22 year old Ava leaves Ireland to become an English language tutor in Hong Kong. She falls into a sort-of friendship with benefits situation with Julian, the first person she meets. Soon, she moves out of her cockroach infested flatshare and into Julian’s luxury high rise.

The parameters of her relationship with Julian are not set. She has moved in but has her own room, they are both quite adamant that they aren’t together and yet they continue to have a sexual relationship.
When business take Julian on an extended trip to England, Ava finds herself left to entertain herself with Julian’s friends and later a friend of those friends, Edith.

Edith is a native of Hong Kong and everything that Julian is not. Ava finds herself becoming more and more interested in Edith, all while hiding her relationship with Julian, even after she begins a sexual relationship with Edith.

The book is centered on Ava’s inner turmoil and conflict as she finds herself trying to navigate her relationships not only with Julian and Edith but with her own family and co-workers as well. It becomes clear early on that Ava is full of self-loathing and feels that she is worth of the loathing of others.

It seems that she has spent so much of her time convinced that others won’t like or love her, that she has cut off every avenue where those feelings might find their way to her.

While I did like the verbal banter between Ava and Julian and their hobbling steps forward, the book in general was just alright. The entirety of the book was in Ava’s head or immediate sphere, there was no real atmosphere and the characters all came off as whiny and self-centered.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is one of those books that I think I was supposed to like a lot more than I did, and it's all due to the beginning. It took a long time to get going, and it took a long time for me to get into it.

Ava herself isn't all that interesting, but I'm not sure she's intended to be. Rather, she is there to be imprinted upon by Julian and Edith, the former of whom makes his intentions known, even as Ava tries to convince herself otherwise. Edith, on the other hand, is far more direct. You never doubt what she wants.

By the time this story clicks and starts moving, you might feel it's too late. You endured a lot of s-l-o-w plot (and character) development, so when Ava is presented with a dilemma, you may not care as much as you think you should.

This book has been recommended by quite a few impressive organizations, and it routinely is labeled as "smart." Naoise Dolan's writing is, unquestionably, more high-brow than not, and the ending is perfect. But to compare her to Sally Rooney seems a bit of a stretch.

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
⭐️⭐️

Ava is an Irish expat currently living in Hong Kong. She doesn’t enjoy her job as an English teacher, and really doesn’t enjoy her dingy apartment and her nosy roommates. Ava soon meets Julian, a wealthy and emotionally distant banker, who allows Ava to move into his spacious apartment. Their platonic relationship eventually turns sexual, though the romance is lacking. When Julian goes on an extended business trip, Ava meets Hong Kong native Edith. Ava is struck by Edith’s ambition and quickly falls for her. So what is Ava to do when Julian announces he is returning to Hong Kong? Should she continue living a kept existence with Julian, or follow her heart with Edith?

I want to start with the positives on this novel. It is certainly well written, and I enjoyed the LGBTQ+ representation. This novel is definitely for someone, but it wasn’t for me. I found the plot to be meandering and the overall tone of the writing and the characters was dreary. I really could not stand Ava or Julian... both are emotionally unavailable and cynical to an extreme, and I just couldn’t click with them. Ava routinely made choices that made me want to bang my head against the wall. I think the novel was going for a dry, millennial deadpan vibe, but I found it to be overly pretentious and depressing. I usually enjoy literary fiction but I just couldn’t get into this one. Thank you Harper Collins Ecco and @netgalley for my advanced readers copy! Exciting Times is available now.

The plot moved slowly. I liked the narration and voice but felt the story was missing the engaging elements that pull the story and characters forward. The ending was also unsatisfying.

2.5, rounded up.

I think my reaction to this debut novel is both a question of being the wrong audience ('it's not you, it's me', in other words), and also being the wrong book at the wrong time. The first is because it's a book about and FOR millennials, and the narrator being a 22 year old girl and myself a 66 year old man meant I had almost nothing in common with her. Not only couldn't I relate to any of her 'problems' (issues would be a more apt appellation, since she is one of the whiniest and neediest protagonists I've ever encountered), but she is so disagreeable and unlikeable that if I were introduced to her at a social gathering, within five minutes I'd be itching to find any excuse to depart her company. That's not a great position to be in reading about someone for 256 pages.

Secondly, with the glare of the increasing tensions about racial injustice in the US, an unconsciously privileged white girl totally clueless as to such just seemed extremely grating to me right now - I just couldn't force myself to care a whit about her obsessions as to whether Julian, the man she doesn't even care about, really loves her or not; nor whether she will mess up (yet again) a seemingly more promising relationship with the more forthcoming Edith (who deserves much better)- it's not earth shatteringly important to anyone but Ava.

That said, Dolan, definitely has writing abilities, even more remarkable when one considers she is 'on the autism spectrum', and perhaps Ava's inabilities to connect and lack of self awareness are reflective of the author's own issues in that regard. And though I wouldn't say there is much in the way of the 'razor sharp wit' that seems to be a go-to phrase in reviews for this, several lines are indeed clever and warrant a chuckle. And while I can understand all the comparisons to Rooney and Moshfegh, I think it's a lazy comparison, and ultimately does the book a disservice.

My sincere thanks to Netgalley and to Harper Collins for an ARC in exchange for this honest review.

Thank you again to Ecco Books for providing an advanced review copy!

Exciting Times follows Ava, an Irish ex-pat who lives in Hong Kong and teaches what she calls “British English” to rich children. Not making enough to rent a buy a decent living space, we learn about her arrangement with Julian, a wealthy banker she initially lives with, and then starts sleeping with. A touch cynical and unwilling to commit, her arrangement with Julian enables Ava’s poor decisions to push people away who start showing affection for her - until she meets Edith, a Hong Kong-born lawyer whom eventually Ava develops feelings for when Julian is away on business. However, upon Julian’s return, Ava realizes she must make a choice between the comfortable and the unknown.

First off, this novel draws a lot of comparisons to Sally Rooney, from the writing to the relationships to the mentions of Irish culture and politics. I feel like if you enjoy the kind of complicated, annoying, yet realistic messy relationships that Rooney writes about, you’ll like this book. Naoise Dolan writes sharply and smartly, and I felt her drawing comparisons to the ambiguity and contradictions of the English language and human relationships throughout the novel to be really interesting.

However, this book was ultimately not for me. The characters annoyed me so much, and maybe it’s because I’m slightly older than the characters depicted, but their intellectualism was so grating, and Ava’s decision-making and tendency towards self sabotaging was frustrating to read about. The novel got more interesting during Edith’s section, but I feel like Ava as a character never really came alive for me, as I felt like there was not any personal growth beyond realizing who she loves more in the end. I wish the setting of Hong Kong was also described in more detail, as you sometimes forget that the novel takes place in Hong Kong and not a dreary European city.

Despite my own criticisms, I think it really will appeal to those who find themselves wanting stories about seeking and the journey towards growth, even if growth isn’t really the end goal or result at the end of the novel.

Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times was a really fun read. At the surface level there’s a lot of witty, snarky retorts and commentary on wealth and class. But maybe less overtly or obviously fun, but the thing I love most in books, is that there’s also a deeper level here and to some degree it’s up to the reader to tease it out and make their own conclusions.

Ava is a 22 year old Irish expat teaching English in Hong Kong. She doesn’t really know what she wants in life and ostensibly left Ireland because she was so unhappy there. But as anyone who has ever moved to a new place to try to escape their own emotions or troubles knows, those things have a way of following us. This novel, is in many ways, Ava both running from and gradually dealing with her issues.

In Hong Kong she meets Julian. He’s older than she is at 29, a banker, and a Brit who had gone to Eton and then Oxford. It’s difficult to articulate their relationship (and it’s unclear either one of them could either) as Julian refuses to consider Ava his girlfriend yet theirs is more than just a casual relationship. Ava moves in with Julian, accompanies him to parties, and much of their relationship is taken up with intellectualizing rather than feeling or dealing. But intellectualizing as a means of coping and distancing oneself is basically how Ava functions in the world.

Later on she meets Edith, a Hong Kong native who was schooled in England. She’s Ava’s own age but a lawyer and in many ways more together in her life. Their relationship starts out slow, but unlike with Julian there’s more emotion here and a lot of discussions about being closeted, about the difficulties of coming out in their families and cultures. As other reviewers have noted, I’m unsure I’d consider there to be a true love triangle at the root of this book but Ava does struggle to know what to do with or about either relationship and kind of bounces between the two.

I also have to say again how much of a pleasure I found the actual writing. I have so many highlights and found myself copying and pasting my favorite quips and laconic observations- and Ava is absolutely full of them- into a note on my phone. The comparisons to Sally Rooney are apt in many regards and I’m certain this won’t be a book for everyone. I also bristle somewhat at the idea of this being a “millennial novel” because I think only a certain and small percentage of millennials actually live or think this way. If anything, I think it’s a literary novel, that there’s much to enjoy here for anyone who loves reading and words. Because Ava is teaching English grammar, there’s a lot of fun and playful observations about language in the book that are absolute candy for a certain sort of a reader, and in that sense I think it’s much less about or for millennials specifically and more suited to a certain sort of reader of any age.

I mentioned the depth beyond the infinitely quotable and fun quips, asides, and observational remarks. Perhaps the other reason I think this will appeal to a certain sort of reader is because Ava intellectualizes and analyzes everything nearly to death. This may annoy some but speaking both personally and of quite a few people I know, I think it’s a common enough tactic and means by which many of us try to distance ourselves from our feelings. I was commenting on another (frankly far more excellent) review of this book on the subject of Ava being an unreliable narrator and how as the book goes on we discover what others actually think of her is much different than what she thinks of herself or thinks others think. I remarked that I really loved the ways Edith was so honest with and really saw Ava and was not afraid to call her out. And how Ava herself seemed to start to come to a more honest assessment of herself as well, but even there, the biggest instance of her doing so, she’s imagining Julian telling her these things about herself. It brought to mind the idea that perhaps we are all unreliable narrators and that this is why we need others in our lives. Ava, like many of us (gosh knows, it’s wildly true of myself!), often pushes others away but in a sense we’ll never be happy stewing in our isolated misery. This is why we need others, not just for company and warmth, but because others help us see who we really are. And generally no one is harsher on us than we are on ourselves. More than a love triangle, to me at least, this is what Exciting Times is really about.

First of all, thank you to @netgalley & @hapercollins for an ARC of this book. It was released on the 16th of April but I’m a bit behind on my reading schedule. This book falls into two genres, Literary Fiction and LGBT Literature, both ones I don’t often venture into. As you can see from previous posts I tend to gravitate towards Thrillers. The synopsis of this book had drawn me in but I found myself struggling to read it. By no means is this a bad book, and I’ll quote something I saw on Facebook a bit ago. “No book is a bad book, it just might be a bad book to someone. While you might not enjoy a book, it may be someone else’s favorite.” I think I needed that reminder while reading this one. Perhaps I didn’t enjoy the writing, or perhaps it’s the genre, but I felt like I had to push through and hope it got better. I think it may have been the politics mentioned, or something similar but I was thrown off because they’re topics I don’t keep up with. Politics are way too easy to drown yourself in. I still found myself invested in Julian, Ava, and Edith and was happy with the choice Ava made at the end of the book. I think if I understood more political things than I would’ve enjoyed this book more, but I don’t have much to say when I had trouble following those sections. I still recommend that you try this if you find the synopsis interests you, it just wasn’t for me.

I had to DNF this one, which I have never done for an ARC. I can't tell you how many times I picked this up, but the writing is executed in such a detached way that it felt almost impossible to connect to. This book has been compared in style to Normal People by Sally Rooney, but I actually really enjoyed that book. I did not make it much past half way, but this book is just not very emotionally accessible, in my opinion.

3.5 stars

At first, I was a bit bored with this book. I thought it would just be another millennial relationship novel in the vein of Sally Rooney, which is all the rage at the moment. It seemed as if it was just another novel about a girl complaining about her bizarre yet favorable relationship with a man. But around a third of the way in, this book got a bit more interesting to me.

As Ava begins to expand her social circle, a new relationship which she enters encourages her to examine her motives and desires a bit more. Yet even so, a cloud of confusion remains over her, and she waffles back and forth between options. What might be easiest, or most satisfying, or what she actually wants (which is buried beneath all of her other opinions and expectations of herself). Ava is a very complex and often annoying character, who you just want to shake.

But even as her approach to her relationships, and her desire for power over others, dragged on me a bit, I really appreciated some of the points she brought up. She talks a lot about class, and especially accents and grammar. As an English teacher in Hong Kong, Ava has to temper her Irish english and teach using British English. She is also in a relationship with a wealthy British man who has what the English might term as a posh or proper accent. These situations are ripe for discussion and thinking more deeply regarding class and its relation to how we speak.

The end is ambiguous—does she go with the status quo or break free? Her desire to maintain the upper hand and have a sense of control or power spoiled both of her relationships in different ways, yet we leave her at a point where some resolution might be occurring. Maybe I misunderstood the very end, and there was a stronger hint as to what would happen, but I was honestly left a bit confused at which path she took. I wish there was an answer in one way or the other, since I feel like Ava was unable to make any choice throughout this entire book, which bothered me. While her clever banter was entertaining, and some parts of the book brought up really interesting ideas, I felt something was lacking that would have made this story really stand out for me. It is almost too insular to fully draw me in, if that makes sense.

Thanks to Netgalley and Ecco for an advanced digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Hmm, this book wasn’t what I expected which was a light breezy read. It’s definitely more Normal People than Crazy Rich Asians. While there were aspects I liked I was never sure how I felt about the protagonist which held back my overall enjoyment of the book.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Harper Collins for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately, this one is a DNF for me at 38%. I was really looking forward to it and was very excited to read it as I had heard it been compared to Normal People which is one of my favorite books.

I did notice the similarities between Dolan and Rooney’s writing, it was very dry, intelligent, and politically aware. I did find Dolan’s writing inaccessible though. I had to stop every few sentences to look up words and at a certain point it became tedious and made the reading experience unenjoyable.

I also did not find any connection with the characters. I personally could not relate to their motivations and feelings which is why I had a difficult time getting into the book. I understand that they were supposed to be flawed and unlikeable, but I found them to be so in a way that made them unrelatable to me personally.

I think a lot of my problems with the book also come from a timing issue and I don’t think I was in the right headspace to read this when I picked it up.

Overall, I think that if you enjoyed Normal People, you should still give this book a shot. Dolan is a very talented writer and her intelligence is apparent. I will definitely be on the lookout for more work from her and I might give this book another shot down the line.

I really enjoyed this one. Initially I picked it up based on the Sally Rooney comparison, and was not disappointed. While the writing style and plot differ between Exciting Times and Rooney’s books, they both are really excellent depictions of the present time and how it impacts relationships. Exciting Times felt very real, and I found myself identifying with Ava even when I didn’t want to.

The setting of Ava in Hong Kong doing TEFL, was a new one for me to read about. I really enjoyed the reoccurring discussions of language and grammar, as Ava compares what she is learning about English while teaching it, to Irish and Cantonese languages. Ava is a character who at first I found unlikeable, but warmed up to her as I realized that she is articulating thoughts and behaviours that everyone has but doesn’t talk about.

I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in stories that explore the effects of technology on relationships, self esteem, and language.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco Books for the ARC copy. Exciting Times is out on June 2nd.

Exciting Times follows Ava, an Irish 20-something as she navigates her love-life as an expat in Hong Kong. There are some echoes of Sally Rooney. The book is well-written, and if you like Sally Rooney this may be worth checking out. The characters felt a bit distant to me but I would be interested in reading this author's books in the future.

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this would be a quick read at 250 pages. It was not. I found the story kind of boring and quit at 30%. Didn’t want to waste more of my time reading this. Kind of felt like the author was trying hard to be like Sally Rooney.

Despite its title, "Exciting Times" is a quiet, character-driven story. Ava is a young Irish woman who moves to Hong Kong to teach English, where she finds herself entangled with two people: Julian, a banker from England, and Edith, a lawyer from Hong Kong. This novel has a spare, witty tone that I enjoyed, with a lot of dry humor. The characters are hard to read, partly because of their personalities, and partly because of Dolan's writing style, and so this book will likely appeal to readers who enjoyed something like "The Idiot" by Elif Batuman. I loved the author's observations on different cultures, and even though the book takes place in Hong Kong, there is a lot about the relationship between the Irish and the English. Ava is teaching children English, and I also enjoyed the asides about the English language and all of its variations.

I received an e-arc of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own

2.5/5 stars (rounding up to 3 for the sake of goodreads)

This book follows 22-yo Ava, an Irish ex-pat living in Hong Kong. It's unclear from the start why she's there - after all, she's TEFL teacher who's also a bit of a Marxist with no passion for teaching English. Julian, a wealthy 28-yo British banker, befriends Ava and the two begin a strange relationship. They don't particularly like each other, but both of them generally dislike most people, so they forge their relationship of mutual tolerance and sex appeal. The synopsis makes it sound like an actual relationship, but to be clear, Ava and Julian never date. He's mostly a rich friend who she sleeps with who she also has an odd obsession with.

Julian returns to the UK, and Ava befriends Edith, a wealthy lawyer from Hong Kong in his absence. As she begins a more healthy and satisfactory relationship with Edith (to be clear, it is romantic and Ava is bisexual or pansexual - she never labels herself though), she attempts to unravel her complex feelings surrounding Julian, as well as her feelings on her sexuality and what relationships mean to her.

I haven't read a Sally Rooney book yet, but this has been compared to her work and I was expecting a more slow moving introspective read. I was expecting generally unlikeable and ambiguous characters. I got all of that, and that's not my issue here. My issue is that though I enjoyed reading a lot of this book, I struggled to understand its point. In many ways it was trying to do too much. Ava hates herself and seeks the attention of others to validate this hatred - it's uncomfortable and constant. I liked this exploration of a character like that - though she has the capacity to love and appreciate others, she is relegated to being cynical about the world for a number of reasons, a lot of which are completely valid.

However, I think Dolan also tries to touch on a myriad of other things to an overwhelming degree. For a 300 or so page book we have references to many, many political issues such as abortion, Brexit, marxist theory, etc. Ava seems to be cognizant of a lot of these problems even though she's dismissive of the idea of being into politics (which is odd considering she identifies as a communist). But for someone who is so focused on herself, there's no mention of Hong Kong politics (and this book takes place in 2020...). In some ways I'm sure that is intentional - Ava's own selfishness about her place in Hong Kong is evidenced by her lack of knowledge. But, it's just odd. I get the point of not including this, but maybe it's how I'm reading it this week especially with many protests there that it becomes a problem.

ALSO, I consider myself relatively well educated on international political concerns outside of the US, like Brexit for example and yet I found discussions of British and Irish politics in this to be rather niche. That's not a bad thing, but I assume you'd get more out of this if you are privy to Brexit conversations daily rather than being a bit more detached like I am in the US. I did learn a bit through it which is always good though.

I did like some of the commentary in here on TEFL programs. As someone who has worked in community education before, Ava and her coworkers represent the ills of the profession. And it's a relatively good critique on neocolonialism, etc. I also liked the exploration of Ava's sexuality, as well as this dichotomy between the two relationships in her life, Edith and Julian.

I may go back and update this review later with some more thoughts. Overall though, I enjoyed my reading experience for a lot of this, but to be honest, there was a ton lacking. I wish some thoughts had been more developed, and I think some of the points Dolan was trying to make were lost in her pursuit of making this book witty and "smart" in the dialogue of the characters (the way they talk is a bit entertaining and I think it reflects a lot of difference in gendered communication but it's a bit over the top). I wouldn't not recommend it - I'd just tempter your expectations about what you'll get. So yeah, 2.5/5 stars. I have to upload a video of my rating system, but for reference 2.5/5 stars usually means I didn't dislike the book, it was adequate, and I enjoyed a number of parts to it, generally means the negatives are balanced with the positives.

Exciting Times is the most Sally Rooney book to have not been penned by Sally Rooney. In a way that statement is overly reductive of Naoise Dolan's fresh and distinctive voice, but still, the fact remains: if you don't find Sally Rooney to be much to write home about, steer clear of this debut about Irish socialist millennials overanalyzing their messy and self-destructive relationships. But if you're like me and that's sounds like a recipe for perfection, you'll probably love this.

Shown through the eyes of an Irish expat living in Hong Kong, Exciting Times essentially focuses on a love triangle between narrator Ava and two individuals who in many ways are polar opposites - the rich, tactless English banker Julian and the elegant, clever Hong Kong native Edith. Each is distinctly compelling, though the love triangle itself isn't what moves the narrative so much as Ava navigating her own boundaries and ethics and evolving perspective on relationships. Irish identity is another theme that takes center stage; Ava is an English teacher and finds herself tempering her natural speech patterns so that she teaches 'correct' English to her students. It's a thoughtful, clever, meditative book from a number of angles.

Dolan's prose is this novel's shining jewel; she has such a compact, witty, dry voice - it won't be for everyone and I can see where others might find that it grows wearisome as the novel chugs along, but I found it consistently charming. '"Anything strange?" said Mam on the phone. She really said it, "antin strange," but if Brits spelled Glosster as Gloucester then I supposed Mam deserved similar leeway.'

Exciting Times is definitely this year's Normal People while also being very much its own thing, and I recommend it very highly.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

Lovers of Sally Rooney will absolutely devour this book. I am a huge fan of Sally Rooney, ergo, this book was such a treat for me. I love the unconventional, the interpersonal, the relatable "but not talked about" - and this book had all of that and more. I can't believe it was written by someone so young. Naoise is an author I know I'll follow throughout her writing career, and that excites me.

I had a middling opinion of this book almost all the way until the end of it. The story was engaging enough, but I found the writing to be really frustrating in places. There are so many unwieldy sentences here, so many confusingly constructed phrases than an editor should have smoothed out or eliminated entirely. And on top of that, the insistence on coming sideways at things that would've been more interesting if met head on (like addressing Ava's experience as a bisexual woman in Ireland sometime before the last fifty pages?) made this book way less sharp than it could've been.

But then, as I said, I got to the end and...oh man, I really couldn't help it. I was really, really delighted with how things ended up with both Julian and Edith. It would've been so very easy to end on a sad note here; that Dolan managed to avoid that with BOTH relationships is a feat. And being so pleased with the ending made me realize how attached I'd managed to get to these characters, so that even despite the issues I had with the writing I ended up being happy that I saw this book through to the end.

I don't think there's much out there right now that addresses the kinds of feelings Ava has while still ending in a mostly positive way, and for that alone I'm glad this book exists. If you're at all grabbed by the blurb I think you'll enjoy this.