This novel has lots of potentially interesting ideas and phenomena posited, but ultimately fails to explore any of them. The writing is very level throughout, leaving you a bit un-wowed at any point, our main character has lots of potential for deep development and lore but simply alludes to any other timeline in their life than the one she is in. There is a non-binary character included, which is great representation, but their identity as someone who identifies as non-binary is almost tokenized, referring to them countless times as “the person named Sam” so many times as to feel insensitive to their humanity and reality as a person. I was entertained enough to finish the novel, but at no point was I at either extreme end of the spectrum in terms of emotion about it. The theme of a para-social relationship turned actually social is quite a unique topic in terms of what i’ve seen, but I felt that actually that aspect was the least explored plot of the novel. Overall, could’ve used some focus shifting in terms of what plot points needed development and which ones felt meandering and like filler.

What started as an intriguing premise rapidly dissolved into a self-mythologizing mess that somehow manages to be desperately boring but also Timotheé Chalamet RPF (three words I never though I would type into a Goodreads review!). The best I can say of this is that there are some interesting coming-of-age themes & a subversion of typical tropes you see in queer lit. It is unfortunate that these details are steamrolled beneath approximately 100 other pages of the protagonist 1) wandering aimlessly around Sephora 2) watching beauty influencers on Youtube 3) checking the social media page of the polyamorous couple who have recently dumped her. All of which are described in the extreme, excruciating detail typically reserved for 1000 page epic fantasy novels or gothic literary fiction from the 1800s. A feat considering that this entire book barley surpasses novella length. Are the protagonists's behaviors passably relatable? Perhaps! Does the novel speak on a broader scale to the dangers of being Chronically Online and filtering ones sense of self through social media and dating apps? Yes, in a confusing and abstract way! Does all of this together make for compelling literature? Unforutnalty, it does not! It would be easy to dunk on the admittedly unlikable girlfailure protagonist as the root cause of my problems but my real issue issue is the girlfailure stagnating within a plot that prioritizes performing a critique of society over creating a fulfilling narrative arc. I am however entertained by this book's representation of the specific subtype of fujoshi bisexual attracted exclusively to women, nb folks, and italian-twink era chalamet. Diversity win!

The premise of the book was more riveting than the book itself. The second half of the book is better articulated than the first and I think if the book matched the whole style of the second half my rating might be a little higher.

The biggest thing that didn’t work for me in the novel is the way characters were introduced without actual names: “the actor-character,” “the man and the woman”. Maybe there’s some underlying choice here but it made the writing seem clunky and confusing.

I never found myself rooting for Elsa but I also didn’t mind her as being a wishy-washy protagonist. I think she was written well for a young adult going through so many emotions.

Ultimately I think there was too much going on with the whole story, with some clunky writing. I hope Madison Newbound finds her groove in the next novel because there is definite potential.

Thank you to the publisher for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars

This book picks up in the second half, with the first half having me think about DNFing it multiple times. There seems to be a thread of books out lately with main cisfemale characters who may or may not be queer, date someone to test the waters, and then the end brings no resolution about this and I'm left wondering if the main character just went back to cismen. I can understand what this book is trying to do, and I certainly appreciate that now people don't have to come out and identify like they did when I was growing up (wow, I'm not that old, but it's true). And at the same time, it is tiring to see books written describing women who are drawn toward out characters who are more comfortable in their identity and then there's no actual resolution in the book about how this changed the main character, or didn't, or how much this was just an experiment or side track. As an out lesbian, this frustrates me because I can identify myself with these side characters. We still live in a world where people hate us for being gay, so what does it mean that there's books like this out now where the main character can seemingly escape the pain of this? And what does it mean that there's books like this out now where the character doesn't -have- to identify one way or another or come to a conclusion about their sexuality?

I appreciated the attempts at describing shopping addictions and those felt very relatable and 21st century. They also seemed out of place with the rest of the text's pace. Is that because that's how the character felt when shopping? Maybe I'm missing something here.

If I am being honest, this book didn't interest me a whole lot. I felt really confused and I couldn't get into the characters mind. We need more of the main characters back story ahead of time in my opinion, that way I can actually connect a bit more and feel more invested in her life.

The best thing about this book is connecting it to Timothee Chalamet. Not sure if that was what this author was going for, but it was so easy to do it!

I think this book was good. I requested it because it sounded interesting, and it was. The cast of characters was interesting and all so different from one another. I love the setting and environment this book created it really helped to create well rounded and dynamic characters

A NONBINARY PROMINENT CHARACTER!!! Sorry, just had to get that out there. As a non-binary person myself, I keenly notice when characters are non-binary. Honestly, it’s not the easiest to find them portrayed as important characters in books, so I was really really excited to meet Sam. Elsa and Sam are boxers, just tiptoeing around each other as a summer passes by. This novel is not action-oriented, but instead is a descent into the mind of Elsa as she navigates loss of love, general life confusion, and the awkwardness of attraction. I normally am the type of reader that struggles with these more introspective kinds of books, but this book had me enraptured from the first few pages. I could gush about Newbound all day, but what I will say is that they elevate the mundane and make it matter. Keep writing, it’s powerful.

Misrecognition is about a young woman who moved back in with her parents after a breakup with a poly couple. While watching a movie with her parents, she develops an obsession with the main character and the actor of this character happens to be in her town for a play. While somewhat stalking this actor, she instead develops a fixation on the actors friend, "a person called Sam."

This novel had so much potential. It reads like watching an indie film and you can vividly imagine each setting the author transitions to which I loved. However, the characters were very two dimensional and I had a hard time connecting with our main character. I could empathize with her and her situation but I could have set the book down and never thought about her again. I did enjoy it enough to anticipate what this author writes in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and Madison Newbound for the opportunity to read this book ahead of publishing.

Misrecognition hit a lot (A LOT) of my interests upon reading the synopsis on NG. I’ve been trying to find more queer MC’s that don’t fall into the poorly written queer/questioning category. Unfortunately, I am DNF’ing this book for the time being at 28% (3/12/24).

Much like several other reviewers have said, I’m unsure if this MC’s voice is a deliberate choice or not. I can get where it could be going with the depression aspect, because depression makes people behave in a variety of ways... but she is just so... unremarkable. And the lack of remarkable traits is making this incredibly hard to get through.

The way that Newbound/Elsa presents new characters is ~bizarre~ to me. I’ve honestly been reading this book as someone who’s encountering someone else (Elsa) who has main character syndrome and no one else matters and I’m unfortunately along for the ride. Which would normally be fine if the person with the MCS was interesting... but Elsa is falling incredibly flat and I can’t find it in me to continue trudging through this book because of it right now. I’m also finding it hard to picture any of the characters, they’re just floating orbs in my mind as I read, honestly. There’s nothing about them that conjures any type of character build. You could present me with a group of randomly generated Sims characters, tell me that’s what the characters look like, and I’d shrug and say okay.

The only thing I can appreciate about the writing right now is the vague approach to speaking about social media/pop culture references that has been utilized so far. However, and this is a big however, they’re not vague enough and the references are still going to be outdated within a handful of years or so (the Marie Kondo reference is already dated because I don’t remember the last time I heard anyone bring her up), and the way Newbound writes them (and the way Elsa’s voice presents them) sounds so incredibly insulting? Condescending? I could be reading it incorrectly, honestly... I probably am, but I don’t want to be womansplained as to what an IG story is and how it works as if I don’t spam my friends-only story with animal memes on a daily basis.

The tone for this book right now seems like the author/MC finds the reader stupid, which I am not... so that’s another tick in the dislike column.

Also after reading GR reviews for this book, I’ve come to find out that the actor-character is !!allegedly!! the modern-day embodiment of a sick Victorian child, Timothee Chalamet, and that alone is enough to make me roll my eyes hard enough to induce a Category-5 migraine. I don’t understand the hold he has on everyone, and I am tired of it :) . Maybe if I visualize the actor-character as someone else, I won’t be annoyed.

I will likely let this book sit and come back to it. Right now, reading this is not doing me any favors mentally (because it’s wholly uninteresting and not captivating in the slightest, so it isn’t keeping my attention) and it’s been putting me to sleep whenever I’ve tried to read it.

Hello, me again. It's now the 20th and I am no less confused or annoyed than I was when I started writing this.

Nothing interesting happened until the last 15% of the book. I wish I could have just read that part with zero context needed. It would have been a perfect short story. None of the earlier 85% felt needed, truly. It was so repetitive. SO repetitive. And I understand that breakups and relationships can be very trying. I still find myself psychoanalyzing everything I said and did in my last relationship and wondering what could have happened if I said a different word in a particular sentence. I still find myself unfortunately wondering what they're up to now, even though we ended things under the guise of friendship but don't talk. The ~after~ is weird. But this book lacked any real substance for me and I find that unfortunate. I had moderately high expectations for this book based off of the synopsis.

Elsa doesn't get any less flat as the story progresses. Probably because her character progression doesn't face much change either. Sure she starts to emerge from her shell but it's mayyybe... Five percent of the book?? At the end. I'm not willing to say she gets better as a charter when you compare that five percent to the remaining ninety five.

Between the weird pacing, the weird interactions, the weird way Elsa referred to people (the person called Sam, the actor-character), and the bizarre fragmented sentences/thoughts... I don't know how to really put thoughts to digital paper.

I can't see myself recommending this to anyone I know, unfortunately. There's definitely a niche for this book but I'm struggling to pinpoint exactly what it would be/be called.

Thank you again to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and Madison Newbound for the ARC opportunity. I look forward to being given more of these opportunities in the future.

DNF 65%
It’s hard to follow along when there’s nothing interesting to grasp onto. When nothing continually happens in a book I begin to wonder if I’m missing crucial information. I usually don’t and it’s just the protagonist’s thoughts filling most of the narrative but she isn’t captivating.

Misrecognition follows Elsa. She is a twenty something woman who has just been broken up with by a couple - The man and the woman. After this abrupt ending, she moves back in with her parents and takes shelter in her childhood bedroom.
Elsa is just like me for real. Scrolling mindlessly on social media, smoking too many cigarettes, depleting her bank account on frivolous purchases in an attempt to fill the void and dull her pain. It was mundane, boring, familiar.
Elsa becomes obsessed with someone who she calls the actor-character. (He’s literally Timothée Chalamet.) The actor comes into town to star in a play, and brings Sam along with them.
From here, we follow Elsa as she becomes enamored with Sam. Stalking them on social media, trying to find herself and explore her sexuality and what it now means to be alone and rebounding.
This book was an unhurried, dull ache. It truly conveys the loss and heartbreak that Elsa is feeling in such a real and painful way. She is starting from scratch, picking up the pieces and unsure of where to begin. With that being said, it is very slow at times and I can understand those that DNFed it. We are seeing Elsa at her lowest, with minimal hope.
I do wish that we could have had more glimpses into her past relationship with the man and woman. We get snippets, but not enough to truly form and understanding as to why the loss is so great for her.
If you enjoy slow burn reads with no happy ending or true conclusion, this is for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher who provided me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of these thoughts and opinions are my own.

Listless after a poly breakup, Elsa moves back with her parents. By day she obsesses over the actor-character and by night she consumes mindless videos online. Fans of Monica Heisey's Really Good, Actually, Lillian Fishman's Acts of Service, and/or Emma Cline's The Guest will find something they like in this story, which covers obsession, relationships, and a general lack of meaning in one's early 20s. In general, this is best suited for readers of the New Adult genre.

Yet, I found this wanting. The protagonist is incredibly hard to like. I even enjoy an unlikeable protagonist, but it's not clear that this is intentional by the author. The main character is someone I'm simultaneously uninterested in and embarrassed for, the walking embodiment of cringe. I want to shake her and tell her to grow the fuck up. Usually second-hand embarrassment results in something dramatic and exciting happening, but this story offers very little action.

I love a good commentary about being chronically online, and I thought from the novel's synopsis and Patricia Lockwood comparison that perhaps this book would offer such a critique. Instead, we just watch Elsa scroll on her phone and watch YouTube without any nuance, critique, or insight. The "commentary" provided is akin to "The internet causes alienation," when we're about 15 years into that bandwagon opinion. 

I also had trouble getting into the way this was written. The author purposefully uses strange phrasing about the characters in Elsa's life - "the person called Sam," "the man and the woman," and "the actor-character." I kept waiting for this to be a relevant stylistic choice, but I never found it provided any depth or meaning to the story. This may have worked better if Elsa herself had more depth or personal growth that could serve as a contrast to these fleeting, nameless people in her orbit. 

I nearly DNF'd this a number of times. The story picks up about two thirds of the way through, but never enough that it's worth having slogged through the rest. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the e-arc in exchange for my unbiased review.

To be honest when I started reading the “young actor” allusions I got nervous with how obvious it was but the direction the story went in did not cross any lines. i think the prose was a little clunky and formal even though it mostly worked with her personality. Also the cover is gorgeous. Super quick and readable and enjoyable!

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon Schuster for the ARC!

This book was honestly bizarre. It was way overdone in some places and way under-developed in others. It seems like the author just wanted an excuse to write about her inner life without much of a plot. I wish I found something redeeming about it apart from the fact that it is queer literature, but I did not. Elsa was irritating and thought way too much. She was selfish in ways that I would like a protagonist to not be. Sam was likable, but felt like they barely merited a mention. Sam felt like an afterthought.

I found the first half of Madison Newbound’s debut novel, Misrecognition, a bit trying to be honest. Like Elsa, the protagonist, I felt listless and purposeless, drifting through the pages. Nothing was driving me forward other than habit: start a book, read the book. That’s commitment, I suppose, if not particularly exciting.

It's a familiar story to an extent. Elsa, rebounding from a painful breakup with an unnamed couple, referred to as the man and the woman, retreats to her childhood home. She does what so many young, heartbroken people do – scroll the internet, seeking relief from her thoughts and heartache. The only thing that gives her some focus is her newfound infatuation with the actor-character (a stand-in for Timothée Chalamet). He captures her attention after she watches a movie (Call Me By Your Name, though unnamed) with her parents one evening.

Then, a bit of contrived book magic: the actor-character shows up in her small town, there for the summer for a theater run. Elsa’s fixation continues until she encounters an intriguing person from his orbit, awkwardly referred to as the person called Sam. I read it as a way for Newbound to mark the "before" and "after" of Elsa's connection with Sam, but it became annoying after the first few times.

I nearly DNF-ed this book a third of the way through. Elsa's aimlessness in the first few chapters left me equally adrift. Too much of it, too drawn out. There were a few notable scenes: the flashback to Elsa's relationship with the man and the woman, Sam and Elsa's swimming scene, and their final night together. Newbound writes the anticipation of desire effectively in the charged scenes between Elsa and Sam – the slightest touches and the tension between them.

It's when the person called Sam transitions to being just Sam that the plot gains momentum. However, I wanted to know more about Elsa's past. Her prior relationship with the man, and especially with the woman, is only teased at. Similarly, the brief arc of her friendship with Caro feels unresolved.

I've been Elsa – lost after a split, trying to piece together who I am outside the definitions of the person I was with. Yet, there was nothing about Elsa specifically that made me love or strongly like her. And perhaps that’s what Newbound intended? To make Elsa a blank slate, an everywoman allowing us to project our own longings onto her the same way she does with the actor-character.

In the end, Misrecognition is a shelf for me. It’s a quick, entertaining read with mild spice. Had the pace of the second half been consistent throughout the whole book, I might have been more enthusiastic.

This is a SHELVE.

Painfully mundane for the first half. I thought I was the target audience as I love contemporary fiction involving 20-something women and a queer element is all the better. However, after finishing this book, I am clearly not the target audience. The prose was good but it lacked a tie to the physical world. I do not want to be stuck in someone’s head while they watch Marie Kondo, a beauty vlogger, or while they contemplate masturbating over and over. It lacked a physical tie in a way essays do. It only picked up once she finally began to interact with people. I’ll give this author the benefit of the doubt that maybe it was intentional to synthesize for the reader the depression Elsa was experiencing.

I’m sure many people who pick this up will enjoy it. It reminds me a lot of We Do What We Do in the Dark. I found it to be pretentious in some ways and proof that excellent writing at a micro, sentence level does not equate a well written book. In my opinion, even a character study requires some sort of structure to pull the reader along, which this lacked for a large portion of the book, That said, market it as a book for hot girls and it will become a TikTok sweetheart.

I did really enjoy the incessant social media stalking and limerence. People who are drawn to this book will relate to that. The Timothee Chalamet character was such a silly (in a good way) element to have and kept me going when I wanted to not finish this book. The second half when Elsa begins to have real life interactions is when the book became enjoyable. I would probably have rated this a 4/5 if the first half was removed and this was left to be more of a novella. I liked that everything with the friend (Cora?), her parents, and Sam were all left vague and that Elsa’s life hadn’t gotten much better.

Lastly, I don’t think the description matches the book well. Even if it’s not my taste, it’s definitely not funny. I also didn’t find it to be “unflinching” as there was no real commentary. Nothing within the book supports the claim that her relationship with the man and woman was formative, exhilarating, nor were they cultural guideposts, I would’ve liked more focus on Elsa repeating patterns, I think the description made me expect more discussion on social interactions and toxic patterns. Overall, I think the description sells a book with underlying social commentary and instead the book delivers long drawn out descriptions of mundane things with very little “unflinching,” “uncomfortable” analyses.

I really tried to finish this book but I could not fully get immersed into it to do so. I am finally calling it quits after it’s sat partially finished in my Kindle app for over a month. I found the author’s voice and writing style to be interesting and unique. I just wish the story did a little more to grab you in the beginning to give a little more pull of intensity for the reader!

Thank you to the publisher for the arc!

I’m sad I didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought I would. The story seemed right up my alley. I just didn’t end up liking any of the characters.

misrecognition follows Elsa as they grapple with heartbreak, moving home, crushes, and fixations.

thank you netgalley for this arc!!

i really loved the overall illusion of the crush aspect (even though it was def timothy chalamet). i think this book had an interesting take on how social media stalking can change our current relationships, how one summer can change everything, and how weird gender is.

there was plenty of prose next to regular sentences which kept the story from being all too bulky. i also enjoyed how spread out all the information about Elsa was. Yes we know she just went through a break up, but then many pages later we get the full story and then pages later we get the backstory, it kept me pulled into reading.

the only thing i wish there was more of was the best friend! what happened to her? she just fell out of the rest of the book!

anyways worth a read imo.