I have only heard good things about Liza Palmer – how funny and relatable her books are. I have quite a few on my physical bookshelves to read. So I was really excited when I was approved for The Nobodies! My first Liza Palmer read!

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

An emoji face? And not even a cute emoji face? Hmmmm…

SUMMARY: If there’s one thing Joan Dixon knows about herself, it’s that she is a damn good journalist. But when she is laid off from yet another soon-to-be-shuttered newspaper, and even the soulless, listicle-writing online jobs have dried up, she is left with few options. Closer to 40 than 30, single, living with her parents again, Joan decides she needs to reinvent herself. She goes to work as a junior copywriter at Bloom, a Los Angeles startup where her bosses are all a decade younger and snacks and cans of fizzy water flow freely. For once, Joan has a steady paycheck and a stable job. She befriends a group of misfit coworkers and even begins a real relationship, after years of false starts. But once a journalist, always a journalist, and as Joan starts to poke beneath Bloom’s bright surface, she realizes that she may have accidentally stumbled onto the scoop of her lifetime. Is it worth risking everything for the sake of the story? Charmingly candid, hilarious, and deeply moving, The Nobodies is a novel about failing but never losing the core of yourself, from a beloved writer at the top of her game.

WHAT I LOVED LIKED: There are 2 storylines going on at the same time here. One is Joan trying to figure out her life, and the second is the mystery of what exactly her employer, Bloom, does. Especially when she is a 30-something working around a bunch of 20-somethings who don’t care that they have no idea what the company does, or how their role works in the bigger scheme of things.

The storyline that kept me turning the pages was the Bloom storyline. As we were nearing the end of the story, I found myself also wondering what it was they did. But was it enough to drive the whole book? Well…

WHAT MADE ME SCRATCH MY HEAD: The character development really left something to be desired. I never really felt like I connected to any of the characters, including Joan. And why was she written as though she was a dowdy old 50-something? There were mentions sprinkled throughout the book about how she didn’t know what acronyms, like SMH, mean (you know – shake my head?) and constantly spoke about the “younger generation.” Ummm…soooo…this is awkward because I am a closer-to-40-than-30-year-old. And I know what all that “text speak” means. We were in our 20’s when all of that hit. And we finished growing up as the digital age sparked. We spent our high school years on AIM. So why didn’t she know any of it?

FINAL THOUGHTS: I think the face on the cover of the book sums up my feelings perfectly.

It wasn’t horribly bad, but it wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read. For that reason, I will give this 3 out of 5 bookstacks.