Ashley Whitaker's writing is witty, well-paced and engaging. I would read other novels by this author; however, Bitter Texas Honey was not for me. Whitaker does a great job drawing the reader into Joan's mind, but her mind felt like a very unpleasant and uncomfortable place to be for an entire book. Joan is somehow self-centered and at the same time insecure. She's looking to express herself artistically as a writer, but seems to only be a vessel for other people's ideas and ideologies. She's an unlikeable character surroounded by a cast of unlikeable characters and even though I can intellectually understand the satire, I also found that delving into Joan's mind was more exhausting than enlightening.

Bitter Texas Honey by Ashley Whitaker was an entertaining and funny debut.
The humor is fun Ana her writing is engaging.
I really enjoyed how raw and honest this story is.
A well written story that kept me hooked from the very beginning.

Bitter Texas Honey is going to be a polarizing book but I think that Ashley Whitaker does a pretty great job with this story, which left me thinking about it for days after I finished reading it.

Our MC, Joan, is about as unlikable as a protagonist can be. She's lazy, entitled, egotistical, and has some pretty disturbing political beliefs to boot. That complexity will probably turn off a lot of readers but Whitaker really put me inside Joan's head and her world.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this to be published debut. Unfortunately I had to call this one as a DNF at about 50%. Something about its description and the actual execution of it was just off. The main character was a mess in a way that was just too much. Halfway through the book, I couldn’t figure out what direction we were going to take to get to the end. It was just a very meandering story. I think there were definitely some good parts to this book, and I think the story has potential, but needed cleaned up a bit. I would give this author a second chance, but Bitter Texas Honey was not for me.

Bitter Texas Honey by Ashley Whitaker

A fantastically written, character-driven story with an extremely unlikable main character. This one left me with all kinds of thoughts and feelings.

🍯I both loved and hated the main character. She was so fantastically written, but I didn’t enjoy a single thing about her. I didn’t relate to her in any way. She thought she was more interesting and perceptive than she actually was. A complete and honest portrayal of a flawed character.
🍯 The relationship between the two cousins was a highlight. I loved reading their observations about the family and their own hot mess lives.
🍯 There wasn’t much of a plot, not much growth by the end. It felt very ironically highbrow, which I both enjoyed and rolled my eyes at. I’ve never in my life used the word “meta” but that is the word that kept coming to me as I was reading. (And maybe that’s not even the right way to use the word 😂🤷‍♀️).

Fans of unlikable characters with limited self-reflection, character-driven novels, and provocative debuts may enjoy this one.

DNF at 25% I just did not want to spend any more time with these characters. The writing is good, but I had no sense of the story a quarter of the way in.

Points to Whitaker for creating a drifting 20 something female protagonist who is....conservative? This is set in 2011, before this character became commonplace. Joan is not a likable person and everyone else is so dysfunctional that it was impossible to find someone to root for. That said, she's also an intriguing bundle of contradictions but oh so self important. I did like Whitaker's writing style and think she's got a bright future. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. While this wasn't for me, I'm sue there are others who will enjoy it.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the eARC.

Man, the description "a mix between Fleabag and The Royal Tenenbaums" got me, but this was not that. Full disclosure: I DNF'ed this book after 10%.

Considering the ways politics have changed since 2011, I could not stomach the normalizing of right-wing ideology. After taking a pause, I went to read other reviews, and I am happy to see my DNF decision supported by many others who said the MC never grows and doesn't have empathy for others. With limited time to read, I am choosing to avoid books with characters that are the antithesis of what I value. I don't need to love every character (in fact, I love an unreliable narrator or messy human who can't get it together), but a privileged white woman who bounces between beliefs and doesn't have redeeming qualities? Pass.

I enjoyed this a lot but there were also some really messed up things that happened. I would say this is quite dark unless you like reading about Adderall addiction. I was naïve and didn't have a clue. That said, it's very well written and interesting. Give it a try!

Bitter Texas Honey comes out next week on April 15, 2025 and you can purchase HERE.

Conservative talk radio hosts were the most reliable men in her life. Monday through Friday, no matter what she'd gotten into the night before, they were there, like old friends and confidants, like second fathers, like faithful lovers, their voices booming and authoritative, clever and jovial and worldly, always ready to soothe her mind and silence her thoughts.

Joan listened one morning, in January 2011, while she got dressed for her internship, tucking a button-up blouse into control-top pantyhose, sliding on her black pencil skirt, and dry heaving into her sink. She continued listening as she walked the four blocks uphill to the Texas Capitol, her head throbbing, chugging a sugar-free Red Bull, with two more cans clanking in her purse for later. She listened intermittently throughout her five-hour shift, as she tried to piece together the events of the night before, reading through a thread of unsettlingly intimate text messages between her and a man saved in her phone only as "Marine-Dirty 6th."

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Bitter Texas Honey is set in 2011 Texas and has us follow Joan, a 23 year old who used to have more liberal believes but has decided that was all the drugs talking and now makes a conscious effort to aline herself with her conservative family members.

During the day, she works as an intern at the Capitol, but how she really likes to spend her time is by writing. Or… trying to. For some reason it’s become much more difficult when she stopped taking adderall.

It was interesting to take a peek into the mindset of someone with such opposite views to myself. I will admit though, since Joan was fighting herself throughout the novel, I spent a lot of time just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Joan to realize that she was trying to force herself to conform with her family and their believes.

This one is a hard one to rate, Joan is an extremely unlikable character full of contradictions and by the end of the novel, doesn’t really appear to have experienced any true growth. I had a hard time with the fact that after all that, nothing changed. On the flip side, you can tell that Whitaker is a talented author and I’d be open to looking into her next release.

the thing with fleabag is that fleabag had empathy for the people she hurt and worked to become a better person a little everyday. in <i>bitter texas honey</i> i can't say the same for joan because her political views are so vitriolic that it's so hard to be in joan's mind for over 300 pages. sure a reader can read between the lines to look at how familial ties (both social and genetic) or religion can be so harmful for growth (there's even a bit about conversion therapy for a side character). i actually enjoyed trying to put the pieces together to figure out why joan is the way she is (especially after her short lived time at umiami that wasn't explained well). however, i don't think i can recommend this to anyone because joan doesn't change her political views in the end and that is absolutely tied to how much growth she can go through.

2011, Austin, Texas - Joan West is an aspiring writer and a tea party republican. She doesn’t fit in with her liberal peers, and not sure if she fits in with her wealthy god-loving family either. Joan’s family are addicts, including herself. Like most addicts, they find themselves smarter, and better than others with zero self-awareness.

One thing is for certain, Ashley Whitaker can write. There is not a likeable character in this story…and I kept reading because of it. Think of it like a hate follow. I hated these characters sooo much I kept reading to see how bad they could be or if any of them turned their lives around. It takes fantastic writing to develop characters that can bring out that kind of emotion. They were so alive I wanted to go downtown and park in the Whole Foods parking lot wait for Joan to be there and shake her. A good debut novel, and I honestly look forward to the future stories Whitaker brings us.

Content comments: There is a character in the story that uses the “r” word multiple times to describe someone.

Bitter Texas Honey takes us on a wild romp through Austin Texas in 2011. Joan is trying to find her place in life, she’s not like her evangelical conservative family or her liberal peers in Austin. She’s tried both political parties on and feels above them. Her main goal in life? To be a writer, an artist, a creator. She finds inspiration anywhere she can, or desperately tries to.

Joan’s biggest muse in her life is her wild and free cousin Wyatt. Wyatt is a soft dreamer who believes in the Texas classic nuclear family life, but he’s held back by his demons. His debt, addiction and mental health issues. As Joan’s biggest inspiration she wants to move the world to help Wyatt when he’s in crisis, but Joan can’t see outside herself enough lost in her own haze of addiction.

This is a story of addiction, the many roles it can play and sizes it can take while destroying lives. We learn how deeply generational the compulsion for drugs, sex, love, politics and validation are. We watch Joan traverse through a cycle of men she thinks can appease her as she tries on masculine traits. The whiskey drinking writer, always comparing her latest novel to Hemingway or Kerouac. Socialized with femininity she purposely chooses masculinity not realizing it’s just as harmful.


This book isn’t going to be for everyone, it’s full of very complicated characters that are very of the time. There is flawed language and ideals. I see a lot of my younger self and my family wrapped up within this story. The rhetoric her family has on politics, religion and mental health painfully mimic my live experience. I’ve dealt with generalized anxiety disorder and depression disorder my entire life whether I knew the name for it or not. I know what it’s like to not be heard by your conservative god loving family.

Thank you Dutton and netgalley for this arc!

The satire in this book took a while for me to sink into but once I did, I started to really enjoy this. It was so nerve wracking to read about this character and what horrible decision she would make next.

First off, the main character of this book is unlikable, but I think that was the point the author was trying to make. I had to put aside my dislike though and let myself just read this, which I am glad that I did.

This ended up being a very strong book, with lots of satire on relationships, beliefs, and Texans.

Ashley Whitaker has a voice, and she is not afraid to push the norms of writing to tell her story.

In full disclosure, I DNF’d this book after reading less than 10% of the book. It became clear I am not the audience for this book during a rodeo scene with the character and her family where they were saying crazy right wing things. If I wanted to engage with that, I would spend time with my extended family. This is just not a book I can mentally handle right now.

I have never read anything quite like BITTER TEXAS HONEY, the impressive debut by Ashley Whitaker. It took me until about 20% into the book to realize it's a strange lit fic satire, with zany characters and a purposefully maddening main character. Whitaker is a genius for the sly unexpected humor that creates the bones of the novel. It's the early 2010s, and a hipster writer in Austin TX is dabbling in conservatism during the peak Obama years. She has a dysfunctional family, a pill addiction, and a fumbling career. My favorite character is her cousin, Wyatt, who is dealing with an undiagnosed mental illness which is keeping him from developing his musical genius.

It's not an easy book, especially since I kept waiting for the moment where Joan, our MC, realizes being a republican is a terrible idea but it never seems to happen. She still wants to be an artist, not realizing that the belief system she is trying to adapt (she used to be liberal!) goes against everything she wants. Her family is over the moon about her converting to their ideals, but when a tragedy that could have been easily prevented strikes, the family heartbreakingly becomes even more hard headed - though set in the past, it's all very relevant to today!

I loved going into a book not knowing what to expect, and I was so taken by Whitaker's writing style and these unique and baffling characters. She is incredible at world building, especially in a time and a place that exists! She takes big swings and they pay off, and I can't wait to see how this book is received next month.

I got this book for the cover and title thinking I would be entertained but I read to escape and with the constant political aspect of the narrative I just felt a dryness and irritation so I had to DNF. The MC is unlikable, so there wasn't really anything to save the storyline for me, personally.

Joan is self-sabataging and easily influenced as she navigates her twenties in convervative Texas during the Obama administration. She interning at the State House, campaigning for Ted Cruz and self-medicating herself to write to next great novel to upend the literary world. She also keeps meeting the wrong kind of man. Is she incredibly unlikable, ABSOLUTELY!

Reading your begin to question what Joan is going to do next to ruin her life. Her only redeeming quality is her unabashed love for her cousin Wyatt. Together, they keep it real and talk truths.

This story is messy, brutally honest and a good look at politics from a conservative state.

Strong debut!

Thank you, PENGUIN GROUP Dutton | Dutton

a book that aggravated me because the main character was so unlikeable but also made me like her somehow???
the writing is thick, but so good and the plot is nice and easy to follow. this was interesting considering i live in texas and have lived in austin. the author is definitely talented