Sociable by Rebecca Harrington is a story of and/or a commentary on the twenty somethings in the world of social media. Perhaps, I am not the right audience for this book; I do not see the humor in it. Elinor emerges as a shallow character who is more annoying than endearing. I find myself inclined to tell Elinor to stop whining, grow up, and be an adult. Satires can be biting and funny. For me, unfortunately, this book is neither.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2018/06/sociable.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

I found Sociable to be less of a novel and more a social commentary on society as it exists today. I am neither a fan nor a foe of Sociable. I ranked it at 3 stars because of the weak character portraits. Rebecca Harrington offers readers a character driven book, unfortunately I didnt find them compelling, or even likeable. The characters are unpleasant stereotypes of the millennial generation, and lack any depth or complexity. Though I did find several of the situations and dialogue humorous, it was kind of uncomfortable laughter. I did appreciate Ms. Harrington's use of a writing technique that broke through the fourth wall, speaking directly to the readers.
I was entertained but not enthralled.

There's definitely some promise in this book and with the author. I was excited to read this book and was bummed to see bad reviews, but I definitely understand now.

Since I received an ARC, I'm not sure how much was worked out after the publication. But I had issues with randomly breaking the 4th wall (omnipresent voice talking to the reader twice in the whole story). At some point, there were two sections that were from J.W.'s perspective (instead of Elinor's), and that was weird and random as well. There were also a couple of times that someone was mentioned without any explanation of who they were until you read a paragraph or two. I think there were a lot of editing problems here.

The overall writing was fine. Harrington used great description and I really felt like I was with the characters in the setting. I was entertained enough, and it was a short and simple read to enjoy. As a millennial, I was able to relate to the constant need to check your phone/social media/etc.

The characters were somewhat fake and hard to connect to. There were some situations where I was like "that would never happen" or whatever. I just think a lot of the writing was done in Harrington's head instead of inside the pages.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday for the ARC, for which I have given an honest and unbiased review*

I really hated this book and found the ending deeply unsatisfying. The main character is vapid, shockingly immature even for 26 years old, and judgmental. I stuck with it because I thought the book would be about her eventual turnaround and what she learned through writing viral content, but neither really happened.

While she very briefly acknowledges that MAYBE feminism isn't being judgmental but supporting other women to do what makes them happy, there are several other unresolved plotlines that she doesn't appear to learn anything from - i.e. her relationship, her TV appearance, her dates. She's so clueless that doesn't even realize that her coworker isn't talking to her anymore because she's annoyed that she published an essay referencing her and her friends without asking.

Without any character development, this book just meanders along and doesn't go anywhere.

When I read the synopsis of this book, I thought it sounded as though I would learn how a fictionalized Buzzfeed-esque website works. New journalism. I always love to read books about professions that I have no experience in. Instead, I received a story about self-absorbed characters that (spoiler alert) had no character growth and ended the story in the same annoying way they started. Some of the plot points that intrigued me were not well fleshed out and fell flat. I had to ask myself more than once "what was the point of that?"

This book may be better received by millennials who can relate to what the characters go through.

I had such high hopes for this book and was so excited when I got an eARC via Netgalley (in exchange for a review, opinions my own). It took me several weeks to make it past the first couple of chapters because I kept getting so annoyed with the characters that I had to keep putting it down. Finally I breezed through it, cringing along most of it but getting to a point where I could see where Elinor was coming from and, while I didn't excuse any of her dumb actions, I at least understood it. I think I may have hyped this up too much in my head before actually reading it. Ah well. I did enjoy parts of it but don't think I would reread it.

Thank you to Doubleday Books for providing me with a copy of Rebecca Harrington's novel, Sociable, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT- Journalist Elinor Tomlinson is devastated when her boyfriend and fellow journalist, Mike, breaks up with her. They had been dating for four years and the break-up seems to have come from out of the blue. Elinor suspects that Mike was cheating on her with his colleague, Andrea, but no matter how much she dives into Mike's social media, she cannot get concrete proof. In the months after the break-up, Elinor starts working at a company called Journalism.ly, where she has a knack for writing articles that go viral on social media. She starts figuring out life on her own with a new apartment and jumping back into the dating scene, but Mike is never far from her mind. Will Elinor ever understand her breakup or will she just drive herself crazy by using social media to relay to Mike that her life is fine without him?

LIKE- One of the best part of Sociable is the commentary on how men treat women in the workplace. Elinor is a talented journalist, yet the men in her life use subtle tactics to undermine her efforts. When she is dating Mike, his career and talents always shine above hers. The ending of the story has a nice nod to Elinor realizing that she is just as talented and worthy. Her superiors at Journalism.ly, are male and they constantly belittle her. One guy, who is her age and whom she went to college with, feels that he can serve as her mentor, because he has been at the company a few months longer. It's insidious and the worst part is the men clearly don't even realize what they are doing. It's simply the way things between men and women have always been. I certainly recognized the behavior from my own experiences in the work place. Men can be very patronizing, even when they are the "good guys."

Speaking of the men in Sociable; they come across as very flat characters, especially Elinor's co-workers. When I finished the novel, I felt disappointed, especially with Peter, a coworker whom it seems might have a crush on Elinor, but where the storyline never develops. However, after giving it some thought, I've concluded that the point of Sociable is that Elinor allows her fixation on Mike to get in the way of her goals. The point is for Elinor to come into her own and realize that she is worthy outside of having a relationship or validation from social media. It was a little odd that so much of the Peter situation was developed without a pay-off, but the ultimate pay-off was Elinor's self-realization.

And Elinor, oh Elinor...she's a mess. It's not a requirement to have a likable protagonist, but I have to confess that I wish that I had been able to like Elinor a bit more. She reminded me of a character from Lena Dunham's series, Girls. Elinor is self-involved, not particularly nice to her friends, and neurotic. She is full of contradictions and is rather unpleasant. I felt that her situation was highly relatable, but I found myself rooting for her to succeed in her situation, not her as a person. That said, I found Sociable to be a compulsive read that I didn't want to put down. I was locked-in and finished it in one afternoon.

I also want to mention that the same day that I sat down to read Sociable, my husband and I had a discussion about Facebook and the fake realities that people create for themselves or how they post things on social media just for attention. I found this to be very timely with regard to my reading of Sociable, especially how Elinor works hard to cultivate a perfect social media presence. In several scenes, Elinor is at party or a mixer, and she is on her phone (as are others) ignoring real social interactions, while favoring documenting a false version of the situation on their social media accounts. It's stomach turning, because it's what's happening in real life all of the time. Reading Sociable has made me step back from my own social media usage.

DISLIKE- Besides wishing that I had liked Elinor, I found it odd that the story occasionally broke the fourth wall, addressing the reader directly. It was infrequent enough to be a quirk that I found unnecessary and distracting. It always pulled me out of the story.

RECOMMEND- Yes. Sociable is a quick read that stuck in my mind for several days after I finished reading it. It reminded me so much of Girls, that I recommend it to fans of the show. Harrington is a solid writer and this is a on-point topic.

This book wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. I think that it was more a mockery than anything.

While this book sounded like it would be a winning formula, it fell short for me. The main character, Elinor, gets a job creating viral content, all while navigating the life of a twenty something in New York. I didn't find Elinor to be very relatable - she was young & seemed mature at times, but then made weird decisions & had a lot of dialogue that didn't make sense (dialogue with characters as well as inner dialogue). I felt like the story was very disjointed, and the progression of it didn't make sense most of the time. The ending was very abrupt as well, leaving me very unsatisfied. I did enjoy the social media aspect of the book, as well as the discussion of what makes viral content, but it was very shallow & left the reader wanting a lot more.

Thank you so much for this ARC!

I couldn't wait to read this book, it sounded like a book that would be so easy for me to relate to. Unfortunately, it just wasn't so. I really did not connect or even like any characters in this book.

What I imagine was meant to be a fun look at digital communication and relationships, turned into something else entirely. It was a quick and easy read with a few funny and interesting bits. But there were problems.

I couldn’t ever tell if this was to be a tongue in cheek situation or was this for real. Are we poking fun at digital journalism or providing commentary on it. I’m still not 100% sure.

The characters had few redeeming qualities. And it’s tough to read if you don’t like them and there are so many cringeworthy moments.

My biggest problem was point of view. The story flitted around so much. We first meet Elinor, then we are Elinor and still then we are spoken to as the reader. It was hard to keep up with.

The story was quick, but I’m not sure I could recommend.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

This was just not the book for me. I had a hard time getting into it.

The concept for Sociable was good and I was excited to read this book. However, it was not executed well. I didn't like this book at all. Rebecca Harrington went from first person narrative to a third person occasionally. I would much rather an author pick one type of narrative and stick with it.

I love the idea of the book following the main character's, Elinor's, social media. Each chapter would start with Elinor's posting on her social accounts and then the chapter would give the details of those posts. Elinor may have been posting about everything being sunshine and rainbows, but then the reader would get to see what was really happening in her life.

Elinor's live in boyfriend is obviously second guessing their relationship and has one foot out the door, but Elinor is posting old pictures of them together with hashtags about how in love they are. For a bit I was left wondering if Elinor was delusional. I thought this book might take a twist where Elinor isn't really grasping the real world. That didn't happen and this book continued on.

Sociable is only 256 pages thankfully, so it's a very short read. The writing just doesn't make this book worth wasting your precious reading time on. I'm giving it two stars.

Being a grown-up today is not like it was twenty years ago. Relationships are different. Networking is different. And working is definitely different. Millennials are tagged with a lot of snarky monikers and saddled with bad attitudes. But it's a tough world out there. Just ask Elinor. 

Elinor Tomlinson is a recent journalism graduate living in New York City with her boyfriend Mike. They met in J-school and kept their relationship together through first jobs. But while he's writing long-form pieces for his website, she's working as a nanny to pay her share of the bills. Fortunately for her, his mother (a famous writer) knows people, and she sets Elinor up with an interview at a new journalism website, Journalism.ly. 

Elinor is very happy to land the job at Journalism.ly, but it also brings new challenges. Working in an office where no one talks to each other, they all just stare at their laptops all day, she's not sure who to ask for help. And because of the vagueness of her job description, she's not entirely sure what it is she's supposed to be doing there. But she does have a mentor, or two, and her first piece for the site goes viral, so she must be doing something right. Right? 

As Elinor learns to navigate through her adult relationships, through a job with few instructions and very little direction, through her own doubts and insecurities, she also learns what it is to be an adult in a new, social world. 

Rebecca Harrington's Sociable is an immensely readable novel that is both an entertaining coming of age story and an ironic satire of today's workplaces. Written in the same vein as Camille Perri's The Assistants, Sociable is a smart and funny parody of the brave new world of today's young adulthood. From the clueless managers to the challenges of online dating, from the awkward networking events to the open-space workplace, Elinor's experience can be felt by all of us who have ever had a bad job or an apathetic partner. Sociable is the novel of the new reality, and fortunately, it helps us laugh at ourselves as we struggle to gain a foothold in this new world. Very highly recommended!



Galleys for Sociable were provided by Doubleday through NetGalley, with many thanks.

I read Sociable in a matter of hours last weekend, it's a quick easy read. Elinor is a millennial who went to school for journalism. She now works as a nanny and is trying to break into the journalism world. She catches a break and accepts a job as an online writer, creating material meant to go viral. This should be an exciting time for her, yet as her journalism career is finally starting to take off her personal life is falling apart. This book had great promise but unfortunately, it was not for me. The characters were superficial and narcissistic, the dialogue eye roll worthy, and the plot just kind of meanders along. There is zero character growth, I was really hoping Elinor would snap out of it and have an "aha" moment. I think the author wrote this with the intention of poking fun at Millennials but it missed the mark for me. If you are looking for an easy, light, palate cleanser type of book then pick this one up. Thank you @doubledaybooks for this advance reader in exchange for my honest review.

I hated this book. I hated Elinor. I hated Mike. I hated Elinor's friends. I hated Elinor's co-workers.

Elinor is ...a try-hard. She (and Mike) both want to be 'journalists' and end up writing for websites that are struggling to create viral content. Elinor is jealous and says things like "That's not very feminist of you" to her friends. She doesn't develop as a character, instead, she still thrives on petty social media victories and posts.

I think I'm too old to read books like this now. Maybe my copy was missing some pages because this felt like it was missing huge parts of the story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Quirky novel about the culture of social media – using it, creating it, changing it, and earning a living by it. While most of the characters were in their 20s, a few unlikeable chaps were more my age (forty-cough-ish). I just couldn’t wrap my head around grown men acting so silly about making lists a la buzzfeed. The male characters were intolerable at best.

I did like the development of Elinor, and the characters of some of the other women. Elinor was a little wayward but as soon as she got rid of a certain albatross she was able to come into her own.

All in all, I think that (1) I’m not the right demographic for this book (twenty-somethings will appreciate more, I think!), and (2) I’m just too much of a realist to get into unrealistic realistic fiction. Or maybe I’m just clueless. Do people really live like that in the city? Is working for a social media company actually that prestigious? SOCIABLE may have been intended as satire, or maybe something tongue in cheek. Maybe it was totally mocking society. I’m not sure, but whatever it was supposed to be, I think it went over my head.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy of this book.
It's hard for me to articulate how I feel about this book. It's less of a novel (there wasn't really much of a plot) and more of an almost too realistic portrayal of millennial journalism. As a journalist, I found this topic fascinating and relatable. I have totally experienced Elinor's struggles to find a job and go viral, etc. I also dated a fellow writer in college who talked about my writing the way Mike talked about Elinor's writing, so that was relatable too.
I think the book was sometimes painful to read just because of its blatant portrayal of the stuff we millenials all try to deny about ourselves. But no matter how cringeworthy some of the scenes were, I couldn't look away.
Elinor's determination to stay with Mike even though he treated her like crap was especially difficult to get through. I'm glad at least that aspect ended well. I did appreciate Elinor's progression, minute though it might have been.
I didn't really understand the point of J.W.'s perspective since nothing really happened with him. Also, the narrative voice was often really odd and intrusive, like in an old-fashioned Bronte/Austen way. I'm not sure what was up with that.
All in all, I would say it wasn't necessarily a book I had fun reading, but I did find it really interesting so I think it gets some props for that.

Did not finish @ 17%

I tried so hard to push myself through this book, but I just couldn’t do it. The writing style was so stiff and strange, and I had a similar issue with the characters. I just had such a hard time wanting to pick it up that putting it to the side was just the way I had to go.