Rebecca's Thoughts

Originally posted in best books of January & February 2024

Goodreads Synopsis: Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. After a sojourn across the pond, she arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them from having a good time. 

 In her diary, Isa describes a sweltering summer in the glittering city. By day, the girls sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Money runs ever tighter, and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert their social capital into something more lasting than their precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill.

This is a book about nothing. It’s mostly just vibes but I ate it up. I really like this book and enjoyed learning about how these two girls were surviving in New York. The characters are unlikable, unrelatable, and at the same time very interesting and great storytellers. Despite being unlikable Marlowe Granados does a great job humanizing these characters and by the end, I was really wanting them to succeed. 

As I said, this book has no plot. It’s comprised of journal entries, and they often depict very frivolous things or juicy gossip about the other characters in the book. The book is vapid and very materialistic in the way it depicts life in New York, but at the same time feels very endearing and realistic in its pursuit of happiness and belonging. It’s a book about finding oneself, but also getting drunk and living life to the fullest and who can knock that?