I geuinely had a fun time reading this book. I really enjoyed the book. Perfect for those looking for unlikeable protagonist. Great book all round

A Novel Obsession left me with conflicting feelings after finishing it.

-I really loved the premise of this book. Who hasn’t looked up an ex before? I do think it fell flat in some areas though, and the stalking really took it to whole other level.

-I felt like none of the characters were really likable.

-There were multiple times where I thought, “ugh I just want to put this book down” but really wanted to know where it went.

-I wasn’t shocked by the big revelation/twist and actually enjoyed it, but don’t think I liked how the book as a whole ended.

-I thought the writing was really great and told the story well, everything flowed nicely.

I was constantly between 2 to 3 stars and so rounded up to 3.

In some ways, a novel obsession is like many other books and movie with a similar premise. A book about a girl that becomes obsessed with her boyfriends ex, and befriends her under false pretenses.

But it's a little more than that. Naomi, the lead displays selfish, captivating, horrifying behavior all in the name of a story and every move she made kept me on the edge of my seat. For writers, is a question of how far are you willing to go to make art imitate life (or life imitate art). And, what are you willing to risk to make that happen.

The ending was a bit on the weaker side. It felt hasty. And having spent so much time getting to know Naomi, the ex Rosemary, and the boyfriend Caleb, I would have liked to see a bit more come out of the conclusion.

A riveting tale of obsession fueled by insecurity. This is a fun read, but in a bit of a scary way. The heroine, Naomi Ackerman is writing a novel based on her own obsessive behavior toward her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. The story that ensues is quite a ride, right up to the end of the book. Thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book and can’t wait for Caitlin Barasch’s next novel. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an advance copy of this book.

After such a disappointing read (with such a promising description!), I dragged my feet a bit starting A Novel Obsession. This was also described as a story of social media stalking, but in this case, the object isn’t a popular influencer, but her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. A Novel Obsession turned out to be a Manhattan bookworld page-turner. I bought into Naomi’s Isnta-stalking because it felt realistic. Who hasn’t taken a social media peek? And when Naomi found some information about Rosemary, her boyfriend’s ex, I mostly bought what she did with it. I could easily understand a real person talking a walk in a particular neighborhood hoping to bump into someone else, so I felt like I was being gently led into Naomi’s darker activities. (I could not see a real person drifting into shooting a Lolita porno with an influencer’s boyfriend as part of vague scheme to get closer to her, which is just the tiny tip of the Like Me hot mess.) The book takes readers on Naomi’s slippery slope from discovering her new boyfriend might have a type, to seeing Rosemary is also in the literary world, to arranging “accidental” meetings with Rosemary and sliding into her life.

Also, there are some really hilarious NYC book world moments. Rosemary gushes that booksellers like Naomi are the gatekeepers to literature, which I’m pretty sure I’ve heard publisher’s assistants say to book store staff at book launches. Plus, there’s a lot of rich New Yorker soul searching from Naomi about whether she’s really hungry enough to create great art, and comments on how writing is her first love, before any personal relationship, all of which I feel like I could have overheard at loads of Brooklyn bars. I loved how Caleb was sort of a generic nice guy, and then the boyfriend in Naomi’s “fiction” manuscript is kind of an underdeveloped, generic nice guy, and I just giggled so much in the middle of the creepy obsession story.

Readers will be dragged into Naomi’s terrible decisions, so I don’t want to reveal anything about how the plot unfolds. But I do have to say that I didn’t predict the way the story would end up. In fact, for most of the book, I thought Naomi’s weird stalking and fake friendship would all be undone by Caleb and Rosemary being reasonably well-adjusted people, and the whole mess coming out in a casual chat.

You are going to want to get your hands on A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch, its “A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by BuzzFeed, The Millions, Goodreads, BookRiot, and The Nerd Daily” so you know its going to be good.

I don’t mind an unlikeable main character, maybe I am in the minority but sometimes the not-so-nice characters are more fun to read about. And in this book, insecure Naomi is not exactly someone you’d be friends with in real life.

I thought this was a fun and entertaining novel, I am sure tons of readers will devour this one!

SYNOPSIS:

Twenty-four-year-old New York bookseller Naomi Ackerman is desperate to write a novel, but struggles to find a story to tell. When, after countless disastrous dates, she meets Caleb—a perfectly nice guy with a Welsh accent and a unique patience for all her quirks—she thinks she’s finally stumbled onto a time-honored subject: love. Then Caleb’s ex-girlfriend, Rosemary, enters the scene.

Upon learning that Rosemary is not safely tucked away in Caleb’s homeland overseas, but in fact lives in New York and also works in the literary world, Naomi is threatened and intrigued in equal measure. If they both fell for the same man, what else might they have in common? The more Naomi learns about Rosemary, the more her curiosity consumes her. Before she knows it, her casual Instagram stalking morphs into a friendship under false pretenses—and becomes the subject of her nascent novel.

As her lies and half-truths spiral out of control, and fact and fiction become increasingly difficult to untangle, Naomi must decide what—and who—she’s willing to sacrifice to write the perfect ending.

Let’s add 24-year old bookseller and aspiring novelist Naomi Ackerman to the list of unlikeable female characters I can’t help but love. Naomi is a writer who dreams of writing a novel, but is only able to write about her own experiences and hasn’t done anything she deems worthy of a book. Until she finds out about her new boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend and begins stalking her and befriending her all in the name of creating material to (barely) fictionalize.

The story is tense and while Naomi’s actions are undefendable, I still found myself rooting for her and hoping she could get out of her mess unscathed. I may be telling on myself to say I found aspects of this self-sabotaging writer with an inability to let down her guard enough to actually connect with other humans relatable, but… I did.

This is an incredibly impressive debut novel. The writing is incisive and raw and the story compelling. I’m excited to see what Caitlin Barasch does next.

Naomi is an aspiring writer who works at a bookstore in NYC. Curious about her boyfriend’s ex, Naomi tracks her down and befriends her under false pretenses, justifying it to herself as research for a novel she’ll write. Her web of lies grows more complex and threatens to collapse as she plots the end of her book. The story moved along at a swift pace and held my attention. Great ending.

A Novel Obsession is a tense, psychological book about a young woman who, after hearing her boyfriend's ex has reached out to him, becomes somewhat obsessed with her and begins basically stalking her. I wouldn't call it a psychological thriller, but there was a lot of tension maintained throughout the entire story.

Some reviewers didn't like it because Naomi was "stalking" Rosemary. However, I feel like that was the point - you aren't supposed to like it, you are supposed to be disturbed by it. It pulls you in and makes you try to figure out Naomi's true motives, and analyze the things that have happened in her past to try to find some sort of answer. It also reels you in and makes you want to find out how everything unfolds, just waiting for the righteous emotional payoff of it all blowing up in her face.

Naomi's character wasn't especially relatable for me personally, but I was still completely invested in the story. Almost like one of those characters you love to hate. I didn't hate her, but I thought she was crazy (maybe perhaps on the verge of a major mental breakdown), and enjoyed analyzing the things she said and did to try to figure things out. She claims to be a writer, but didn't seem to have a desperate passion for it. The things she said about writing and the things she actually did were at odds, except for when she said that she would do anything for the book - but even that seemed like just a justification for her obsession. Her constant need for validation seemed to drive many, if not all, of the poor decisions in her life.

The other characters seemed very flat, but since this is a 1st person narrative I think that was an effective choice in really immersing us in Naomi's self-centered thoughts and what I perceived as her spiraling mental health.

This brilliant debut novel is an interesting and intense character study with themes of validation, the power and consequences of social media, and privilege. I liked how meta it was, especially when we got multiple layers of it as the women got together to discuss their writing. I loved the subtle plot twist even though I began suspecting it, and thought the ending, although a little anti-climatic, was very realistic and well done. I would highly recommend to anyone who wants a tense psychological book but does not like violence or thrillers. I personally think it would make a great book club book because there is just so much to talk about, but beware of explicit intimate scenes.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the early copy, all thoughts are my own.

I just couldn’t get into this story or justify what Naomi was doing. I didn’t like her from the start. Who wants to sabotage a promising relationship because they’re obsessed with their new partners ex? Two stars!

This book, A Novel Obsession, gave me vibes from the Netflix series “You” with the dark humor and suspenseful tone-not to mention we also have a slightly unusual/damaged main character?? This book started off strong for me and I was able to devour it in 3 sittings. It was a definite page turner of a book about a woman(Naomi) obsessed over an ex-girlfriend of the new guy she falls for. This was literary suspense at its finest. I was totally invested in seeing how this would all play out in the end. I think most of us can say we have felt intimidated by the idea of a previous relationship of the person we are now with. But do we become “friends” with that ex and pretend we are someone else?! I know I certainly haven’t. So for me, this was where the book really took off. I had to see what would happen and how this would all play out.
I thought the writing in this book was very good. It was a very clever premise and was creative and interesting. I would definitely recommend this book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Definitely a quick read - most of the story was a little slow but the ending was really interesting. I hadn't read anything like this before and it was very meta.

Firstly, I am HONORED to be an early reader of this book and I am SO EXCITED for more people to read it! It combined so many of the things I love to read about -- female obsession, relationships, and writing -- and it did it SO WELL. I've read a lot of books about obsession with slightly unhinged narrators and this one still managed to surprise me and give me anxiety throughout.

So what is it about? Glad you asked -- It's a first person narrative as told by Naomi, a self-proclaimed writer/bookseller in a relatively new relationship with Welsh mathematician, Caleb. When Caleb mentions that his ex-GF (Rosemary) emailed him about meeting up, it sparks an obsession in Naomi that leads her to stalk (observe?) Rosemary and strike up a friendship with her -- all with the intention of writing a novel about it.

The way the narrative blends with Naomi's novel is geniusly meta, leaving me wondering what's real and what's the product of her writerly imagination. And like all stalker stories where one character's entire identity is founded on lies, I was constantly waiting for Naomi to be caught, leaving me on the edge of my seat through every interaction.

While many stories of stalking and obsession are steeped in violence and a desire to possess the target in a physical or emotional way, this novel subverts the genre by making it all about STORY and about women. I actually really like how it chose to highlight the budding friendship between two emotionally struggling women, rather than putting romance at the forefront. Caleb is almost a footnote in the book, really. Naomi wants to possess Rosemary on the page and weave a good story. She starts to see her life and all the actions she takes as necessary for crafting the perfect plot -- her writing becoming her #1 love, with everything else being secondary. She calculates everything she says and does to provoke a certain response from both Caleb and Rosemary, which she then writes down as quickly as possible. An intriguing concept, it leads you to question how much of the author's -- Caitlin Barasch -- own life is entwined with the narrative.

Overall, it's very spellbinding. This novel became MY obsession over the few days it took me to devour, and I can't stop thinking about the characters. Well done! I can't wait to add this one to my permanent collection and to see what the author does next!

I was utterly enthralled by this book. Part psychological thriller, part character study, and part millennial satire. I have never read anything like it and it was so whip-smart and sharp. All the cultural and literary allusions? Chef’s kiss. We’re all just trying to perform as we are perceived and Barasach nails this sentiment. I will be bullying my friends to read this and I’ll most definitely be buying a copy. Will post to my Instagram on release day.

Thank you Dutton/Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the chance to read and review Caitlin Barasch's striking debut A Novel Obsession. This book impressed me for a range of reasons (below) and left me with an overall sense that Ms. Barasch has a fantastic way of twisting a plot that if very internal, mostly a deft character study, and making it almost meta cognitive at times, thinking about thinking about writing/writing about a plot while offering the plot and having the protagonist talk about the plot with someone else offering feedback on the plot (that was odd to write but I hope my point is that this is a really interesting narrative that is I felt often winking at itself and the reader). As other reviewers will likely note, this fits in with other recent novels about the chaos that some writers experience (The Other Black Girl for example) or generate themselves (e.g., The Plot, Dream Girl) but this book is also wholly its own, with a unique voice and distinct story.

Three things I liked
1. The main character and other characters are not likable, Naomi is hard to like because of all of her decisions and actions, Rosemary is odd and even off putting at times (she seemed kind of uptight and disagreeable to me), Caleb is bland (but I also feel Ms. Barasch in one of the more meta scenes actually justifies this nicely)... BUT I still was completely sucked into the plot, the suspense, and the life unraveling. I say this because for me it takes a talented writer to make me want to know what happens to unlikable people.

2. As noted I felt at times that Ms. Barasch was winking at the reader, inviting me along to be involved in her writing in a way (without it reading as her telling me what to think, it was subtle and worked well for the narrative). I enjoyed the chance to think about the writing process and decisions writers make (and the feedback process).

3. There was an effective theme of suspense and tension; the book is not scary nor a thriller but more of a how will this work out, where is this story going and how will it resolve tension. The end for me was satisfying is a bit short and I enjoyed wondering, I think as Naomi herself did, how this was all going to end.

This is a great book for book clubs and readers who like a literary suspense story that is more character driven than plot driven (the story if satisfying but it's mostly about the characters). If you read or plan to read Other People's Clothes this would fit with that general theme of problematic friendships and writing and creativity/desperation.

I often enjoy novels with people behaving badly as the primary plot device. This one, however, left me flat. Other recent novels out there with the same tension that were more interesting and complex.

Not going to lie. Last night, when I first finished, I gave this 3.5 stars. I almost actually gave it three. Then I slept on it. And I thought about it. And I thought more about it. And the book totally occupied my mind enough to give it four stars overall.

I did not give it five because I truly wanted to slap the shit out of Naomi and Caleb-- for both the same and different reasons. Also, I found the book to get slightly repetitive in the middle. And as this book sat with me, those are probably the only two things I did not enjoy about this book.
However, I enjoyed this book for many, many reasons. Loved the idea of a stalking ex girlfriend. Most of us have been in a relationship where we feel intimidated by an ex. Where we feel like we cannot add up or be worthy. Like we feel that even though that relationship ended, it still matters to our significant other. Sometimes that obsession drives you apart and sometimes you move on quickly realizing that to keep what you have you leave the past in the past.

During this book with watch Naomi struggle in really tough ways. From multiple experiences when she was younger to how that affects her as an adult. Her inability to not live fully in reality and constantly create a fictional narrative is heartbreaking.

And the ending was so freaking well done. Though it took time to grab me when I started and it had to resonate with me after reading, I definitely recommend this one.

An interesting premise that was very engaging at times and lagged in others. Naomi is not likeable; shes relatable but not likeable. but it was also hard to not understand her own paranoia when certain things she thought were true and in fact turned out to be. Caleb was bland; he needed just something more than being a plot device. And Rosemary; she had her own motivations that bubble up every now and again but more never fully explored. Good character study though.

Thank you to #netgalley and Penguin group for letting me read an advance copy of #anovelobsession by Caitlin Barasch.

I have mixed feelings about the book. It was definitely a page turner and I was racing to get to the end to see what happened. But it seemed like an anticlimactic ending. I’m not sure what I expected but guess I thought it would be more dramatic. It was a great twist but I didn’t really like any of the characters. Except for the grandmother.

I’m not sure at what point Rosemary figured out that Naomi had been stalking her but as sick and twisted as what Naomi did was, I also found it creepy that Rosemary did what she did. But it’s also a great revenge plot. Caleb just didn’t seem like a guy worth fighting or obsessing over.

This is minor but when Caleb and Naomi are at his dads house, it comes up that he is a vegetarian. But I’m one of the last scenes of Caleb cooking for Naomi, they sit down to eat a dinner of roast chicken and vegetables. Was this a simple oversight or some plot twist that I missed.

She is a good writer and I will read more by her.

I love novels that take place in the literary world, especially if they're thrillers. The Other Black Girl, Who Is Maud Dixon, The Plot, and Vladimir are a few I've read recently that have captured my heart. All of these literary thrillers have something in common that I eat up every time: protagonists who are so unhinged, so morally bankrupt as to seem completely unreal, but their self-made dilemmas are so entertaining that they always manage to endear themselves to me. What can I say: I love mess!

Oh, and what a mess we get in A Novel Obsession in the form of the main character Naomi Ackerman! Naomi is a twenty-something New York bookseller by day, aspiring writer by night. She's just entered into a new relationship with a Welsh mathematician Caleb, and things are going well for the most part. There's just one problem: she's run dry on writing inspiration. Enter: Caleb's ex-girlfriend, Rosemary Reid. After some harmless internet digging fueled by a heady mixture of innocent curiosity and insecurity, Naomi discovers that Rosemary is also in the literary world, as an editor. And that's not where the similarities end--they also kind of look alike. What starts as a quest for inspiration and information turns into a fabricated friendship with Rosemary that crosses the thin line between curious and creepy. Naomi has found her muse, and she'll go to any lengths to get the story she needs.

This book was so tense! Throughout the whole book, I felt for Naomi, I really did. This was her first real relationship and she is painfully insecure--it happens to the best of us. But she continuously crosses boundaries and invades Rosemary's life in a way that made me physically cringe! I loved it! Naomi was fascinating in her obsession, and while on the surface I wanted her to finally realize she was going too far, deep down I don't really want that--the mess is just too good! In Naomi, Barasch has crafted the perfect character to examine the intersections between curiosity, obsession, insecurity, trust, and privacy in interpersonal relationships.

This was a stunning debut, and I can't wait to see what Caitlin Barasch writes next!