What a delightful surprise! This book was a short, fast read that I accomplished during a rare uninterrupted afternoon. I immediately felt drawn in to the story about Steve, who narrates what happened over the course of a a few years, centering around the last few months of 1999.

The backwards-story begins with Steve ruminating on what happened at a housewarming party in Dec. 1999. We then go back to see how his life unfolded regarding his relationships with his coworkers, his friend, John, Mary (John's girlfriend), and Lauren (Mary's roommate). The author's descriptions about life in the late 1990's includes details about Y2K and the tech boom in Silicon Valley.

The jealousies that arise in Steve and his friends culminate in a tragedy. Who is at fault? This is more of an introspective question than a mystery. There are themes resonating with The Great Gatsby and The Brothers Karamazov, which are referenced in the book.

Sometimes a book hits you just right, and this one did. I recommend it as a fast read (took me about 4 hours) and one that while on the surface might seem shallow, is actually deep with meaning.

John and Steve become friends during the Y2K frenzy. John becomes rich, marries and has a fabulous lifestyle. Steve is envious of John. One night during a dinner party, lives are upended by what occurs. This story was a slow burn and the ending was abrupt. The author has a fantastic premise, shows promise and I would like to see more tension in the plot. Tease us a little.


Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Celestial Eyes Press for this ARC, I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Many Are Invited
by Dennis Cuesta

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC.
Sadly, I just could not get into this book. It was so slow paced and the characters just felt ehhh. It seemed to take a week to almost finish.

Thanks to NetGalley and Celestial Eyes Press for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The prologue had be intrigued. What could this man have done that was so horrible and led to such tragedy?

The worry over Y2K joins Steve and John together at work where they quickly become friends. Steve is the type to do just enough to get by, whereas John seems to prosper without much effort. John is the right place at the right time sort of guy, and Steve often times feels irked watching his best-friend reap the rewards. On the surface, Steve and John have a great friendship, but there is an undercurrent of competition. On a bet, Steve sends John into a high-end clothing store where they spied a beautiful woman dressing a mannequin to get her number. Steve's glee over John returning without her number quickly fades as John mentions Mary, another employee he met in the store. After a few months of dating, John and Mary get engaged and Steve realizes he has fallen in love with Mary. What transpires after this moment will drastically change their lives and one night of celebration will end in tragedy.

As the story is being told through Steve's POV, you sense his underlying indignation of his friend's successes and his feelings of schadenfreude. Mary's best friend Lauren also exhibits the same feelings towards Mary but seems to be more expressive with her uncomplimentary actions and comments. It makes you wonder why these people are friends in the first place.

I was misled by the prologue, which to me felt like a set up for a thriller. Instead, it was a slow-burn story of how ironic life can be. I didn't care for any of the characters, not because they were unlikable, but I couldn't relate to any of them. I'm about the same age as the characters in the story, I just couldn't relate. This was just OK for me.

A quick read that leads through the POV of Steve. A jealous character that wants what his best friend has. John is one of the top tech guys making sure his Y2K theory will work as the year 1999 rolls over to 2000. This was a technological threat that the coding of computerized systems was projected to create havoc in networks around the world at the beginning of the year 2000. The news broadcast the fear of a shutdown. John figures out the glitch and was paid 2 million dollars and a new job for his level of genius. It plays a small part in the story line other than catapulting John into a different income bracket.Steve played the part of a friend, but he was envious of John's life, his wife Mary, their new house they bought in a superb neighborhood, and vehicles. With Steve, he was not so lucky with his job, money or the girls. They're like a fraternity rival playing out, but John is unknowing. It doesn't take long to realize Steve is on the psycho side and capable of wreaking anyone's life. When a house warming party turns tragic, who is to blame? This does have a twist at the end, but leaves you wanting an explanation of what took place. The characters are believable and unlikable.
Thank you NetGalley and Celestial Eyes Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I found this book very slow going with nothing much happening throughout most of the book. You could read the last few chapters and get the gist of the story. I read the whole thing, wondering when something interesting was going to happen all along the way, and eventually, it did, but I found it kind of unsatisfying. The characters were mostly unlikeable as the narcissistic "me" generation.. I did enjoy the Y2K references, the onset of the internet and personal computers, and the twist toward the end..

I liked the premise of the book but in execution it fell a bit flat. The characters were not very endearing which I can work around. But, it seemed there was a lot going on without not much really happening. I honestly put the book down at the end and thought to myself “what was that supposed to be?” I thought on it for a few days and I really didn’t get any clearer of an understanding where the author was trying to take us unfortunately. I will try more of the author’s books though.

Many Are Invited
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Fiction
Format: Kindle eBook
Date Published: 10/6/22
Author: Dennis Cuesta
Publisher: Celestial Eyes Press
Pages: 242
Goodreads Rating: 3.29

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley and Celestial Eyes Press and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: A housewarming party ends in tragedy. . . Steve Galanos, a native Midwesterner, reflects on his time in and near Silicon Valley during the 1990s, a time when the two-digit year emerged as the Y2K problem, the burgeoning Internet fueled the expansion of the New Economy, the dot-com bubble created unseen prosperity and real estate frenzies. Yet it’s a housewarming party, held in late 1999, that affects him the most.

My Thoughts: The chapters were short in this book, which I tend to gravitate towards. It is just easier to stop at the end of a chapter. The tragic event occurs very late in the storyline, the first is filled with the Y2K bug (I definitely remember the country during that time), politics, and religion. Not that those are bad topics, just topics that I generally would not read. I believe the backstories of the characters could have been filled in less space and more expansion on the tragic event and the aftermath. The tragic event should open up the story and then work backwards from there, then the Y2K bug, politics, and religion would not have seemed out of place. The ending of the book just stops, not a cliffhanger, and not a resolution. It’s not a bad read, just not what I expected or hoped it would be. That could be on me as I may have misinterpreted the synopsis.

I really struggled to finish this book and wanted to just stop reading several times. I found the characters unlikable which made it difficult to connect to the story. The first half of the book was slow and a bit boring for me. The conversations were very superficial and, as a woman, the constant talk about “Swedes” was honestly cringeworthy. The latter half of the book became a little more interesting during the party scene but it wasn’t as thrilling as I was expecting based on the synopsis. The ending was very abrupt and felt unfinished.

Thank you NetGalley for my ARC of this book.

Set in the late 1990s, Many Are Invited starts as a sort of buddy story. The two male leads, Steve and John, both in their mid thirties, work for the phone company, trying to resolve the Y2K problem of what will happen to the world’s computer systems when 12/31/1999 shifts to 01/01/2000. They become fairly close until John leaves the company and joins a dot-com. He becomes wealthy, meets his future wife, Mary, and lives a prosperous life. Steve stays in the same old phone company job, dates around without meeting a significant other, and develops such an envy of John’s life that Steve ultimately falls in love with Mary but doesn’t act upon it.

This book is supposedly a retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and there are a number of mentions of Gatsby and other characters, and there is even a Many Are Invited character named somewhat after Fitzgerald because of his very vague distant relationship to F. Scott. That said, the characters are not particularly likable. Steve is envious of John and always feels out-classed. The women are archetypal “good” or “bad” women without much substance. The more lush the body, the worse the personality.

The title, Many Are Invited, refers to an invitation to an open house party given by John and Mary as they settle into their first house. The story is fairly slow until the tragedy set up in the first few pages finally strikes at the open house. The denouement seems overly long in proportion to the rest of the novel, and the ending feels rather abrupt.

Steve and John, Mary and Lauren. John and Mary, Steve and Lauren? Steve and Mary, John and Lauren? Whatever the grouping, this cast of characters was oddly unlikeable. A story of friendship set in the years before Y2K, the book felt dated from the beginning. I found it difficult to care about any of the characters and the "tragedy" mentioned in the synopsis was less than enthralling. The writing was decent and the book was not boring, but for me it fell flat. While the description makes this sound like a great book, I found it to be mediocre at best.

Thanks to Net Galley & Celestial Eyes Press for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of this book.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't finish this book. The characters were disgusting (to me as a female), the two protagonists rating "Swedes" (hot women) and trying to fix the Y2K issue.

I had been riding that nostalgia wave of novels that put me back into my youth, but this may have killed it for me. As soon as John gets the position for the Y2K program at work to fix programs and get rid of programs and find new programs, he quits and goes somewhere else with barely any info on what exactly he did. Then they see a woman in a store changing a mannequin and one goes in to flirt with her, and ends up marrying the other employee.

There was nothing captivating to me, and I eventually DNF'd it at chapter 9.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC.

I really tried to get into this book. The description seemed great, like something I'd be super interested in reading, but the execution just did not do it for me.

The story progressed too slowly, and the characters just weren't relatable.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it ended up not being for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dennis Cuesta, and Celestial Eyes Press for an ARC of Many Are Invited in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly, I was not a fan of this book. The description sounded great, and I was excited to read this, but was soon disappointed. The prologue was confusing, the narrator has been obsessed for 20 years with this December night in 1999 when tragedy struck...I think. Then we get into Chapter One which happens right before this fateful housewarming party, and Chapter Two goes all the way back to 1994. From here, we move forward in time slowly, meeting Steve, John, Mary, and Lauren, our main characters, and seeing their relationships develop until we finally get to the housewarming party halfway through the book. They are all keeping secrets, being competitive and jealous of each other, and passive aggressive in so many ways. None of them are even remotely likeable.

The so-called tragedy doesn't even happen until there are about 20 pages left, so I read the book hoping to get to the good stuff. There was way too much Y2K, politics, and religious talk for me, and sometimes there wasn't even a point to it. They tragedy wasn't even really explained, and there wasn't really a conclusion. There were references to the Great Gatsby in here, and this story was a little reminiscent of Gatsby's party and relationships with Nick, Daisy, et al. But Gatsby it was not.

All in all, it's not the worst book I've ever read, but I believe it needs work. There was too much unnecessary build-up to the night of the housewarming party that didn't have anything to do with anything other than to show how much these friends really didn't like each other much. I would have rather had most of the story set at the party, where the secrets slowly get revealed and then something tragic happens.

Many Are Invited starts off as a slow memoir type of a novel which talks all about the evolution of technology related to Y2K. You might think its boring, but the story is not just about this man and his job. It is a story about this man, Steven, and his relationship with John, Mary, and Lauren. It is also about the events that led up to the horrible night of the housewarming party.
The story is slow paced and sometimes a little dull but if you stick with it, you start to see that something is spiraling out of control. This leads to a disaster of consequential proportions. Steven and his narcissism are at the heart of it all.
I thought it was a good story with some surprises. It reminded me a bit like Liane Moriarty's stories, where you don't quite know where it's going to it gets there. Then you are shocked by where it ends up. So if you are a fan of hers, you'll be a fan of Many Are Invited.
Thanks to Netgalley and Celestial Eyes Press for the advanced copy of the book. The opinions are my own.

I tried, but I couldn't get into this book. It was very slow going. Additionally, I couldn't relate to any of the characters.

The description of this book was interesting but something was list in the execution.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC.

I really couldn’t get into this book. I didn’t connect to any of the characters so I found myself not caring about them whatsoever. The story had a lot of potential, the plot was very interesting, but the writing was so wordy that it was really hard to get through.

Many Are Invited sounded interesting being set in the 1990's in the Bay Area since I was familiar with the area and Y2K. However, it started slow and never really caught my interest, possibly because most of the characters seemed unlikable. The ending felt unresolved but maybe I missed something.
Thanks to NetGalley for my ARC of this book

In Many Are Invited by Dennis Cuesta, the author shares a story of friendship and jealousy in the late 1990’s amid a high level of anxiety as the year 2000 approached. Would computers crash? How could companies prepare for what they called Y2K? At the phone company, John takes the lead on a committee to identify and prevent potential problems that could disrupt their business. Steve works for him and the two men develop a friendship. They eventually meet two attractive young women who share an apartment. Mary and Lauren appear to have a relationship based on jealousy and competitiveness. The story unfolds rather slowly as the four friends develop relationships, but also keep secrets from each other. The story picks up the pace and the tension during a housewarming party hosted by John and Mary. Steve makes some poor decisions that affect all of them as 1999 turns into 2000. The story seems to end abruptly, and I wanted to know more. Although I enjoyed the twists and turns towards the end of the book, I wished Dennis Cuesta had condensed some of the earlier sections of the book.

The book started ok, but then went into really lengthy and confusing description of the protagonist's visiting bars and drinking there and talking to all the characters and tons of lying and drinking and vomiting. Throughout the book, he was portrayed as a jealous man, hating his friend and trying to 'steal' the friend's girlfriends and even potential girlfriends. The second part of the book is all about the party where too many people were invited and all the previous characters came over, too, invited or not, There are also lots of drunken mostly pointless talking ensues along with the protagonist doing a bunch of stupid and evil things and it all ends in a tragedy. As soon as you start to feel for the protagonist, he reveals that this is not what happened, and that he was the sole cause of things going badly. The story is kind of interesting, but I didn't like all the drunken dialogues