While I enjoyed two of the story lines, one of them felt meh. I liked the audio but I didn’t think the intertwining was so amazing. It was better done in his last book. 3.5 stars

Last year I read and enjoyed Ethan Joella's debut novel, A Little Hope, so I was very excited to read his sophomore release A Quiet Life and it did not disappoint. A Quiet Life tells the story of three characters who are each dealing with struggling with the loss of a loved one. While ultimately about loss, it's a beautifully written, heartwarming novel about supporting one another through tough times.

A Quiet Life is the sophomore novel by @joellawriting and was the heartwarming story I didn't know I needed. ⁣
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I enjoyed #ALittleHope last year but I loved this one even more. And while it's ultimately a feel good story, it also covers the pain and heartache so many carry. Feeling less alone and supporting one another, even when we haven't walked in each other's shoes, really is what it is all about⁣
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Life has felt challenging this year in many ways, and A Quiet Life really helps restore your faith in humanity. If you are looking for a book to close out 2022, I highly recommend this one! Thank you to Scribner Books and NetGalley for my gifted review copies.

Happy Pub Day to my absolute favorite read of 2022. I read A Little Hope last year and adored it so I had high expectations for A Quiet Life, but I didn’t expect to be absolutely blown away. This was stunning, beautiful, breathtaking, tender, etc…I could go on and on. It is such a testament to humanity and that so many of us are just doing the best we can and what the best decision looks like is going to differ for every person. It was a gentle reminder that everyone has hard things going on in their lives that aren’t public facing and if we could connect on those items we could better support ourselves, each other and our communities. If my bookstagram could convince you to read one book this year, this is the book I would pick.

Huge thank you to @scribnerbooks for providing me an ARC. Loved it so much I ordered the hard copy!

A Quiet Life by Ethan Joella

A Quiet Life is a work of fiction detailing the lives of three independent individuals who are each suffering in their own grief. Chuck and his wife Cat, loved to go down to Hilton Head every winter leaving their home in Pennsylvania for some warmth of the south. But after Cat dies, Chuck struggles with the decision of whether or not to go to Hilton Head on his own. Ella is working two jobs, as an early morning newspaper delivery person and she also works in a bridal salon. She is trying to save up enough money for the day that her daughter Reilly returns. Kirsten works in an animal shelter. She is still struggling after the horrible death of her father. They were very close and now has difficulty with getting close to people. She works with two men at the animal shelter and is starting to have feelings for both of them.
During the course of the novel, these three lives become intertwined with each other in some unexpected ways. This novel is sad with a touch of sweetness. If you enjoy books that are character driven, this would be a book you might want to pick up.
Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

I loved Ethan Joella’s book A Little Hope so I was very excited to read his newest. A Quiet Life is a perfect title for this beautifully written novel; Joella’s characters are sad, but the story is also comforting and hopeful. I love a story that makes me deeply, even when those feelings are sad ones. This story is about how to deal with grief and the importance of human connection. Ethan Joella is quickly becoming one of my favorite, must-read literary fiction authors.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for this ARC.

One of my favorite books for 2022. Love that we get 3 different stories from characters from 3 different generations. Made me restore my faith in humanity- and not nearly as sad as I expected it would be.

This is an immediate top 10 of the year read for me. I read this with my book club as well as others and I don't think a single person didn't love it. It was several of ours favorite of the month.

The intermingling of the stories and the characters were so well done. It was one of those books that I was sad to near the end of. The book made you feel all the emotions. Each character was facing a major event in life. Despite each of these being very different the author made you care about all of them and become fully invested in each storyline.

I most certainly recommend this book for a wide range of readers.

Ain’t nothing like an emotional, character driven read. I just loved this book.

There’s something about an emotional, character driven story that really gets me, and Ethan Joella is exceptional at writing them. This was breathtaking.

This book made my heart sing a soft song of hope for the human race

Ethan Joella has a unique gift: the ability to write characters that leap off the page, into our hearts. He has done it now for the second time…

*Kirsten, a young woman stuck in time, grieving her father, pondering her future.

*Ella, grieving her missing daughter, wondering if she will ever see her again, questioning where life will lead.

*And then there’s Chuck, the axis the story revolves around, grieving his wife of many decades, examining his past mistakes, and questioning if he has a life ahead.

As these lives weave in and out, glancing off each other, forming bonds, changing direction, I fell in love with each of them.

This is a quiet story of everyday lives. I teared up more than once, I related to so many things, and I wanted to hug all three of these humans.

This was such an emotional book. Joella takes three people with separate lives and intertwines them in a way you’d never think of. This book talks a lot about grief and how hard it is to move on after an excruciating loss, but it is written so beautifully. This book was set in a town not far from where I grew up so it was a little nostalgic for me 🥹 If you’re looking for an easy, charming read then this is the one for you!

Thank you Netgally and Scribner books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

A Quiet Life ❄️

“𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒, 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑟.”

Every once in awhile you read a book that reminds you why you love reading so much. This was my refresher. I absolutely loved this book, I had a feeling I would after reading the authors debut a little hope.

Contemporary storylines addressing themes of grief/loss and hope. Multiple POVs that senselessly blend together. Really just an exceptional book.

Ty netgalley for the ARC!

From my blog: Always With a Book

I absolutely loved Ethan Joella’s debut novel, A Little Hope, so of course I was thrilled when I received a copy of his sophomore book and I loved it just as much, if not a little more. While both books are quiet reads, they are emotionally powerful ones that stay with you long after you finish reading them.

This book is about loss and the different ways people experience it and how they try to move forward. It alternates between three points of view and I immediately fell in love with all three characters, plus the secondary ones as well. The author has such a wonderful way of creating dynamic, richly drawn characters that are so real and relatable. I felt like Chuck, Ella and Kirsten were all sketches of people I know in some way and I could even see bits of myself in them.

The beauty of this story is in the way these three lives intersect. It’s little acts of kindness that bring them together. It’s a great reminder that we never know what someone else is going through and why human connection is so important. And it is this message that couldn’t come at a more opportune time when we enter such a busy season. It’s so easy to get caught up in the stress of life and forget that kindness goes a long way. This isn’t a flashy novel, but rather a story about life – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and how it is through forgiveness, acceptance and kindness that we can find a way forward when life gets tough.

I loved this story and will be recommending it to everyone!


Audio thoughts: I listened to this one and loved that there was a cast of narrators. Having three narrators for each of the three main characters really made this audio stand out and I think Stacey Glemboski, Melissa Redmond and Byron Wagner did a great job bringing the story to life. Each infused just the right amount of emotion into their voice as needed and their pacing was spot on.

This is a quiet story, about love, about overcoming grief and taking tentative steps toward something new, and about our desperate need for connection, especially in times of trouble.

The book follows the lives of three characters—Chuck, a widower still coming to terms with grief and guilt after his wife’s death, as he tries to will himself to make their annual sojourn to Hilton Head without her; Ella, a young mother struggling to hold on after her daughter goes missing; and Kirsten, whose father’s unexpected death has left her in a kind of emotional limbo. The three will interact in ways that will change them profoundly.

Joella’s storytelling, is emotional, powerful and impactful. A definite must read.

A Quiet Life
Author, Ethan Joella
Available now!

Thank you @scribnerbooks, @ethanjoellawriting, and @netgalley for my e- arc, but you know I had to pre- order this beaty anyway! A Little Hope was one of my top 10 in 2021 and A Quiet Life will be in my top 10 this year!

I just love Joella's insightful and moving writing style that allows his novels to be fully immersed in his themes of hope and humanity that flawlessly defines the heart of human relationships.

Beautifully character driven in a way that allows readers to identify with each of the characters, A Quiet Life follows three unique individuals who are struggling with loss, meaning, and how to move forward in their grief.

Check, Ella, and Kristen's lives connect and intertwine in meaningful, yet unexpected ways that allow for each of them to learn from the other and ultimately assist in their healing and offer one another much needed hope and growth.

A perfect read for this time of year when we are all searching for connections, love, joy, and strength.

I really appreciate the way Ethan Joella writes about how small the world really is. He puts it into a perspective that really just lends to the heartbreaking nature of the books he writes. I will say, however, this book did not hit me in my feels nearly as hard as A Little Hope did. With that being said though, I feel like this book was still very very good! I just think the nature of the storylines in this book did not pull at my heartstrings the way I wanted them to. I sobbed repeatedly reading A Little Hope and I sort of went into this book expecting the same experience and while it didn’t make me sob, I think it will stick with me forever in many other ways. These characters were so human and I feel like moving forward I want “to be someone’s cardinal” and really understand that the only way I can help others is to ask them.

I will pick up anything Ethan Joella puts out in the future! Auto-buy author for sure!

Published by Scribner on November 29, 2022

Most of the events in A Quiet Life take place in Pennsylvania. Those events revolve around the intersecting lives of three characters, all of whom have experienced a recent loss. The intersection is likely meant to illustrate the universality of loss and the importance of connecting with others in times of personal tragedy.

Chuck Ayers’ wife died. He’s having difficulty disposing of her things. He can’t decide whether to embark on the annual vacation that they always took as a couple, a trip to Hilton Head for which he has already paid.

Kirsten Bonato has been numb since her father was murdered. She put her ambition to become a veterinarian on hold and took a job at a pet rescue. She has a thing for her boss David, but Grayson is “promising and new.” One suspects that Grayson will be in Kirsten’s past as soon as someone even newer comes along.

Riley’s father Kyle picked up Riley from school. He has a shared custody arrangement but it wasn’t his day to have Riley. Riley's mother, Ella Burke, is understandably upset but since Kyle has parental rights and probably isn’t a threat to Riley’s safety, the police don’t want to devote significant resources to what is more likely a custody dispute than a kidnapping. Later that night, Ella discovers that some of Riley’s clothes and toys are missing from her room, raising the fear that Riley’s disappearance is meant to be permanent. Kyle's eventual explanation of his motive didn't strike me as being particularly credible.

The three central characters indulge in internal monologues, although Kirsten’s tend to focus on whether shiny and new Grayson is a better deal than handsome David who makes her feel safe and squirmy inside. Chuck’s thoughts are less frivolous. He thinks about and talks to his dead wife but he's strangely obsessed with a young woman named Natasha who was once his wife’s project. He fears that he did not treat Natasha well. His wife’s desire to help Natasha triggered the most serious argument of their marriage. It is an argument he now regrets. He seems to think that making amends with Natasha will help him make amends with his wife.

Ella is hard on herself for going outside on the day of her daughter’s disappearance, as if staying home would have made a difference. Ella also spends time rehashing her failed relationship with Kyle in resentful detail, musings presumably designed to show the reader that she is unnecessarily hard on herself for being clueless about Kyle's character flaws when he accused her of being frigid and dull.

The lives intersect in ways that seem forced. Chuck meets Kirsten at the pet rescue when he contemplates adopting a pet to ease his loneliness. Kirsten turns out to be a former student of Chuck’s wife. Ella delivers newspapers when she’s not working in a bridal shop. Chuck meets Ella when she slips on the ice while delivering his newspaper. He gives her a pillow and a blanket because, if you’ve slipped on an icy sidewalk, you know you want nothing more than a pillow and a blanket while you lie on a sheet of ice. Ella meets Kirsten through David, who conveniently turns out to be Ella’s neighbor.

Chuck is the only character I cared about. His grief is profound. Ethan Joella portrays it in a way that makes pain palpable without reducing it to a cliché. Ella’s fear about her daughter’s safety is believable but carries less impact, although mothers might relate to a contrived “every parent’s worst nightmare” scenario more than I did. Kirsten’s loss is almost an aside to the story of her love triangle, a loss invented to wedge Kirsten into the story’s larger theme.

The power of kindness is a secondary theme. Chuck’s wife changed Natasha’s life by being kind. Chuck improves Ella’s life through improbable acts of kindness. Kirsten lifts Ella’s spirits, and then Chuck’s, by being a kind soul. Oddly, Ella thinks to herself that she misses kindness when everyone, including a cop who is helping her find Kyle, is kind to Ella.

And, of course, the story is about the importance of connecting with others. The execution of that theme is sometimes a bit schmaltzy, if only because its execution is far from subtle. As characters interact, they quickly dissect each other, instantly identifying the cause of their pain, perhaps saving them from years of therapy. Kirsten thinking that her dead father sent her to help Chuck cope with his sorrow is a bit much. Characters come to embrace their neediness as if neediness is a welcome revelation. A reader can almost hear Streisand singing “People Who Need People” in the background. Obvious sentences like “Chuck smiles at the scene and thinks how necessary love is” underscore the narrative’s lack of subtlety.

The predictably happy endings make the novel a bit too “feel good’ for my taste. The tidiness with which the stories wrap up is improbable. The novel also suffers from redundancy. For example, Chuck tells us repeatedly of his belief that he will find his dead wife, or himself, in Hilton Head. Ella reruns her happy memories of Riley, even though she’s only been gone a short time. Kirsten’s indecision about which man she wants to sleep with next is tedious.

There is an audience for books like A Quiet Life. Joella’s smooth prose and keen observation make for easy reading. Some of the story’s emotional moments seem genuine. A Quiet Life is not a book I disliked. It just isn’t a book that made me believe the story was real. I’m recommending it despite its faults because the parts that I liked, including Chuck’s story, I really liked.

RECOMMENDED

4.5 stars.

A Quiet Life is the perfect title for this quiet book about three characters dealing with grief and loss and the unlikely friendship they find with each other.

This book was reminiscent of Joella's first novel, A Little Hope, which I loved. Similarly to that book, the parallel stories focus on different characters, but the characters lives begin to intersect as the story continues. I loved seeing all the points of intersection in this story. As it progresses, you can see how these three separate people with separate lives slowly connect with each other and ultimately end up helping each other to find hope and healing. It's really a beautiful portrait of the human experience.

The pacing is slow in this novel, and I don't mean that in a negative way. The style is quiet and thoughtful and purposeful, and it reminds me of Fredrik Backman's writing. (I said the same thing about A Little Hope, and I love Backman, so this is a good thing). There may have been a few parts of the book where it struggled to hold my attention. But it was worth it by the end when I was able to see how the whole story came together and how these characters dealing with grief and loss were a little more hopeful by the end after finding connection with each other.

I would highly recommend this one for anyone who enjoys well-written, character based stories filled with the realities of both grief and hope!

“Maybe loving someone so deeply means accepting the fact that they occupy a specific, clear place in you. You accept there will be hole if you lose them - the way a tree will leave a crater whether the roots and stump were.”

I’m going to be honest on the main reasons I wanted to pick up this book is the cover. It is simply stunning. (And now that I’ve read it the cardinal on the cover has me 🥹🥹) I’m so happy that I picked this one up.

This story is all about the power of human connection. It is poignant and beautiful and will make you smile and cry and just feel all of the feels. It tackles heavy subjects such as grief and loss with such insight. I absolutely loved all the characters and it felt so special to see their development.

I’m going to be honest: books like this can be hard for me to read. Reading about death of a family member and grief can be extremely raw and triggering for me after losing my mom at 21. I personally resonated with Chuck especially and his relationship with his children hit close to home. I found that although this book was hard to read at times it also made me feel less alone and reminded me of the power of opening up to others and allowing them to help you.

This story is an important reminder (especially going into the holiday season) that you never know what someone is going through and to always lead with compassion.

Read if you are fan of A MAN CALLED OVE and IONA IVERSON’S RULES FOR COMMUTING.

This novel alternates between three characters in the same town in Pennsylvania: Chuck, a man in his 70s grieving the loss of his wife; Kristin, a woman in her 20s, grieving the loss of her dad; and Ella, who is struggling to make ends meet and hasn’t seen her young daughter in several months, for reasons it takes a little while for the book to reveal. Each character is deeply sad, and also stuck in their lives. And as they connect with other people and as their paths intersect, they all slowly start to find a way forward - so it’s a sad book, but a hopeful one as well.

As in his debut novel A Little Hope, Ethan Joella is just a beautiful writer who masterfully brings his characters to life and makes you feel for them so deeply. If you forced me to choose between the two books, I’d say I slightly prefer A Little Hope - only because while it had more characters and therefore a little less of a straightforward narrative than this one, it made me sob my eyes out while this book only made me cry a little. However, both books were masterpieces of quiet literary fiction which definitively add Ethan Joella’s name to my list of favorite, must read authors.

4.5 stars