Mostly Sapphic Books's Reviews > Work Nights

I debated giving this one star because it's objectively pretty unsuccessful in a lot of areas, but I decided to give it two stars because it was fast paced, easy to keep reading, and I did want to know how it would end. Was I satisfied with that ending? No. But I did want to get there.

My first major gripe with this book is that the first one hundred pages are ROUGH. The pacing in this book, especially at the beginning, is ridiculously fast. There are so many scenes that last only a page. There are so many characters introduced who only get a paragraph of screen time. There is no breathing room to sink into these people or learn anything about them or get attached to them. At the 100 page mark (which is when we're first introduced to the second love interest, btw, which is too late imo), things slow down a bit and there are more scenes that are actually complete scenes. The dates start getting more in depth descriptions, and those moments when the writing slows down and digs deep are the best parts of this book.

Unfortunately, the characters we do get time to see aren't super fun to follow. I didn't come out of this book liking anyone. Everyone was shallow, insignificant, or made terrible decisions with no reasoning behind them. Both romance options were immediately incompatible with the main character so you aren't rooting for either side of the love triangle, and you very quickly learn that the protagonist Jane is a terrible person, so you aren't rooting for her in any area of her life either.

You are hoping that Jane grows as a person by the end of the book, though. Does she? Spoiler alert: (view spoiler)[No. The ending of this book leaves Jane starting to recognize that she's selfish and irresponsible but not taking any action to change that. I couldn't even tell you how her life is going to go after this story ends. There are so many things that feel unresolved. Everything just kind of blows up in her face and she goes, "Well, shit." She doesn't even ask, "Now what?" (hide spoiler)]I don't even know what Jane wants. She's an intentionally very listless character, but she honestly has no personality and no internality. She has no ambition. She has no charisma. She's very hollow as a character, and it's just not interesting to follow, especially when she's making poor decisions that she hasn't managed to justify.

Also the dialogue was weird. There are so many quirky one liners from random side characters. Was it supposed to be funny? Was it supposed to say something about how we're all strange and complex? Was it supposed to propose deep metaphorical ideas under the guise of comedy? I don't know.

I don't know what this book was trying to say. I don't know what the point of any of it was. I just know that I don't think this book said anything about dating or quarter life crises or discontentment or New York City that other literary fiction books haven't already said better.