Book Review: Fleishman Is In Trouble #MomsWhoRead #Struggle #Fiction #Book #BookBlog #Review

This book caught my eye because one of my favorite authors raved about it…so a good friend and I decided to read this one together…

The struggle was REAL with this one. It took a month to get through this one…I seriously thought about not finishing, but I stuck it out hoping the ending could save it…nope. **For what it’s worth, it took my friend a month too and she felt the same.

If you like reading about a newly separated/divorced man (Toby Fleishman) who finds himself on an app constantly talking about sex, this is a book for you. Seriously, the sex talk was over the top. We get it. You’re appealing to women. He walked around with the attitude of a martyr and kept up his poor me, poor me to everyone he talking to…I couldn’t like or support him.

His ex is no better…she ends up going “missing” and just leaves her life (and two kids) behind. It was hard to like her, even when there was a semi-sob story.

Then there’s this odd point of view of one of Toby Fleishman’s friends. I couldn’t quite figure out how she fit in to the story, honestly she could have been left out. It felt like maybe she was just writing about the Fleishman’s, but it was so bizarre and didn’t really add anything to the story.

2 stars.  The ONLY reason why this isn’t 1 star is because I reserve that for the rare book I don’t finish. This book made me rethink my rating system. I don’t understand the rave reviews behind it. It was a book full of all unlikable people that I did not feel anything for. It doesn’t help when the ending does NOTHING. If you have read this one I would be real curious to hear your thoughts on it as well. Maybe I missed the whole point. Have you ever read a book like this??

Details

Title: Fleishman Is In Trouble

Author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Genre(s): Fiction

Publisher: Random House

Release Date: June 18, 2019

Find it here on Goodreads

First Line Fridays: February 14th #FLF #BookMeme #Friday #BookQuote #ReadMe #Reading #MomsWhoRead #Book

As always First Line Friday comes courtesy of Hoarding Books Blog.  I discovered this magic thanks to Crystal at Must Love Reviews.  Here’s what you’re all here for…the first line…

Toby Fleishman awoke one morning inside the city he’d lived in all his adult life ad which was somehow now crawling with women who wanted him.

I. Am. The. Worst. I said I was not going to let your posts bog me down and read the books you raved about…and here I go, going to my local library and picked up Fleishman Is In Trouble.

Blurb

Recently separated Toby Fleishman is suddenly, somehow–and at age forty-one, short as ever–surrounded by women who want him: women who are self-actualized, women who are smart and interesting, women who don’t mind his height, women who are eager to take him for a test drive with just the swipe of an app. Toby doesn’t mind being used in this way; it’s a welcome change from the thirteen years he spent as a married man, the thirteen years of emotional neglect and contempt he’s just endured. Anthropologically speaking, it’s like nothing he ever experienced before, particularly back in the 1990s, when he first began dating and became used to swimming in the murky waters of rejection.

But Toby’s new life–liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night–is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn’t know–she won’t answer his texts or calls.

Is Toby’s ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.

What are you reading today??