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Meg Howry’s THEYRE GOING TO LOVE YOU slayed me. Utterly gutted me, emptied me out, and filled me back up again. It has been years since a book has so touched my heart. It is rare, indeed, for a work of fiction to evoke that surreal feeling of knowing, with every turn of the page, you are reading literary greatness. Yet, this is exactly what Howrey has achieved in her epic tale of family, love, and the deeply complex symphony of life.
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Set, in part, in NYC during the 80s AIDS crisis, with ballet as the most imposing character, it is a gripping story of love and loss, of beauty and the harrowing ugliness of rejection - when one simply wants to be loved, to belong, to be someone’s person, in all that entails. THEY'RE GOING TO LOVE YOU - indeed.
A dream, a hope, a wish, a life’s work. To be loved, To be accepted. Family.
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Protagonist Carlisle wanted nothing more than to orbit the planetary brilliance of her father, Robert, and his partner, James, in their 80s NYC brownstone on Bank Street. Their world was one of ballet, always ballet, literature, theatre, the arts...and the crushing devastation of AIDS. The brilliance and the sorrows, life as art.
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Carlisle made a colossal mistake in her early 20s, and her dad rejected her outright for the betrayal - until she visited him at his deathbed, 19 years later. Years lost. It’s just so appalling when elders reject their children - for any reason at all. It’s even more appalling after one devotes so many years of her life ardently trying to earn their love and respect. My heart breaks over the loss of time, of love, of family. Yet, Carlisle found her dance, and her life, on her own terms, and triumphed, brilliantly -an absolute joy.
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Every single page is poetry. Yet, it is never overdone or flowery. It is tidy, organized, and structured, as one would expect from a ballet. Containment is a key word woven throughout the pages - They’re Going to Love You is just that: perfection, contained. My highest recommendation.
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My sincere gratitude to Net Galley, Doubleday Books, and Meg Howry for the opportunity to read this brilliant book in exchange for my honest and wholly independent opinion.

3.5 stars

There is so much that I liked about They're Going to Love You. For one, the prose is lovely: Meg Howrey writes beautifully and with such love about ballet and dance in general, the motifs and images she threads throughout her novel lucid and striking. I also loved the way she crafted Carlisle's relationship with her father and his partner, James; you feel keenly how much Carlisle loves them, how desperately she wants to be closer to them, to be drawn into their family. Howrey depicts these characters with real sympathy and understanding, and this carries over more broadly to all the other characters in her novel, even the ones who may, at first glance, seem marginal or antagonistic to Carlisle. Through small, tender moments that nevertheless feel significant, she's able to cultivate a sense of the wholeness of these characters, of the richness of their lives, even if they don't actually get a lot of time on the page. (I'm thinking here, especially, of the way Howrey writes Carlisle's relationship with her mother.)

And yet--I just wanted more. They're Going to Love You was, to me, a good novel that could've been so much better. The foundation is there--the characters, their dynamics, the writing--but it needed fleshing out. Part of why the story felt a little underdeveloped to me is the pacing: as a narrative, They're Going to Love You moves both too slowly and too quickly. We spend a lot of time on things that we shouldn't--especially in the beginning, where we focus on Carlisle and her work in the present timeline--and not enough time on the things that we should--namely, the dynamics between Carlisle, her father, and James. That dynamic between those three is the linchpin of the entire novel, and yet I never really felt like its heft and significance was dwelt on enough or written with enough detail.

The other thing is that it just takes too long to get to the thrust of the story: the central conflict that severs Carlisle's ties to James and her father to such an extent that it leaves her completely estranged from them for over twenty years. Because that conflict unfolds so late into the story, the rest of the narrative is then forced to rush to get to where it needs to go. When we get to the last part of the novel, then, the present timeline where Carlisle reconnects with James and her father, who is now dying, the emotional beats just don't hit as hard as they should. And it's such a shame, because I really was invested--I cared about these characters and was moved by them, but I finished the novel feeling a little dazed, like I'd just watched a great movie, but at 2x speed.

In my notes on this novel, I wrote down "good bones but needs more meat"--and that's pretty much the crux of my feelings on They're Going to Love You.

Thanks so much to Doubelday Books for providing me with an e-ARC of this via NetGalley!

One word: wow. Beautiful prose is woven into a coming-of-age story about making peace with your family (and yourself).

Carlisle gets a phone call about her estranged father that sends her hurdling back in time, remembering her visits with him in the 80s. NYC. His partner James. The AIDS crisis. Ballet. Her fractured family. Her burgeoning dreams.

It’s a tangled mess of feelings and family and relationships. Of growing up and growing away from the people you love, of discovering how to be yourself while coming to terms with the parts of yourself (and your loved ones) that you’ll never really know.

I especially enjoyed the relationship all the characters had with their art; and the question of loyalty (to your art, to your family, to yourself). Is selflessness actually selfish?

So many big questions are asked, but it’s the people and relationships that are the stars of the story. They are fully formed, imperfectly perfect, and utterly heartbreaking.

Howry’s writing is musical, her phrasing like a dance between words and images.

I loved everything about these people, and this story.

Very beautiful writing, very human characters. I’m always a sucker for books about creative types. Doesn’t matter the art, I just love the way artists love.

I did find the rift at the center of her relationship with her father Ill-fitting for some reason. I didn’t seem to justify the result, though I suppose rifts at the center of relationships are like that to an outsider.

Good writing but I just couldn't get into the story. Ballet is not something I'm interested in but I gave it a few chapters.

Oh what a gorgeous, tender, rewarding novel! You don't have to know anything--or frankly, to care anything--about ballet to be instantly ensorceled by the opening pages of Meg Howrey's THEY'RE GOING TO LOVE YOU. I was unfamiliar was Ms Howrey's work, but loved this novel so much she's become a must-read on my list. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Doubleday and to Netgalley for the opportunity and pleasure of an early read.

Thank you to NetGalley for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Although I am not familiar with the world of ballet, I still enjoyed this novel immensely. The writing was brilliant and captivating. I found myself deeply invested in the relationships in the book, and my heart ached when the betrayals occurred. This was a beautiful book, and it exploded some of my favorite themes: love, art, life, and death.

I wasn't familiar with Meg Howrey's work until I came across her galley on social media, along with a glowing review. And I'm so glad I did. This book will stay with me for a long, long time. It's tender and heartbreaking and the prose is sharp and luminous and I didn't want the book to ever end. The novel tells the story of a family of dancers, and the one mistake that, in essence, tears the family apart. I'll admit I didn't know where the novel was heading until about halfway through, but this structure was easily a strength of the novel. What a gorgeous feat.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley!

Described as "a magnetic tale of betrayal, art, and ambition, set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles" this is a beautiful story. Almost as beautiful as the cover art! Wow. Beautiful characters and a compelling story.

I could not put this lovely novel down. The story truly envelopes you, and the author masterfully slowly provides details into how this family unraveled. The novel does an incredible job in clearly articulating and flushing out this characters. Now I must go read everything she’s written,

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC! This novel releases later this year.

A touching, moving story that languidly unfolds over the course of a few decades, this is a love letter to New York City and those lost in the AIDS crisis.

A lot of this book deals with ballet, and I must admit ballet isn’t something that really grabs me, but I felt the author made it work. The ballet scenes served a greater purpose, but I am knocking off a star simply because that stuff isn’t my cup of tea. Your mileage may vary.

I love the relationship between Carlisle, our main character, as well as her dad and his longtime lover. The three of them had a dynamic and complicated relationship, one from which a lot of this novel’s drama and tension is drawn. This story explores aging homosexual characters in a real and caring way—nothing feels tacky or forced.

Overall, this is a beautifully written novel, one filled with love and quiet moments of excellent character work. Recommended.

When I read the synopsis for this book, I obviously had to request it being a former professional dancer and teacher. This threw me right back into my past. My heart ached and felt the grief in full force of being out of the dance world, but brought back such full of life memories. Oh to be enraptured in the arts. Living breathing the arts. I was pulled back to the hours of training, teaching and especially choreographing. The feel of the floor beneath me, the music, the mapping everything out. Howrey writes these characters with so much vibrancy that I can almost feel them. It feels like you are there right with Carlisle. My heart was breaking for each character in all their complexities. I wept and was inspired throughout this entire book. Howrey wrote grief in how complicated it can be with family dynamics. How grief can catch you before the loss, playing scenarios out for early protection, the complex relationships when someone is dying and the pressure of reconciliation, the forgiveness for them. The dying get to be free as the living add more clouds.

We discussed AIDS in our household from a young age with me being born in the early 80s. Howrey wrote in such a delicate way and how it felt to try and understand this as a child. When one of my mother’s best friends (since high school) and his partner would come over they would talk about the past and those they’ve lost. They also traveled a lot and would come to visit, bringing us little gifts from around the world. Telling us stories from the past and all the new memories they were making. I was enamored with them both. This story made me think of them both.

I believe we carry every age in us as we grow older. They don’t disappear, our younger selves are still with us. I carry all of mine, including the dreamer, the dreamer who told stories through dance. Howrey wrote the perfect story to capture just that. There are some truths that cannot be danced and then there are those that can set you free. I am thinking of all the dancers I’ve taught. They are all my firebirds. This book felt like choreography to me. Such beautifully raw choreography. Thank Meg Howrey for this story that will stay with me in my dancer heart.

Thank you to Doubleday for this eARC via Netgalley.

Deeply, deeply complex, beautiful, haunting. So perfectly constructed and coordinated to heighten the drama inherent to life, flowing like a dance: family leads to love and to betrayal and anger and to reunion. Carlisle is as real and deeply felt a character as any, from when she is a child living is Carlisle's Room and getting excited over window shutters, to when she is a teenager who adores the maturity her conversations with James afford her, to when she is a young adult full of desire - for love, to make something of herself, to keep her parents and James content - and full of anger, to when she is approaching middle age, unsure of how satisfied she is with her life's path, faced with regret and the need to forgive and be forgiven, overflowing with anxiety and distractions. Each beat of her life and what happens around her is wonderfully done. Things culminate, fall out of her hands, time passes in a way that is utterly irreversible, and the end is speckled only with reminders of what could have been, of how silly it was to let that time pass. It's a relatively short novel, but there's so much in there - so much complexity, and so much done right.

This was so beautifully written and felt like something so personal. I read this book and felt like I was in a haze. I couldn’t think about anything else.

What an absolutely beautiful novel. It centers on Carlisle, an aspiring ballet dancer trying to be a part of her gay father's world in NYC at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and then where she is 19 years later. Gorgeously written and evocative.

What a deliciously written novel. Everything about it was perfect for me. From the character development to the overall theme, I don’t think there has been a book lately that has checked off all the boxes for me.

Written from Carlisle’s POV, we experience her life engulfed in ballet from a young age to the present day. She was a character that I quickly fell in love with and connected with from the first chapter. Mired in family drama, the devastation of AIDS in her gay father's community, and the quest to find her true calling in the dance world, I wanted nothing but the best for her and her family throughout.

Switching back and forth from her childhood to the present day, we witness the growing problems that provided such heartbreak and loss that quickly tore her family apart. Will they be able to find forgiveness in each other before it’s too late? Or have their relationships taken a final bow?

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

For me, this story was about family. And not in the idealistic, cookie-cutter way that it's usually thought of, but one that highlights the realistically flawed people that are in it. Carlisle, the main character, is caught between two sides of her family: a distant mother who seems to love her new family more, and her father and his partner who are struggling to cope with the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. They are all tied together through dance, specifically ballet. Throughout the book, Carlisle has to come to terms with her relationship with family, but also her relationship with art as well. I thought this story was beautifully written, with wonderfully frustrating characters who you can't help but to fall in love with.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite lines:
"You know what's more terrible than giving up a dream? To discover you haven't."

Meg Howrey’s writing is almost unspeakably beautiful through this entire novel. Let me first say that I haven’t been so emotionally-moved by a story since “Call Me By Your Name,” and that’s certainly not to compare the two stories themselves, but the emotional undertone to them. The undeniable, complex humanness of Carlisle, Robert, James, and Isabel in “They’re Going to Love You” is a masterful feat, and really what drives this story. I was utterly transported and transfixed by Howrey’s descriptions of everything—ballet choreography, movement, music, the Bank Street apartment, Carlisle’s emotional responses, the dreadful air of NYC during the height of the AIDS crisis. This, in short, is a masterpiece of a read. Coming in at under 300 pages, it’s a quick one, too. Surely to be in my top 5 books of 2022, I will think about this one for a long time.

Knowing very little about professional ballet, the details about choreography and the personal relationships were very interesting. The relationship break that was hinted at and finally revealed near the end was worth the wait and nicely handled. The main character Carlisle was interesting, thoughtful, well spoken and so real. I loved this book and would recommend it.

Howrey captured an interesting time period and the scare of the AIDs epidemic and the 80s. In addition to this, she juxtaposed the passion for dance and growing up in a family of dancers. Well written and an even better story!