I thought this was a stellar debut and tore through this in a day or two. The lives of the characters were a bit of a mess in the way that most late 20-early 30 something lives are, but I enjoyed watching them try to figure out what they wanted and learn how to reach for it.

Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna (out July 16, 2024) was a recent read, and my first five star book of the year. I don’t know what it is about Ireland, but damn do they know how to write a novel about the human condition and love over there (honorable mention to all Sally Rooney books)! McKenna discusses all forms of love, love between family, between friends who become your family, and love for yourself in taking your hopes, dreams, and desires seriously and giving yourself space to accomplish them. I very much relate to the feeling of incapability to fully express the depth of your love for your loved ones. Reading Evenings and Weekends came with the realization that, while we might not be able to open our brains and let our loved ones peek inside to prove our love, love and the act of loving is often much more simple than that.

3.5/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This book felt like a glimpse into normalcy and how messy life can be regardless of age.
One of my reading goals for the year was to read more contemporary fiction. The genre can be so real and raw while telling important stories.
Evenings and Weekends was an easy read but it fell a little flat for me. The introduction to the book and its characters was a bit messy in the beginning. You have to fight through a few chapters to get the gist of the characters and when the story has transitioned to their view. Just when you get comfortable picking up who you’re reading there’s a side character thrown in occasionally. You follow Ed, Maggie, Joan, Rosleen, Phil, Keith, Callum, Holly, Ali, Debs, Louis, and a few other side characters. All of them add to the story and are vital to the authors message.
There isn’t a particular pin-pointable plot, in my opinion. The concept of the book reminds me of when Dumbledore would pull memories and put them in the pensive for viewing. These memories are just a little extended. You’re following a cast of characters for a small segment of time, essentially jumping in one weekend and leaving the next. The end isn’t the end of the characters, just the end of the time period being told. The story got a little lost in the long winded flash backs of Phil’s childhood memories. They added to the context but also required some of their own context.
I did find the characters relatable. Struggling with money, relationships, sexuality, identity, family, and more. Oddly enough, I found myself relating to Rosaleen (The 60 year-old mother of 2). Always overthinking and missing someone deeply who didn’t get to experience life with me.
In the end, I did enjoy this novel but was left wanting more.
TW: Homophobia, Rape, Parental Loss, Pregnancy Loss

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley.

Oisin McKenna's Evenings and Weekends is an excellent character study. The characters here feel very real and fleshed out. Both good news and bad news, really, because they are not the most likable characters. This combined with the general lack of plot left me wanting.

I loved the setting and atmosphere of this book. It was almost the main character. However, I didn't really click with any of the actual human characters. There were a little too many of them to keep track. I almost started a spreadsheet but reading for pleasure shouldn't be so much work. I think if the book had a narrower focus it would have worked better because I didn't feel like I knew enough about some characters to care about them but they kept reappearing.

I felt like better use of the whale would have helped. It didn't really go anywhere thematically that made sense to me.

Forgive me for making comparisons, but I had a bit of a flashback to the breakfast club while reading this novel. Without spoiling anything, this novel concerns a group of disillusioned millennials during a heat wave in London in 2019. Perhaps it was the set up of this novel, or perhaps it was the way in which these characters were portrayed, it just has that same vibe of listening to people tell you where things are going wrong in their lives, you can't fix them--because they're fictional, but they feel so real and you just want to reach out and reassure them that things will change as time progresses.

This novel doesn't shy away from discussing sex, sexuality, or engaging in the Zeitgeist of late 10's millennial culture, and I found that quite refreshing. This work is clearly by and for Millennials. Or for people who might know one of those artsy folks in the city who just can't seem to figure out the trajectory of where life is heading versus where it should be or deserves to be going. I'd classify the characters as exhausting in a relatable way, and yet they're still endearing. I genuinely think this book is prime material for discussion in literary circles and I hope my review will implore you to give this novel a chance.

Thank you to the author and Mariner books for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The characters in this book are so vividly rendered that you feel like you know them, which is both marvelous and tricky - I read at night before falling asleep, and one evening in the midst of this novel I switched to reading something else because I was just not in the mood to hang out with these exhausting people. The younger generation in this novel includes some of the friends you have in your twenties, especially as a queer person, that you just want to sit down, your hands on their shoulders, and shake them slightly while telling them, "please, get it together, for your own sake and for the sake of everyone who loves you, please, oh my god," which makes this a bit of a frustrating read but also makes the conclusion that much more profoundly satisfying in a way that real life with people like this is sometimes(/often!) not.

Oisin McKenna is great at writing the agonies of being a human being in their twenties and on the other side in their fifties/sixties, which makes me very interested in seeing how he'd tackle the forties. One thing I loved about this novel is how completely secondary everybody's jobs were, to the point that I often forgot what they all even did for work - this may be why most of them are broke, but, same. Overall this was an immersive, somewhat overly crowded experience, but an unforgettable one. McKenna has real talent and I'll be interested to see what he writes next.

My thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was a good story, but difficult to follow at times since there were so many characters and complex dynamics.

The cover made me want to read this book. I wanted to see what the story was about because of the cover. I found a ton of characters and a heatwave in London. There were trials and relationships explored. I thought McKenna had a great idea for a novel. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This book follows a large group of friends/family/acquaintances through their hectic and (somehow) mundane lives in London. The city itself is another character added to the roster; its intensity is palpable. At a certain point, the sheer amount of characters became a bit hard to follow. I felt like I needed to write down a cast of characters to keep track of who knew whom from what. I also wanted the whale metaphor to be resolved in a more satisfying way, though it certainly added to the chaos of the London setting. 3⭐️, I liked it.

An interconnected group of millennials get drunk, hook up, and reveal their secrets over the course of a heatwave in London in 2019. Not much actually happens, but people come together and split apart and while no one gets a storybook ending, everyone has learned and grown. Sensitive topics around sexuality are handled with respect and a lack of judgement.