I was a huge fan of Daniel Handler's Series of Unfortunate Events (under the name Lemony Snicket) as a kid, so I was curious to see what his writing for adults would be like. I did recognize some of what I had loved back then -- his clever use of language in particular -- but was mostly disappointed. The plot was disjointed, I didn't care about the characters, and sometimes I felt like I just...didn't get what was happening? It just didn't achieve what I think it set out to achieve. Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for providing this book in exchange for my honest review.

Daniel Handler has a way with words and with plots. I was glad I overlooked the other, negative reviews, and feel that part of the reason I found this so enjoyable is that living in the Bay Area and being familiar with San Francisco lends to a better understanding of what he is doing here. There are so many references to SF life that unless you have experienced them first-hand, they may fall flat. The City is not the same one of a few years ago, and the income disparity experienced by anyone who lives here for better or for worse is a reality. I know it's true of many places these days, but San Francisco is ground zero for the tech revolution, and it affects every aspect of life here. Well done.

Upon first beginning this story, there was an intriguing pull from its dark comedy that seemed cleverly written through its satirical, ever-changing narrator, but then the story became too scattered, too over-the-top of trying to achieve the sort of bitter, dark humor you might find in other writers like Lemony Snicket. While the narrators had a tendency of trying to engage with the readers, the attempts often fell flat or didn’t make much sense. In the end, it wasn’t compelling any longer, and all the whimsical aspects that intrigued me before only made the story more frustrating and confusing to read. While the plot was difficult to piece together, I could have held on if the characters and relationships offered me a little more. Perhaps I can enjoy another novel of his where he nails this sort of dark satire, but this round didn’t click.

Holy cow. I love Daniel Handler's writing, but this one was so not for me. This honestly felt like a rough draft. It felt so incredibly scattered and I just didn't have the patience to deal with it. I had to bail very early on.

Bottle Grove is a dark comedy staged around two marriages one for love and the other for greed. It attempts to take a humorous look at relationships to determine what drives people together and tears them apart. This tale was confusing and hard to piece together and it just wasn’t interesting. Advance reader copy was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I really this one. He is so great at writing books for children, young adults, and adults alike. I felt like I was really there at Bottle Grove. Looking forward to more of his books in the future. Thanks for the review copy.

Daniel Handler doesn't want to be known as Lemony Snicket anymore and I can understand why. It's been years and he has other stories to tell. I get it.
In the past, however, his efforts have fallen a little flat for me. The stories are too strange or lack meaning or, if I'm being honest, come across as if he's trying too hard to be something that he isn't.
Which is a shame, considering how talented of a writer Handler can be when he really nails it (The Basic Eight, for example).

Staged around two marriages that develop from within one another, this is a story about Padgett and Vic, as well as Ben and Rachel...although it is also about Martin, the bartender at the bar Bottle Grove, around which most of this story takes place.
Padgett and Martin meet at the aforementioned couple's wedding. They are seemingly in love, until they aren't, and then they might be again even though she is with Vic, and maybe there will be murder and kidnapping except then there isn't? And the timeline seemingly makes no sense until the end, when you realize that everything had been happening relatively at the same time and you were just viewing situations from different perspectives.
I'll admit that at one point I wasn't sure if Bottle Grove was for me but I'm glad I pushed on. This tale, though at times confusing and stubbornly hard to piece together, felt like the first time I was getting an adult version of the author I read so much from as a child/young adult. Lovely prose is woven throughout, which is reason enough to read. And, though this is the detail that matters the least, the cover art is what caught me in the first place.
This story was a prime example of what I want from an author as talented as Handler. It was pure, dark, whimsy.

Daniel Handler (also known as Lemony Snicket) is the King of Quirky.  He can take the mundane and make it mystical or unusual.  In his capable hands, quirk can be anything, but it's almost always charming.

That being said, this fictional story of two couples was just sort of "meh" for me.  
Bottle Grove starts out exciting:  Rachel is about to marry Ben Nickels in a ceremony at Bottle Grove, a small forest on the edge of San Francisco donated to the community years ago by a wealthy family.
There are caterers working the wedding, as well as two barmen who own a bar nearby which is also named Bottle Grove.  
The head barman, Martin Icke, falls for Padgett, a wealthy twenty-something randomly hired for the catering gig who is already drunk from vodka she's sipping out of a cough syrup bottle.

A barrel of alcohol goes missing but is quickly forgotten when Reynard, the vicar who officiated the ceremony, is caught cheating on his fiancee.  There's a huge scene between Reynard and Nina during the Nickels's wedding reception that leads to a car accident and Reynard goes missing.

Martin schemes up an idea after the disastrous Nickels wedding to get his wealthy girlfriend Padgett to date a ridiculously wealthy man called "the Vic" in order to get money for his failing bar.  What he doesn't consider is what will happen if Padgett's greed outweighs his own.

In the years after their wedding, Rachel finds herself annoyed by her perfect husband.  She doesn't know how to talk about her own problems or approach the problems she has in her marriage.

Eventually Padgett is in the middle of another dangerous scheme cooked up by Martin and Rachel finds herself in a messy situation with Reynard, the vicar from the beginning of the story, who has a penchant for shape shifting.

This was a humorous look at relationships: what drives people together and tears them apart, at times mundane and at times... supernatural.
The story is of course trademark Handler-quirky and in between the dark comedy there are some unexpected lovely sentences, like this:

"Half past five on a school day, and it's quiet in the place like it's time to turn the record over and play the other side." *

And my favorite quote, which is a simple but profound statement on relationships:

"You meet people and you tell them stories. You meet someone, you marry them, and they're part of the story you're in. They are it. You're the same story and as it changes, every living day, you can never, never keep up." *

I'm not sure what I was expecting from Bottle Grove, but this story wasn't it.  It had its moments but overall I didn't feel invested in the characters or their lives.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.  Bottle Grove is scheduled for release on August 27, 2019.

*The quotes included are from a digital advanced readers copy and are subject to change upon final publication.

Just not interesting. The book seemed so forced. Not a fan.

Thanks to author,publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

With Bottle Grove, Daniel Handler shows himself once more to be a versatile writer who can engage with an adult audience with the same talent and capability that he has used to enthrall young readers. Handler populates this universe, painted very much like many places on the map, with detailed and rich characters. You come away liking some of them, not liking others, but with a definite sense of life and all its wanderings in between love, marriage, and other developments. Read Daniel Handler if you haven't already done so. And if you have, check this title out too.