3 stars

Everything that can go wrong does go wrong during a day in the life of a prominent New York museum. We follow along for 24 hours of the most important day of this institution's year - the grand donor gala. But with troublesome (and troubled) employees, the art of trying to woo new possible donors, pesky ethical and litigious concerns regarding museum artefacts, widespread food poisoning, and more, will the museum's staff end up surviving this day?

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It was very ambitious in terms of breadth of characters and plot, but somewhere along the line it started feeling far too amorphous and bloated with extraneous character vignettes. I understand why most of them were there - the book does do an excellent job of cramming a TON of personnel, administrative, ethical, and fiscal issues into a crucial 24 hour period during the life of this beleaguered museum. However, coming in at almost 500 pages, it could certainly have benefited from a serious paring back of many of those sections that didn't lend much to the plot beyond giving strange backstory elements to certain characters. Also, I found the physical formatting of the book itself quite distracting. It reads much like a screenplay, but with very little obvious formatting between what was spoken dialogue, inner thoughts, or plot description. I thought I would get used to its format the further along I got into the book but it never quite gelled, unfortunately.

On the whole, I feel like this was a great concept for a dizzyingly strange and off-kilter novel but it all just fell a little flat for me. I have an educational background in museum collection management and conservation so I am intimately familiar with the type of politicking and back-room maneuvering that can happen at cultural institutions. But the sheer amount of different motley characters and plot points introduced throughout ultimately made for a confusing and not particularly satisfying read.

Thanks to NetGalley, author Heather McGowan, and Atria Books for giving me access to a free digital ARC of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own and are provided here voluntarily.

A single day documenting the goings-on at a museum is theoretically a great premise for a novel, but what we actually got here is really disappointing.

To begin, this is entirely too long for this type of story. It’s just a lot of information (most of it the petty grudges of a multitude of characters), and none of it culminates in anything meaningful or interesting.

It’s hard to care about the ups and downs of the catering staff, the security employees are insufferable, and the more academic and upper level museum employees are just LitFic stock types.

Theres virtually no humor and no atmosphere (an absolute crime in a book set in a museum); and both things needed to be there for this to be anything beyond a huge cast of characters vying to air their petty grievances.

The premise for this could have led to something really intriguing (or at least entertaining), but instead we got something that feels like a very rough and very early draft.

Friends of the Museum was a messy look at a busy day inside a museum preparing for a yearly gala. While the premise sounded fun and fascinating, unfortunately every single character was absolutely awful. I felt like I was watching a car accident in slow motion, as every single character made the worst decisions they possible could have. The switches between perspectives were hard to keep track of, as the characters narrative voices were not distinguishable. I also was not a huge fan of the dialogue style, it read more like a play, which I don’t find to be an enjoyable experience. Some of the storylines were more interesting than others, and while I did enjoy the mounting tension, I didn’t find that the end implosion was interesting/extreme enough to satisfy me.

This book was pretty boring and had way too many characters. Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me.

I've seen such mixed reviews since the publication of this book. While I admit it was a little bit confusing to follow at the start (simply because of the characters and jobs that are so robust and constant) I really enjoyed the chaos and drama. Perfect publication time ahead of the MET Gala, too :)

I really enjoyed reading this book. My published review is here: https://www.postandcourier.com/features/book-review-heather-mcgowan-friends-museum/article_37d3971d-1277-41ff-a71f-4332b66ef9bf.html

Oy. I REALLY wanted to like this - I worked in a museum for 16 years, but this was 500 pages of slow banter, confusing prose and an ending that was not worth the 12 hours of reading time. With that said, there was some comical one-liners and I was invested enough to read the remaining 2 hours of the book where plot thickened-briefly. Thank you, Netgalley for opportunity to read this title in exchange for my honest review.

If you ever dreamed of having a sleepover at your favorite museum to have unlimited exploring time, you’re my kind of nerd, and “Friends of the Museum” should be next on your TBR. Diane, director of a major New York museum, has been teetering on the edge of sanity to keep the place running for a while. When everything starts to crash down on the day of the museum’s most important fundraiser, she and her devoted compatriots spring into action. (Recommendation sent to WordSmarts.com email newsletter)

This is a soft DNF for me for now. I'm considering picking up a final physical copy and trying again with it. I have faith that if Mona Awad loved it, then I will too. The formatting was a little difficult to follow, especially on the eARC. I'm usually one who seems to be in the minority with loving low rated books, so that is actually even more encouraging for me to read this one.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this one. I could not follow the format and the story wasn’t interesting enough for me to get past that.

Wow, what a unique story. Told over the course of 24 hours, this book explores how many characters related to a famous museum go about their day with secrets, sadness and rich interior lives. The number of characters was certainly overwhelming at first; I noticed it took me until about a third of the way through the book to be able to pick out the key characters we were following. At about the halfway mark I felt it “click” for me and really wanted to see what happened to each of the characters.

It’s a bit difficult to characterize this book — as other reviewers say, the lack of quotation marks and unique writing style almost made this more suitable to audiobook or even a tv show format. The couple chapters I was able to read via audiobook helped illuminate the writing style better for me. It’s very literary, and it’s hard to anticipate which of the characters you will enjoy. However, I think the stories wove well together and I enjoyed for the most part!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Told across an entire day’s worth of preparation for a major fundraising event at a New York museum, Friends of the Museum has a frenetic, choppy pace that is made even more confusing by dozens of characters coming in and out of the story. There are plots and subplots and interconnected events. It could have been very entertaining but it mostly felt like never ending nesting dolls of looted artifacts. McGowan spends so much time telling about all these various characters' quirks and anxieties that when things really start unfolding, it’s unsatisfying and tedious. Diane, the museum director, and her assistant Chris, are part of the main plot of the evening’s event. Another main player is the head of security, Shay, who spends most of the morning struggling with early onset dementia while maneuvering the indecencies of working with entitled white people. Shay’s plot alone could have been interesting but it felt more like an abandoned storyline from Crash, the 2004, ham-handed RACISM! AM I RIGHT? Oscar winning embarrassment. The subtle attempts of critiquing the art world felt clumsy and bumbling. At times, Friends of the Museum could be really funny, like when a curator says the word “vagina” when describing some art and almost kills a monied partygoer. Somebody does seem to die at the end and McGowan attempts to make us feel empathy. But after spending so many hours with these insufferable people I was hopeful for any number of them to perish.

Thank you to Atria and Netgalley for access to this eARC! I unfortunately DNF'd this read around 20% due to the formatting of the eARC mixed with the lack of dialogue markers. There were some areas where it was very hard to follow along, and with the underlying tone of anxiety and frantic energy around the event at the Museum, it was too difficult to continue. I hope to try reading the physical book sometime soon!

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the advanced egalley.

I was very interested in how Friends of the Museum is compared to The White Lotus, and it was blurbed by Mona Awad. I love museums so this thing sold itself, but I had a hard time connecting to characters, the dialogue style took too much getting used to, and it went on too long for my taste.

Friends of the Museum was an imaginative and mildly confusing adventure! It took time to immerse myself into the story and I found it difficult to separate the characters. I loved reading the political opinions but feel the book could be shorter and would appeal to more people. I recommend Friends of the Museum to anyone who enjoys satirical literature and would like an inside view of art institutions.

This book was not for me, I wanted to like it but it was kind of a slog to get through. The characters felt flat and the story was slow moving. DNF at 46%.

Maybe this book is just not for me. I liked the setting and some of the problems introduced in the first few scenes of this book. However, I hated the format of this novel. The heavily dialog based storytelling, combined with way too many characters, made for a shallow, boring book where I never did care about what the characters were doing. I felt like I was reading a screenplay, but with all the descriptions and background information missing. The conversations we were privy to did not seem necessary to the story half the time, and the possible plot-lines were too broken up for a novel. I could see how in a film one might switch back and forth between different threads the way this story tries to, but it did not work here. I wanted to like this one, but I really didn't.

This is a very character driven book. This follows the day in the life of several staff members of this museum in New York on the day of this large event. I feel like the plot was there but it was a little lacking in some areas for this to be a plot driven book. You needed to really connect and care about the characters in order to want to continue the story and see how their day went. This book is set in the span of 24 hours, and while I enjoyed that it did not offer enough time for me to connect to these characters. That coupled with the back and forth of the point of views made it difficult to follow. I feel like it’s a double edged sword, because on one hand if we eliminate characters we get less of the story and more connection, but if we added more point of views we lose connection and get more of the story. I was left very confused by if the point of this story was the museum aspect or the life story aspects. While I did enjoy the energy of this book and the themes it deals with, it was not what I was expecting.

I recommend eyeball reading this if this sounds interesting to you, and I also recommend reading this quicker than dragging it out, because often I would come back to the book and be confused where different POVs left off.

Thank you Atria and Washington Square Press for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Things go awry in a New York museum on the day leading up to an important gala.

I loved the premise of this one, but it did not deliver for me sadly. The writing was hard to get through. I don't even mind lack of quotes (at times) or out of the normal writing styles. But it just didn't come together here for me.

i love museums and i love books about them, but this one had far too many perspectives for me to have a meaningful experience with it. likewise, it had many interesting themes, but too many for them to be followed through to the end.