Review: Writers & Lovers

Writers & Lovers by Lily King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In Writers & Lovers, Casey is living the expected life of a writer in that she's drowning in debt, she's working as a waitress, living in a garden shed, and doesn't quite know how she's ever going to finish a novel and query it. But throughout this book, Casey also has to deal with her mother's recent death, her nonexistent relationship with her father, and multiple relationships with men that often leave her with the choice of settling or risking what could be.

I think this paints a relatively accurate picture of the post-college writing life. There is no easy or right way to get things done. If you want to survive, you have to spend your time at a job other than writing. If you want to make it as a writer, you have to push the rest of your life aside to get the words on the paper. Casey isn't the first person that gets a career off the ground in fits and starts, and she certainly doesn't let the fate of her book dictate what the rest of her life looks like.

The most interesting thing about this novel is that by the end, Casey's life is tied up in a neat little bow. Yes, the reader can see where there will be huge obstacles to come after they are done reading, but for a literary novel, it's as if the ending is almost too nice. Nothing really happened in Casey's life while we were reading, and she only made a few small decisions with any certainty, yet her hopes and wishes are answered in the span of a chapter or two. You want to be happy for her, but you want to question how quickly everything fell into place.

*Book provided by NetGalley

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