A beautiful book celebrating life with all its beauty and hardships. This was a wonderful reminder to be grateful for and hold close those we walk through life with—the people who make the beautiful parts of life better and the hard parts of life easier.

This was a beautiful story of friendship and life. Rowley is excellent at deep storytelling while still keeping things lighthearted at times and adding humor.

Steven Rowley is quickly becoming a go to author for me. His books are so human and are a delight to read.

I LOVED THIS BOOK! I would have loved another couple hundred pages with these delightful and hilarious people. I just finished and just feel so warm. Absolutely lovely book with so much heart and heartbreak. Everyone needs to read it. And go tell your people you love them.

While this started a bit slow for me, I was soon sucked into this adorable and quirky friend group and so enjoyed moving through life with each of them. I was laughing and crying alongside them and I really appreciated that all the characters were so distinct that I didn't find myself mixing them up of feeling confused, despite two of the people literally having the same name. Steven Rowley is very good at making you feel so connected to the characters he writes and I'm already excited to start The Guncle Abroad.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book had so many sad undertones but was written beautifully. Coming off The Guncle, suffice to say I wasn’t expecting sadness. But I loved the Jordan’s. I loved how the characters made a pact with one another AND THEN SHOWED UP for one another. Big “that’s what friends are for” energy. Everyone falls into their own struggles and it was refreshing to read a book where friends circle around and support one another. The thing about this book is that it was hard to really know the characters — I wish we’d gotten a little more. I think there was a little spark missing that stopped me from really enjoying this one. But I liked it and I’m glad I got to read it.

This book was a DNF for me. I got about 20 % in and it just wasn’t keeping my attention. With that said I think an older audience would appreciate it more. I did like the idea of the book though. A group of friends loses one of their own in college. So after his funeral they decide to make a pact, to each host their own funeral while alive. That way they can know how loved they each are before they pass. This book is about reunion, friendship, and pulling together time and time again.

I cried and I laughed and I cried and I laughed. Wow. I love Steven Rowley but wow. What my soul needed right now was “The Celebrants”. This book is therapy. Just read it, 10 stars if I could.

Thank you thank you thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. I’ve always bought copies for my closest friends.

This book is beautiful. The friendships are so complex and they feel so real. I loved hearing about each person, and I loved the scenes when they were all together. I actually recommended this book to a patron before I even finished it, because I knew it was a winner early on. I think it's a great book for those who are looking for something more character focused, rather than plot focused. I think it's great for fans of A Little Life (though less intense and depressing, but still emotional). Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for this ARC!

Everything Steven Rowley writes is fun, phenomenal, and emotional. This is no exception. A great book to take along on a trip, gossipy, with deep themes.

This one was unexpected in the best way! I felt all the feels with this one and will continually recommend it!

I greatly enjoyed The Guncle (and am looking forward to the sequel), so I was looking forward to reading The Celebrants. This book gives readers depth and levity and heart. This one introduces readers to a dynamic friend group that made a pact in college to provide memorial elegies in advance of their actual deaths - upon request.

It's an interesting premise and builds on themes of friendship and mortality.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

The Celebrants is the story of 5 best friends who develop a pact that they will arrange and attend each other’s funerals before they actually die.

Jordan, Jordy, Alec, Craig, Naomi, and Marielle meet and become best friends while attending Berkeley. When Alec tragically dies of an overdose as they are about to begin their adult lives they develop their funeral pact so that they can ensure that they never leave anything unsaid for each other.

Over time the “funerals” become more of a lifeline as each of them struggles with a different crisis.

The Celebrants is exactly that, a celebration of the friends, the family that we choose, and how we lift each other up to keep going along the way.

I felt as though this lacked some of the character development that we experienced with The Guncle but overall I enjoyed hanging out with these five friends and had some lol moments as they stumbled through life together.

The Celebrants is about a group of college friends who upon the death of their sixth friend make a pact to hold their funerals early to share how they feel about each other. The book is set up at each of the funerals.

What I liked: The overall message of friendship is so nice. It made me grateful for the college friends I’m still in touch with.

Rowley is able to craft five very different individuals who might not be friends if they hadn’t met when they did. When they came back together for each funeral seemed to make sense.

The ending made me tear up.

What didn’t work for me: I didn’t click with this book the way I hoped. I loved The Guncle and maybe I was expecting more humor but this book is much more sad and I felt a bit disconnected with how it’s set up.

Who should read it: You vwant a sort of sad look at adult friendships.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book, as this book has already been published, I will not share my review on Netgalley at this time.

I was interested in this book because I have enjoyed the previous books by this author. At first I was struggling to connect with the characters but by the end I was fully invested in the lives and deaths (both preemptive and real) of the core group of characters. Steven Rowley is gifted at writing with heart without getting overly saccharine. By the end of the novel the characters and their relationships felt fully fleshed out. I do wish we had more experience with them while they were younger at the front of the novel to better underline the impact of the death of Alec and how it impacted everyone.

The Celebrants 🌅
Thank you G.P. Putnam’s Sons for the advanced reading copy and @prhaudio for the listening copy, receipt of which did not impact my review. The Celebrants is available now!

QOTD:

The Celebrants features college friends, Marielle, Craig, Jordan, Jordy, and Naomi, who created a pact after their friend and housemate Alec passed after overdosing during their senior year in college.

“Do as many things as you can to remind yourself you’re alive.”

It’s grief with a side of humor and a love letter to Gen X - I’m about 7-8 years younger than the main characters and caught all the fun references (The Courtney Scale had me cackling, though I wasn’t allowed to watch Melrose Place). Their friendships are wobbly at times but solid, in a way that only those who’ve known you longest can be.

“Today has . . . been a day.”
“There’s always tomorrow,” Naomi said. And while she meant it literally, it was also a beautiful statement about hope.

Listening to the audiobook really enhanced the experience for me - author Steven Rowley did a fantastic job. After loving both this book and The Guncle, he’s now an auto-buy author for me.

I highly recommend it!
I Received an advanced reading copy, receipt of which did not impact my review.

I adore Steven Rowley so much, and The Celebrants broke my heart in all the wonderful ways he knows how to do. Not a day has gone by since finishing this one that I haven't thought about the characters and what I would be feeling put in their position.

Loved it! 4stars. The sarcasm, humor, love and life lessons make this book a wonderful read! Enjoyed reading about the individual characters in this friends group. Mr. Rowley has a way to pull on your emotions and with a sense of humor!

“Have an appetite for life, coupled with a genuine interest in others. That’s the secret to a successful life.”

The beauty this book holds. Steven does it again giving us a wonderful poetic book told through characters about the importance and beauty of living and honoring life before the inevitable death. I cried by the end not from sadness but by the way this book warmly held me in its clutches. The pact the friends invoked in the novel to have funerals for each other while alive was so sweet and poetic. By the end I could hear two things in my head. Barbie saying do you ever think about dying, and a quote from Tuck Everlasting. “Don’t be afraid of death, be afraid of the un-lived life!” As someone who has dealt with death more so than most, this book helped heal a part of me, and served as a reminder to the beauty of my life and how far I’ve come in my journey. Truly invigorating. So thank you to @mrstevenrowley for penning another fantastic wonderful novel for me to recommend to anyone, and for writing a beautiful shoutout to the Bookstagram community in your acknowledgments it was very kind of you.