Meredith trusts Nina- thinks she's a friend just when she really needs one. And women support women, right? Well,, no. Meredith has fled the US for Paris thanks to a deeply disturbing me-t00 moment with a powerful producer she calls the "rug." And the Rug has hired Nina to get close to Meredith and then discredit her. Nina's back story is more interesting than Meredith's but know that these women have more in common than it first appears. It's a carefully plotted thriller with intriguing characters on top of a familiar theme. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

Thank you Alfred A. Knopf and Net galley for providing me with an advance copy of this terrific novel. Violet-eyed starlet Meredith Montgomery is sexually assaulted by "the Rug," a Harvey Weinstein-ish producer. Meredith’s agent, Marietta, whom Meredith, with her wry insights, explains “must have been in her early fifties, but with all that meditation and . . . help of some Cindy Crawford-approved injectables” could pass for forties, urges her client not to involve the police because the Rug was very powerful and Meredith had appeared nude on the screen. Marietta was satisfied that the matter would be aptly handled “in-house.” When the lawyer her manager retains for her advises Meredith that she can’t bring charges against the Rug—“Way too late for that. His word against yours, you lose. Forget about it”—Meredith’s first thought is: a haiku! The lawyer does obtain a paltry $150K settlement and an empty promise that the Rug was contrite and eager to cast Meredith in an A-list ensemble piece.

The NDA Meredith signed forbids her from talking about the Rug, but she vents on social media about a thinly veiled Rug, causing the film and television offers to dry up. She decamps to Paris with the intention of working on a memoir exposing the Rug. One evening, a disheveled Meredith ventures out to a Berthillon kiosk on the Ile de la Cité where two middle-aged American male tourists verbally accost her and another woman who defends herself and Meredith with a switchblade. That woman, Nina Willis, confides that she carries a knife as she was gang-raped as a teenager and now works as an activist sharing her story “to warn girls to be careful.” Meredith and Nina forge an immediate friendship (too immediate) and Meredith is tantalized by Nina’s proposal that the actress serve as the a celebrity spokesperson for Women’s Work, a women’s rights group based in Amsterdam. But, just as quickly as they bonded, Nina ghosts Meredith and a stunned Meredith returns to her home on the Venice Canals in Los Angeles where her phones are tapped, she is surveilled, and numerous articles appear on the internet deeming her crazy, a deviant, a liar, and worse.

Curiously, the next section of the book is set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian genocide, where we witness the rape of Lejila, a Muslim woman, by her neighbor while her husband and her children stand by helplessly. Her husband lost in the Bosnian genocide, Lejila and her daughter, Samara, are evacuated to Israel by a Jewish relief organization grateful that Lejila’s grandfather had hidden a Jewish family in their basement during World War II. This disparate section introduces a character whose relevance to Meredith is not immediately clear, but Schulman is a skilled writer and the connection between Meredith and Samara is flawlessly executed.

It might seem that we have had enough of these high-profile sexual abuse scandals, but this novel, seemingly inspired by Rose McGowan’s role in bringing down Weinstein and helping to launch the #MeToo movement, is smart, highly entertaining and timely. With her delicious observations of the brutality of show business, Schulman has an unerring eye for detail and character development. She writes in a sleek, cool style which conveys both Meredith’s naïveté and her lively irony. This novel moves at the pace of a thriller and enchants with its humor and wit.

Starting out, I did not know this was loosely vased on the true premise of Rose McGowan and the Mossad agent that befriended and betrayed her on behalf of Harvey Weinstein.
I think that the fact that a bug chunk of this is rooted in reality makes it hard to evaluate it on it's own terms. Initily I thought that the book was trying to oush the reader to think about how much empathy they were willing to give abused women when those women in turn were awful to people around them. An interesting, if depressing, exercise. But the realization that so much of the real story of Weibstein and his accusers has spilled over onto these pages made it feel a lot more icky to play around with rhetorical questions like that.

There are a couple of stand-out sections, like Nina's childhood in war-time Bosnia, that deserved more room to breathe. But in the end, the interesting elements were dulled by grating characterizations and perspective shifts.

I didn't realize it ahead of time, but this book was clearly based heavily on true events (#metoo and the Weinstien case).

Meredith is a struggling young actress who is victimized by a wealthy, high profile producer. She meets and befriends Nina, who seems to have a lot in common, but might not be who she seems. I don't want to say too much more at the risk of giving spoilers.

This wouldn't be my favorite book, but I didn't hate it. I found myself taken in by some chapters and bored with others. Personally, I don't love books that are loosely based on true events, when it matches real life too closely.

It definitely has some trigger warnings, so it won't be for everyone.

DNF at 30%. felt suffocatingly meandering in its prose, and like it was trying too hard to be edgy. just so meandering, at the beginning it feels like nothing really happens but it alludes to the big reveal that you are not really contextualized into yet, so it just feels like you are at the end of a book you didn’t read the beginning of, and then after that short snippet of Meredith’s perspective, suddenly you are dropped into a deep deep war perspective from the father of Nina, who is actually a child of war spying on Meredith i guess? this is said to be based on event from the Harvey Weinstein case but i don’t know anything about this particular incident so i was just confused and could not continue. great book cover but i don’t know, something about it just didn’t work for me.

A #MeToo novel. Two women, meet. One is a b-list actress who has been dealing with the actions of a powerful producer. She meets a pair who wants to help her bring the producer to justice, but are they really who they say they are?

This is a powerful story, and it's not an easy read. It's a modern story for the time.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf and NetGalley for an electronic ARC of this novel.

Lucky Dogs is a thinly veiled retelling of the Harvey Weinstein #MeToo story and Rose McGowan's story. A young American actress is traumatized by her past with a wealthy producer and tries to tell her story on social media. Not getting any traction, she flees to Paris where she meets a charismatic woman Nina, who works for a women's rights group, and is eager to spread the actress' story to get justice. Only Nina isn't who she claims to be.

This story was interesting but depressing in a lot of ways. It deals with the perils of fame, social media, and the aftermath of trauma. The book is told in parts with each part focusing on one of the two main characters. It was a well written book and has a powerful message, but it's not going to be for everyone.

I liked the writing style and the almost thriller-esque pacing. I loved that the two main characters were both fleshed out and complex and that we were able to understand if not sympathize with them, as unlikeable as they were.

The different “parts” of the story (particularly the jump between 1 & 2) were so vastly different and the change from one characters POV to another were so abrupt that it felt at times like reading two completely separate books which caused some confusion for me at the time, but now that I’ve finished, I feel that it showcases the author’s range.

I was unsure if this was a story that would stick with me after reading (as a woman the topic is unfortunately nothing unknown to me) UNTIL the author’s note at the end, where the real life event that this was inspired by is discussed. I was not entirely familiar with much of the details of said case and this information cast the book in a much different, much more impactful light.

3.5/5 stars overall.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ebook. The author has taken the reporting on the Weinstein abuses and pulled her own story about an unstable young actress who gets abused by a producer and a young woman who befriends the actress, but turns out to be an ex Mossad agent spying on the actress, hired by the monstrous producer. The author splits the story and alternates chapters by doing a deep dive into each woman and their lives to show how they both made the choices that they did.

I was immediately drawn in by the simple vintage nature of this cover and boy was the content and narrative fulfilling as well. I am so thankful to Knopf, PRH Audio, Helen Schulman, and NetGalley for granting me audiobook access and digital access to this one of kind tale of friendship, feminism, and social activism. Lucky Dogs is set to hit shelves on June 6, 2023, and I can't wait for the hype to come.

Heavily influenced by the Harvey Weinstein story, Lucky Dogs follows two women - a young starlet taken advantage of by a nameless uber-producer and the ex-Mossad spy tasked with ruining her. Both stories are interesting in their own right, but they do not go together. In fact, switching between the two POVs feels like reading two different books.

I can see where Schulman was hoping the narrative to go, but it never quite makes it. Instead, we have a stream of conscious narration of a woman spiraling in real-time juxtaposed with a harrowing tale of sociopathy borne of childhood trauma. But what annoys me the most is the inclination to focus on a woman’s actions within a rape story instead of the repugnant man actually at the center.

Let me start by saying, as you can probably guess by the summary, this book focuses heavily on rape and it is incredibly dark and graphic. It depicts how deeply the trauma of rape can burrow into a person and effect so many aspects of their lives. I personally thought it was done well, but definitely not going to be for everybody.

I read Farrow’s Catch and Kill (which is phenomenal!) but I hadn’t really paid attention to the fact that one of the spies who went the deepest into infiltrating Rose McGowan’s life was a woman. This book explores how one woman could come to a position where she happily accepts payment by a known serial rapist to destroy a victim’s life. It was very interesting and a unique exploration into this side of the case that in part led to the #MeToo movement. The writing style may also not be for everybody; the actress’ perspective is written a bit in stream of consciousness, including with text speak. It was jarring at first, but ultimately worked for me and helped further contextualize the character.

This novel is divided into 5 parts. I was just catching the flow of the story in part 1 and then part 2 makes a major detour to an entirely different timeline and writing style. Part 3 switched back to the first part's timeline, etc but I could only make it about halfway through before I quit.

Lucky Dogs is an angry fever dream of a novel. Upon opening, we are introduced to our main narrator, Meredith. She’s a B-list actress hiding out in Paris after a #MeToo scandal. It’s at an ice cream shop one evening that she meets Nina.
They only briefly interact, but affect each other for a long time. Neither are who they say they are. And both, deeply affected by trauma, are unnervingly detached, and erratic.
Some parts of the story pulled me in and others I couldn’t connect to or care about completely. Ultimately, this is an interesting book, and I do think it’s incredibly purposefully written.

I like this books but I was bored. I was engrossed in some chapters and others fell flat. I wish Nina's parts wasn't based in the past like Meredith's or they both had back story. It's a quick read but it's well written, fun (in the way of going through life without a filter), and educational about what it's like to be sexually assaulted.

This was a tough one to review for me. I was really excited by the blurbs about this book and I had high hopes, but it ultimately wasn't what I anticipated. I really enjoyed the book but I think that maybe my expectations were too high. Meredith isn't supposed to be a sympathetic character and I think that's the point. She's almost the perfect victim because she's so messy on her own that she's easy to discredit. That being said, I think I enjoyed reading more about Nina. Her chapters were more interesting and added depth to the story in a way that I wish Meredith's did.

An American TV star is Paris engaging in classic sad girl activities when she crosses path with an interesting woman at just the right moment. The two women are confronted by a group of vulgar and unsafe American men, and their responses forge a connection between the two strangers who have both faced sexual violence before. However, this seemingly fortuitous meeting quickly spirals into a treacherous situation.

1️⃣ A mix of sad girl lit and a thriller?! I was very excited about the combo, and it’s done well. The book offers the mind-numbing passing of days you expect from sad girl lit while also creating moments for action.

2️⃣ The shift from the first character’s perspective to another story in the second section in the book is jarring. I checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally clicked into another book in my Kindle library after a few pages in that section. The stories are seemingly unrelated until later in the book when it becomes clear how they match up.

3️⃣ Although the two perspectives are necessary for the big ideas Schulman pushes the reader to consider, the secondary story is a bit clunky and took more effort to get through.

4️⃣ As you move further into the book, Schulman leads you to consider painful and difficult questions about the effects of trauma and the ways a victim can become a perpetrator.

5️⃣ Although I enjoyed this book at times, it wasn’t a favorite. The topic was great, and I can’t pinpoint exactly what didn’t click for me, but it just didn’t. It earns 3 stars from me.

This one wasn’t for me - I tried my best to get into it but during part 2 I found my mind really wandering and couldn’t understand what the backstory had to do with the overall plot.

What is not clear from the jacket synopsis of this book is that this is very directly a #MeToo story. Hollywood celebrities who were involved in the real scandal are name dropped frequently, and there are obvious real world corollaries to the characters. Our protagonist, Meredith, is a young actress laying low in France after a being victimized by a Weinstein-esque rapist/powerful producer. She meets Nina, who shares her own account of sexual violence and quickly wins Nina's trust and solidarity.

I can't say too much without risking spoilers, but suffice it to say Nina is not what she seems, which is why the book is so propulsive and exciting and nuanced. It tackles a lot of uncomfortable or difficult topics, like the involvement of females in condoning or even participating in the exploitive rape culture of Hollywood, what makes a victim sympathetic, the sacrifices we make for dreams, the limitations of birth and opportunity, and who we owe loyalty to.

Would have been five stars but for the anticlimactic ending, but definitely still worth reading!

DNF -- this was tough for me! I couldn't get into the narrator's voice, and wasn't hooked into the story while reading. Just not for me right now.