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.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this ebook!
This was (and still is) my first Steven Rowley book which I plan on remedying soon when I read The Guncle. I loved the very unique theme of friends having a “living funeral” when the need arose for any friend. I’ve never read such a thing elsewhere. I also appreciated how Rowley portrayed their friendships changing realistically with time, adulthood and life events. My only tiny nitpick is that the friends were often annoying with each other that it almost felt borderline toxic at times. Again, that’s to be expected with passage of time and life experiences but not with every single friend bickering at each other. That being said, I loved the ending and overall theme of the book and will definitely be exploring more of Rowley’s novels.

Steven Rowley has this wonderful and terrible ability to communicate extrordinarily life-like characters through his stories. What makes them so like-like is their belief that they are invincible when they are, in fact, vulnerable. And this vulnerability is communicated through humor, unlikeable and fallible character attributes, and some of the most trying and heartbreaking situations a person (real or fictional) can go through.

In The Celebrants, you get all of this packed together. Compared to The Guncle, this book has quite a bit of full-of-themselves characters. This is the only thing I disliked about this book. I felt there was too much "pick me" energy for everyone competing for attention when the one person who NEEDS the attention is being overlooked. In a way though, this is how some adult frienships are, especially when you don't see each other regularly. Everyone gets together and quietly competes for who has the most messed up life, who has it worse, who has it better, etc. I think for me that was the only reason I didn't enjoy this book more. I didn't have the connection they all have together, so as an outsider looking in I struggled to see past the faults to the meaningful relationship they all have together.

This was so charming! Though The Guncle was, for me, more emotional, I really enjoyed The Celebrants and can't wait to see what this author comes up with next!

I really like the authors style of writing, while this does not surpass his all time great, The Guncle, but it’s a good follow up.

I liked the different character and figuring out what’s happened. The writing is very good and I wish I got a little more of the gay couple life.

I loved this authors previous book so when I saw this one I jumped on it. I love the fun and punny writing style. Even in the harder moments there is a lightness while still showing depth and pain.

The Celebrants by Steven Rowley. Pub Date: May 30, 2023. Rating: 3 stars. I so wanted to love this story, but alas I only found it to be okay. With themes of death, cancer, living a fulfilling life and friendship, this is a somber and emotional read. I was intrigued by the premise of friends who made a pact for living funerals for each other and thought this novel would have more substance, but it fell flat for me. I felt there were too many characters and it was a struggle to really get to know each of them and their stories. I will still read Steven Rowley books though! Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review. #netgalley #thecelebrants

What a fun sophomore novel by the amazing Steven. I loved it and loved the cover I’ll continue to read more by the author.

I did not like any of these people. Since they did nothing but carp at each other constantly, I did not get the impression that they liked each other all that much either. And giving 2 of the men the same name was annoyingly twee, and just designed to ensure that I could never tell them apart. I made it to the 76% point of the book and couldn’t stand it anymore. I skipped to the last chapter. I really liked “The Editor” by this author, and “The Guncle” wasn’t bad, but this book was not for me. 2.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

So first I want to mention I adore this author and really enjoyed his last book The Guncle.

This book had a lot of things about it that drew me in. However I couldn’t get into it. It just didn’t meld with me as the reader. I didn’t enjoy the flip flop of timelines. I also don’t think I was prepared for the grief side of it. I just didn’t feel connected I felt myself pulling away not wanting to read it. So sadly this story was not for me. I do love this author and will try the next book. But this one was a no go.

I just couldn’t get into this book. I didn’t feel a strong connection to the characters and felt like the story line was too slow to progress to force myself to finish it.

This author deals with death themes. Let's just start with that before you read this book. The books are amazing and enjoyable and well written while also being funny and charming. But you need to be in the correct head space. This author does an amazing job with these themes and I highly recommend any and all of his books. His characters are also fairly diverse which I appreciate.

In this one, a group of friends make a pact after their friend dies in college. They agree to have living funerals for each other when they are at their lowest point. The goal is to provide each other with love when they most need it instead of waiting to celebrate their lives after they are no longer there.

I enjoyed Rowley’s novel, The Guncle, which came out in 2019. When I was invited to read and review The Celebrants, I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, it didn’t do a thing for me. Nonetheless, my thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam Books for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

As a child, we once had a bird bludgeon itself to death on our sliding glass door, unable to accept that the invisible barrier was really there. Reading this book made me feel just a bit like that bird. I’d liked Rowley’s last book. Other Rowley fans liked this book. So why…(BAM!)…why…(BAM!)…why could I not get into it?

I think it all boils down to privilege.

Had I read the premise more carefully, I might have avoided this trap. A group of seven college friends, grief-stricken after losing the eighth friend, agree to meet every few years and give each other mock funerals to celebrate the lives that still exist among them.

What rarefied conditions must exist to make such a thing possible? Imagine having the resources to be able to drop everything and fly off to wherever the meeting is held. Air fare. Childcare. Housing. But as I read the abundant dialogue in this thing, such trivialities are seldom mentioned. These are people that for the most part came from money, and they have money now, and they assume they will have as much, if not more, in the future.

Of course, the story is not about money and privilege. It’s about taking stock of their current lives and comparing them to their youthful expectations. There are secrets. There is baggage. And now, in their middle aged years, they are older, wiser, and in many ways, sadder.

Oh honey. They think they’re old now? My ass! My children are middle aged. Get a grip.

So okay, I am probably not the ideal audience; and yet, I will remind you that I didn’t volunteer for this. I was selected. Someone clearly believed that I am within the target audience.

I initially felt some of this when I began reading The Guncle. The protagonist there was a successful actor with a pile of money; and yet, the challenges he faced, first with the death of his partner, and then with the homophobic relative that tried to keep him from taking the children that had been entrusted to him, won out. The presence of well-written children helped a good deal, and the humor was completely on point. I cannot fail to appreciate an author that can make me laugh out loud.

I didn’t laugh out loud this time. It’s grim, but it’s wealthy-people grim, not working class grim. If you don’t know the difference, then we all know which one you are. I rolled my eyes a great deal, but it’s even harder to read when you do that, so I borrowed the audio from Seattle Bibliocommons. It didn’t help a bit, apart from making it possible to take in the book and roll my eyes at the same time.

I see that this title has been nominated for the Goodreads Choice awards, so clearly, a lot of people have loved this book. But I am not one of them.

Recommended to rich people that believe their lives to be harder than they actually are.

DNFed at 41%. I absolutely loathe every single character in this book. I tried. I tried so dang hard because Rowley is a Bookstagram favorite. But this one? I just couldn't do it. I even moved to the audio version and that did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for me.

I went into this book with high hopes but it just wasn’t a good fit for me. I had a hard time connecting with any of the main characters and felt like I didn’t get enough time to understand them before their many, many issues were brought into play in the storyline. The overall message was positive but there aren’t a lot of funny or lighter moments to help the story progress.

Thank you to the publisher for a free netgalley.

Not going to lie. I went into this with low expectations because I kept seeing not great reviews. After reading, I feel as if people went into this thinking it would be like the Guncle. The Guncle had heavy moments, but The Celebrants is heavy from start to finish.

We follow a group of 5 (were 6), and at their friend's funeral they decide that each one of them gets one funeral while they are alive. This is when they need it. When they're having a moment in life where they feel at the bottom.

While the story begins, it floats back and forth between the Jordans (present time) and the past. The past includes some college life. Then throughout the book, we get closer to 2023. Between the present day Jordans chapters, we get to see when each friend pulls the funeral card.

I thought this book was amazing to be honest. I loved the story and I found myself getting emotional at each "funeral".

Why I took one star was the format. The section for each funeral was long. And I am fine with that. But instead of making chapters inside each section, Rowley wrote them as one long chapter. So I felt like there was not a good place to stop. I can see why this turns readers off as 40 page chapters don't do it for a lot of people.

But I recommend. I think this is a great story about friendship and how life changes but those friendships can last.

I had a bit harder time connecting with the characters in this book than I expected (I absolutely loved and adored the Guncle); however, I love the message of friendship/family The Celebrants was conveying