*Thank you to Net Galley and Henry Holt and Company for this advance copy*

Want reads like the never ending stream of consciousness of Elizabeth, a wife and mother of two girls who teaches at a charter high school by day and moonlights as a professor one evening a week. Despite her two jobs, they're about to declare bankruptcy.

Elizabeth appreciates what she has: a loving husband committed to his family and two intelligent and beautiful daughters. She lacks satisfaction in her job, struggles to have a positive relationship with her parents, and, most of all, she misses her friendship with Sasha, her best friend from childhood. Her narration alternates between present day events and the moments when her friendship with Sasha was falling apart.

I really enjoyed the style of this book. The narration is almost poetic. Elizabeth's a very relatable character with reasonable wants and needs. She doesn't hate her life, but she doesn't love it either. She's flawed, and while some of her moves made me anxious, they turned out to be the right choice for her.

This book made me think of friendships of mine that have fallen apart and how I contributed to them. It also made me reflect and appreciate what I have while also recognizing that it's okay to want more.

It’s an unlivable narrator who is depressed. She is unhappy that her parents won’t help her out financially when she is the one who broke off ties with her parents and threw their money in their face. She declares bankruptcy with her husband but still spends money on the “magic credit card” that she won’t ever pay for. She is a burned out at her teaching job, leaving early, not helping the younger teachers and disillusioned with administration. She over does her running as her only release from her life. She is constantly thinking about her childhood friend that she is barely in contact with now. Overall, I just didn’t enjoy it.

Read this in two sittings, was completely entranced and amazed by the voice and story. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time and can't wait to talk to others about it. A complete original that is so timely and necessary.

Elizabeth comes from a privileged background, has a doctoral Ivy League education, and is trying to support her family while her husband aims to have his dream career. She’s working two jobs—at a charter high school in the Bronx and then as a professor in the evenings— to still come home and be a mother to two small children. It’s about the struggle to be female right now, relatable and real.
Told from Elizabeth’s point of view, it read like she was divulging her deepest desires: the want of financial security, the want for a partner to mutually support and understand, the want of feeling fulfilled professionally and the want of friendship as she lays out her history with her oldest friend Sasha.
I love a character study and I appreciate a book that really connects emotionally. I devoured this on Monday and I’m still thinking about it. •
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Wow! This read like a memoir, and was so fantastic. It is a woman reinventing herself during midlife that I think so many readers can relate to. Pick up this book ASAP!

I really wanted to like this, but I just felt very bothered by the main character and couldn't get past it to really get into the book. Thank you to Netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for the ARC.

This book isn't what I thought it was going to be. The overall plot was pretty basic. It was also shockingly predictable. I knew exactly what was going to happen less than 50 pages in. The main thing that irked was the writing style. I had to re-read every other sentence like 3 times because the writing was so clunky and confusing. I also didn't like the main character. She was so desperate, whiny, and immature. I'm tired of female protagonists bitching about their "imperfect" lives every five minutes. Enough is enough. The cover art was the best thing about this book.

Thank you, Netgalley and Henry Holt for the digital ARC.

Release date: July 7, 2020

44 // “I want everything both ways all the time and I’m tired of feeling sorry for this.”
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WANT is a book that explores both what we want and also the cost of wanting. Elizabeth is trying to do it all and be it all as a wife and a mother, while also working two jobs, but she finds herself wanting more—financial stability, meaningful work, deeper relationships. I loved the reading experience of this book namely because of the contrast between the mundane, daily life Elizabeth is living and the deep things she’s struggling with: motherhood, mental health, broken friendships, and economic privilege. 4/5 ⭐️—I liked it!

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.
I like that it opens with a story of adolescent female friendship… but the sentence that really got me was from the following chapter that is still very close to the beginning of the novel:
“My body is outside the halo of hot water and my skin mottles and I shiver and am cold as I wait for him to come.”
This novel is doing a lot of work from the beginning but it’s read with ease. This will be a fun summer read.

A really captivating novel about precarity, capitalism, motherhood, marriage, and autonomy. This book is honest about things we don't usually talk about.

This book resonated with me, especially in what we are going through with Covid-19. This book is about A woman named Elizabeth, grew up privileged, went to one of the best colleges, has a great family with two adorable daughters, a loving husband, a great job teaching in Brooklyn, a good friend, and much more. I can't say I know what it feels like to have all these things, but I can identify with always wanting more instead of counting the blessings we do have have. She has A great life, but comes off as needy and wanting more and more. I don't have that great life, but I can identify with wanting more. Especially in these times, I should be counting the few blessings I do have, but want more.

A great title for this book. As much or as little as we have, EVERYONE wants more, no matter who they are. A 3.5 stars.

A special thanks to Henry Holt and Company and NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I really enjoyed this book! I liked the subject and also the style of writing. I felt like this was a very honest and realistic description of modern life as it is for many people. So many of us juggle marriage, children, careers, and stress while still never feeling like there is enough money. I also related to the main character since I also work in a high school. The author beautifully expressed the feelings of inadequacy that so many women after graduating, getting a good job, doing all the things you think you are "supposed" to do and yet still something is missing. Wow, I felt that in my soul. I highly recommend this one!

On the surface, it would seem like Elizabeth, the heroine of Lynn steger Strong's novel WANT, has the world figured out if she only would stop navel gazing and be thankful for her blessings. Her life is enviable by any measure, but it is Strong's honesty and her ability to present the inner life of this woman so clearly that keeps the reader riveted. Here are the facts -- growing up in Florida, Elizabeth had a privileged childhood, followed by Columbia degrees and a life in Brooklyn, while she teaches in the Bronx and knows Manhattan well enough to jog across the Brooklyn Bridge and back every morning before breakfast. She also has two healthy, adorable girls, and a loving husband. So why does she feel so needy? The title of the book is the first clue -- no matter what they have, they always want more, feel secondary to friends, made to feel inferior by parents, sometimes everything is not enough. Ultimately, I liked Elizabeth enough that I wish I knew her in real life.

Any woman that works (inside or outside of the home) can relate to this story....what does anyone really want when you get down to their basic, honest selves, and not how we portray ourselves to the world. This is a book that makes the reader think - and also makes the reader want more!

Lynn Steger Strong’s Want reads like a highly personal confession of various wants: the want of money and stability in one’s life and career; the want of providing more stability for one’s children, as well as support—emotional, financial, and otherwise—for one’s spouse; and also the want of creating lasting ties and friendships amid a world where technology has made us feel that people are closer, and yet has instead created gaps and chasms among people, even, in the narrator’s case here, her oldest friend, Sasha.

The narrator of Want comes from a socioeconomically privileged background, with an Ivy League doctoral education to boot (Columbia is never named, but hinted at). With a husband following his fantasy of a dream job and two children to provide for, Steger Strong’s novel charts what it’s like to work at a charter high school in the Bronx—where the students are cattle-prodded into performing high on standardized testing rather than offered actual instruction or one-on-one time that would actually serve them—and also catalogues the increasing adjunctification of higher education in America. For those over-educated living in New York City, this is often paired with being over-worked and under-paid; this is the case of Steger Strong’s narrator in Want, and we witness how she attempts to balance her several jobs, declaring bankruptcy despite working nonstop, being a parent to her children and as much of a supportive wife to her husband as possible, all the while fantasizing about a friendship that fell off the tracks a decade ago—one that is only really continued on social media, in fits and starts.

There are a lot of interesting passages and sequences to mull over in Want, and the books the narrator teaches to her undergrads at night are both resonant of her own prose and also familiarly savory to fans of literary and translated fiction. There are echoes of Rachel Cusk here, too, while Steger Strong maintains her own voice: never once fearful of admitting privilege and its loss for her narrator, and never scared to shows the flaws in modern life in terms of how it affects family, finances, mental health, and one’s personal relations.

While there are many quotes I would love to pluck from the book, I’m respecting the do-not-quote mandate of the ARC I read—kindly provided by Henry Holt and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review—and urge those who are all too familiar with the over-educated and under-paid gap in America right now, especially those in education, to read this book when it’s published in July 2020.

4.5 stars

This book is perfectly accurate about the feelings many overly educated women feel in regards to their personal and financial lives. Struggling with finances is something you don’t expect after getting your degree, but unfortunately many women do. The author perfectly captured the feelings of inadequacy many women feel due to this and the effect it has on their relationships. Even though this is fictional, it is so accurate. I highly recommend this one!

Thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to this read this ARC. Our narrator remains nameless for most of the story. A well educated woman who cobbles together an insufficient paycheck while living an even more unfulfilling life tells us a story that on the surface seems "so what." She and her husband have filed for bankruptcy despite her parents' wealth. She mentions frequently that she grew up with all of the material comforts and more, yet her parents decline to help X and her husband because they just bought an expensive new house. Her mother cannot support her daughter in any way, going so far as to suggest X give her the children. The two little girls seem loved and well cared for, though the two year old and a four year old are never named. Her husband has PTSD from 9/11 and she is depressed, yet neither try to find help, help each other (except for the childcare arrangements which fall through regularly) or help themselves. She has tried meds and therapy in the past, but no longer seeks treatment. She plods on, sometimes leaning into the wind, sometimes against it. She had/has a best friend Sasha. Sasha is a hot mess and X can never be there for her. X isn't particularly good at being available to anyone in the way they need her.

It all comes down to a very unhappy woman who will never be who anyone wants her to be (her perception) or can figure out who she wants to be. It's relatable, but also chaotic. As the reader I often shook my head in agreement - I know the disappointed parent. Yet, X knows how to help herself. Is it that she can't or won't? The book is nearly overwhelming with questions and the roads not taken.

WANT is a difficult book to read because Strong is such a talented writer. She drops us right in the midst of Elizabeth's life. Elizabeth is a teacher, a runner, a reader, a mother and a wife. She and her husband live in a crappy apartment with their two children. Elizabeth's life is small - she and her hedge-fund-manager-turned carpenter husband have had to declare bankruptcy and Elizabeth's parents, who have plenty, refuse to help. the book follows Elizabeth as she revisits her friendship with Sasha, someone she knew as an adolescence. Steger's writing is incredible - as reader, I picked up the emotions Elizabeth was feeling and even had to walk away from the book a couple of times, Just an amazing read.

Aching, powerful, incandescent with rage and longing, this beautifully written novel gripped me and would not let me go. Page turning read about reading, motherhood, family, love, work, money friendship, but mostly the clean cut of how impossible it is to tell the whole truth about anything, about the limits and powers of words, about failures, small and large, and impossible connections and about the failed and necessary kindnesses throughout.

This novel is unlike any I've read. I at first didn't want to finish it. I couldn't get into the book. But it captivated me the more I continued to read.
Somewhere along the way, Elizabeth lost happiness in her life. She was just going through the motions of living. She had lost track of her best friend, feeling like a failure in her parents eyes because her and her husband needed money. Heartbreaking at times and then she could make you laugh.
You will want to put this on your TBR. You won't be sorry buying this book.

Thank you to Publisher and NetGalley for the eARC