Katy O.'s Reviews > Same As It Ever Was

(free review copy) ETA: I came back and rated this five stars because I just can't stop thinking about it. Lombardo worms her way into my heart and brain and simply settles in, and for that, she deserves the highest rating from me.

ORIGINAL REVIEW

Please don't mind this very very meandering and incoherent review in the immediate aftermath of reading this book. I hope to clean it up in the future? Maybe?

Whew. I'm going to hold off on rating this one for a bit because I have spent such a long (relative) amount of time in the pages of this book and feeling so many complicated feelings about the main character Julia that I'm a bit muddled about how to come to a final verdict. Does the fact that I won't be able to stop thinking about the story and the relationships for a long time mean it's stellar? Or does the fact that I wanted to scream at Julia a million times, despite understanding that her childhood trauma impacted her adult choices, mean that it's not a favorite? This isn't an easy book to love, in my opinion, because it's so very messy. Julia is a mother and daughter and wife who has absolutely none of it figured out and who is very much trying and often feeling like she's failing and to some, HAS objectively failed. But who gets to call a marriage and mother a failure? I posit that it's only the spouse and child that gets to make that verdict.

(view spoiler)[ I think that I would be able to easily give this five complicated stars if not for the absolute gut punch in the last few pages of the book. I'm currently livid that Lombardo did that to Mark, Julia and ME, and I might need to cool down a bit to think about how that (horrible) plot twist added to the story, versus just ending the story with the wedding and birth of their grandchild. Don't we already know that everyone dies eventually? Couldn't we just have been given that much security with this very insecure story? (hide spoiler)]

If book clubs can agree to read such a tome of a meandering (and winding and time-hopping) story, I think this could make for amazing discussion. If you want easily understandable and loveable characters, I think this might be a tough one for you. If you want to wade through and revel in the quagmire of a traumatic childhood and how it impacts a woman for her entire life, THIS is the book for you. As the mother of teens and married for 19 years, I definitely connected with parts of this book, but had to draw on my understanding as an educator of trauma response to have empathy for many parts. It's not that I didn't LIKE Julia, it's just that it hurt me to read about her for so very much of the book. I feel like parts of me ARE Julia while other parts of me want to scream at Julia and parts of Julia are so many of the children I know and so I kind of want to mother Julia?? Confusing.

Also, I think Mark could have totally written How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, DAMN.

And yes this review is a hot mess.

Source: digital review copy via Edelweiss