Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for the advance reader's copy of Want by Lynn Steger Strong.

If you've ever wanted to live inside the mind of someone to see how they tick, this book is for you. In Want, we readers spend some time living inside the thoughts, dreams, memories and, yes, wants, of Elizabeth, the narrator and central character of this book. There are other characters but none exist outside of their interactions with Elizabeth, either in the past or present. We get a front row view of what it's like to do everything the "right" way and still struggle to find a path to a successful, happy life.

This was a very gratifying read that was both intimate and all-encompassing at the same time. We get to be at work with Elizabeth and know how she feels about her job, co-workers, etc. We get to be at home with Elizabeth as she struggles to juggle parenthood, marriage and her own mental health. We get to find out why Elizabeth lost touch with her best friend Sasha and why it still bothers her. Mostly, we get to reflect on the fact that everyone has an life that everyone can see and then the life that they think they're living.

If I could give this book more than five stars, I would. Bravo, Lynn Steger Strong.

Thank you Netgalley and Henry Holt & Co. for this eARC.

Want by Lynn Steger Strong follows Elizabeth, who lives in New York, is married with two kids, has two jobs and a PhD, is unhappy with her life and decides to reach out to Sasha, her long-lost childhood friend. Unfortunately, this was a disappointment because the main character was pretty unlikable in her narration and the writing was so bland that it was pretty hard to finish the book. 2/5
TRIGGER WARNINGS: depression, sexual assault, rape, abortion

Strong's 'Want' succeeds because of how dexterously (and compassionately) it communicates desire. What we want and how we want it are put on display with honesty and self-awareness — this is not your typical book about the white-collar Brooklyn intellegentsia.

A contemporary, introspective narration of a young married mother of two young daughters. She does no have a flourishing job, sex seems pretty boring with her husband, they have debts up to their necks, she is obsessed with her high school/college bestie, she has a complicated relationship with her wealthy parents who keep scolding her.

At times, I felt Elisabeth's life depressing, I did not understand her. Other times, the story felt like a reality check. But it was an interest read; it is funny how as adults we can be so stubborn and we end up putting ourselves in tough situations, and also how some have such a hard time to let go of their past.

If you enjoy psychological contemporary novels, you will enjoy this one.

Thank you Net Galley and Henry Colt & Co. for this e-ARC in exchange of my honest review.

Elizabeth comes from money and has a wonderful education, a husband and two children, but there still seems to be a lot of wants in her life: of money, of time with her husband, of stability, of a dear friend, of a good relationship with her parents. Much of the novel's prose feels like a meandering from thought to though, and that is what Elizabeth is doing: meandering from adjunct position to adjunct position, from week to week, barely staying afloat.

It is a novel without a ton of plot, but with a character who is certainly very relatable in this day and age.

This novel comes in at 224 pages but boy does this book pack a punch. Elizabeth is our narrator, she is 34, married with two daughters. She has a PhD but unhappy in her career. On top of this, she is filing for bankruptcy with her husband and they are just trying to make ends meat.

This is an extremely introspective novel. Her relationships with family and with old and new friends are at the forefront off this storytelling. What I loved so much about this the author gives you her inner monologue along with what she actually says throughout the book.

Elizabeth felt extremely real. I think we all will relate to her. She is a decent teacher, good wife and mother, but just does not feel fulfilled. Everything she does feel for not and I think that is OK.

The writing is sparse and lovely throughout and I just wanted to hold Elizabeth and say I understand. You will be able to read this in a couple of hrs, but it will stay with you a long time.

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

So this is a strange book. It's about affluence/wealth, work, motherhood, family dynamics and the complex friendships between women, which sounds really up my alley, but this wasn't a four star book -- more like 3-1/2. It sounded right up my alley and Iiked it, but can't say I would recommend it. Sometimes it was uncomfortable to read, it was very raw and almost too real.

Elizabeth is not a happy camper. She seems to be in a happy marriage and has two young children, but is weighed down by the challenges in her life (and there are many) and only seems truly happy when she is running in the early morning or ruminating about her childhood friend, Sasha.

In Want, and through the author’s stream of conscious writing style, we’re absorbed into Elizabeth’s life and understand what she wants from life: financial stability, a job she likes where she can earn a decent living and have health insurance, and resolving a long standing fractured relationship. This writing style could be confusing at times but reflected the conflicts in her life and her strong need to try and resolve her wants.

Want is an interesting book and she tackles a number of timely issues with themes of dysfunctional family relationships, the “business” of education today, sexual harassment in higher education, the struggle to live in a large city, and the challenges faced by people who are highly educated but low paid.

Thanks to Netgalley and Henry Holt and Company for the opportunity to read Want in exchange for an honest review.

A perfect read for the times. As a full time working mom, I could relate well to the main character in wanting and longing for things outside my current familial role. I read this in one morning and thoroughly enjoyed.

This book felt like living inside the main character's brain. As though it was her stream of consciousness had been put on paper for us to follow. The character, Elizabeth, is in her early 30s, married, with two kids, and two jobs. Living in NYC she is over educated and underpaid. This is easy to relate to no matter where you live if you are of a certain age. Those of us raised in the 80s and 90s have been set up to believe higher education is a must and saddled ourselves with student loan debt. Then our parents are often shocked to learn we're all in debt up to our eyeballs. Elizabeth and her husband are no exception. Elizabeth's parents are wealthy though and would probably bail them out had Elizabeth not screamed at them and cut them out of her life for a bit. The money struggles are a part of this story of want. The other want Elizabeth has is the return of her childhood friend, Sasha. As a woman this is also easy to relate to - having a close friend in our youth only to grow apart as adulthood responsibilities take over. Elizabeth does what every person in this day and age does -stalk Sasha on social media. They do reunite in a way, but it's not the level Elizabeth misses from her youth. Overall this story definitely shows the many wants of modern day life. As we are still in the midst of a pandemic and people have learned to live with less of everything I wonder if our wants will lessen also. Or at least turn into wanting more simple things like human connection over the material things we've all been trained to chase.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

A novel about being trapped in exactly the life you were privileged enough to lead. The narrator of this novel, 34 year old Elizabeth, is white and has a Ph.D., but she works as an adjunct and, without insurance, has been bankrupted by a Caesarian and bad teeth. Her husband has a few more degrees of freedom...but this isn't a novel of overt resentment over women's lives overrun by children an responsibilities, so much as it is a relentlessly truthful, ruthlessly intelligent story of a woman looking at her life and asking: "Is it worth it?" and finding out that her answer is 'yes.'

Favorite quote: “We cannot live outside the systems and the structures, but, it turns out, I cannot live within them either anymore.”

That sounds fairly bleak, as far as life philosophies go, only Elizabeth is insightful enough to understand that her ability to experience her own life fully as she lives it, day to day, is exactly what makes it meaningful

I typically love books that are character-driven, but for me to enjoy stories with little plot I have to actually care about something related to the novel. With "Want," I didn't particularly care about any of the characters, including the protagonist.

Devoured this book in an afternoon, lying on the ground in my backyard, holding up my e-reader to block the sun, battling a headache and heat exhaustion. And that's a very fitting way of reading this book, in which the main character battles exhaustion and headaches at every turn.
Because the main character is tired. Tired in a very real, bone-deep kind of way, and it's the sort of tired I suspect many readers will instantly recognize.
The book and its cover seemed a bit like it was going to be in the NY hipster mom beach read genre, but it quickly becomes apparent Steger is doing something else; a bit of an investigation into the cross section of millennial burnout and class issues.
It's a tremendous bummer to read, and as is common with these sort of contemporary lit books, the ending is bleak. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone feeling uncertainty about their financial future, because it reads as a prophetic horror story.
That said: it's great. Reads well, with a strong voice that only gets sharper as the book progresses.
In recent months Steger's said she may have to sell her city apartment and move to a cabin somewhere cheaper, so it's hard not to see this book as semi-autobiographical look at Steger's own life, a look at a woman who shunned corporate structures and didn't have the social or financial capital to make that lifestyle work.
It might be about Steger, but I imagine a lot of people raised to follow their passions will relate.
Thanks to NetGalley for the copy.

My rating is probably more like 3.5 or 3.75 stars. Oh man oh man do I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, the writing is beautiful and poignant and truly one of a kind. And I think this story will resonate with a lot of people and there will be many conversations about this book. There’s something about this book that I can’t quite put my finger on that I just didn’t love. Maybe it’s that this book left me feeling a little empty inside. Ultimately I would recommend this one.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This book was a riveting account of female rage and unhappiness. The narrator, who remains nameless for most of the book, slips in and out of past and present, friendships and jobs in one of the better streams of consciousness I've read recently. I really enjoyed this one.

What on the surface appears to be a random assortment of thoughts and diary entry-ish musings is actually a heart breaking story of the things we WANT but give up for one reason or another.

Lynn tells this story in a stream of consciousness narrative. There are not set chapters, there is not a setup to a problem (it is known from the early pages Elizabeth and her family as in financial trouble), there isn't a happy resolution and there is no tidy wrap up at the end. This is just life, it is messy and layered and that is reflected fully in this novel.

The story follows Elizabeth who grew up wanting for nothing and is now in bankruptcy, in a job she hates and doesn't fit in and has lost touch with her best friend all while dealing with crippling depression, parental disappointment and the looming burden of being unable to provide for her children. It is an honest reflection of what how hard it can be to have what you want line up with reality.

Elizabeth is smart, Ivy league graduate smart. Devours books in single sittings. Completely undone by her inability to cope with life sometimes and yet she is funny, loves her kids and her husband is daily just tries not to succumb to the panic ever lurking in her veins. She is almost every woman I have ever known at some point in their lives.

As women we fight to be everything to everyone. It was so validating to read about a woman who admits it is impossible to be that without it causing you to loose part of yourself in the process. I found myself nodding and saying "ugggh yes this...omg yes this" over and over.

This won't be like other books you read. As I said it is written in a flowing prose that can feel like it is wondering all over the place but really if you hang on it finds its way back. And aren't' we all like that? Just trying to hang on, doing our best for those we love, all while feeling like a fish flopping on a deck trying to catch our breath.

Thank you first to Netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for the ARC of Want by Lynn Steger Strong. I thought that the character of Elizabeth - her simmering fury, frustration, exhaustion and the myriad ways she is just barely holding it all together - leapt so intuitively and realistically off the page. The novel is written in an incredibly introspective, rambling thought-consciousness form of first person. It is Elizabeth’s innermost thoughts, jumping from the present to the far and recent past as we see all the ways in which her life goes farther and farther off its expected track. We don’t know her name until almost the very end, or that of her husband or children ever in this book. We are too deep inside her head to need her name and her husband is simply ‘my husband.’ Her children ‘the four year old’ and ‘the two year old.’ While this might seem impersonal, it reads as somehow more introspective as this is how she refers to them in her head, in the thoughts that fly wildly. Elizabeth’s exhaustion is palpable in this book - she is tired of her two jobs which she and her husband need to make ends meet, tired of raising her two little ones one of whom is still nursing, tired of the roles that as women we are thrust into without ever asking us permission: mother, wife, friend, caregiver, nurturer, teacher. And she is ashamed and angry that she and her husband naively squandered away the life of affluence and privilege that they were born into. And yet even still, she is self aware enough to realize, perhaps because of the school where she teaches, one in which all the children are students of color, that her life with its debts and daily worries is still inherently an easier one based on her race. There is so much going on in this novel - topics of class, race, domestic issues, ownership. I thought it was incredibly well done. These are huge issues and yet I read this book in a day, but it never made light of them. A very thought-provoking novel.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Want by Lynn Steger Strong. First-the cover is absolutely beautiful! This story follows thirty-something Elizabeth, who is a married mother of two children. She teaches at a middle school by day, where she often feels disconnected with her younger co-workers, and then teaches one evening course at a nearby college. Juggling life as a mom, wife, teacher, and everything else is becoming more overwhelming by the day. In the midst of everything, Elizabeth and her husband are having problems with money and end up filing for bankruptcy. While all this is going on, we are introduced to Sasha, who was a close friend to Elizabeth while they both were growing up. Elizabeth has barely kept in touch with Sasha over the years-meaning a glance here or there at Sasha’s sister’s social media page to see what Sasha has been up to. On a whim she reaches out and texts Sasha.and they begin to reconnect. As they begin to chat, Elizabeth realizes she isn’t the only one struggling. Want is an interesting book. As a mother of two middle grade students, I could relate in many ways. I understand a lot of her rage and frustration with daily life. I did feel the story line became a little disjointed as it went back and forth between the present and past with her friendship with Sasha. Overall I did enjoy the book and look forward to other works by Strong.

A very timely book about a privileged woman who is dealing with real-life problems and is ill-equipt to deal with them. She chose to go into a profession that doesn't afford her the lifestyle she once had and that she seems to assume was her right. It was hard to identify with her but I think a lot of (mostly white) women feel a lot like her--entitled and shocked that what they are doing isn't enough to get what they bizarrely feel is their birthright.

This one was a little bit too character driven for me. I might give it another chance later, character driven novels are not working for me during corana.