A very uncomfortable book. Broder does a great job telling the story through the female gaze, but unfortunately that female is deeply selfish, insecure and cruel. And she somehow gets away with all the horrible choices she makes throughout the book (including killing a dog). I didn't like this, but I had to see how it ended. The ending was not satisfying.

This book was truly odd. It was super unique, though! I know a lot of people will like it, but it's not really my cup of tea.

This is not a book for everyone, but it was very much a book for me. I was hooked from the very first page and could not stop thinking about this book in the breaks between reading it (I went on a 4-day hike in-between and would constantly mull over this book while walking). The book starts when Lucy has apparently already hit rock bottom: her boyfriend has left her, her thesis supervisors give her a deadline to finally finish writing the thesis on Sappho she has been working on for years (and in which she does not believe anymore), and she spirals out of control leading to her assaulting her ex and as a result being forced into therapy. Her (much older) sister offers her a job house- and dog-sitting so that maybe she can find her footing again while also attending group therapy. But Lucy is not done spiralling just yet.

An utterly striking, daring and original take on the story of a woman’s unraveling. I was immersed and engrossed from the first sentence, and while our thirty-something female narrator wasn’t always likable by any stretch, and her decisions not always advisable or empathy-enducing, it was the realness and rawness of her character—her flaws, her impulses and yearnings, her need to be needed and repulsion at others and herself, her introspection, her floundering, her imaginings—that resonated with me and won me over. Highly recommend.

This was a strange book. It's like the contemporary fiction version of The Shape of Water, which is to say that the sex scenes were less "fade to black".

I’m not rating this book. This is not a romance novel. Lucy is a severely fucked up and flawed character. She has been dating her boyfriend for ten years with no sign of commitment in sight. She suggests they break up and is shocked and immediately regrets this when he agrees. She ends up needing to leave town after an unfortunate string of events take place... When I first started this book, I hated her. She is judgmental, sexist, mean, codependent, addicted to sex and love, etc. She says her friend’s hair looks “pubic”, she calls someone a butterface, she thinks older women with no lovers are boring/unable to lead fulfilling and adventurous lives. But once I sat with Lucy for a while I understood her more. She sees her own fears and insecurities projected onto others. Yet she thinks she isn’t nearly as bad as them. She has depression and is addicted to the rush of love/sex. She tries and fails many times to recover on her own. Lucy does something pretty gross and unforgivable near the end of the book. But haven’t we all done something gross and unforgivable at some point? Don’t we all think “this is it, no one will love me after this” yet our family is still there to hold us and say “it’s okay.” So in conclusion, there is lots of sex in this book but it ultimately feels awkward, fleeting, or meaningless because this is not a romance novel. It’s a book about hitting rock bottom and the beginning of making your way back to the surface.

The Pisces by Melissa Broder is a shocking, brilliant story about the lengths women go to to be desired. Stories like this one are vital for us to look at our world from a different angle. Allegory and symbolism are strong here. It reminded me of The Vegetarian in tone. I found the use of the fantasy merman character to be an effective way to show how unaware Lucy had become of her own agency and accountability in relationships. This story shows what happens when women feel they lack the power to control their future in relationships. It shows how women use their bodies to please, to acquiesce, to deliver their part to play. I related to the main character at times and I found that terrifying. Read this book if you're looking for a gut punch look at patriarchal structure and the effects. But don't read it for a light romp in romance. Ain't nothing light here. 5/5 stars.

I was intrigued by the concept of The Pisces and I liked quite a bit of Lucy's self-reflection, but ultimately the merman part of it fell incredibly flat for me. I felt like the merman didn't quite fit in too much with the realism of the story. For me, especially in fantasy/magical realism, the fantastic parts do have to mesh with foundation of the book's reality, and because I felt that this didn't, the story didn't mesh with me. I am looking forward to whatever Broder writes next though!

what even is this book


I really, really wanted to like this book. I'd heard so much about it and the premise of it was intriguing. Unfortunately, it was too weird to function.

I enjoyed reading this book though it does feel hard to review. It immediately caught my attention but I didn’t end up liking the main character much. Even so, it helps make Lucy human and watching her deal with mental health issues was appreciated. This was a dark and sexy novel I gobbled up in one weekend . A great summer read.

Thank you to Crown Publishing for providing me with a copy of Melissa Broder's novel, The Pisces, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT- Thirty-eight year old Lucy, has spent over a decade living in Arizona and working on her thesis involving the poetry of Sappho. Lucy is struggling with her thesis and when her boyfriend dumps her for a younger a woman, Lucy hits rock bottom. 

Lucy needs a break from her desert life. Her sister, Annika, is spending the summer traveling and needs someone to dogsit, so Lucy moves into Annika's California beach house for three months. While in California, she tries to get her life back on track by attending group therapy for sex addiciton. Nothing seems to be making her life better, until one evening while sitting on the rocks at the beach, she meets Theo, a handsome and mysterious man, who likes to swim by moonlight.

LIKE/DISLIKE- I usually separate what I liked and dislike about a book, but in the case of The Pisces, I feel the two are so intwined that I need to speak of them together.

I likely would not have read The Pisces, if I had realized that it was erotica. The description of the novel said that it was erotic, but did not list it as "Erotica," which is a big distinction. I'm not a prude, but I also don't read erotica. It's not a genre that I'm familiar with, so perhaps someone who is familiar with the genre would have a very different reaction to The Pisces. 

I found much of the erotica elements to be icky. There are plenty of vivid descriptions about fecal matter and period blood that are just gross. Broder writes incredible sensory descriptions, but they were often of things that I did not care to imagine. I thought erotica would be sexy and a turn-on, but there was nothing sexy about The Pisces. I felt that a lot of it was for shock value.

The Pisces is narrated by Lucy and she is a self-centered, bitchy character. She makes snide judgements about nearly ever other character in the story. She's terrible to her sister, who loves her. The worst part is she neglects the elderly dog that is in her care. I'm not sure if I've ever read a story with blatant animal abuse. As an animal lover, this was hard to stomach. Although, I think all of this is Broder's way of showing us that Lucy is a deeply disturbed person and as a reader, we really not supposed to like or connect with her. There is a subtle shift in her character in the last few chapters, but most of the novel she is not someone who is learning from her mistakes or even wishing to make changes.

I liked the colorful characters that Lucy meets in her group therapy, as they add another dynamic to the story. But the whole time the therapist and things there are being told to do in sex therapy, disturbed me. The advice was terrible, further damaging already damaged women. I kept looking for the plot or character that would redeem the story and shed some positive light, but this was hard to find. Annika seems to be the only normal, good-hearted character and her part is minor. The Pisces is a story about deeply damaged people. 

This is also a fantasy novel with mythological creatures that requires a heavy suspension of disbelief. Logistically, there were elements that didn't add up. The scenes with Theo hanging out with Lucy in Annika's house were bizarre. I was paranoid about the white couch.  I wondered why Lucy didn't question him more, she was too accepting. 

I liked the ending. It's creepy and unsettling. I didn't anticipate the twist. 

RECOMMEND- Probably not, although I think if you love to read the genre of erotica, maybe give The Pisces a try. This book wasn't for me.

After breaking up with her boyfriend, Lucy moves to her sister's house in Venice for the summer. While she is there, Lucy joins a support group for love/sex addiction. From here, things start to get a bit weird (to say the least!) and the misadventures begin.

Lucy meets a merman named Theo. Yes, a MERMAN! She develops an extremely erotic relationship with him. This sounds like it would be the most compelling part of the story and yes, I would definitely say it is at times. However, I found that it acted as a backdrop to the rest of the book.

We follow Lucy as she constantly makes terrible decisions in her life. This is where the real magic of the book takes place for me. There is something so genuinely honest and human about her actions that the reader cannot help but root for her. Even if we do not understand her, we can see where she is coming from.

I am surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I think I was in the mood for something that was on the more bizarre/surreal side and this definitely delivered. The writing style is simplistic and the main character is completely unlikeable but I could not put this book down. The author does an incredible job bringing humour, wit, and quirkiness together to create a readable story about the existential nature of love.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book to be very interesting and unique. I never thought I could dislike a female character until I read this book and eventually found her to be endearing. It maybe a difficult read due to some of the subject matter but the writing itself and evolution of the characters was beautiful. I simply can say the book is crazy/beautiful.

Crossroads, advice, group therapy and figuring out love. What more can one look for? Set in LA Border offers a tour of this complex city and the sexploits hidden within its skirts. She underscores her protagonist's need for connection and the struggles to define just what kind of connection she requires. The voice in this work is gorgeous and the elements that generate it's speech are rich. Consumerism is challenged and the dichotomy of being sexy and a strong female are interplayed as main character Lucy dives deep into a passionate love affair with addiction. Coping with her feelings and flaws the world around her caves in and emerges anew. It is a work about love, sex, self and growth.

I love and I am curious to read almost everything written in more than one language, except vampire stories. Nor my sense of humour either my life and literary interest. I am a person of simple tastes after all. This was until yesterday, when I added on my 'not/never to read' list a new category: adult books with a merman/mermaid character. Merman erotica, to be more precise.

At 38, Lucy just broke up with her boyfriend and is about to loose the stipendium for writing her PhD thesis on the poet Sappho. Unsure about her future she accept the offer of her sister to petsit a diabetic dog in her house in Venice, LA while attenting a women therapy circle and trying to figure out her future. Lucy is lost, surrounded by other women even more lost than her and life goes on, with hook-ups on Tinder or other adventures. Until she met the merman, Theo. 'Did it take a mythological deformity to find a gorgeous man who was as needy as I was?'.

The writing is ok, the topics are relatively common - the millenial searching for herself while working a non-sense PhD. Introducing the mythological hottie may be new and challenge the narrative, but it is not exactly the kind of stories I am interested in. My bad, I know. But my literary logic doesn't accept that although the life of Lucy is often going through deep periods of emptyness and depression - skilfully described - an impossible romance may be the way out. Meanwhile she is neglecting the poor dog who will pass away until the end of the story.

The next time I will read more carefully the plot descriptions of the books I am supposed to read and review.

PS. Although the temptation was enormous, I decided, for the sake of the review, to read The Pisces until the very end.

This was a deeply unpleasant reading experience, and it had nothing at all to do with the mermaid erotica.

This is the kind of book that tries to illustrate a particular slice of life banality in a very crude way. It highlights the gritty and miserable facets of the human experience in some sort of attempt to…I don’t know, be empathetic? Evoke a kind of universal shared experience? Whatever the goal was, this book did not succeed, at least not with me. I couldn’t relate to anything in this novel, whether it was the one-night stands, the contrived intimacy issues, the hyperfocus on sex and heterosexual relationships, or the ennui of the academically and emotionally dissatisfied. I don’t know. I can’t even properly explain it, but I just really hated this book.

It’s a transparent and pretentious attempt at being lurid or ~edgy~ or whatever, which is a shame, because I was actually fascinated by the potential this novel had. I enjoyed the merman storyline and the allusions to Sappho and Greek mythology and ancient history. I liked the ending a lot. I think that there could have been so much more to this story than all the random sordid details I had to read with my own two eyes.

Also, there’s too much pontificating here. I can deal with some pontificating but I don’t like it when characters are always getting up on their soapbox to to preach about the ways of the world and the meaning of life…it almost always rings hollow to me. The pontificating here almost always results in bleak conclusions about the bleakness of life in ways that rubbed me the wrong way.

But ultimately, as I think you can kind of sort of tell from the bent of this review, this was just not the book for me. I don’t think any of the issues I had with it make it an objectively terrible book by any means, and I can see the appeal that it holds. It is just so deeply antithetical to my overall tastes that I find myself just wanting to scrub it from my mind. Perhaps by a different author, in a different style, I might have appreciated everything here more, but as it stands, I really disliked this book.

This book just didn't click with me. I feel it took too long to get to the end, and that the finale wasn't satisfying.

I thought I was getting a story in the vein of The Shape of Water (see also: Grinding Nemo), but The Pisces was less about banging a merman and more about a woman dealing with depression. And surprisingly, I enjoyed the pre-merman stuff way more. Fair warning to the faint of heart: this book is super descriptive when it comes to well, everything, sexytimes and otherwise.

I'm not going to lie. The Pisces is one weird-ass book. I did not know what to expect when I first opened the novel, but I certainly was not expecting what I read. Ms. Broder actually found a way to make sex unappealing in so many ways, plus she created a character with whom it is difficult to find any sympathy. One might argue that the novel is satiric in nature, that it skewers the idea of relationships and the profession of therapy; yet, those are nuances that are challenging to observe because everything about the story is so in-your-face. Perhaps my feelings for the story would differ had I been able to look beyond the surface, but this is one novel where empathy completely fails me.

There is so much I find wrong with this book. I struggle with reviewers who describe the story as hilarious because the novel is, frankly, depressing. Lucy is a mess, and reading about her insecurities, her ennui, and her dangerous behavior when it comes to men is not something I find particularly funny. She is abrupt and coarse in pretty much everything she does or says, a blatant coping mechanism that becomes tedious after a while. Her issues with her thesis piss me off because she openly acknowledges that she is taking advantage of the system. I cannot feel sorry for someone whose blatant disregard for a system set in place to enhance learning is a key point in trying to win our favor. That she has issues with relationships is very clear, but I did not need multiple explicit examples to prove the point. One time going home with the wrong man and putting herself into a situation that could have severe consequences is all it takes for me to understand that Lucy needs professional help.

Then there is the fact that Lucy does begrudgingly attend group therapy sessions, but she mocks the idea and her fellow attendees almost every time she attends a meeting. It is understandable why Ms. Broder would make the members of Lucy's therapy group caricatures, as we only see them through Lucy's eyes and that is how she views them. It does not make them more enjoyable in a scene though. Yes, we have problems with our mental health support and care. Yes, we take the idea of therapy too far at times. Yes, there are people who are in need of such therapy and do benefit from it. No, I do not need to have this lesson repeatedly thrown at me with all the subtlety of a wooden log.

Then there is the idea that this novel is sexy. That is a resounding no. There is nothing sexy or erotic in Ms. Broder's descriptions. In fact, her overt crassness in such scenes is the opposite of erotic. It is the cold shower of erotic. As for the merman scenes, I have no words. Actually, I do. Ms. Broder ruined the idea of mermen for me with her depiction of sex with them. Everything about those scenes is wrong, creating visuals that I would rather forget but know I will not be able to do so.

The thing is that it is not Lucy's bluntness that bothers me so much, although it certainly did its job in making me uncomfortable. It is not even the explicitness of the novel, although anyone who takes umbrage at the c word should stay far away from this one. Taken separately, those are a writer's prerogative that do not bother me. It is the combination of everything which is repellent to me. It is Lucy's unapologetic nature. It is the complete lack of sexiness in all of the sex scenes, even when they are supposed to be nurturing and loving. It is the lack of subtlety of the entire novel; I prefer my stories less obvious and aggressive in their lessons. Subtlety in writing is an art, and there is none to be found in The Pisces. While it is obvious Ms. Broder can tell a story which evokes feelings and makes a point, her storytelling methods are not something I enjoy. In fact, I am quite surprised others find this particular novel so impressive. To me, The Pisces has all the subtlety of being beaten over the head with a steel pole; you would not think so many people would enjoy that.

I had a hard time getting into this novel. This is not a book I would usually pick but the cover and synopsis looked too good to pass up. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book.