poison, and the antidote in equal measure. Most women are innately nurturers, but as much as we love our inner circle we must hold a space for ourselves.
Publication Date: February 3, 2026
Thank you to Net Galley, Emily Nemens, and Zando--Tin House for generously providing me with my ARC, in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own, as always.
#Clutch #EmilyNemens #Zando #TinHouse #NetGalley
BY: EMILY NEMENS
Closer to a 4.50 Not Rounded Up!
I loved this character driven beautifully written novel that examines and explores much to reflect on while reading as Literary Fiction often can be relied upon for its depth. Some readers found this difficult to relate to because they didn't like the characters which for me as an older reader admit that there's a theme among them being affluent for the most part. I could tell right within the first few pages that this new to me Author, EMILY NEVENS wrote from the expertise of highly sophisticated style that signified to me that this was going to be a narrative that I was going to love. I was rewarded by a reading experience of, "CLUTCH, by my instincts proven correct by her masterful approach that followed from beginning to end. I'm still thinking about these intriguing relationships that were so well developed that linger about five women who met in College, and how often those connections stay with us as we carry those friendships into our future. That's the case with these five women who have stayed in touch for two decades with them sharply distinctive making them easy for me to keep their initial appearance of some in this quintet having achieved various success at one aspect of their respective lives. The very heart of the story that upon closer examination of each of these five friends who decide to gather together in Palm Springs reveals that what some have accomplished that on the surface some have as the novel depicts would be that each individual has underlying issues that everything is not what it seems. While they are younger than I am they reminded me to be Millennial's who came of age during the millennium that navigated their way through the earlier digital era with the early period of the Internet or the early social media which it's impossible to deny since the very beginning of the novel there's a am example of their communication through a Group Chat. They are also associated with their generation with Millennial also comes to mind which are also referred to as Generation Y, or Gen Y They are mentioned as surviving COVID which didn't we all, but they are to have experienced other significant historical events such as 911, and the Great Recession which I thought influenced how I gathered what caused their widely original life circumstances which ranged from varying degrees of vocations, relationship status, living arrangements, etc. For example: one being an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialization doctor, one a lawyer, one being a writer, one in Texas Politics, some married with children, with serious problems. Crumbling marriages, imploding careers, the messiness of life takes place with both realism, but ultimately hopeful since there's sharp humor so I never felt this was too heavy. The last time these five women were all together was four years ago, when celebrating a baby shower. Two of these five best friends are still in New York that gives them the opportunity to meet much more often. Even though the other three are further away what struck me was their generation had it harder financially than the previous generation, but the current one has it harder than all the previous ones. I was also struck with how technologically savvy they are when the author goes back in forth in time within the same pages providing their backstory. I think that I admired this author's sophisticated writing prowess, it is not going to be appreciated by the wider audience of readers. While the Author, Emily Nevens wrote a captivating narrative, and I marveled at her fantastic vocabulary I was shocked that when I posted my review to see that there were only one reviewer friend agreed with my rating. The Author does provide a thoughtful and helpful chart in the beginning, my biggest piece of advice to future readers to enjoy this Exquisite superbly crafted novel named "CLUTCH," is to take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with that chart, since it will be informative of all five friends, and their associated side characters, Reba, Hillary. Carson, Bella, and Gregg. The writing is incisive, razor sharp, and incredibly witty. Ultimately this should resonate with most women that is enjoyable and entertaining that delivers how much as to paraphrase another author that I agree with which there's plenty of dysfunction that this author writes both from a pen that contains both the poison, and the antidote in equal measure. Most women are innately nurturers, but as much as we love our inner circle we must hold a space for ourselves.
Publication Date: February 3, 2026
Thank you to Net Galley, Emily Nemens, and Zando--Tin House for generously providing me with my ARC, in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own, as always.
#Clutch #EmilyNemens #Zando #TinHouse #NetGalley
November 28, 2025
Emily Nemens’ new novel Clutch is a celebration of enduring female friendship in all its messy glory. It opens with five women, best friends since college and now nearing forty, meeting in Palm Springs for a girls’ weekend after not seeing each other for nearly four years. They laugh, cry, take magic mushrooms, check in on children back home, keep secrets, fight, make up, and renew their bond, unaware of all the ways in which their lives are about to blow up and test their friendship.
Nemens throws a lot of terrible events at her characters - each painful, though mostly relatable, with one final turn that is truly shocking. With few exceptions, most of the men in their lives are assholes; it’s the bedrock of this friendship that gets them through tough times. No matter what these ladies have going on in their own lives, they are always there for each other.
I’m surprised that I ended up liking Clutch as much as I did, because the first few chapters were challenging to read. The narrator drops you abruptly into the women’s lives with no introduction, backstory, or context. The story immediately begins unfolding from there, so for the first few chapters I was spinning a bit trying to figure out who’s who and what’s going on. At some point though, it all came together and I was fully absorbed in the story.
As a reader, you are not deep in the action. The narrator tells us about a character doing something fairly standard (eg, taking care of a child or aging parent, interacting with a spouse or roommate, seeing a doctor) which triggers a chapter full of rumination about a topic related (sometimes tangentially) to what she was doing. Parenting, aging, the environment, fertility, women’s reproductive rights, balancing work and motherhood, relationships with spouses and parents, how to define success, and existential questions about what they want out of life as they approach forty are all up for grabs.
The scenes, if you can call them that, serve more as containers for this interiority and thematic exploration rather than as a structural devices to advance the plot. At first I found this annoying - why can’t we just have a traditional scene with dialogue and rising action? - but somehow the plot builds in spite of very little action taking place.
It’s actually a brilliant and effective way of writing, and not easy to pull off as successfully as Nemens does here. The characters’ internal reflections feel meandering, but are in fact superbly layered and precisely observed, slowly building a complex portrait of these five women’s friendship, ambition, hopes, and dreams.
I recommend Clutch for readers who enjoy relatable stories about women’s friendship. Go in knowing that the writing style takes some getting used to, but the payoff is worth it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Zando/Tin House for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at http://www.fogfiction.com.
Nemens throws a lot of terrible events at her characters - each painful, though mostly relatable, with one final turn that is truly shocking. With few exceptions, most of the men in their lives are assholes; it’s the bedrock of this friendship that gets them through tough times. No matter what these ladies have going on in their own lives, they are always there for each other.
I’m surprised that I ended up liking Clutch as much as I did, because the first few chapters were challenging to read. The narrator drops you abruptly into the women’s lives with no introduction, backstory, or context. The story immediately begins unfolding from there, so for the first few chapters I was spinning a bit trying to figure out who’s who and what’s going on. At some point though, it all came together and I was fully absorbed in the story.
As a reader, you are not deep in the action. The narrator tells us about a character doing something fairly standard (eg, taking care of a child or aging parent, interacting with a spouse or roommate, seeing a doctor) which triggers a chapter full of rumination about a topic related (sometimes tangentially) to what she was doing. Parenting, aging, the environment, fertility, women’s reproductive rights, balancing work and motherhood, relationships with spouses and parents, how to define success, and existential questions about what they want out of life as they approach forty are all up for grabs.
The scenes, if you can call them that, serve more as containers for this interiority and thematic exploration rather than as a structural devices to advance the plot. At first I found this annoying - why can’t we just have a traditional scene with dialogue and rising action? - but somehow the plot builds in spite of very little action taking place.
It’s actually a brilliant and effective way of writing, and not easy to pull off as successfully as Nemens does here. The characters’ internal reflections feel meandering, but are in fact superbly layered and precisely observed, slowly building a complex portrait of these five women’s friendship, ambition, hopes, and dreams.
I recommend Clutch for readers who enjoy relatable stories about women’s friendship. Go in knowing that the writing style takes some getting used to, but the payoff is worth it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Zando/Tin House for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at http://www.fogfiction.com.
December 21, 2025
I knew very early on I was going to have trouble with Nemen’s Clutch. Normally, I am the type of reader who likes a lot of dialogue to reveal story and character with occasional long prose to fully illustrate what’s happening. Nemens, with this novel, has done completely the opposite. It’s extremely common to page forward in Clutch and see one (or zero) indentations on a page. Block text was not just the norm, it was largely the entire book. With a whisper of dialogue here and there. So it became clear—I am the exact wrong audience for this book.
Not to say Nemens can’t write. She certainly can. Her gymnastics of vocabulary is sometimes impressive, sometimes pretentious, so the quality isn’t in question. Clutch just read like a story told to you secondhand by a narrator who wasn’t interested in taking a breath and also wasn’t interested if you were actually listening to the story. It was a one-sided conversation I couldn’t leave. Further, it’s about a group of friends who, at the end of the day, aren’t very sympathetic. A group of people I wouldn’t have any interest in knowing—women who were smart but self-absorbed with men who were either jerks or empty shirts.
Two specific instances stand out to me. Almost halfway through, a really important conversation appears to be about to take place with massive ramifications for conflict and drama (finally). Nemens, as a choice, breezes past it with two or three sentences of summary to instead blather about what the character is thinking (which, I have to say, wasn't very interesting). Later, in the book, one character gives an impromptu eulogy at a funeral (with heavy dialogue), and it was easily one of the most powerful scenes in the book. Those two scenes were choices that made me wish for a much different book than the heavy narrative that Clutch is.
Clutch is characters thinking in long, long paragraphs. If that’s not your thing, avoid cracking the spine.
One of the book’s characters (a writer) professes a deep love for verbose, chunky novels (even making a strength of her low-dialogue style in her fictional novel), which felt like an obvious nod to the style of this story. Clutch keep narrating and narrating at me, nodding, as if waiting for me to nod along with it, but I just kept wondering how much longer can this story be?
Can’t recommend, but if your thing is the dense thicket of mental stream-of-consciousness storytelling, you might be closer to the audience of Clutch than me.
Thank you to Zando for providing an uncorrected ARC via NetGalley.
Not to say Nemens can’t write. She certainly can. Her gymnastics of vocabulary is sometimes impressive, sometimes pretentious, so the quality isn’t in question. Clutch just read like a story told to you secondhand by a narrator who wasn’t interested in taking a breath and also wasn’t interested if you were actually listening to the story. It was a one-sided conversation I couldn’t leave. Further, it’s about a group of friends who, at the end of the day, aren’t very sympathetic. A group of people I wouldn’t have any interest in knowing—women who were smart but self-absorbed with men who were either jerks or empty shirts.
Two specific instances stand out to me. Almost halfway through, a really important conversation appears to be about to take place with massive ramifications for conflict and drama (finally). Nemens, as a choice, breezes past it with two or three sentences of summary to instead blather about what the character is thinking (which, I have to say, wasn't very interesting). Later, in the book, one character gives an impromptu eulogy at a funeral (with heavy dialogue), and it was easily one of the most powerful scenes in the book. Those two scenes were choices that made me wish for a much different book than the heavy narrative that Clutch is.
Clutch is characters thinking in long, long paragraphs. If that’s not your thing, avoid cracking the spine.
One of the book’s characters (a writer) professes a deep love for verbose, chunky novels (even making a strength of her low-dialogue style in her fictional novel), which felt like an obvious nod to the style of this story. Clutch keep narrating and narrating at me, nodding, as if waiting for me to nod along with it, but I just kept wondering how much longer can this story be?
Can’t recommend, but if your thing is the dense thicket of mental stream-of-consciousness storytelling, you might be closer to the audience of Clutch than me.
Thank you to Zando for providing an uncorrected ARC via NetGalley.
October 21, 2025
This is usually the kind of novel I gravitate to but it was hard to stay invested in these characters’ dilemmas.
It is the story of long lasting friendship. The five principle characters forged their bonds in college. The book opens twenty years later. The women have converged for a weekend in Palm Springs. It was a good idea to have a character map at the beginning of the book because it helped me keep them all straight. They are an unlikely group in the paths they have chosen and their backgrounds, but similar in their goals, challenges, and need for one another..
To summarize:
Gregg, married to a wealthy space entrepreneur, is a former actress, current Texas legislator weighing a national run. She has two small children.
Carson, unmarried, is a writer living in Brooklyn with one successful novel published and another finished. She has no interest in marriage but wants to establish connection with the father she never knew.
Bella, a New York attorney, is engaged in a high stakes legal case that will make or break her career. She has two children and a husband who reveals his character, or lack thereof, as the book progresses.
Hillary is a successful ENT doctor living in Chicago with a husband fighting drug addition, a dependent mother and young son.
Reba is a former high achieving executive, livies in San Francisco with a wealthy husband and aging parents. She is in the middle of so far unsuccessful IVF.
There was much to like about this story. Strong female bonds, emotional intelligence, realistic problems (if you live in a certain stratosphere). The characters, their background, their current conflicts were well developed and engaging. However, the one thing that felt off about the story were the husbands. Of the four married women, each of the husbands were unlikable in their own way (except maybe the thinly described Reba’s husband). It may be said that they all struck the same one note—self involved,, disinterested as fathers,, intractable. . The ending, featuring the least likeable of the husbands, seemed too over the top, almost farcical.
If you isolate these women from their lives and the questionable choices they’ve made and consider this only as the story of friendship, I think you’ll love it. But if you expected a fuller exploration of relationships in the age of women who succeed professionally and have children, I think it missed the mark.
This is a beautifully written book. But given the intent, it fell short. For the writing and characters, I’d give is four stars, but overall, a solid three.
It is the story of long lasting friendship. The five principle characters forged their bonds in college. The book opens twenty years later. The women have converged for a weekend in Palm Springs. It was a good idea to have a character map at the beginning of the book because it helped me keep them all straight. They are an unlikely group in the paths they have chosen and their backgrounds, but similar in their goals, challenges, and need for one another..
To summarize:
Gregg, married to a wealthy space entrepreneur, is a former actress, current Texas legislator weighing a national run. She has two small children.
Carson, unmarried, is a writer living in Brooklyn with one successful novel published and another finished. She has no interest in marriage but wants to establish connection with the father she never knew.
Bella, a New York attorney, is engaged in a high stakes legal case that will make or break her career. She has two children and a husband who reveals his character, or lack thereof, as the book progresses.
Hillary is a successful ENT doctor living in Chicago with a husband fighting drug addition, a dependent mother and young son.
Reba is a former high achieving executive, livies in San Francisco with a wealthy husband and aging parents. She is in the middle of so far unsuccessful IVF.
There was much to like about this story. Strong female bonds, emotional intelligence, realistic problems (if you live in a certain stratosphere). The characters, their background, their current conflicts were well developed and engaging. However, the one thing that felt off about the story were the husbands. Of the four married women, each of the husbands were unlikable in their own way (except maybe the thinly described Reba’s husband). It may be said that they all struck the same one note—self involved,, disinterested as fathers,, intractable. . The ending, featuring the least likeable of the husbands, seemed too over the top, almost farcical.
If you isolate these women from their lives and the questionable choices they’ve made and consider this only as the story of friendship, I think you’ll love it. But if you expected a fuller exploration of relationships in the age of women who succeed professionally and have children, I think it missed the mark.
This is a beautifully written book. But given the intent, it fell short. For the writing and characters, I’d give is four stars, but overall, a solid three.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
For readers who struggled with the pacing, it’s worth remembering that this is literary fiction, it’s meant to linger, pause, and invite reflection rather than rush the plot.
Five women on the cusp of their forties gather in Palm Springs for a weekend escape from real life. There we meet Bella, Carson, Gregg, Hillary, and Reba, each carrying the weight of a life at a crossroads. Bella, a high-powered lawyer, feels on the brink of another mental breakdown if she doesn’t win her upcoming trial. Carson is wrestling with whether to reveal a deeply personal truth her own paternity she’s more recently discovered, as it relates to the novel she has just completed. Gregg, a former actress, believes she’s ready for a much larger stage, the U.S. House of Representatives, but first must convince her tech-mogul husband. Hillary is barely holding things together, juggling an addict husband, a demanding career as an ENT physician, and concerns about a child who may be neurodivergent. Reba has recently left the consulting world after years of punishing hours and now finds herself adrift, still yearning for the child she desperately wants. Each woman is carrying a heavy emotional load and hoping their friendships will help them navigate it.
Millennial readers, in particular, may recognize pieces of themselves in each of these women, all fighting through similar trenches. The friendships ebb and flow as the narrative moves through two decades, from their college years to this milestone birthday weekend. While the novel can feel stream-of-consciousness at times, the care taken with the prose is undeniable. I haven’t had to look up so many words in a hot minute.
My main critique lies in the portrayal of the men, who are largely one-dimensional and often cruel. While the novel’s focus is clearly on female relationships, this characterization occasionally veers into outright demonization. Additionally, a scene involving animal cruelty felt unnecessary, especially given the frequent shifts in point of view that delayed any sense of resolution (I had to peek a few chapters ahead to calm my racing heart).
Still, for readers seeking a reminder of the power and complexity of female friendship, and who are willing to patiently traverse twenty years of shared history, this novel delivers.
Thank you to NetGalley, Zando, and author Emily Nemens for the advanced copy of the book. Clutch is out on Feburary 3rd. All opinions are my own.
http://www.instagram.com/passionforprose
Five women on the cusp of their forties gather in Palm Springs for a weekend escape from real life. There we meet Bella, Carson, Gregg, Hillary, and Reba, each carrying the weight of a life at a crossroads. Bella, a high-powered lawyer, feels on the brink of another mental breakdown if she doesn’t win her upcoming trial. Carson is wrestling with whether to reveal a deeply personal truth her own paternity she’s more recently discovered, as it relates to the novel she has just completed. Gregg, a former actress, believes she’s ready for a much larger stage, the U.S. House of Representatives, but first must convince her tech-mogul husband. Hillary is barely holding things together, juggling an addict husband, a demanding career as an ENT physician, and concerns about a child who may be neurodivergent. Reba has recently left the consulting world after years of punishing hours and now finds herself adrift, still yearning for the child she desperately wants. Each woman is carrying a heavy emotional load and hoping their friendships will help them navigate it.
Millennial readers, in particular, may recognize pieces of themselves in each of these women, all fighting through similar trenches. The friendships ebb and flow as the narrative moves through two decades, from their college years to this milestone birthday weekend. While the novel can feel stream-of-consciousness at times, the care taken with the prose is undeniable. I haven’t had to look up so many words in a hot minute.
My main critique lies in the portrayal of the men, who are largely one-dimensional and often cruel. While the novel’s focus is clearly on female relationships, this characterization occasionally veers into outright demonization. Additionally, a scene involving animal cruelty felt unnecessary, especially given the frequent shifts in point of view that delayed any sense of resolution (I had to peek a few chapters ahead to calm my racing heart).
Still, for readers seeking a reminder of the power and complexity of female friendship, and who are willing to patiently traverse twenty years of shared history, this novel delivers.
Thank you to NetGalley, Zando, and author Emily Nemens for the advanced copy of the book. Clutch is out on Feburary 3rd. All opinions are my own.
http://www.instagram.com/passionforprose
November 30, 2025
For the good first half of the book, I found myself continuously debating whether I should DNF. It is not in my spirit to give up on books. I'm glad I pushed through, because finishing the book helped me understand exactly why I was having such a difficult time connecting with it.
First, I want to say that the story was good. I really enjoyed the storyline and the five characters and their distinct lives. The main part that did not resonate with me was the style of writing. Towards the second half of the book, I realized that this author is a strong writer. The themes of loyalty, distance, and the ways friendships evolve over decades were moving and beautifully grounded. The author clearly has a strong literary voice.
However, the writing style and structure didn't align with my reading preference. The style of writing is metaphor heavy. A simple idea, "students moved slowly on campus after a tragedy", gets turned into "carrying a dozen eggs in the crooks of their elbows, eye sockets, clavicle dips..." See what I mean? This writing is richly descriptive, but it wasn't the right fit for me. I tend to prefer a clearer narrative, and I struggled to stay connected to the story through the heavy, metaphor driven prose. I think readers who enjoy highly descriptive literary fiction will love this.
I also found the frequent use of brackets challenging. This happens throughout the book. The author will write a sentence and then have a different sentence (but related) in the middle, in brackets. Here's an example, taken directly from this book:
"The occasional calls from Gregg's mom (Charlene, the famous poet, had taken a writerly interest in Gregg's most literary friend) were buoying but hardly enough."
Much of the sections that contained brackets were even longer than this. What I found myself doing was mentally covering the sentence in brackets then reading it and then coming back to read what is written inside the brackets. It felt like driving a car and constantly hitting the brake again and again. It disrupts the flow of reading.
All this said, I admire the ambition of the writing and the emotional depth of the characters.
Thank you, NetGalley, for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
First, I want to say that the story was good. I really enjoyed the storyline and the five characters and their distinct lives. The main part that did not resonate with me was the style of writing. Towards the second half of the book, I realized that this author is a strong writer. The themes of loyalty, distance, and the ways friendships evolve over decades were moving and beautifully grounded. The author clearly has a strong literary voice.
However, the writing style and structure didn't align with my reading preference. The style of writing is metaphor heavy. A simple idea, "students moved slowly on campus after a tragedy", gets turned into "carrying a dozen eggs in the crooks of their elbows, eye sockets, clavicle dips..." See what I mean? This writing is richly descriptive, but it wasn't the right fit for me. I tend to prefer a clearer narrative, and I struggled to stay connected to the story through the heavy, metaphor driven prose. I think readers who enjoy highly descriptive literary fiction will love this.
I also found the frequent use of brackets challenging. This happens throughout the book. The author will write a sentence and then have a different sentence (but related) in the middle, in brackets. Here's an example, taken directly from this book:
"The occasional calls from Gregg's mom (Charlene, the famous poet, had taken a writerly interest in Gregg's most literary friend) were buoying but hardly enough."
Much of the sections that contained brackets were even longer than this. What I found myself doing was mentally covering the sentence in brackets then reading it and then coming back to read what is written inside the brackets. It felt like driving a car and constantly hitting the brake again and again. It disrupts the flow of reading.
All this said, I admire the ambition of the writing and the emotional depth of the characters.
Thank you, NetGalley, for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Disclosure: I received an advance review copy of Clutch from Zando | Tin House via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Emily Nemens’s Clutch follows five women who have sustained a decades-long friendship into midlife, navigating careers, marriages, parenthood, politics, and personal reckoning. On paper, this sounded like exactly my kind of novel. I’ve recently enjoyed several books centered on long-term friendships and the ways they stretch and strain over time. Unfortunately, while the premise held real promise, the execution left me disappointed.
My primary struggle with Clutch was the writing itself. I’m a reader who enjoys a wide range of styles, including experimental and voice-forward work, but here the prose felt relentlessly dense and overwrought. Page after page of unbroken block text, long paragraphs, and heavy sentences made the reading experience feel more like an endurance test than an immersive story. There was very little variance in rhythm or structure, and the scarcity of dialogue only heightened the sense that the book was narrating at me rather than inviting me in. Instead of feeling intentionally literary, the prose often felt like it was trying too hard to announce its seriousness.
Because of this, I never fully connected with the characters or their conflicts. Any thematic exploration of friendship, ambition, or care was buried under the weight of the narration. I found myself bogged down in the execution to the point that I couldn’t meaningfully engage with what the novel was trying to say. What lingered most for me wasn’t a scene or an emotional beat, but the persistent feeling of pretension and excess.
By the time I finished, my dominant emotion was relief. I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I kept waiting for it to open up or loosen its grip. It never quite did.
I suspect Clutch will appeal to readers who enjoy dense, interior-heavy literary fiction and are drawn to prose that prioritizes style and intellectual signaling over narrative momentum or accessibility. For readers like me, who value variation, balance, and a sense of forward movement, this one may feel like a chore.
Emily Nemens’s Clutch follows five women who have sustained a decades-long friendship into midlife, navigating careers, marriages, parenthood, politics, and personal reckoning. On paper, this sounded like exactly my kind of novel. I’ve recently enjoyed several books centered on long-term friendships and the ways they stretch and strain over time. Unfortunately, while the premise held real promise, the execution left me disappointed.
My primary struggle with Clutch was the writing itself. I’m a reader who enjoys a wide range of styles, including experimental and voice-forward work, but here the prose felt relentlessly dense and overwrought. Page after page of unbroken block text, long paragraphs, and heavy sentences made the reading experience feel more like an endurance test than an immersive story. There was very little variance in rhythm or structure, and the scarcity of dialogue only heightened the sense that the book was narrating at me rather than inviting me in. Instead of feeling intentionally literary, the prose often felt like it was trying too hard to announce its seriousness.
Because of this, I never fully connected with the characters or their conflicts. Any thematic exploration of friendship, ambition, or care was buried under the weight of the narration. I found myself bogged down in the execution to the point that I couldn’t meaningfully engage with what the novel was trying to say. What lingered most for me wasn’t a scene or an emotional beat, but the persistent feeling of pretension and excess.
By the time I finished, my dominant emotion was relief. I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I kept waiting for it to open up or loosen its grip. It never quite did.
I suspect Clutch will appeal to readers who enjoy dense, interior-heavy literary fiction and are drawn to prose that prioritizes style and intellectual signaling over narrative momentum or accessibility. For readers like me, who value variation, balance, and a sense of forward movement, this one may feel like a chore.
September 29, 2025
Giving this a slightly generous four-star review. This book follows five college friends (women) through the next two decades of their lives—career ambitions, achievements and setbacks, marriages and relationships (successful and maybe not), parents aging, family secrets, mental health and substance abuse issues, wealth or lack thereof, pregnancy/motherhood, fertility struggles and abortion, and more—all of the things that we know make up a life. I thought this book did a great job realistically depicting how even strong women allow ourselves to become secondary characters to the men in our lives and it definitely showed several male characters as the self-centered, selfish, manipulative jerks they can be. There were things that happened in this book that I was FURIOUS about, but also showed how the women faced these situations and their trade-offs (some of which I did not agree with at all). It was very truthful about the internal struggles of women as they grow and evolve in the various stages of life and how solitary that can be and how difficult it can be to share that burden with friends who you know want the best for you, but also may (probably will) judge and remember all you share. It also did a great job of showing the organic ebbing and flowing of friendships, how groups break off into twos and threes to sometimes (often) chat and gossip about the others. It made me think a lot about the wonderful value of female friendships and how the perceived and actual slights, competition and retributions play out IRL and sometimes destroy or strengthen those friendships that we deeply value and need. All that said, sometimes the book was hard to follow -- regrettably, I don't feel like I even really had a handle on which character was which until close to the end of the book. It also felt a little overwrought, tried a bit to hard to be "literary" and was maybe too long. Not a must read, but a thought-provoding one. PS. I am not sure I ever figured out what the title "Clutch" is supposed to mean. I always enjoy finding that Easter egg in a novel, but missed it here.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Five college friends on the cusp of turning forty meet for a weekend in Palm Springs. They are all going through things, but their friendship is steady and restorative. Reba, daughter of extremely wealthy parents, longs for a child but hasn't jumped into IVF or any medical intervention. Hillary is a plastic surgeon who spends her days doing nose jobs and her evenings caring for her son. She's begun the process of divorcing her husband, who is back in rehab again. Bella is a lawyer on the partner track of a prestigious New York firm. Her current case is her make or break chance to be promoted. The stress of it has put her marriage on the back burner, and she sometimes asks her husband to pitch in more than he is interested in doing. Gregg is a Texas legislator married to a techbro billionaire, with a large staff to care for her house and her children. She has it all, including four corgis, but she's tired. And there's Carson, the poor member of their group, although poor in this world doesn't mean she can't afford to live as a writer in New York and to not have to take a regular job. As the story moves forward, it also folds backwards to explain their pasts, as they all face pivotal moments in their lives.
The strength of this novel lays in the writing style which bobs and weaves through each paragraph, moving forwards and back in time, curving around to add small details and moving rapidly between the five characters. Nothing except the story is straight-forward. It forces the reader to slow down in moments of high drama to look at the small details about a character's past or detour away from the action to focus on small details. It can be frustrating, but there's no question that it raises the tension. The downside of this approach is that the payoff often doesn't match the tension the author has created. And in the final chapters, the solutions are too easy and nice, but for expensively-educated women living financially secure lives, maybe harsher consequences are impossible.
The strength of this novel lays in the writing style which bobs and weaves through each paragraph, moving forwards and back in time, curving around to add small details and moving rapidly between the five characters. Nothing except the story is straight-forward. It forces the reader to slow down in moments of high drama to look at the small details about a character's past or detour away from the action to focus on small details. It can be frustrating, but there's no question that it raises the tension. The downside of this approach is that the payoff often doesn't match the tension the author has created. And in the final chapters, the solutions are too easy and nice, but for expensively-educated women living financially secure lives, maybe harsher consequences are impossible.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This is a novel examining friendship over time. It is also a character driven novel.
Five women - Gregg, politician; Bella, a litigator; Carson, a writer; Hillary, a doctor; and Reba, a consultant. All were college together and have sustained their friendship over 20 years. The book opens with all of them meeting in Palm Springs to commiserate approaching 40. What follows in the aftermath of that time together is the story of where each have been and where they are going now. All have secrets, marriages (except Carson) that are complicated, decisions that will affect their relationships and desires longing to be fulfilled. But their bond as friends overrides anything and gives these women a bond that helps them endure what life throws at them. There are a lot of funny, intelligent and cognizant conversation and comments in the telling.
An omniscient narrator has the job of telling the story of each of the five women, which is impressive, given how many to manage. I like omniscient narrators but so few writers seem to like to use them - so kudos to the author! I think though by having so many characters, it was hard to keep momentum up at times. I also felt 5 characters was a bit much, too much shifting of the story that might moved faster with one or two less ones. I felt a connection to Bella, but struggled with Carson - she seemed to me to be the least knowable. I didn’t like Gregg for her selfishness and I felt I’d have liked to have known Hillary more.
The ending to the book was a stunner. I’m not sure how I feel about it but I felt the author threw in some kind of vindication - can we always get what we want? I think the writing was great and overall I had a good experience reading it.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and Zando Publishing for allowing me to read this ARC.
#Clutch
#Zando
#EmilyNemens
Five women - Gregg, politician; Bella, a litigator; Carson, a writer; Hillary, a doctor; and Reba, a consultant. All were college together and have sustained their friendship over 20 years. The book opens with all of them meeting in Palm Springs to commiserate approaching 40. What follows in the aftermath of that time together is the story of where each have been and where they are going now. All have secrets, marriages (except Carson) that are complicated, decisions that will affect their relationships and desires longing to be fulfilled. But their bond as friends overrides anything and gives these women a bond that helps them endure what life throws at them. There are a lot of funny, intelligent and cognizant conversation and comments in the telling.
An omniscient narrator has the job of telling the story of each of the five women, which is impressive, given how many to manage. I like omniscient narrators but so few writers seem to like to use them - so kudos to the author! I think though by having so many characters, it was hard to keep momentum up at times. I also felt 5 characters was a bit much, too much shifting of the story that might moved faster with one or two less ones. I felt a connection to Bella, but struggled with Carson - she seemed to me to be the least knowable. I didn’t like Gregg for her selfishness and I felt I’d have liked to have known Hillary more.
The ending to the book was a stunner. I’m not sure how I feel about it but I felt the author threw in some kind of vindication - can we always get what we want? I think the writing was great and overall I had a good experience reading it.
I’d like to thank NetGalley and Zando Publishing for allowing me to read this ARC.
#Clutch
#Zando
#EmilyNemens
October 14, 2025
3.5 stars
Friendship is a vital part of our lives, and its scope changes dramatically as we do. As our obligations and social structures evolve, our bonds do, too. That's the focus of this novel, centering on five women who were close in college and are still bound by time, shared experience, and of course love.
Structurally, I FELT the passage of time, and that was periodically a barrier. Mimicking actual life, there are moments that seem to really slow and get a lot of attention and detail and others that fly by. From a reader's perspective, this can pose challenges with engagement. Additionally, there are one to two too many friends in this group. As is always the case when dealing with either a family or friend structure like this, some characters are more compelling than others. I did have a hard time keeping some of them straight and being equally concerned with each character's outcomes. Often, I thought I'd have enjoyed getting to know a smaller group better versus the diluted version with an extra (IMO) character or two.
This is the kind of book that hits right at a certain age and experience. Folks who have gone through multiple seasons of life and through associated friendship transitions will appreciate the way those details are handled and modeled here. At the same time, they may also struggle - as I did - with the long journey.
I enjoyed this read overall and will look forward to more from this author.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Friendship is a vital part of our lives, and its scope changes dramatically as we do. As our obligations and social structures evolve, our bonds do, too. That's the focus of this novel, centering on five women who were close in college and are still bound by time, shared experience, and of course love.
Structurally, I FELT the passage of time, and that was periodically a barrier. Mimicking actual life, there are moments that seem to really slow and get a lot of attention and detail and others that fly by. From a reader's perspective, this can pose challenges with engagement. Additionally, there are one to two too many friends in this group. As is always the case when dealing with either a family or friend structure like this, some characters are more compelling than others. I did have a hard time keeping some of them straight and being equally concerned with each character's outcomes. Often, I thought I'd have enjoyed getting to know a smaller group better versus the diluted version with an extra (IMO) character or two.
This is the kind of book that hits right at a certain age and experience. Folks who have gone through multiple seasons of life and through associated friendship transitions will appreciate the way those details are handled and modeled here. At the same time, they may also struggle - as I did - with the long journey.
I enjoyed this read overall and will look forward to more from this author.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, for which I thank them.
“Clutch” is a novel by Emily Nemens. This book is about five since college friends gathering together over a weekend. Although the woman have been friends for 20 years and their lives have diverged (some married, some mothers, some working, some famous, but all dealing with things in their lives), they’ve managed to continue to make time for each other. This weekend is a way for them to reconnect and have time - by themselves - for each other. I found this book to be … odd. I couldn’t keep the women straight in my mind for a while, although there are things making them different from each other. I also just could not relate to these women although, in some ways, I felt I should have. Once they were settled in the house and the next morning had the phone taken away and the “chocolate delicacies” given, I have to admit to just skimming large parts of the book. This book is very character driven - which would have been okay, but at times it felt like the author had so much to say (between the long sentences and many parenthetical phrases interrupting) that at times I felt like I needed to first parse the sentences, then understand what I just read. Maybe it’s me … maybe it’s the author’s style, but this wasn’t a fit for me. Which is a pity, because the premise sounded really interesting. My recommendation - read some of the more positive reviews and give this book a try … it might be your cup of tea.
“Clutch” is a novel by Emily Nemens. This book is about five since college friends gathering together over a weekend. Although the woman have been friends for 20 years and their lives have diverged (some married, some mothers, some working, some famous, but all dealing with things in their lives), they’ve managed to continue to make time for each other. This weekend is a way for them to reconnect and have time - by themselves - for each other. I found this book to be … odd. I couldn’t keep the women straight in my mind for a while, although there are things making them different from each other. I also just could not relate to these women although, in some ways, I felt I should have. Once they were settled in the house and the next morning had the phone taken away and the “chocolate delicacies” given, I have to admit to just skimming large parts of the book. This book is very character driven - which would have been okay, but at times it felt like the author had so much to say (between the long sentences and many parenthetical phrases interrupting) that at times I felt like I needed to first parse the sentences, then understand what I just read. Maybe it’s me … maybe it’s the author’s style, but this wasn’t a fit for me. Which is a pity, because the premise sounded really interesting. My recommendation - read some of the more positive reviews and give this book a try … it might be your cup of tea.
October 6, 2025
Thank you to #NetGalley and #TinHouse for the opportunity to read and review #Clutch by #EmilyNemens. I love novels that follow a group of friends, in this case five women who are on the cusp of 40 -- Gregg, Reba, Carson, Hillary, and Bella - and the ways in which their lives (and friendships) have changed since meeting as undergraduates in college. The five women are well-written but I found Carson and Hillary the most relatable and interesting to follow.
Nemens does a great job moving forward and backward in time to demonstrate the ways their lives have changed, including key moments from the past. The five women are finally getting together after a long hiatus and, in that interim, marriages, births, and various other big ticket life events have occurred. The women are in very different places in their lives but it is clear that they care about one another and, true to life, some are closer than others. The majority of the novel, including the most pivotal action, takes place within the months that follow their meetup.
I won't go into the details of what each woman is experiencing in the post-meetup timeframe but each is navigating life-changing circumstances. If that all sounds interesting, I HIGHLY recommend this novel and readers will not be disappointed with the details. If you are a fan of sweeping friendship novels and lovingly written characters, this is an absolute WIN!!!
Lastly, I saw that Emily Nemens has another book release in the coming year from Tin House and I can't wait!!
Nemens does a great job moving forward and backward in time to demonstrate the ways their lives have changed, including key moments from the past. The five women are finally getting together after a long hiatus and, in that interim, marriages, births, and various other big ticket life events have occurred. The women are in very different places in their lives but it is clear that they care about one another and, true to life, some are closer than others. The majority of the novel, including the most pivotal action, takes place within the months that follow their meetup.
I won't go into the details of what each woman is experiencing in the post-meetup timeframe but each is navigating life-changing circumstances. If that all sounds interesting, I HIGHLY recommend this novel and readers will not be disappointed with the details. If you are a fan of sweeping friendship novels and lovingly written characters, this is an absolute WIN!!!
Lastly, I saw that Emily Nemens has another book release in the coming year from Tin House and I can't wait!!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I received a digital ARC from Zando. I only request ARCs that truly catch my eye and feel like books I would normally pick up on my own. When I read the premise of this one, I was immediately intrigued and felt like I could relate to both the characters and the plot. The story centers around a group of five friends who live all over the country and are all at very different places in their lives. What they share is a friendship that has lasted more than twenty years, beginning in college and continuing into their forties.
Unfortunately, I did not connect with this book at all. I found the writing to be complicated and often difficult to follow. The constant shifts between past and present within the same chapters made it challenging to stay engaged, and I frequently felt pulled out of the story. As someone who is the same age as these women, I was really looking forward to the banter that comes with turning forty, the deep love that long term friendships bring, and the real life challenges the characters were facing.
Instead, I never became invested in any of the characters and found myself skimming near the end. While I think the premise of this book was strong, the execution did not work for me. The characters and the writing style simply were not what I personally connected with.
Unfortunately, I did not connect with this book at all. I found the writing to be complicated and often difficult to follow. The constant shifts between past and present within the same chapters made it challenging to stay engaged, and I frequently felt pulled out of the story. As someone who is the same age as these women, I was really looking forward to the banter that comes with turning forty, the deep love that long term friendships bring, and the real life challenges the characters were facing.
Instead, I never became invested in any of the characters and found myself skimming near the end. While I think the premise of this book was strong, the execution did not work for me. The characters and the writing style simply were not what I personally connected with.
September 24, 2025
Clutch is a tender, moving portrayal of enduring female friendship. In a vein similar to Ann Patchett, Emily Nemens makes skillful use of the moments big and small that end up defining our lives and relationships. I loved the ebbs and flows in these women’s dynamics with each other; the friendships are not free from secrets and resentments, but they last in spite of them. At times, the lyrical prose was a little hard to follow, but I think an audiobook version of this with the right narrator would be beautiful. A personal critique is that I did grow weary of seeing such accomplished, kind, and interesting women be cut down again and again by the vacuous men in their lives. Is it realistic? Sure. I would’ve preferred less predictable challenges, though the responses from the women kept the story engaging enough for me. Lastly, readers looking for a diverse cast of characters should look elsewhere—this cast of women is nearly all white, educated, and relatively well off. I don’t think this homogeneity is a bad thing, just an observation.
Content warnings: suicide attempt, animal cruelty, drug use, pregnancy loss
I received a free ARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Content warnings: suicide attempt, animal cruelty, drug use, pregnancy loss
I received a free ARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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