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.

This one took me a little while to get into. There’s a big cast of characters and the story drops you right into the middle of a hectic day at the museum, so at first it was a bit confusing trying to keep track of who was who and what was going on.

But once I got a better sense of the characters and how their stories connected, it started to click. There’s a lot of sharp, dark humor and some great moments of emotional depth, though I did find that parts of it dragged a little for me. Still, I appreciated what it was doing, especially how it captured the chaos and dysfunction of a crumbling institution trying to keep it together.

Thank you for this ARC copy!! Heather McGowan’s Friends of the Museum is a dark comic novel that unfolds over a single, chaotic day at a struggling New York City museum. Structured as a ticking-clock tragicomedy, the book immerses readers in the lives of a sprawling cast of characters—curators, administrators, security staff, and kitchen workers—all navigating personal and professional crises as the museum prepares for its annual gala.

Friends of the Museum offers a satirical yet empathetic exploration of the art world’s inner workings, making it a compelling read for those interested in character-driven narratives and institutional critique.

Friends of the Museum takes place over 24 hours with each chapter covering a specific time.

There are a lot of characters and I had a hard time keeping them all straight. I was so excited to read this book but sadly it didn’t work for me. I just couldn’t keep track of all the detailed storylines with so many characters and the way book jumps around.

Thank you to NetGalley & Atria Books for letting me read this ARC.

I was excited to read this book, but unfortunately it was a slog for me. The story takes place within a single day at a museum that is most likely meant to be the Met or some other famous New York art museum. It's the night of a big gala, and everyone is supremely stressed and busy. In real time, we follow different staff at the museum through their work and personal lives.

This book is marketed as having a White Lotus-like vibe, but to me that's a real stretch to be honest. The blurb says by the end of the day someone will be dead, which makes it sound like a murder mystery and a lot more interesting than it actually was. All the characters were definitely complicated, but I didn't find myself caring about any of them or wondering what was going to happen to them. The writing style irritated me a lot - it was hard to tell who was talking most of the time, and the stream of consciousness didn't really work - and I found myself dreading reading this book. In writing this review, I've talked myself down from three to two stars, sorry :/ This just wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

I tried to get into this one but the weird formatting really took me out of it. I might go back to it eventually.

I'm not quite sure I am the right audience for this story, and I'm not quite sure that I read it at a time where I was in the mood for it. When the characters aren't my cup of tea, I also don't know if it is something to say about the character's personalities, or if it is the fault of the writer for failing to make their characters likable. When Normal People became a hit, I told myself that I was going to try and read the book before I watched the show. However, as soon as I saw that there were no quotation marks when the characters were speaking, I grew hesitant because I knew that it would throw me off at some point and I didn't want to get thrown off and waste the story. This was something similar to that. I had trouble with the large cast, I had trouble with the lack of quotation marks, and I had trouble liking the characters overall. I'm assuming that because this novel takes place in the art world at a museum the cast is supposed to be pretentious and self-righteous. But it seems like they hate everyone! They make fun of people for being fat, they over sexualize women, even the women over sexualize themselves to the point that it's all we know of their physical description. It was hard to like anyone in the book, and it was hard to follow their character arcs. But to be fair, I wasn't able to devote as much time and energy into understanding each and every aspect of this novel as I was needed to. Perhaps I will be able to go back and feel differently once I reread it. Perhaps I am just not the right audience.

This was not what I was expecting and quite disappointing. I love museumes and wanted to read something more about that, not people being jerks.

Probably closer to 2.5 stars. This book was just not for me. I had trouble keeping up with all of the characters (even with the LONG list provided at the start) and the transitions between them. I also found the lack of quotation marks a contributing factor to the challenges I had tracking with the story lines. I liked the concept of the structure, focusing on one single day, but I wasn't invested in the story.

This book did not make sense to me, if I'm being completely honest. I really appreciated having a note in the beginning of the ARC, I thought that was really neat and special. Unfortunately, it did not change my opinion of the book itself. I prefer books that do not follow a style like this and have fewer characters.

I was also quite nervous about the reference to White Lotus. While the show is popular, as a recent watcher, I was a bit in shock as to the language that was allowed in the show in order to make a point - I ended up stopping the show last night because it was so bad. My assumption is this book is hopefully better than the third season of White Lotus, but this is not the read for me.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read this eARC! I appreciate the opportunity to leave honest feedback voluntarily.

I did not finish this book. I really tried to get into it but it just wasn’t for me. The cast of characters was confusing, even with the explanation at the beginning and I could not really find a connection of the plot.

3.5 / 5 stars
I was instantly drawn to the cover and synopsis of this book when I first saw it. 24 hours at a NYC museum? How can you not be intrigued? I enjoyed getting to know the characters in this book, however it was hard to keep track of them at times because there were so many. I enjoyed reading and I would recommend it to anyone who likes books that might be off the beaten path.

this was a rough one for me. probably would have DNF if i wasn’t reviewing for netgalley. so many characters and interesting way of doing dialogue that took 100 pages to fully grasp. some good themes but ultimately not exciting.

okay i was lucky enough to be granted an arc which i finished… the day the book came out. unideal, for sure. however, this was a tad disappointing for one of my most anticipated reads of the year.

it was billed as a mystery, when it was much moreso the lead up to a climax you knew was going to happen, without knowledge of what form it would take. that alone would have been fine, but it was a slog to get through. the characters were largely annoying, and not in the fun, 3 dimensional way — it was easy to get bored.

i just really think there was no closure on any of the plot lines — that’s possibly the way it was supposed to be but not at all satisfying to me.

Friends of the Museum is Heather McGowan's latest novel after almost a decade. The story takes place over one day (we are given the time throughout) with a cast of colorful characters who work at a notable New York Museum putting on a special gala event.

I did find myself early on flipping back to the character list at the beginning of the story to keep track of everyone and their relationship to the museum and each other. Those vignettes that were most compelling were about the museum director who has hit a rough patch in her marriage, a security guard who is suffering with symptoms of early onset dementia, and one of the staff members who has become pregnant from a one night stand and is debating what her next step will be. Amongst all of their personal dramas are larger ones impacting the museum such as suspicious provenances for art work, possible fakes, hesitant donors, and food poisoning at the museum café. It is interesting how the different relationships and character behaviors inform each other; the friends in the title is definitely used with heavy irony for this tragicomedy.

If you enjoy Friends of the Museum, you can also check out McGowan's previous novels Schooling and Duchess of Nothing. Her original screenplay for Tadpole was made into a movie starring Sigourney Weaver and Bebe Neuwirth.