3.5⭐️

the definition of no plot just vibes!!

enjoyed the sister dynamic and the dysfunctional family, the mother made me laugh so much!!!!

the chronically online aspects were good and living in New York as a young person was spot on.

the ending, however, was not what I was expecting and it was kinda traumatic Imao I am not even an animal person but I was like Jesus Christ what is happening here…

I honestly don't have much to say but I'm glad I read and this book is one of my favorite covers ever

I am hit or miss with the cool girl lit genre - this was almost a hit for me !! almost...

Is there a real plot to WORRY? Maybe, but you have to enjoy the characters and for a lack of better word, the vibe to enjoy reading it. And luckily for me, I did. Tanner has written a book with dialogue so real, I felt like I was eavesdropping on family conversations. I enjoyed the sister dynamic and their dynamic with their mother. This book won't be everyone, but it definitely has an audience (which includes me) and if you enjoy Melissa Broder, Ottesa Moshfegh, or Mona Awad, then I think you will enjoy WORRY. The abrupt and gruesome ending did unsettle me, so I'd recommend checking TW/CW.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

Wow... how can one even describe the feeling of this book? The specificity in the viciousness of family trauma and conversations was so raw it felt like I was in the room. Honestly, this felt almost too triggering to me at parts, but it was executed so well that I couldn't put it down. I enjoyed the portrayal of how interlocked nihilism and social media can be, especially with each sister's stark differences in reactions to trials and tribulations. That dynamic felt insanely intimate. I fluctuate from giving this 4 or 5 stars - for now, I am settling on a comfortable 4.5/5.

Thank you so much to Scribner for sending me a physical copy of this book!

Worry was a wild ride. Like other reviewers, I highly recommend checking the CWs but I will add a few at the bottom of this review as well.

A character-driven novel, Worry follows sisters Jules and Poppy through a year of living together in New York. They aren't particularly close, but are trauma bonded in many ways, which leads to entertaining but troubling dialogue and mishaps. Their mother is quickly slipping into the QAnon realm, which adds an additional layer of tension but also comedic value to the narrative.

I wouldn't say that any of the characters are "likeable". They are complex and extremely messy and despairing and sad and anxious and all of the things. The story can quickly go from funny to straining, but there were many parts that felt almost too real and kept me going.

I would recommend this to people who like character-driven stories, complex family relationships, millennials wasting away into the abyss, and new york city cliches.

CWs: animal violence, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt (off-page), antisemitism and antisemitic slurs, ableism, graphic medical content

Follows two twentysomething sisters who become roommates in Brooklyn and struggle to maintain jobs, relationships and their sanity. The premise sounds so boring and overdone but something about these characters felt deeply relatable. This has some of the most authentic mental illness representation I’ve ever read while also being unbelievably funny. Read this!

Humorous, solipsistic, and oddly sweet at times. I can already tell that this book is going to be one of the "it" books in 2024. I think this will definitely cater to a certain audience (those who enjoyed Big Swiss, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death Valley, etc). If you're not into the whole sarcastic and existential tone that a lot of these post-pandemic books come with, I don't think you will enjoy this too much. I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed this.

It's clear that Tanner is skilled in the art of reading people. Many of the characters are painfully reminiscent of the people that you'd meet in real life. I don't think I've ever read a book that is as on the nose and honest as this one.

Also as a side note, I definitely sympathize with Poppy as a younger sister with skin issues. We just want to feel loved by our older siblings!!!

Worry is cold hard proof that people with anxiety are the funniest. There were so many parts where I felt seen and others where I laughed out loud. The main characters felt so relatable and I identified a lot with them.

If you’re a fan of Melissa Broader or Odessa Moshfegh, I think you’d really like Worry.

When I received this copy of Worry from @scriberbooks I chuckled at the cover and said something like "relatable". What I found inside was dark, absurd, and difficult to look away from. Worry is the story of two twenty something sisters turned roommates navigating life in NYC, being online, family dysfunction, and...existential dread.

In her debut, Tanner bares the young millennial soul out on the page for the reader to relate, cringe, scowl, and honestly, want to bang our heads against the wall. This was equal parts wild, raw, shocking, and, at times, warm and tender. I think this is going to have a wide range of reviews, especially because of that ending, but regardless of how you feel, you likely won't be able to look away. This publishes March 26th and I can't wait to hear what you think.

I DNF'd about 20% of the way through. I just couldn't get into the book which was sad because this was an anticipated read for me. I felt that a lot of nothing was happening and was skimming more and more as the pages went on. I decided to DNF and maybe come back to it in the future rather than completely ruin my reading of it by forcing myself to continue with it. I understand books like this are character-driven and often slower and less plot-heavy, but I felt that nothing was happening in this book, and the characters weren't entertaining enough to keep my interest.

So much of this felt like reading a book about my mother and sister and all of our dynamics which was strange but cathartic. The ending really threw me

I definitely feel like I'm in the minority here. I'm normally all for a sad girl literary fiction novel with no plot and just vibes, but this one just didn't do it for me.

Worry picks up on the day Poppy moves in with her older sister Jules in Brooklyn. Poppy, in the last year, tried to commit suicide, and decided to leave living with her parents in Florida to make it on her own. We follow the sisters as they navigate that first year together, learning how they interact with each other and how their family dynamics work. Jules is obsessed with "internet mommies" so much that she creates a separate account just to stalk them with. Poppy has chronic illnesses that keep her from living a fully carefree life. Together, they have a very unhealthy relationship--they brutalize each other verbally and then make up in the next breath. They compete with each other, tear each other down on purpose, and then step back to apologize. It felt like a whiplash. And then we meet their toxic mother, the definition of a narcissist, and someone who made my blood boil every time she was on the page.

I give this novel credit for making me viscerally react to these characters, but this just felt like watching a train wreck of dysfunctional people abuse each other for the sake of hurting. There were times when I laughed out loud or giggled (this book has a lot of dialogue, and most of it is interesting if not entertaining), but my overall enjoyment of this was very limited. I've realized that I don't enjoy reading stories like this--where everyone is constantly belittling one another because they are all so profoundly unhappy; Go to therapy and be better to each other!

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. This title publishes March 26, 2024.

This book has no real plot, so you have to really care about the characters in order to keep reading it. And for me, there were two compelling threads that made this book fascinate and destroy me emotionally. 1) A pair of sisters who simultaneously love/hate each other and can move quickly from slinging the most vile gut-wrenching insults, to exhibiting great care for someone they know better than anyone. 2) Parents who are ANYWHERE near the world of essential oil MLMs, sex trafficking hysteria, or right-wing political conspiracies.

In conclusion, ouch. This book was painfully relatable for me and I'm deducting a star for the ending (without spoiling) because it made me upset.

Check CWs/TWs before reading!

I never really got it when people said a book is “raw,” but I get it now. This book is raw. It feels way too real. It’s no plot all vibes. Jules feels like a tangible, real person. I felt immensely seen in the mundane points. The most outlandish points of the book felt all too authentic. Alexandra Tanner demonstrates a mastery of lit fic.

I’m torn on how I should rate this book. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but I didn’t dislike it either. If I had to describe the novel in a single sentence I’d say it was a portrait of modern technology addicted millennials with mommy issues and a healthy dose of burnt-out apathy. And to be fair, this is where many real individuals of that generation are sitting in this day and age.

"Poppy’s ideas about dead art, to me, are just as numbing as the ideas in the play. The shows I watch are dead. The middling novels I take apart bit by tiny bit for Booksmarts are dead. Dead art is everywhere. Dead art is my life. By the time we get inside, I’m exhausted."

The novel follows Jules and her younger sister Poppy, who has moved into her NYC apartment. The sisters have a very mercurial relationship, most likely thanks to the awful relationship they share with their mother. It feels as if their mother purposefully sows discord between the sisters because if they pull away from each other, perhaps they’ll value her time and ideas more. Their mother very much wants to maintain a position of power over her daughters and is extremely narcissistic. While both sisters had definitely dealt with a childhood full of emotional acrobatics, I believe, even though the younger of the two, Poppy was beginning the process of healing and trying to move past her traumas and struggles. Jules on the other hand was very much stuck in a rut. Between the lack of enthusiasm with her career, dissatisfaction with her perceived lack of life accomplishments, a dependency on social media and internet memes to drown out the overwhelming press of the problems around her, Jules has a lot of aspects of her personality that many could relate to. I didn’t really like Jules as a person though, I think because you could see throughout the novel that she wasn’t really trying to make an effort to improve her life. Not to mention how purposefully mean she could be towards her sister. This very likely is from mental health struggles, but it was still frustrating not to see any growth from her. I was really hoping to see the sisters grow closer in a positive way, or to at least see Jules gain a tiny sense of direction. That’s often how life goes though, so I can’t fully fault the novel’s message for that disappointment of mine.
The ending was abrupt and to many, may seem incomplete, but it fits in with the rest of the novel and it’s commentary on the bleakness of a society where we are so bombarded and overwhelmed with struggles from every angle that sometimes all we can do is numb ourselves to those issues with whatever distractions are available.

This was a hard one to get through. Definitely just vibes and monoliths. If you like witty banter if gen x and sisters. You like this.

Genuinely don’t ever think I’ve cackled out loud reading something as I did while reading Worry.

The amount of quotes I shared with my sister because of how relatable and hilarious I found this story is unreal.

If you’re a chronically online girlie going through a quarter life crisis and have a younger sister (or sibling in general), you need to read this.

Definitely looking forward to reading more by Alexandra Tanner!!

Thank you NetGalley and Scriber for an ARC of this book exchange for my honest review!

This book is positively full of awful people who are somehow embarrassingly relatable at the same time. Main characters and sisters Jules and Poppy are complicated and terrible but totally, unrelentingly human. The timing of their story is perfect because we know the pandemic is around the corner and they will have no choice but to cohabitate and all of this fighting about it is for nothing. I'm sad it's over! I laughed a lot! I'll miss my deranged little sisters. Looking forward to what Tanner writes next.

I breezed through this in a few days! Such a great depiction of millennial Jewish Brooklyn transplant ennui. I wanted to pull my hair out, or break out in hives, and hug the girls at the same time. Hope there’s more to come!

I loved this book. It showcased and encompassed the reality of two awkward sisters with a terrible family dynamic. The dialogue felt real and uncomfortable-which is what lit fic is supposed to do. The shocking ending was enough for me to deem this an instant classic.

Twenty-something sisters Jules and Poppy end up as roommates in a small NYC apartment. Through a series of misadventures and one disastrous trip home for Thanksgiving, they try to find their footing together.

I think this book will really resonate with a certain audience, but I don’t think I am that audience.

I would definitely give Tanner another try. Her writing was very fast paced and chaotic (in a good way), and I really enjoyed the witty dialogue. There was a lot of super relatable existential dread packed in, and I could definitely understand the sort of plateau Jules was feeling.

My biggest problem was just that there was no real character development. Every time I thought the sisters were about to figure it out together, they immediately reverted back to how they started. I really wanted there to be some sort of dive into their relationship with their mother and how that impacted their relationships with each other, but it just never came.

The ending also felt a little off to me. It was just a very strange place to end it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC!