I can see how this may be something good to read as a comparison to pride and prejudice. But I think I might just be completely over P&P comps.

Also, I understand that these days, injecting stances on political or social movements is a given. The social commentary is everywhere now and inescapable. However, usually it’s a one or two off topic. This had so many topics?? I just felt taken out of the book every single time

thank you netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review. hard no. this 1000% read as YA and not adult contemporary romcom. who would make fun of sexual assault victims

I love Pride and Prejudice retellings, and this was a fresh take on it. It had very Bridget Jones’ Diary vibes, if Bridget lived in modern Seattle. I appreciated the growth the character of Rachel made, and loved Christopher, the male main character. The book was really well paced and entertaining to read.

While I approached Rachel’s growth, it was a tad hard to like her. She is very self-involved. I also found the mother’s character very one dimensional. At the beginning I found her mother amusing, but toward the end I found her toxic.

Rachel Weiss has a job she isn’t excited about, no solid romantic prospects and is about to turn thirty. She has a group chat with her friends, but as they move forward in their respective lives, Rachel feels like hers is falling apart.

3.5 stars rounded up.

3.5 stars rounded up.

I don't really know how to summarize this book, other than it follows main character Rachel and her group of friends through their trials and tribulations. Rachel's mom is set on getting her together with the new neighbor's son, a rich CEO, and Rachel spends most of the book working to ensure this doesn't happen.

It may be a "me problem" but I just couldn't connect (dare I say I disliked) with the characters, especially Rachel. I'm not sure what else to say other than I wish I liked the book more.

Thank you Forever for providing me with Advanced Reader’s copy on Netgalley.

Rachel is an extroverted, happy-go-lucky person, but her job doesn’t inspire her—it barely covers the bills. She’s thirty and having the time of her life hanging out with her besties and meeting people on Tinder. Her sister Jane, the responsible one, has a great job and will likely get engaged soon. Rachel, meanwhile, loves being the life of the party. However, her mom has started pressuring her to get more serious about life and consider dating the new neighbor’s son, a self-made millionaire. As soon as Rachel meets him, though, she can’t stand him or his family.

Rachel’s friends are maturing, and the dynamics with her besties are starting to shift. Her friend Amy is married, and Sumira has been quieter recently, making Rachel feel like things are changing around her.

The book is filled with banter and lively conversations between friends, which I really enjoyed. I loved the dynamics of Rachel’s friendships and the strong connection she shares with her sister. While Rachel is slower to settle down, her friends are transitioning into the next chapters of their lives. It was fun to read about her chaotic life and watch as maturity slowly sank in, helping her become a more grounded person.

Rachel is Jewish, and I appreciated reading a book with Jewish representation that wasn’t centered around the Holocaust, but instead focused on Jewish joy.

There is a romance element in this book, but I didn’t feel like the main focus was a romcom. To me, it felt more like a coming-of-age story, and I really enjoyed that aspect.

Rachel Weiss is about to turn 30 and her life is nothing like she thought it would be. But at least she has her three best friends and their group chat. But now her mom wants to set her up with the tech entrepreneur son of their neighbors, Christopher Butkus (who is inexplicably always referred to both of his given names). And her friends slowing start to drift away as they enter into new relationship or deal with marriage problems. How can she get her life back on track?

This is a loose retelling of Pride and Prejudice with none of the depth or charisma of the original. The characters all were one-dimensional and weren't developed beyond stereotypes. There is literally no chemistry between Rachel and Christopher (or any of the couples for that matter). Yet everything gets wrapped up in a big bow at the end. I only stuck around until the end because I was using it for one of the titles in a reading challenge. It gets a second star only because it made me laugh a few times.

A quirky and eclectic contemporary fiction (not really a romance)! If you're looking for a little bit of chaos that reads as almost like an endless stream of thought, this will fill your cup.

Out On: September 24, 2024

This book was an easy read that I don't think will stick with me long term, which is honestly exactly what I needed at the present moment in a book! I thought that Rachel's life was certainly chaotic and that she had much to work on, so the fact that we got to witness her character growth throughout the book was entertaining.

I think that the mother in this story is rather toxic and I don't know if other Jewish mothers are like this, but if this is genuinely how they act about wanting their children to be married and are failures if they aren't... I'm sorry, because that is absurd. Most of the scenes with the mom made me actively frustrated for our FMC here and I genuinely didn't like those sections of the book.

If you are going into this book expecting it to be a romance, you may want to think again because the story takes a very long time to get into any form of romance that is wholesome, however it is still approached in a really strange way? I don't know, but I was not vibing with the way any of our FMC's relationships played out. They just felt weird to me.

Overall, this book was a nice read for my overtired postpartum brain, but I don't know if I would pick it up again now that I've read it. Complicated feelings about it to say the least.

Thank you so much to Forever Pub for this advanced copy on NetGalley and for the physical copy as well! 🤍

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
I thought this was a delightful romance novel with a lot of humor and charm. I thought Rachel was a really unique protagonist. I also enjoyed the side characters.

If you are looking for a cozy romance this fall, I highly recommend Rachel Weiss's Group Chat!

Many thanks again to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

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This humor reminded me of Georgia from angus thongs and full frontal snogging which I loved as a teen. Brash, sexual humor and a wild and somewhat self centered protagonist but besides the first few chapters where I felt it was a little forced I really enjoyed this character.

It’s a pride and prejudice retelling and for the most part I like it! But it felt a little rushed at time as we sped through a year in the life and some plot points (like the #metoo movement) felt totally out of the blue. I didn’t like the mom’s character at all, her dramatics at first felt funny but then they kept escalating until I stopped enjoying them. This novel straddled the line between serious topics like climate change and diversity and the me too movement and over the top humor and they just didn’t full gel together in my mind.

I REALLY wanted to like this book - I was so excited when I read the blurb but was sadly disappointed by the lack of depth of the main character. Rachel’s s of centered ways made her hard to connect with and find empathy for throughout the book.

There's a lot to like in Lauren Appelbaum's Rachel Weiss's Group Chat - a modern spin on Pride & Prejudice in a Tinder world, a charming tech CEO boy next door, a cast of delightful characters. But I think the story never quite hits its stride - is it a romance? Is it an exploration of friendship and figuring it out? It is about family? It's kind of about all three, but consequently never gets deep enough with any. Also, wow, some of the things these characters were doing to each other just felt kind of bad and not in a fun messy way - the way that Rachel just drops it and moves forward with her friend Amy was hard to see. I liked the writing here - the tone was funny and relatable and there is a lot of promise here. I would definitely read from this author again even if this one wasn't a home run for me!

3.5 out of 5 stars!

A book set in Seattle? Yes! The Emerald City was home for five years, so any and all books set there bring all kinds of nostaglia. I loved how Rachel had a friend group that saw each other through thick and thin. And while turning 30 didn't hit me nearly as hard as turning 40, I could see how Rachel was having a difficult time navigating life. The work mandated therapy may have just been the key to helping Rachel solve her life's problems. Except for the fact that she keeps running into Christopher Butkus, son of her parents' new neigbhors. She wants nothing to do with him, yet her racing heart every time she sees him doesn't seem to get the memo. I alternated between reading the e-book and listening to the audiobook. Dara Rosenberg did a stellar job narrating all the characters in the book. She brought them all to life and made this rom-com feel like a movie in my ears.

I received an advance copy of this book at my request and voluntarily left this review.

Just last week my sister and I were talking about how she loves Pride and Prejudice and I do not - including almost all modern adaptations (the exception being Bridget Jones’s Diary). While reading this, I was getting major Bridget vibes and post-reading I saw on @goodreads that it is an adaptation, which totally makes sense. Rachel, the Bridget character, is incredibly messy, self-centered and weirdly fails up with her job. Something about this made me like it more than other adaptations and while I enjoyed it and it’s quick readability, I didn’t love it.

I am always excited for stories with Jewish main characters and this one caught my attention as soon as it was announced. Overall this was funny and fast-moving, with fun nods to Pride and Prejudice. I think it might be especially appreciated by any Jewish fans of Bridget Jones's Diary, but without the focus on weight.
Rachel Weiss lives life to the fullest, and in this format we get her true thoughts about her family and her circle of close friends. These supporting characters go a long way in balancing out Rachel's intensity. I think the humor of this book almost requires a specific compatible mindset. Some times I was laughing out loud, but at other times I was really cringing. For any readers who get secondhand embarrassment, this book is probably a bit too much.
In many ways, this focuses more on Rachel's personal journey and her romantic pursuits are more along for the ride. Her self confidence and her basically disastrous experiences keep us constantly engaged. I honestly loved how Rachel ended up volunteering at the library and taking on additional work tasks. Her ultimate romantic pairing was sweet and earnest, but the P&P overlaps went from being charming to being a bit too precise. It made that character feel more two dimensional.
I supplemented with the audiobook, which was expertly and dramatically narrated.
Content notes: possible standardized test cheating, underage drinking, quick Harry Potter reference, public nudity, mention of smoking a bowl a day, parental matchmaking and pressure to marry, vomit, judgmental discussion of small penis size

I really wanted to like this one, but I couldn't get attached to the characters and story was very meh for me. I wanted something sweet and this felt too angsty with not enough characters I cared about.

Almost every reader has heard of Elizabeth Bennet but now booklovers have been introduced to Rachel Weiss in Lauren Appelbaum’s Pride and Prejudice-esque novel Rachel Weiss's Group Chat. I read it for the Austen vibes and, while it did deliver, the rest of the book left a little to be desired.

Here’s the book’s description:

The year is already off to a bad start. It’s not enough that Rachel Weiss is stuck in a job she despises and has an unfortunate attraction to men who disappoint her. It’s the Year of Turning Thirty . . . and now her mother won’t stop trying to set up Rachel with the millionaire buying the house next door.

Luckily Rachel has amazing friends and their juicy group chat to keep her going. But between work-mandated therapy, her thirteen gray hairs, and biking in the buff, she can’t help wondering why she isn’t moving forward like everyone else.

As Rachel’s life—and circle of friends—begins to fall apart, she confides in the last person she expects. The uptight, irritating—yet surprisingly funny and thoughtful—tech bro next door may be the one person who sees Rachel for the woman she wants to be. After random DMs turn into confessing letters, she begins to realize perhaps it was she who had him wrong all along.

As I said, there were Pride and Prejudice vibes in this book and I thought they were quite well done. It brought elements of the classic novel while also giving a nod to the way Bridget Jones’s Diary adapted the original text. While reading the notes/acknowledgements from Appelbaum at the end of her book, I realized my feelings were bang on. She also said she was inspired by the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series by Louise Rennison. Suddenly, things made a lot more sense. Rachel was…not Elizabeth. At all. She was reading way more like Emma to me - which is unfortunate because I really do not like Emma! Georgia is a teenager and incredibly self-absorbed, as you would expect from a teenager. She’s also clever and funny. Rachel was also all those things but it gets a bit wearing when it’s a grown woman acting like a teenage girl. Plus, she, like Emma, thinks she’s the best friend in the whole world and always wants to try to help but it’s still always all about her. I think this book would have worked so much better if it had been college/university aged characters because then I would have understood Rachel better. As it was, she drove me nuts and I didn’t really care if she ended up with “Darcy” at the end or if she figured out all her issues with her friends and her career. And I hate feeling like that.

One thing I tend to struggle with with a lot of P&P adaptations is the enemies to lovers storyline. It is not a trope I really like in modern books but Austen was a master at it with Elizabeth and Darcy. It’s just something modern writers can’t always replicate to appease my, perhaps too high, standards. So, it’s no surprise that I didn’t love the trope in this novel. Rachel was extremely prejudiced against Christopher for no real reason I could discern. I actually quite liked Christopher and thought he was too good for Rachel (as she was at the start of the novel - maybe she’s better for him at the end. Maybe.). I appreciated that he called her out for not being active enough with her beliefs and not putting her time and energy where her mouth was.

Rachel Weiss's Group Chat is a total rom com - full of hijinks, embarrassing moments, a swoony male lead, and a Happily Ever After. I wanted to love Lauren Appelbaum’s debut novel but it just didn’t thrill me as I expected it to. I think I’ll still check out what she writes next and hope I enjoy the main character more than I did this time around.

*An egalley was provided by the publisher, Forever, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*

Thanks to Forever for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This read was not as enjoyable as I had hoped. The humor didn't resonate with me, and I found the main character to be quite whiny. It felt strange for her to be having a midlife crisis at such a young age. I also didn't find her friends appealing, and the relationship pressures became quite exhausting.

I hope this doesn't come off too harshly. Perhaps the story isn't at fault; maybe I've just encountered too many similar narratives, and this one didn't stand out enough for me to truly appreciate it. It could also be that I'm in a different phase of life and wasn't in the right mindset to enjoy it. But honestly, if these characters were real, I wouldn't want to be friends with any of them, as they felt quite boring to me.

Rachel and Christopher keep running into each other and their dislike for each other grows…or does it? In a modern telling of Pride and Prejudice, we watch both characters attempt to work through their own character flaws (although Christopher’s main character flaw is that he likes Rachel).

Rachel definitely felt more Lydia than Lizzie (LBD Lydia, iykyk), but tried to redeem herself in the end. Rachel is definitely not the hero in this story and neither are any of her friends. The author glosses over the real harmful things that happen and we are supposed to accept it because they are young, drunk, or “respecting” their friend’s choices.

Any time Christopher and Rachel were actually together it definitely was sweet, but a lot of their communication happened randomly on Insta and I didn’t spend the whole book rooting for them to be together.

This was mainly a story of friendship and redefining your own expectations of yourself. I would recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind the romance not being a majority of the plot, anyone who has ever questioned their role in a friend group, and anyone who doesn’t mind characters being a little problematic.

Thank you to the author, Forever, and NetGalley for the ARC for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I really struggled to finish this one. I found the plot drawn out and boring and I couldn’t stand the main characters. Rachel was not very pleasant and I really didn’t want to hear any more of her story, sadly. Not the romance that I was expecting.