As I was scrolling netgalley one night, I was instantly drawn to WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST by Alina Grabowski for multiple reasons. First, the title, and second, the gorgeous cover. I only needed to read the first sentence of the synopsis before quickly hitting the request button. I was 100% sold just by reading this:

“𝘼 𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙥𝙪𝙯𝙯𝙡𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙪𝙣𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙚𝙣 𝙬𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣 𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙙𝙮 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙨𝙢𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙈𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙘𝙝𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙨 𝙩𝙤𝙬𝙣.”

Heck, yes. Sounds like my type of book! I will say that the writing style and format took me a while to get used to. I think that with so many different perspectives, some details got a little confusing and disjointed. It felt like a collection of short stories at the beginning, but less so as the novel went on, as I started to notice connections between the women and other characters. Once I was able to really pin everyone down, and connect the dots, I was easily wrapped up in the lives of these women. This is a very unique and fascinating read that touches on so many important topics like class, sexuality, loss, grief, and womanhood. If you enjoy literary fiction with a bit of mystery and grit, then this is the perfect book for you. WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST is available now!

Women and Children First is not really what I thought this.book would be. It seemed haphazardly.written. There are a lot of characters that all.connect to each other through Lucy. Lucy is a high school student that dies one night. A cast
of characters try to come to terms with her death.

It was classified in the mystery genre, but it seemed more like women literary fiction to me. I never understood what the mystery was supposed to be. Maybe, I just didn't get the book.

This published May 7, 2024

Thanks to Netgalley, Zando and Grabowski for the E-ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

😊 Happy Reading 😊

#netgalley #zando #zandoprojects # alinagrabowski #womenandchildrenfirst #arc #readmytbrlist #readaway2024 #alphabetchallenge2024 (W)

It takes a minute but hang in there, it gets so much better!! The beginning of this book was kinda hard to get through because I felt bored, but what I didn’t realize is that all of the information is necessary for the rest of the story. Overall, a great read! I’m so glad I didn’t give up. A story that will leave you in tears, the happy kind.

This was a compelling story that was well-written. There were many quotable lines that really resonated on a number of levels. The only drawbacks that I experienced were that it was somewhat confusing at times to keep track of everyone's role in the story; and that there seemed to be some loose ends that were not tied up by the end of either the individual chapter or the end of the story. I kept waiting for certain of the characters to come back in later on, but it felt at times that their stories were unresolved. Perhaps this one is ripe for a sequel, because I would love to follow these characters and see where they are and how they are still grappling with this life-changing event. It was a really absorbing and eye-opening insight into the thoughts and feelings of all of the people that are touched by an event such as this.

As someone who lives in a coastal New England town and loves a small town mystery, the description of this book grabbed me right away. This book uses a unique storytelling device: each chapter jumps perspective from one character to another. All are women connected to Lucy, a teenage girl whose death at a house party has rattled the community. Some chapters are from those closest to Lucy (her mother, her best friend) and others from bystanders (her teacher's roommate, the PTA president). I liked this concept but not every chapter clicked into place for me -- I liked but didn't love this book. I'd recommend for fans of Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey, Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward, or We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry (although it is not really like any of those...).

<i>"No one protected her. And this is something our own daughter will never understand. That we were never girls, not really. For a moment we were children, yes. But a girl and a child are not the same. A child is a pet. A girl is prey."</i>

I am so torn on this one. It's a fascinating story. Something has happened and a girl is dead. The story is told from 9 different perspectives - each person somehow tied to the girl or the night she died and their different connections. Think of a drop of water and the ripple effects that go out - each ripple being a different POV.

Except that was just the first half of the book. The second half felt disjointed. The perspectives no longer seemed to tie the same way and there was even one perspective that I still don't know why it was included.

But the writing was so good. The character studies were so well done. There are so many lines that took my breath away, half the book is highlighted on my kindle from all the amazing lines. I think this could have been an amazing study about women and girls and the difficult parts of growing up - but that plot, I think, is different than the one we got. Neither possible plot felt fully explored or developed and I ended the story shocked there wasn't another chapter. It left me hanging in the worst kind of way because I'd been hoping for more.

If you like character studies, you just might like this one. It just wasn't for me.

<i>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>

I found myself lost numerous times and then would seem to find my way. I still feel like the story was lacking and disjointed. I didn’t love the ending.

I love the multiple POV’s in this story - it reads almost like short stories that are intertwined. It was a little hard to follow at points, but I enjoyed it and it was fast paced.

This book of tenuously connected stories explores what it is to be female. Daughters, mothers, friends, teachers, mentors, and sisters have their innermost thoughts and feelings laid bare. Adolescence is portrayed with all of its ugliness, its angst, insecurities, naivete, and wanting. Society's expectations of girls and women are depicted - though disjointedly with many unanswered questions posed.

Another theme running throughout the book was actions and consequences. Guilt, blame, and culpability are at the forefront of the minds of many of the characters.

"Morals are just something you pretend to have until it's too hard to uphold them."

Set in a fictional Massachusetts town, the stories are connected by one girl - Lucy. She dies after falling at a teenage party and the town's women are learning to live with the loss and come to grips with what happened to her. The reason for Lucy's death is unclear, yet the reader senses that there is some culpability here... Each of the ten stories has a different female narrator. Once you hear from one, you never visit her again.

"You can claim to be whoever you want to be, as long as no one holds you to your history."

All in all, this book contained beautifully rendered prose but lacked cohesion. As it was just a collection of linked stories, it didn't really have a resolution. I wanted to love this debut novel, but sadly did not. I'm certain that it will appeal to many, but it just wasn't the book for me. The unique structure of this debut left me unsatisfied. I would read more of this author's work if she had one story to tell in a more traditional fiction format.

“Women and Children First” by Alina Grabowski is set in a small MA town and centers around the death of a teen girl that falls off the roof during a party.
The story is told through different female narrators in the town.
The writing was lovely, but I found the book slow and somewhat depressing.

Another house party, another death. This story is about this death, and how the girls life impacted 10 different women form different ages, all who knew her. Told in past and present tense, it is a reminder that life can be cut short at any time. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reader copy of Women and Children First, a debut novel by Alina Grabowski, in exchange for an honest review.

This novel explores the tragic death of teenager Lucy Anderson at a house party in ten chapters, each from the perspective of a woman or teenager in Lucy’s orbit. While the novel held my interest, it was disjointed and ultimately unsatisfying. The best parts of the novel for me were the development and intertwining of the various characters, but I’d have loved to hear from Lucy herself.

Three stars.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for this eARC. This book revolves around the aftermath of a teen girl’s death in a small town. The unique structure shifts perspectives to a new female protagonist in each chapter, but this constant change left me disconnected from the characters and their storylines. I found the book boring, often returning to it hoping that something compelling would happen, but ultimately, it didn’t. There were no significant twists or surprises, and the lack of a main character made it difficult to feel invested. I never felt closer to understanding the dead girl or what happened to her, which left me unsatisfied. The central theme seemed to explore the independence of teen girls and the point at which it becomes too much, but it wasn't enough to hold my interest. While the writing style wasn’t bad, the pacing and coherence didn’t work for me. If you enjoy shifting perspectives and exploring themes of teen independence, you might appreciate this book more than I did. For me, it was a miss.

Thank you to Zando and SJP LIt for the ARC. This has been one of my most anticipated reads of the year because it is in part based on my hometown. This fact turned out to be slightly distracting as I was pouring through the pages trying to figure out if I recognized places or people or events instead of focusing on the bigger narrative. And this book requires some focus. The connections between characters can be a little abstract and I don't know if I simply missed something early on but it took a while for an obvious piece of the puzzle to fall into place. IN some ways it is easier to think of this as 10 short stories rather than a whole novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to what Grabowski writes next.

I really enjoyed this book. The narrative style of hearing from 10 different women in this town, only once, really worked for me. It felt a little stream of consciousness/Virgnia Woolf-esque the way we jumped around to different women, because we would often hear about a character and then the next chapter would be from that woman's POV. This structure worked for me and created a nice picture of this community (though I'm sure it won't work for everyone). Even only hearing from these women's POV once, I still felt connected to these women and this community and the story that was being told. The author did a great job of illustrating high school and how student and adult actions can have such a large impact on individual women.

Women and Children First was a difficult book for me to read. I felt lost a lot of the time and unconnected to the characters and story.

Women and Children First. Literary Fiction. 336 pages. This book follows the story of ten women in one town- puzzling their stories together. I was interested in the story… but it just fizzled out and ended. I was left wondering- “what was even the point?!” Disappointing! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Three stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A student in a small town is found dead outside of a party. Ten different women share their stories in relation to Lucy. Some were friends, neighbors, mothers and co-workers. Below the surface is a theme of loss and illness with alcoholism and cancer of characters. Something is amiss with a male teacher. The narrative can be vague at times. The voices of the women are not always distinct enough to differentiate between narrators. Sometimes I didn't know what was going on and seemingly, neither did the narrators.

Copy provided by the publisher and Netgalley

I like the premise of the stories here. There’s no major plot though, or at least you don’t get a feel for one. The telling is disjointed, and surface level. I found at a fourth of the way through the book, I could tell you a couple of characters and some small information about them but nothing much else other than that. I didn’t know why I should care about them. It could have flowed better, but I think mostly it just wasn’t for me.

When a teen aged girl dies mysteriously in a decaying New England beach town, ten women who thought they knew her each speak through their own perspective. Dialogue heavy, with little action, and no real resolution, the story wandered here and there and never really caught my total interest. Thank you to Zando and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.