An overworked premise much better covered in another medium. Normally the written word evokes stronger imagery than TV or film, but this proves that is not always the case. Some sections are inspired while others leave on asking, "where did the author go & who is this substitute".

This book was kind of meh. I found parts of it very good but others felt contrived and more than a little self serving. I also thought it ended rather abruptly. It was an excellent premise that didn't quite work.

I had trouble getting this book to download as an advanced copy reader but I do still want to read it and put it on hold to still read. It sounds too hood to pass up.

Thanks to NetGalley, Hanover Square Press, and Nicholas Mancusi for the opportunity to read and review his debut novel - a quick read that kept me glued to the pages.

Oscar is an assistant professor of philosophy, just scraping by in California, living a quiet life. He gets a call from his father that Oscar's mother died on a return flight from Hawaii. Oscar had no clue his parents were in Hawaii but that was just the first surprise from his dad. His mother, who suffered from depression, had gotten involved with a cult-like guru and they were broke. Oscar returns home after his mother's funeral and is lost, gets drunk, and has a one-night stand with Dawn. That encounter leads him down a road of drug smuggling, blackmail and a life Oscar couldn't imagine.

A thrill ride of a book waiting to see how it will all end up, while bringing up philosophical thoughts about free will and destiny. Looking forward to reading more from this author.

***3.5 rounded up to 4 Stars ***
Publication: June 18th, 2019

Oscar Boatwright is a philosophy professor at a university finds out that his mother passes away during a flight to Hawaii, a flight he didn't even know she was taking. Turns out his family was in significant debt and as Oscar is mourning he mistakenly sleeps with one of his students from a bar, Dawn. Dawn blackmails Oscar and wants his help smuggling drugs for her and a drug lord in exchange for her silence. This book has SO much potential. I was so hooked from the beginning but then it became a little unbelievable and far fetched for me. I did a couple eye rolls here and there but I still enjoyed the story for what it was. Overall, I think this is a high quality debut novel and I look forward to reading more from Nicholas Mancusi in the future.


Special Thanks to NetGalley and Hanover Press for allowing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Like a slow-motion car crash, A Philosophy of Ruin is a literary Breaking Bad.

Oscar learns his mother has died midflight on the way home from Hawaii. Oscar then learns that his mother's mental condition led her and his father to follow a self-help 'guru'. THEN Oscar find out that his father owes the 'guru' thousands of dollars.

In the middle of this - Oscar has a drunken one-night stand, and find his hookup in his class - AS HIS STUDENT - the following day. Through a series of events, Oscar ends up being a pick up driver for a bundle of drugs and I don't want to finish this and give away the ENTIRE plot.

Excellent plot and great writing. This is a good one!

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

Holy cow! Oscar's mother has died, he's discovered that his parents gave away a lot of money to a guru, he got drunk and slept with a student, and now he's involved with her drug dealing. That's a lot to pack into a fairly slim volume but Mancusi does that AND, given that Oscar is a philosophy professor, has adds some things that will make you think. It will also make you think about all the bad decisions Oscar makes. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. This won't be for everyone- but stick with it and you'll be rewarded with a good read.

After the unexpected loss of his mother, a young philosophy professor’s life starts to spin out of control.

Philosophy + Breaking Bad should make for a good combo but there was nothing spectacular about A Philosophy of Ruin. Don’t get me wrong, it had its entertaining parts but certain sections had me bored and skimming.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Oscar Boatwright's life is crashing in slow motion.

He's received news his mother died on a flight home from Hawaii.  His father arrives at his home, stunned and still numb.

To make matters worse, Oscar learns his mother's depression had overwhelmed her and led his parents to spend tens of thousands of dollars on seminars with self-help guru Paul St. Germaine.

Now Oscar's dad has not only lost his life savings but the wife he longed to save from deep depression ...and he still owes thousands to St. Germaine.

Oscar's extremely modest income as a philosophy professor barely covers his expenses and student loan debt so he's hopeful his wealthy sister will be able to help their dad in his dire financial situation.  It isn't long before his sister confides she and her husband are separating and their finances haven't been great since the market turned.

Just when life seems it can't possibly get any worse, Oscar has a drunken one night stand with a woman he meets in a bar ... and finds her sitting in his class the next day.  
Dawn isn't just his student, she's also a drug dealer.  While Oscar attempts to remove himself from the awkward situation, he's drawn further into Dawn's world, and she knows some of his story.  Enough to know Oscar won't say no to helping with a large drug run, both out of fear she'll blackmail him and because he can't possibly turn down $30,000 in his current situation.

Numb from his recent loss, disillusioned by the past, and uncertain of his future, Oscar sets out with a simple plan: drive a borrowed Land Rover to a GPS programmed location several hours away, pick up a backpack of illegal drugs, and return to campus.  That's it.

His simple plan takes a dramatic turn when Oscar believes he's being followed by a black truck. What follows is an abrupt and terrifying turn into chaos.

A Philosophy of Ruin begins with a man struggling to come to terms with his mother's mental illness and sudden death and evolves into the story of a man trying to escape a dangerous drug run.

Mancusi manages to deliver this novel in a controlled way though the events are a dramatic and sudden spiral.  I could compare the plot and delivery to the television show Breaking Bad which has a similar tone and theme.
The ending was abrupt and lacking for me personally but this was still an overall fantastic novel!

Thanks to Hanover Square Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.  A Philosophy of Ruin is scheduled for release on June 18, 2019.

Such an interesting concept. It took a few pages to get into the story, but once I was in, I was hooked!

This book was not my favorite. I felt like it was very sporadic and hard to follow. I would find myself reading and think "where did that come from?" It did not hold my attention. I did not feel like I could connect with the characters or the story enough to become truly invested. Overall, it was too jumbled and all over the place for my liking. I liked the premise, but the execution did not hold up for me.

Oscar Boatwright is shocked when he receives a call that his mother died on a flight from Hawaii to California. His parents live in Indiana, and he had no idea that they were coming to visit him, much less that they’d been in Hawaii. Soon, he learns the purpose behind their trip. His mother, Delia, suffering lifelong depression, had fallen under the spell of self-help guru Paul St. Germaine. Starting slow, she watched all of his video seminars, then started attending seminars in Hawaii, and finally paid extra for special session with St. Germaine himself. Because this seemed to help Delia, Lee consented.

However, these expensive sessions have not only stripped the elder Boatwrights of their entire savings; they also owe over $20,000. An assistant professor of philosophy who barely makes over $20,000 a year before taxes, Oscar isn’t in much of a position to help his father. He hoped his older sister Grace, married to a wealthy businessman, might contribute, but at the funeral, he learns that she is getting divorced and planned to ask her parents for help with her legal bills.

Oscar illegally downloads St. Germaine’s video lectures and learns that his lessons revolve around embracing insignificance and rejecting free will. Not only is he angry with this man who he felt cheated his parents out of their money; he is offended that St. Germaine is perverting his field, philosophy, with conclusions based on false premises and faulty evidence.

Meanwhile, the term has begun and Oscar revs up to teach his Intro to Philosophy class and grade the many papers his students submit. In his free time, when not watching St. Germaine’s lectures, he spends time with his one friend, Sundeep, another professor in his department. Sundeep convinces him to attend a guest lecture, and the lecturer enjoys the graduate school groupies so insists on dinner at a bar instead of a restaurant. Oscar drinks heavily, and early that morning wakes up with a young woman in his bed.

The next day, he is mortified to learn that that the young woman, Dawn, is a student in one of his classes. Although he tries to extricate himself from the entanglement to protect his career, he is undeniably drawn to her and unsuccessful in cutting personal ties. Their relationship becomes even more complicated when she tells him that she is a drug dealer and needs him to make a pick-up for him. He’ll earn a large sum, but if he refuses, she might report their sexual encounters.

Oscar knows that he shouldn’t agree, but he fears the consequences of refusing, he’s tempted by the money, and he’s seduced by the danger. Once he picks up the package, though, the danger is greater than he imagined, and his training as a philosophy instructor certainly is insufficient when confronting rival drug dealers and partners he can’t trust.

Although Oscar had adamantly rejected St. Germaine’s message, his trajectory since his mother died questioned the very foundations of his life philosophy. Was he in control of his behavior, making decisions that led him from point to point? Or was his free will a myth, his path established long ago and out of his control?

Setting a philosophy professor against a self-help guru offered a new and interesting take on the concept of free will, but A Philosophy of Ruin did not take full use of the opportunity. The kind of questions I would expect Oscar to ask due to his academic training were missing. The dialectic between free will and determinism formed the overarching theme of the novel, and I was disappointed that it wasn’t addressed in this way.

At times, Oscar was a sympathetic character, and Mancusi’s prose to describe his inner dialogue was so spot on, I thought he was describing my own thoughts. As Oscar descended deeper into ruin, though, he was less fathomable, though I suppose that’s the point.

As a character, though she had potential, Dawn never fully came together for me since it was never quite clear what her motives were and if she was being sincere or manipulative. She did show, however, that she was willing to make sacrifices for her partners.

Though his foray into drug dealing might be the biggest danger he faces, Oscar’s largest challenge is coming to terms with St. Germaine and his ideas, and his final accounting as well as the ending of the book, including his father’s role, were unsatisfying to me.

That said, A Philosophy of Ruin, a quick read, offers a portrait of an ordinary and even boring man whose life quickly diverges into an otherworldly disaster provoking the question: at what point can personal tragedy be averted?

At it's best, Mancusi's novel gives readers a moving portrayal of how a sudden death can overturn lives. Unfortunately, too much of the story is given over to rather trite thriller material in what feels like a poor imitation of Breaking Bad peppered with cliches. However, Mancusi is able to right the ship eventually composing an ambiguous ending that powerfully eases the lame adventure story that sidetracked readers there.

Oscar Boatwright is a philosophy professor, struggling with the belief that God does indeed exist. But when his mother dies suddenly on a flight from Hawaii to California, next to his father, Oscar finds himself thinking of her watching over him and re-considering, at least on some levels, the presence of God. In shock and grief, Oscar becomes involved with one of his students. A sexual dynamo who soon leads him, somewhat less than willingly, down a very dangerous road of drug running. Oscar finds himself surprised at his lack of fear for the most part, and his daring in the face of danger in others.......sides of himself he was not aware of prior to his mother's passing. One thing that he knows for certain is that he must find the shyster that bilked his parents out of their life's savings, Paul St. Germaine, in whom his mother had placed all of her trust (and money) in prior to her death in the hope that she would be cleared of her life-long depression. The buttoned-down Oscar finds himself far outside of his normal limits as his hatred for St. Germaine and longing for revenge as well as understanding of his mother's motives, as well as his continued involvement far out of his league with drug runners and would-be dealers, leads him to unexpected and surprising events and endings. Excellent book!

This story was pretty good, but I felt like some of the pieces of the story were merely there to advance the plot. There were questions I had at the end that were left unanswered which was frustrating. Overall it was worth a read.

Nothing seemed to flow here. The story was all over the place and I admit there was some disappointment with the ending.

Maybe some important bits were edited out and this is what the reader is left with.

The plot seemed like a good idea that was executed poorly.

Well, that was unexpected! Oscar Boatwright was bobbing through life, not exactly happy but not entirely unhappy. His status quo was completely knocked out of whack when his mother unexpectedly dies mid flight coming home from Hawaii. Why were his parents in Hawaii in the first place? The answer to that question throws Oscar off even more, calling into question everything he thought he knew about his family and his own motivations.

This feeling of being off kilter continues through the entire novel, pushing Oscar to depths he never expected. I was happily impressed with this book, it was twisty and unexpected. There were a few points, the more "philosophical" areas, where I may have shortened things up, but these were there for a reason. All in all, a solid read!

A husband travels home on an airplane with his wife's corpse sitting next to him. This event is the initial incident that captivates readers into Mancusi's brilliant A Philosophy of Ruin. This book is a family epic for the 21st century and details how men of multiple generations process grief and keep their families alive. While it is gritty in parts, this book is a great read for thriller readers waiting for the next Stuart woods or Walter White (Breaking Bad) adventure. Highly recommended.

"Oscar Boatwright’s mother had died in her seat during a f light from Hawaii to California, and his father had been made to sit for three hours in the same aircraft as her cooling body."

Great 1st sentence! I always adore when a book gets off to a start like this. Good job author Nicholas Mancusi.

I find the rest of this review difficult to write. There were parts I enjoyed very much, the "thriller" aspects if you will. Also, the primary characters were nicely developed, if a tad unbelievable.

However, for me, there was just way too much "rambling", the "philosophy" segments could have been tightened. I know, the title is Philosophy of Ruin, so of course philosophy has to play a big part, but I really think it could have been tightened and the reader would have still gotten the point without having to endure so much rambling.

Thank you NetGalley and Harlequin for this opportunity.

A Philosophy of Ruin is an awesome, original, heart-pounding thriller. It’s a stunningly solid debut novel. Great action, with lots of twists and turns. I loved the characters. This is an amazing book. I’ll be looking for more from this author. My thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.