This book did not work for me. The coming-of-“working” age angst resonated with me and I could totally relate to Mona’s predicament. BUT I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. They all felt one dimensional and lacked emotional depth.

The story focused on a 23 year old woman, Mona, who has strived for academic perfection her whole life. After graduating from University of Arizona with top marks in finance, she becomes bitterly disappointed when she can’t land her dream job. The economy is on the brink of collapse and financial institutions are struggling to keep afloat. Mona has big dreams to get rich and successful yet is forced to continue living with her parents because she has failed to launch. Mona goes through an identity crisis as she watches her best friend achieve career success and her parents’ marriage fall apart.

We’ve all been there, trying to break into the job market and land our dream job (or at least a step towards our dream job) after graduation. This book had a fantastic plot idea but sadly wasn’t executed all that well. Readers who are okay with a shallow one note cast of characters and enjoy a light witty writing style that doesn’t delve too deeply into issues will probably enjoy this one much more than I did.

I received an advanced audio copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Mona is a young 20 something professional just at the beginning of her career when the great recession put the brakes on everything and she has to move home. Being a grownup is hard, and Mona does it with humor and honesty.

I listened to this book on audio and the narrator was very good! A Coming of age book full of drama, life, dark humor, love and growth! Mona’s desires and expectations after graduation did not come easily for her. She found herself living with her parents unemployed, no real direction. This is when I felt s he continues with her entitlement attitude. This book enveloped so much of my interaction with many millennials in the work environment. I enjoyed this one!

Thanks to NETGALLY and Dreamscape Media for this advanced copy for my honest review

Mona is like so many of us, lost in a world of people that appear to have their lives together. This book made me laugh because it is entirely relatable. Mona is a character that will stick with me for awhile.

Mona Mireles is a quintessential overachiever: a former spelling bee champion and valedictorian of her college class, she has a sterling résumé and a wall of plaques and medals in her bedroom that stretches floor to ceiling.
She's also broke, unemployed, back at home with her parents, and completely adrift in life and love. Such a quirky and funny tale!

Poor Mona is a recent college graduate who thought her life would be so much better. She did everything right, and in the end feels like the world didn't give her anything. She's unemployed and living with her parents. (She's also self-harming, if that is a trigger for you). Her public complaining about her situation was captured and she's become an internet meme.

This could have gone a more comic and "chick lit" direction, but Mona at Sea leans more toward literary fiction, so it's more a character study of a girl who was promised it all and comes to realize that life is filled with unexpected twists and turns.

Thank you NetGalley for an audio-ARC of Mona at Sea by Elizabeth Gonzalez James.
This book was not my favorite. Maybe I am too old for this book, but I just could not relate to the character. Mona's whining and self destructive behaviors seemed childish and unattractive. I found myself struggling to finish and read other books in-between this one. Not being a person to quit a book, I stuck it out until the end. Although the story had closure, it just wasn't enough to redeem all the whining.

"Mona is a Millennial perfectionist who fails upwards in the midst of the 2008 economic crisis."

This one line really sums up this book and how relatable it was for me. Mona lays bare for the reader the crushing disappointment of life after achieving your educational goals, doing everything you were told would make you successful (hello student loan debt!) and the false promises at the end of the degree tunnel.

I think this novel is a decent debut--there were times when I really chuckled or appreciated the sardonic observations from the understandably jaded Mona. There were, however, some meandering and slightly boring passages where I tuned out of the audiobook for a bit--sort of the reading on autopilot feeling. For listeners of the audiobook I would say if you enjoy a dramatic narration that borders on a one woman play then you will enjoy this read but for me it was a bit too theatrical especially when vocalizing highly emotional moments.

Overall, I'm glad I read it but I would save it for when you have the patience and desire to explore a new and developing voice in lit.

Thanks to NetGalley & @dreamscape_media for the ALC and gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book was hard to listen to for a few reasons.

Warning - Self-harm and self-injury is featured throughout the book and is a major plot point. I would skip those parts myself and almost quit reading the book because of it.

I was the exact same age as Mona was when she graduated in the same year, as the Great Recession hit and the housing market bubble burst. I had a job lined up too (thankfully not in finance) that didn’t pan out because of economic circumstances. There were many moments when I related to that frustration that she had, especially when job searching.

However, Mona’s attitude was truly heinous. She was entitled to the point I was embarrassed for her. She was mean enough to fat shame her best friend in front of everyone at a party. She argued nonstop with everyone and the thought that I could have had 5% of the attitude I had when I was her age made me want to cringe FOREVER. Woof.

I almost DNF’ed a few different times but pushed through for the NetGalley review. Mona is redeemed a little towards the end of the book, but not nearly enough to warrant a satisfying read.

This was a struggle to listen to for me. I simply wasn’t interested in the main character or their story. I did listen to the end. The writing was good and I’d try something else by this author but this just was not the book for me.

I really enjoyed Mona at Sea. I found it to be brutally open and honest without being overly melodramatic and trite. The author makes the setting and the characters real enough to picture yourself living among them.

Reviewing
Mona at Sea
By Elizabeth Gonzalez James

Millennial Mona gets an amazing job at a big bank straight out of grad school, which is no surprise after graduating at the top of her class. However, the bank crashes on her first day, and Mona finds herself struggling to find use for her financial degree in the 2009 financial crash.

Some readers may find Mona’s struggles relatable, but I found her decisions and attitude to be inconsistent with the driven, high achieving student she was in school. The characters seemed immature and underdeveloped, making random decisions to move the plot along.

Mona struggles with drinking and self harm which are both downplayed or even praised by her mother and boyfriend. For this reason alone, I would not recommend this book to younger readers.

Overall this just wasn’t my cup of tea, perhaps it will be yours?

⭐️⭐️💫 2.5 stars for a bit of a Debi downer of a read with a 18+ rating for praise and glorification of self harm as a coping method.

Sad Millennial definitely has some GenX tendencies and I am here for it. This was a fun read for me. I’m certain some people won’t relate to Mona, but I adored her honesty and snark. I love that while she grows over the course of the book, she doesn’t change. I left this book feeling like she’s someone I know, and wanting to check in on her later. This is definitely a wonderful debut novel.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Mona graduates college at the top of her class and has an amazing financial job secured. Then the financial crises hits in 2008. Mona loses her new job on her first day and while this is happening, her reaction is being recorded by a bystander then sent to the internet. Mona is a “sad millennial”. She ends up living with her parents and has this idea of a perfect job and perfect family – neither of which she can achieve. She submits 400+ resumes and goes on a handful of interviews and the only job she can find is at a call center. Her parents request that she takes it. She does and her life gets turned upside down – in a good way. The writing was easy to follow and allowed the reader to understand Mona’s internal struggles: her self-harm and the way she thought. This book did a great job portraying the struggles that young adults are having in the limbo of graduating college and beginning their career.

As someone that is around the same age as Mona, and came of age around the same time, this one was extremely relatable for me. I remember similar times and similar feelings graduating college around the time of the Great Recession and found connecting the story throughout. I would imagine that many millennials of a certain age will feel the same and this will likely be a popular book this summer. For anyone who graduated college ready to take on the world and experienced unemployment or underemployment I highly recommend this book, and even if you can't relate this is still an enjoyable novel.

Okay, first off I'm just going to say, this book should come with a trigger warning for cutting. Using cutesy knife word play in the description is not cool. Having read the book all the way through I will say that given the author's treatment of cutting in the story, the cutesy word play does not surprise me. This book is not written like it comes from personal experience with cutting, but rather from a morbid fascination with the disorder.

Secondly, this book is not "sharp and witty", nor is it "darkly humorous". I laughed out loud twice and the rest of the time I was straight up bored. Mona is sadly the least interesting and least likeable character in the book. The scenes where she was with her job search support group were the most interesting parts and they were few and far between.

I was going to give this book a 3 star rating, which for me means readable but not recommendable, but the lack of trigger warnings and the way cutting was used in the story bumped it down to a 2. The character of Mona needs some serious therapy and suggesting that she could cure herself without it using just the power of love and art is ridiculous.

Mona at Sea by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Narrated by: Aida Reluzco
Publication Date: July 8, 2021
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Description from NetGalley…
“Mona Mireles is a quintessential overachiever: a former spelling-bee champion and valedictorian of her college class, she has a sterling résumé and a wall of plaques and medals in her bedroom that stretches floor to ceiling. She's also broke, unemployed, back at home with her parents, and completely adrift in life and love. Seven months out of college, she’s desperately trying to reassemble the pieces of her life after the Wall Street job she had waiting for her post-graduation dissolves in the wake of the Great Recession. When her reaction to losing her job goes viral and she is publicly branded the "Sad Millennial," she begins a downward spiral into self-pity, bitterness, and late-night drunken binges on cat videos. She's the sort who says exactly the right thing at absolutely the wrong moments, seeing the world through a cynic's eyes. 

In suburban Tucson amid the financial and social malaise of the early 2000s, thirty-three-year-old Mona must not only find a job but also quickly learn to navigate the complexities of adult relationships within the black hole of her parents' shattering marriage. At her mother's urging, she grudgingly joins a support group for job seekers, and she slowly begins to see that all is not lost—and that perhaps losing the job on Wall Street was a blessing in disguise. She might even learn what it is she finds meaningful in life. The only question is whether or not she’ll be brave enough to go after it.”
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Thank you to @netgalley @Dreamscape_Media for the ALC in return for my honest review.
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My thoughts…
Cynicism without being cynical. Is that possible? Gonzalez James’ writing certainly proved it. I 💚 this book. Some may find this book slow-paced, but it was a character-driven-literary-fiction and it was an incredible debut. This was not a book to “go blind” in. Read the description and be prepared to read painful truths. It was a book with serious themes, so real that it was comical, without being insensitive. Themes such as depression and self-harm were written without outright stating so, but still full of insight and vulnerability. Even though the back drop was the 2008 financial crisis, the story was just as poignant this year, maybe even more so, as we all try to go back to our “normal,” after a year filled with distorted and disrupted plans. Listen to it on audiobook if you could because, the narrator was excellent in portraying ambition and “adulting.”

This story has a mix of funny and sad but reflective moments. I found Mona humorous but also vulnerable. I could tell that she was unhappy and just trying to find the way she navigated through what her ideas of success were supposed to be. The story was realistic and the side characters were amazing. I enjoyed this book so much and can't wait to read more from this author.

I really enjoyed this! Mona made some pretty bad choices but she was funny and relatable. Her voice reminded me a lot of Samantha Irby. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who's ever felt like their life wasn't going as planned.

Mona at Sea is a witty and biting ode to a generation coming of age at time filled with so much promise and so much disappointment. Mona perfectly encapsulates the frustration of working hard and doing everything the world expects only to end up adrift in a sea of criticism and missed opportunities. She is surrounded in every direction by judgement of millennials and advice on how to succeed but very few people who really want to listen and hear her problems.

Mona is relatable but at times I also wanted to shake some sense into her and if that isn’t the recipe for a realistic and fully formed character, I don’t know what is. ImThis audiobook was such a pleasant surprise after starting it with very little knowledge of the the author or plot. The narrator really brought Mona to life with a mix of sarcasm and heartfelt moments that again, made Mona feel so real to me. This didn’t feel like a book “about the millennial generation”, it felt like a love letter and and pep talk and chance to vent over drinks with a friend. I felt this book.

I will be recommending this books often and hope to read it with my book club.