Love Orange

Jenny Tinkley lives with her husband Hank and their two sons, Jessie and Luke, in a quiet suburban town. They’re a picture-perfect family living in the picture-perfect smart home. But behind the glossy, perfect sheen there are cracks: Jenny feels bored and stuck in her life, Hank is frustrated by his lack of professional success and their children are each facing their own worries and challenges. 

To try and escape the monotony, Jenny begins a correspondence with a prison inmate named John. She finds excitement in their letters, but things start to unravel when Jenny  agrees to become a go-between for John and his wife and develops a strange obsession with the orange glue that seals his letters. 

The characters are the driving force of this story. They are compelling, relatable, and instantly familiar as someone who could be your neighbour. Jenny is a typical suburban mum. I found her relatable but did struggle to warm to her, particularly as the story went on and her actions became increasingly selfish as she spiralled into addiction. I hated Hank. He was misogynistic, toxic, controlling, and just generally awful. I thought the author  did a great job of writing him and managing to evoke such strong feelings of dislike in not only me, but every other reader I’ve spoken to. For me, it was the kids that drew me to them most of all. My heart broke for them and the things they went through. I think one complaint I have about the book was that I would have liked the children to have featured more. 

I also liked how the smart house was like another character. Jenny sees the house as spying on her and controlling their lives. She gets a kick from outwitting it and managing to do things unnoticed. She even tells Hank to ask the house if he has any questions at one point. I would hate to live in a house like theirs and can understand why she felt the way she did. Sometimes you can have too much technology. 

I did have two issues with the book that I would like to address. The first one was how the therapist told the family that Luke wasn’t autistic because he showed a high level of empathy. This perpetuates the false narrative that autistic people aren’t empathetic which is completely wrong. While they can struggle with processing and expressing emotion, people with autism are often highly empathetic, my own son included. Second of all was how it portrayed everyone who takes pain pills as addicts. While I liked that the book raised the issue of opiate addiction, I did feel like the portrayal spiraled into harmful stereotypes. My biggest issue was with the following quote:

“The thing about pain pills is that they take away pain. Any kind of pain. It gets so that people can’t even get out of bed for the pain that life becomes… compared to the high.”

As someone who uses opiates for chronic pain, the idea that we all become addicted and care only about the high is harmful, offensive and factually incorrect. I don’t get high. Pain medication is the ONLY reason I can get out of bed and live a life that has a sliver of normality. Dependency to help ease pain is not addiction, and while some people do unfortunately spiral into an addiction, I personally know many more who are languishing in agony with no life because they’ve been tarred with the same brush as an addict and denied any relief from their chronic and debilitating pain. For me the quote above is like saying all people who drink alcohol do so to get drunk and become alcoholics. But these are personal feelings and I don't think everyone reading will feel the same way. So I encourage you to read for yourself. 

But I don't want this to come across as sounding like I didn't like the book, because I did. Love Orange is an absorbing and addictive debut novel that explores family, secrets and addiction in modern society. It is beautifully written, immediately draws you into the the Tinkley’s world. I also really liked the quirky humour that runs through the story. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments that made this a joy to read. 

I read the book as part of a readalong organised by the publisher and really enjoyed the chats where I got to see the different things others noticed and the varied ways we can interpret the same book. 

A beautifully written look at a fractured family and life in suburban America, I would recommend this novel and can't wait to read more from the author in the future.

This book had a great premise and I enjoyed the secrets hidden below the surface as well as the twisted family dynamics. However, I thought this story was only ok and that the writing needed a bit of work.

Not quite what I was expecting. I found the ticklist of issues a bit wearing and didn't exactly warm to the characters - though I acknowledge this might be a deliberate device. The book is well written, however, and this is personal taste. Others obviously love it.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A twisty story of an American family and the secrets that lurk beneath the surface, but a rambling narration style that needed to show rather than tell.

This novel burned slowly in my subconscious, and I've been left with a cavernous space in my life after I finished reading. I've never left a novel feeling so strongly that I need to know more! What happens next for the characters who crept under my skin? Particularly Jenny. The author masterfully creates this powerful need to protect her. She's so incredibly fragile, that it's particularly worrying when you leave her at the end of the novel.
Written by an accomplished translator, I found the themes of perception, and 'translating' everyday circumstances present throughout.
 
The author shows you a family living in the 21st Century. Technology led smart house. Children navigating adolescence with online challenges. A sterile minimalist modern house which later stands in stark contrast with an old fashioned home full of cooking scents and a sense of peace.

And it left me with many questions about the progress we've made.
By simplifying our lives, have we stripped away pleasure?
The pleasure to be found in accidentally bumping into a friend at the supermarket,  leading to a unexpectedly spontaneous cup of coffee and catch up. When all you went out for was milk and bread.
Something this modern house can order for you directly...
Although getting your house to understand you is another thing...👀

Recommend 🧡

Thanks so much for access to this title.

I was pleased to join in over on Twitter with a book club read and shared our thoughts on it together over the few days.

Love Orange is all about the Tinkley family, mainly centred on the mother Jenny. She spends a lot of her time caring for her two sons Jesse and Luke - both complicated in their own ways. One spends too much time on the dark web and the other is very smart and obsessed with what materials things are made of which lands him at the child psychiatrists. Jenny's husband Hank is obsessed with his Viking ancestry (he did one of those DNA tests online) and exercises his power through the house which he has converted to a 'smart house' - filled with cameras and alarms that only he knows how to control.

The family attend church every weekend where everyone texts their sins to "the God phone" WhatsApp number. One day whilst at church, Jenny finds out about an outreach opportunity writing letters to inmates in prison and begins writing to John. She feels an affinity with him, because he is as trapped as she is. One day John's letter is laced with a sweet orange glue, meant to be passed on to his girlfriend who is out of prison. Instead it ends up in Jenny's hands with potentially disastrous consequences.

Love Orange is an intensive exploration of an American family covering many things from technology and toxic masculinity, to motherhood, religion and the US opioid epidemic. I really enjoyed reading this darkly satirical debut novel.

Love Orange is a really engaging and surprisingly relatable novel about the intrusive nature of technology.

On the surface, the Tinkley family seem happy, but all of them have their own secrets which are explored within the novel. They live in a 'smart house' which watches everything they do and which Jenny particularly hates.

It was quirky and funny in places too, and I loved the character of Luke who had a charming innocence about him.

It was perhaps a bit too long - I struggled to stay fully engaged at the beginning and felt there was quite a bit of padding.

This was a refreshing read, but the narrative was a little too jumpy for my liking and as a result it lost my attention a few times.

This is a superb read about the Tinkley family who, on the surface, are living a regular, everyday, suburban life in Pennsylvania. Jenny doesn’t like the ultra-modern way her Arts and Crafts house has become... but Hank, her husband, loves the technology, the way you can order milk with a simple spoken request. Luke and Jessie, the sons, have the usual issues but nothing untoward. But all is not as it seems, which is very much the case in many people’s lives today.

Aside from Luke’s obsession with digging and archaeological exploits, he’s a good kid. Jessie gets into trouble at school for allegedly accessing the Dark Web. Jenny begins a long correspondence with a prisoner, John, and also Shona, his partner. Unbeknownst to Jenny, and anyone else in the family, the licking of the strange orange glue on John’s letters leads to much more worrying behaviour.

This debut is assured, funny, in places, and deftly written, and I really like the way Randall switches the focuses from one character to another, which shows the supposed cohesion of a family and how it can rapidly unravel. Throughout, I am on Jenny’s side - the only female in the family unit - not that one should take sides, per se. 

I love books that are beautifully written and compelling - but also resonate after turning the final page, and ‘Love Orange’ ticks all of these boxes for me.

A darkly funny portrait of a suburban family coming apart at the seams. Lots of clever riffs on the theme of imprisonment, often of our own making. I did wince at a therapist character saying that one of the family’s sons wasn’t autistic because he showed a high level of empathy though - the idea that autistic people aren’t empathetic is deeply wrong and has lost the novel a star in my rating - but that aside, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

<b>Great Themes, but I struggled to stay engaged</b>

This book is packed with discussions of gender, the prison system, interpersonal relationships, and technology. On their own these are all interesting topics. Combined well these could make for a great read. However, I found myself losing focus. 

The primary issue I had with the book was that so much of the information and emotions that defined each character was told to us rather than shown through character actions. I felt that each chapter involved much more information dumping than character action. I think that Jenny and Hank could have been great characters, but I couldn’t fully appreciate them since so much of their personalities were told to us. I found their children to be full, sadly. The supporting cast was alright, but I didn’t feel connected to the dialog. 

I can’t go into as much detail as I’d like because I found my attention slipping. When I’d pick the book back up I found that I’d forgotten a good amount. I will certainly read more by Natasha Randall as I found her choice of themes to be excellent. Sadly, I didn’t connect with this book

Natasha Randall’s debut novel, Love Orange, tackles a magnitude of issues surrounding modern day life as an American.
Jenny and Hank live with their two sons Jesse and Luke. Hank is technology obsessed. He has turned their house into a ‘smart home’ which is listening into their every conversation and monitoring their every move. The house is able to order the family groceries by them just saying ‘house, order milk’. This smart home, which Hank so much adores, is much less liked by the rest of his household. Hank is very much infatuated with protecting his family from things like the dark web and his sons from porn on the internet. The boys don’t enjoy their lack of privacy and Jenny just hates the smart house. Everything in their world seems to rotate around technology, even the priest at their church has turned to the congregation texting their anonymous sins to the God Phone so that people don’t actually have to speak to one another and have proper conversations. This was a concept I found rather amusing.

Jenny is a little bit fed up with her life; she is unfulfilled by the way her life has turned out and is annoyed at the existence of her smart home. As a way to take her mind off her reality, she starts writing letters to prison inmates which is her little secret from her family. Letters to and from her prison pen pal, John, become frequent and Jenny notices that John’s letters are always sealed with a sweet-smelling orange substance. Jenny couldn’t help but try the substance, and noticed that it numbed some of her pain. Jenny searches high and low for whatever this orange substance could be, but is unsuccessful. She is also in contact with John’s husband, Shona, who is also locked up but coming close to the end of her time in prison. At first Shona wants nothing to do with Jenny through fear that her time in prison might get increased, but once she’s released the two start to get along. It transpires that this sweet-smelling orange substance is an opiate drug called Suboxone, which is used to treat chronic pain conditions (and is just generally pretty good at numbing people).

All in all I thought this book was an interesting snippet of modern day family life and it shows just how bleak and dissatisfying life can be, especially for Jenny. Hank and Jenny were pretty dead-set on gender stereotype roles and I did honestly feel a bit for Jenny.. She must be so bored in her life. My main issue with the book was that it’s written in quite a smart way in which the author didn’t draw up any opinions of the characters, this meant that I really struggled to engage with any of them.

I did like that the opioid crisis was a topic brought up though as it is something I can massively resonate with. As a sufferer of chronic pain, I basically depend on pain relief in order to have some quality to my life. I spent quite a while on various opioids in the last few years, and I know all too well how much they can destroy people’s lives. It is so easy to become addicted, and for me, they numbed everything except the pain I am in. As someone from the UK, opioid drugs can only be prescribed by GPs, but I remember so well when I was in Mexico last year, and they had opioid drugs for sale in gift shops.

Overall, I think that Love Orange brought up many important topics which are quite often overshadowed by other things in today’s life. It brings up the American opioid crisis and drug abuse and addiction, but also things like gender stereotypes and toxic masculinity and the book as a whole was something completely different to anything I’ve ever read. I found the book a little bit hard to follow along with at times, I don’t know if this was a problem with me, or with the book itself, but I felt like it was jumping back and forth between points a lot and I kept feeling a little bit lost as to where we were and what was going on.

Thank you to Natasha Randall and NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I look forward to seeing what Natasha will bring out next!

This book is about an American family, but of course it's not that simple. There are lots of surprises and twists about this 'simple' family. 
I thought this book had a fresh voice and really enjoyed it with the characters and the story. 

Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

Love love love!

I really enjoy books about people and relationships and this is outstanding. It’s well written, relatable and so relevant.

Love Orange has a cast of characters that really do drive this story; and there is one in particular that I REALLY loved to hate!  Hank, the head of the Tinkley family is an uptight, controlling misogynist, BUT his scenes are so brilliant that I just could not get enough of him!  Jenny, his wife, is also fascinating - her peculiar behaviour and increasingly strange mannerisms make for some hilarious reading; I just could not tear myself away!
🍊 
There are a number of important themes and aspects running through this book, the first being that the Tinkleys live in a “smart house”, something which affects them all to  a varying degree, and really made me stop and think about the control of technology on our lives.  The lack of communication between the members of the family adds to their dysfunctional aura and brings into sharp focus their somewhat irrational thoughts on gender and descendancy.
🍊 
Randall’s clean and fresh prose made this a quick and enjoyable read and really highlighted the dark humour within.
🍊 
With a fiercely compelling narrative, Love Orange is a veritable soap opera of a novel and I truly felt like a fly on the wall; listening in on the Tinkley’s, utterly paralysed by how their lives unravelled before me!

This book was quite unexpected. And completely caught me off guard. The story didn’t go the route I guessed but I also found it a little difficult to read.

Love Orange’ is the fascinating story and a vivid portrait of an apparently normal middle class American family. But there is a lot to discover behind the facade!

Hank, a salesman is struggling with his work life and his desire to control everything. So much that he makes his family live in a modern house, where everything is controlled and regulated by technology.
Jenny, his wife, has a secret correspondence with John who is a prison inmate.
Their children, confused by their parents’ weird and controlling behaviour start to navigate the dark web and try dangerous 🧪  experiments in the basement.

In the absurd and somehow tragic life of the characters, the author brilliantly mixes themes: from the exasperated use of technology to controlling relationships, from the inability to fulfill dreams and goals to anxiety and inability to make decisions.

I truly enjoyed the book and thanks to the #buddyread I appreciated nuances and details that I did not catch when reading. I feel like this book deserves a second reading and a sequel!

Thanks to the publisher, the author and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange of my honest opinion.

Thank you to the author @natasha_randall_ publishers @riverrun_books @quercusbooks and @netgalley for an arc of this debut book.

Meet The Tinkley's. Jenny and Hank with their smart house filled with technology, look like they've got it all. But scratch beneath the surface and you see that not all is as it seems. With Hank obsessing over his Viking heritage, Jenny secretly writing to an imprisoned convict named John and two sons, one in therapy and one surfing the dark web, things are most definitely dsyfunctional.

A book that also highlights the danger and dependence on technology. Written before lockdown, but eerily predicting what the near future may hold. Have a confession to make at church? Just text it into the God Phone. 

The Tinkley family are put under the microscope in this unpredictable, modern look at gender roles. A Stepford Wives for the millennium generation. Hank is annoyingly chauvinistic, but because he does breathing exercises and yoga, thinks that he's in touch with his softer side. And we see Jenny slowly unravel as she loses control and becomes dependent on the orange flavour paper John sends her. Sharp and witty. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And was Team Jenny all the way (especially after you find out how they met) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Out now #loveorange 🧡🍊

"She had once asked Hank, 'Is there anything hard about being a man?' She knew it was an odd question so she explained herself. 'I mean, I can tell you what's hard about being a woman... there are body issues, age issues, the periods, childbirth, the problem of being taken seriously, glass ceilings - you know that sort of thing. But, I'm just thinking, what about for men?'"

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Randall's book is a treatise on the modern American family and the perils of toxic masculinity, misogyny and addiction, whether it be to drugs or techology. This book is a wakeup call to those who move through life thinking every change must be for the better and fail to connect to the people around them. However, I did find the narratives slightly disjointed at times, particularly that of John, and contrary to some reviewers, I didn't find it particularly funny. The most interesting thing for me was the examination of Jenny's motivations as a bored housewife in a failing marriage, although even she doesn't choose to change and instead has it thrust upon her. An interesting read but I would have liked a little more closure on some of the issues.

“The thing about pain pills is that they take away pain. Any kind of pain. It gets so that people can’t even get out of bed for the pain that life becomes…..compared to the high.”
.
.
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I spent the first part of Love Orange feeling irritated with Hank. His insistence on drinking water mindfully before meals, his constant espousing of his Viking heritage, his creation of the ultimate Smart home, his ring-fenced yoga time…..shall I go on? And then I thought, if this is how I feel about his fragile male ego in print, imagine what it must be like for his wife Jenny? No wonder that Jenny becomes embroiled in a correspondence with a prisoner called John. His sweet-smelling orange envelopes give Jenny a pleasurable numbness when licked. Gradually the pain of two sons she no longer understands, a husband who prefers his home to his wife, in-laws who dislike her and a job that she doesn’t care about fades away into the distance.


In the story of one family, @natasha_randall_ draws out a multitude of issues 
~ Technology as a barrier to real connection: Video games, onion routers, internet porn and smart homes. Even the church confessional is now a text service so the congregation don’t have to talk to one another
~ The opioid crisis: The ease with which Jenny falls into her addiction and the lack of medical care available is terrifying
~ Gender roles: What does it mean to be a man when you are no longer the head of the household or the provider? There is a discussion towards the end of the book about the name Mary in the Bible. The numerous women called Mary, Miriam or versions of this, all blurred by history. It feels a little like this for Jenny. She’s a wife, a mother, a daughter-in-law, a co-worker, an employee and a friend, but you rarely get a deeper sense of who she really is, as if her character has been eroded by drudgery


If you enjoyed Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation then Love Orange may well be a book for you with it’s dark humour and sense of bored frustration. Huge thanks to Netgalley and Quercus books for my ARC