Cult Classic - Sloane Crosley

Fiction

Rating: 7.5/10

When newly engaged Lola runs into an ex-boyfriend, one of many with whom she has complicated history, she is sure that it is just a random coincidence.  Turns out, not so much.

They start popping up with freakish regularity, appearing as mirages or ghosts of relationships past. As she is confronted with uncomfortable reminders of lost loves, she is forced to accept her own flaws and egregious treatment of past partners.

After these surreal run ins start to pile up, Lola is brought into the loop of what’s going on.  She is a test subject for a cult like sales guru who is intent on mastering the power of suggestion to sell high end fix it packages to people who have more money than sense.  

Chosen because she has been diagnosed by no one of any credentials of an affliction that does not exist, people hoarder, Lola has given them lots to work with.  She comforts herself that her break ups were because she is confident in who she is, and her partner of the moment wasn’t a fit in the picture she had of herself.  

This sneakily insightful and deeply hilarious satire shows that it is not remotely that simple.  Deep down we are flinging soil in every direction in a desperate attempt to figure out why our relationships fail. Romantic and otherwise.

My thanks to NetGalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and the author for the advanced readers copy. 

Book Pairing(s): Black Buck by Mateo Askariour, Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick, The Clasp by Sloane Crosley