Coming out on February 25th is Sophie Madeleine Dess’s debut novel What You Make of Me, and to be honest, it is hard to know what to make of it, which is sort of the point. It is a story about two eccentric siblings, Ava and Demetri, living eccentric lives in one of the most eccentric places on the planet, New York City. Both of them are trying to make ends meet, Ava as a painter and Demetri as a filmmaker, but are finding it quite difficult to do so, so they lean onto each other to get by. With that said, they are so codependent, the relationship becomes extremely toxic just prior to Demetri learning he has terminal cancer: Ava becomes infatuated, and ends up having an affair, with Demetri’s lover, who is equally as screwed up as Ava and Demetri. This “love” triangle is not the central focus of Dess’s new work, however. As Dess says on her website: “What You Make of Me has, at its center, a brother and sister.” Thus, the work is about the unusual nature of family dynamics, especially between brothers and sisters that are mirror images of each other.

Read the rest of my review on Cobleskill Commentaries: https://greatbutunknownperformances.wordpress.com/

this ARC was provided by Random House via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review:

the synopsis lied to me :( this was bizarre. nothing happened to the siblings in their youth that they had to heal from, they were just weird. the sister continued to be weird and mean while her brother died, i didn’t understand their rivalry at all. they could’ve easily been friends. not the descriptions of art and the art scene that i wanted. i just didn’t like it right away, but at least it was short. from the description this sounded like it could be like sirens & muses by antonia angress, but it was really just a rambling, inner monologue of a character who competed with her brother and painted weird paintings

I genuinely didn't understand this - I think it was too smart for me. The sibling relationship was confusing to me and I felt like not much was going on. There was something there but I was repeatedly missing it. I feel like my opinion is going to be on the unpopular side after this comes out.

Thank you to Penguin Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Press for the ebook. Ava has been pushed her whole life into becoming a painter by her brother, Demetri, a documentary filmmaker whose films Ava refuses to watch because they might be about her. The two live in separate apartments in NYC, but seem to share one mind and are now even sharing Nati, an Italian gallery owner, even though Ava won’t confess to Demetri that she is seeing her behind his back. Things become impossible for Ava as her brother is now dying and she goes over and over their lives to try and figure out who they really are.