Short and quick read! I had been looking forward to this since Hurricane Girl came out and sadly this one wasn't as good as it. I still thought it was fun and easy to read through. I read this on the beach in Mexico lol.

Thank you to Netgalley for advanced copy of this book!

thank you to netgalley for the e-arc. what a great cover! i originally wanted to read because roxane gay reviewed it glowingly. the jokes and writing were fun, funny and well done. none of the characters were likeable but it was entertaining to read.

This was such an odd book. Everything happened over the space of a few days and it started with a hot air balloon crashing into a pool. That was a weird beginning and it seemed to inspire the people around to act and react in odd ways.
This is one of those books where there are a lot of unlikeable characters, and their personalities were a little exaggerated, but I could really identify with the mom. She acted terribly but just in a couple of days we see her desperation and her way through and out. And I believed her character growth.

I wanted to love this. After all, the cover is so fun. But I couldn’t get into it. The pacing was weird, the sex felt shoehorned to make a point, and the lack of contractions felt so unnatural. Not for me, unfortunately.

There were some weird mistakes with the names and it just felt a little rushed. Not sure if it’s just the ARC, but I wouldn’t recommend this one.

A joyfully unhinged story of money, marriage, sex, and revenge unspools when a billionaire crashes his hot air balloon into the middle of a post-pandemic first date.

Random but unhinged is a good way to describe this one!

A billionaire and his wife crash their hot air balloon in a swimming pool, only the swimming pool belongs to a guy who is on a first date there with the billionaire's ex. Sounds confusing? It is, also cos all the characters have their names starting with the letter 'J'.

I used to like books like these generally, but I have no clue as to why I am over them now. Not a lot happens after the balloon crash, we just get to see more unhinged behavior from everyone involved. The assistant's character was a good addition to the mix, but still, the first half of the book was more interesting. The second half slows down and lags and almost all characters behave exactly in the way you would think they would, so no surprises there.

One of the good things about the book is that the characters were so well-fleshed out that you feel like you have met them before. Definitely something that is out of the blue, this one's a gamble - you might be bored out of your mind or you might love it, but the good thing is that it is a relatively short book so you can actually take a chance on this one.

4.5

Short crisp prose, no fluff, great psychological insight. Dermansky’s characters are always self-reflective and a little self-destructive, a good combination for some hot drama. The flawed characters look at how they create messes and we roll around in their tizzy with them.

There’s a rich couple who used the regular people (including a kid) to entertain themselves, which happens in real life sometimes. Flattery and attention are used as a way to reel the underlings in. The rich want some excitement and an answer to their boredom. They make their new “friends” their court jesters. The flattery and attention may work, but sadly the court jesters often get burnt in the end, when the rich people inevitably grow tired of them.

A billionaire couple, their assistant, a single mom with a cute kid, a man with a pool with a hot air balloon in it. Some hanky-panky. Nothing much actually happens but I was riveted. Dermansky makes ordinary people seem fascinating. The sign of a pro.

Loneliness, hope, frivolity, playing with people, boredom, guilt, longing—all here.

Dermansky is a favorite author. She hasn’t disappointed me yet. Her writing appears simple on the surface, but her sentences magically work together to make the prose sharp, and the story is irresistible. Full of wit and absurdity, too—yum!

Recommended!

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this gem.

An oddball story from start to finish, full of unlikeable characters, and when I say that I mean not one single character that didn't make me want to throw the book at their head. I would recommend this for those who like weird girl litfic that makes you uncomfortable while having second hand embarrassment for the characters. That being said, I like books with unlikeable characters, they are way more realistic and relatable to me, This starts off with a billionaire couple crashing a hot air balloon in a random backyard pool, which made me think, who would ever allow two untrained people in a hot air balloon to fly it. Wild behavior. The book gets weirder and weirder form there but did manage to read at a fast pace and was entertaining. The length of the book matched the pace nicely.
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an advanced digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

A wild, fun, quick read -- but not my favorite from Dermansky. The commentary could've been a lot sharper.

I just finished a good book. Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky is available now and is one you should put on your list.

A truly messy, wild read. Based on the initial blurbs and buzz around this book, my expectations were more rom-com meets Ruben Östlund-esque social commentary, but this is more my fault than the publisher's. I enjoyed the short chapters that kept the story at a good pace but overall could not connect to the characters or really invest in any of their stories. It does make for a good beach/vacation read, so take it along with you this summer.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the digital arc in exchange for an unbiased review.

I was initially attracted to this book because of the description, but I stayed for the weirdly delightful characters

Hot Air is about a group of people who meet under weird circumstances after a hot air balloon crash. It follows them over the course of a couple of days as they reflect on their lives and make plans for the future.

This is very much a character driven story. So don’t come into it looking for a quick moving plot. I don’t think this book will be for everyone but it was right up my alley. I look forward to checking out more by this author in the future.

I wanted to love this because the premise was so fun! But I just could not get into it. Too many different narrators with too little plot unfortunately

Marcy Dermansky's books have characters in absurd situations, but these characters are so human and related. Often making bad decisions, always smart and funny and a good time to read.

I got through Hot Air in about a day. It’s not only on the shorter side, but it also reads quickly. It takes place over the course of just a few days, so it helped that the writing pulls you through and didn’t drag. The book is fairly internal, so it speaks to the quality of the writing that it wasn’t a slow read. The writing was my favorite part of the novel. Not all are the characters are likable (honestly if any), but they’re all interesting and are well-developed. I struggled to connect deeply with the characters though, but I think that’s just a matter of my not connecting with their life circumstances or personalities—not that it was inherently difficult to connect with the book.

Good book, but simply not 100% for me!

I suppose the age-old “don’t judge a book by its cover” is the fastest way to summarize my experience of Hot Air: fronted by fun technicolor text in a cheeky ‘balloon’ style, I hoped for a story half as playful. The premise - what ensues after a freak hot air balloon crash - seemed to match the quirky cover, but unfortunately, the characters and story inside didn’t. Following 4 deeply unhappy and unlikable adults with easily confused J names (Joannie, Jonathan, Julia, and Johnny), the short, claustrophobic novel starts off with an absurdist premise, but quickly felt not darkly comedic — just dark. The silliness of the setup faded into unpleasantness living in each character’s mind for each chapter, and even the children in the story didn’t offer reprieve. For a reader looking for a strange and off-kilter comedy, this may be a better fit.

This is a well-written nd quirky book that I enjoyed immensely! It alternates chapters with different points of view which makes it a really interesting read - there is Joannie (a single mother) as well as a rich couple (Julia and Jonathan) who happen to land in her date's pool in a hot air balloon. This is the start of an interesting story about what people want, and what they will do to get it. And sometimes we think we want something and then the reality is not at all what we thought. I don't want to say too much because I don't want to spoil anything. Just read it -- it's a quick read and I had fun reading it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

What did I just read??? So weird but also so good and I didn’t want to put it down. It was also hilarious.

Besides the cover, there wasn’t much of this book I was fond of. I usually love messy characters, but I found them all insufferable (even the kid). There were points in the story where I wasn’t sure if I was confused or if the author mixed up the names. By the end there didn’t feel like enough of a reason as to why. Why the story and why did the character act how they did. They felt either incomplete or with conflicting characteristics.