This book was a complete disappointment. It may just be I never loved The Great Gatsby but I tried to be open to the premise. Not recommended at all

It's December 1999. Despite the Y2K threat, Steve Galano attends a housewarming party for his friend John and wife Mary. But the evening ends in tragedies caused indirectly by Steve. The next day, he's left to pick up the pieces. But he's not the only responsible party.
This novel is quite disjointed and boring. The story line jumps around between plots. And characters are introduced in random ways. The passive voice also reduces engagement - a rewrite with active voice would make this novel 75% better.
I did like the last page, though - what a surprise!

This was a dnf for me. I couldn’t get into it. I had a hard time getting into the story but maybe I’ll try again at a later date. Thank you NetGalley for an arc.

The premise of this one, a re imagining of The Great Gatsby set in the 1990s, was nothing but a huge disappointment. The characters were so sexist and the writing was awful. I don’t have much to say about this one aside from the fact that I am disappointed that I wasted my time on it. It dragged on and was rather boring. While I feel a new take on The Great Gatsby is great in concept, only a seasoned writer should take it on in its execution.

Thank you NetGalley and Celestial Eyes Press for the eARC of “Many Are Invited” in exchange for an honest review.

This book just couldn't capture my attention.
The story wasn't that interesting and I hated the characters!

The 90's and Y2K are what drew me in...and that's about it. I struggled with this one mainly because of the slow build up. I lost interest in the story ma y times and had to bring myself back in. There seemed to be a lot of filler dialogue and not much substance.

Thank you to Netgalley and Celestial Eyes Press for an arc for review.All opinions are my own.

I was very excited for the “modern” (Aka late 90s) retelling of The Great Gatsby, as it is one of my favorite classics, however this missed the mark. I didn’t really care about the characters at all; and I found one of the main plot points (the y2k scare) to be disinteresting. I think there was potential here, but it wasn’t flushed out enough.

The ending really disappointed me, I felt it was anticlimactic but that is just my opinion. Maybe it will be satisfying for others. Thank you Netgalley for this ARC🙏🏾

Karma can come around at different times, Steve finds this out on one tragic night , Jealousy can lead to one act, that will alter the lives of those invited .

This book had potential but the main narrators voice was so polarizing it made it difficult to read. The locker room talk, seemingly meant to develop character, only proved to be too much for this reader.

At the cusp of the new millenium Y2K is creating fear in the minds of everyone and making us all a little paranoid. The tech industry is hard at work to do what they have to to make sure that there isn’t a total collapse of…every computer in the world! There are 4 main characters, who have zero clue that Y2K is the least of their worries.
This is a psychological thriller/drama, but for me hard to get through. None of the main characters had any redeeming qualities so I found it hard to connect with or care all that much about them. They were all mean, unkind, filled with jealousy, envy, backstabbing, were malicious and basically just not nice people. It’s well written with lots of twists along the way, but just didn’t resonate all that much with me.

This is the first book by this author for me. I was excited about this book since I heard it was a retelling of the Great Gatsby, but set in the 1990’s. It was a disappointment for me. One of the main attractions about the Great Gatsby is the time period the 1920’s with lots of Glamour, Style, Excitement. So, that’s a tall order to recreate a book that is such a classic for those reasons and place it in the 90’s. The description of the book makes it sound that it’s mainly about the Y2K problem. But it’s not really. It’s mainly about the two friend and that they met through the Y2K team at work. I remember that time. It feels like we just entered the year 2000 and now suddenly it’s 2022. I did not care for the characters. They were not likeable, they did not grow on me. You’re waiting all the time for something to happen, finding out what the book is supposed to tell you and then suddenly it does I think the main audience for this book is male.

Many thanks to Celestial Eyes Press and NetGalley

Steve and John were a strange pair. Their friendship began when John became the head of the Y2K department at the tech company Steve worked at. At first, Steve disliked John but somehow they grew to become best friends. But Steve's jealousy of John never truly went away. In fact, his envy only grew once two women were introduced into their lives: Mary and Lauren. To make matters worse was the tensions between Mary and Lauren. All of this buried hostility, jealousy and secrets would come to a head at Mary and John’s Housewarming party.
This is a hard book to review because while the plot and the plot twists had the potential to create a thrilling reading experience, the book fall flat. It was frankly boring and only became progressively more boring as I read on. Even though the ending was technically surprising, I did not care about what happened to the characters. I think most of the characters felt one-dimensional, especially the women who were really just sexist plot devices.
The writing was too wordy and the main narrator, Steve, was unlikeable. Being unlikeable isn’t usually a deal breaker for me, but being unlikeable and uninteresting is. The book also lacked diversity. To show how vanilla the main characters, there is a scene where Mary and Steve discuss why a British guy isn’t African American. All the main characters are white and there are no obvious queer characters.
The climax didn’t work for me (probably because I was not invested in the characters) and there were loose ends that bothered me. There was nothing too wrong or overly offensive about the book therefore, I am giving this one a 2 stars out of 5 stars.

Many Are Invited was a weirdly engrossing book. I read it in 2 days. It was one of those books that even though it seemed depressing, I needed to figure out what was going on, and I needed to know what was going to happen. The housewarming party was foreshadowed several times throughout the book, so I had to find out what was so important about a party.

I’m not sure if I was disappointed or not.

The ending was satisfying in that I felt like I got closure, but it was anticlimactic in that I’m still, weeks later, not sure why I invested 2 days reading this book. Many Are Invited was character-driven, so most of the story was based around the dynamics between the 4 main characters.

Not gonna lie… if I had a friend like Steve, I’d probably move.

The story is told from Steve’s point of view but features 3 other important characters. Each one has issues, foibles, and habits that take the story from “omg this is boring” to “holy crap, what’s going ON!?!?”

Like I said, weirdly engrossing.

When I opened the book, I saw a bible verse that said, “Many are invited, but few are chosen,” from Matthew 22:14. Somehow, this bible verse was supposed to explain the book title and give the reader an idea of how it connected to the story.

I never figured it out.

I honestly think the author threw it in there randomly, without any idea of how to connect it to the book. Many Are Invited cannot be classified as a Christian book, either, since religion is rarely mentioned, and I don’t believe either Steve or John are Christians. I’m proud of the author for wanting to display his beliefs, but I think it could have been done in a more cohesive manner, rather than a random bible verse.

If you enjoy soap operas, or books with weirdly engrossing characters, I think you should give Many Are Invited a chance. I may not be able to tell you precisely why I enjoyed it so much, but it was an easy read, and I gotta say it was a nice break from the huge, chunky fantasy books that I’m used to reading. It was a change of pace, and worth at least one read.

I was hoping that as I wrote this review, my thought would merge into a cohesive thought, and I’d have a better idea of why I found the story so engrossing, but sadly that was not in fate’s cards. I do think you should read it, at least once, but I doubt many people would come back for a re-read.

I was unable to finish this book, unfortunately. The characters were sexist and I didn’t enjoy the story enough to put up with it.

Thanks to Celestial Eyes Press and NetGalley for the chance to read for the honest review.

This one was not for me. I was interested in the book as I live in Northern California and thought it would be fun. However, the writing did not flow well.

I have decided to not keep reading this novel based on reviews. Thank you, publisher, and netgalley for the early copy!

"I didn't know any other "best friends" who affectionately despised each other."

The Y2K scare. I vaguely remember a build up and some freaking out but I don't remember a lot of the specifics. And this book didn't remind me of any of them.

The synopsis says this is about a housewarming party and the Y2K scare. It's not really. It's a weird look into friendships and how toxic they can be. Our MC is Steve and he's pretty sure he's owed a lot in life. When we first meet Steve, John is new to the company and isn't following all the drawn out unwritten rules that Steve has been playing by. Steve believes that's unfair but instead of getting punished, John gets promoted for his forward thinking. John reaches out to Steven for company advice and Steve has resented him ever since.

And being with Steve's POV is unpleasant. He's constantly sizing women up, letting us know if they are attractive enough or not. He doesn't even get to know blond's names, not really, just calls them all "swedes" and puts a number after their name. And his weird hate/hate friendship with John has him constantly having lunch or hanging out with John just to learn if he's dating anyone or other success, just to compare their lives. He even throws himself at EVERY girl he thinks John might have an interest in (mainly co-workers) and then instantly dropping them and running after the next girl John mentions.

But John continues to find success. He even changes jobs and become wealthy while Steve stays in his deadend job and mopes. Somehow John stumbles on a sweet girl, Mary, who adores him and Steve can't help but want her. Mary somehow has a similar toxic and competitive friendship with her best friend Lauren, aka Swede 11 (or 7. I don't eve remember her number anymore). And we get blow by blow of all their competitive weirdness between all 4 of them until the twist at the end.

If toxic friendships are your thing, this may work for you, but don't pick this one up thinking you're getting a quirky story about the Y2K scare - otherwise you'll be disappointed like I was!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

I really, really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately, I did not like how the characters spoke to and about each other. I could barely finish reading this book. I do not enjoy writing negative reviews at all, but in this case all I can say is that I am thankful for the opportunity to read it and will see how the author grows in future books.

I couldn't get past the constant patriarchal nonsense, "locker room talk," and generally misogynistic commentary. I know this was common in the 1990s, but we didn't need it incessantly to tell this story. I would not recommend this book to a single soul. 242 pages of this was 242 pages too many.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celestial Eyes Press for the opportunity to review this book ahead of publication. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.