I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. I struggled with it because I couldn't find any characters in it that I related to or liked, other than the car wash supervisor, whose presence was fairly minor. I do understand why Woody was essentially a parody of himself, because he was so desperate for validation and recognition that he would do these outsized things and his writing was equally faux-lofty and melodramatic. But I had a hard time even relating to Woody the flawed human because at first he was so willing to throw his family under the bus for a scrap of fame, and at the end he was so willing to throw his work under the bus to fall back in line as the disrespected whipping boy in the family.

I wish I felt that his wife actually loved him, but it seemed like she, like her family, mostly liked the fact that he was passive. She never once stuck up for him when her family was belittling him. The only small snippet of redemption was when his father-in-law finally gave his blessing at the end, but even that was a one-on-one conversation, not a public endorsement for Woody in front of his family members who so openly mock him at every turn. Even then, Woody didn't take his FIL's blessing and run with it, or modify his book to make it still his art but less susceptible to being confused with his in-laws' business. He just shelved his book, tucked his tail, and got back in line. He could have taken his chance to make something of himself while still working with his in-laws, but nope.

The book-within-a-book trope is fine, but I wish we had less of the content of Woody's (terrible) book and more of Jeff Kramer's exposition of characters in the main story, perhaps with some redemption of Woody or a balance of Woody's humbling himself along with his wife's family's acceptance of him as good enough.

this was a pretty decent book. It did have some pretty dull moments, and also it was a bit lacking in a few areas. It was a decent story, but I don't think i oud recommend this one to others, it was hard to get through

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

This wasn’t for me. I live in the area the story is written about and the references just felt forced and out of place. The main character was impossible to be interested in. Who even still has a peloton these days? Just something about the writing and the story itself didn’t work for me.

As a former journalist who is perpetually trying to write a novel, ‘Mud Season’ seemed too good to pass over while on the hunt for my next read.
Jeff Kramer’s debut novel is a hugely entertaining take on the ‘writer being a writer’ genre. Our main character, Atwood ‘Woody’ Hackworth has been let go from his journalism job on a local newspaper and decides that he’s going to take revenge (on everyone, even people who are good to him) in the form of a very close-to-the-bone novel.
Hiding within the argument of ‘it’s fiction’, he writes what he knows which is fine until he starts to serialise it online and, well, the mud starts slinging.
Woody’s sardonic humour and lofty aspirations make him an intriguing character – we should dislike him for his pig-headedness and obnoxious lamentations about his ‘Art’ and ‘The Process’, but he’s almost too hapless to truly dislike. There are all sorts of cultural nods in the novel – some intended, some maybe not.
Having just finished a book about ‘The Wire’, my mind was very tuned into the various commentary around the practice of journalism, and I thought Woody’s somewhat petulant decision on a new career felt like it was straight out of ‘American Beauty’.
The novel within the novel works extremely well, despite the very fine lines between truth and reality. Woody’s novel reads enough like a hard-boiled detective (or maybe slightly poached detective!) to clearly differentiate between Woody’s life and his fictional alter-ego Cus’s life.
I initially felt like the novel ended with a bit of a whimper, rather than a bang but, considering it a bit more, I think it worked extremely well because, with the joint narratives, we got one over-the-top ending, and one more grounded in realism which, at the end of the day, is where Woody realises he needs to be.
As I say, as a writer and former journalist, I lapped up every word of this – I identified with so much of what he said about both professions and I did appreciate the commentary around the vagaries of each industry.
A thoroughly enjoyable, well realised novel, with some crackling dialogue, interesting characters, and a book within a book. What’s not to love when it’s done well?

My thanks to Koehler Books, via NetGalley for an eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

They say life imitates art, but what happens when art imitates life? In Mud Season, the newest book about a book, main character Woody hits a little too close to home when his fiction novel which is „loosely“ based on his in-laws very successful and public company accuses them of a fictional crime. Sounds serious right? You’d be wrong. Main character Woody, may be named after Margaret Atwood, but he is anything but serious; he’s quirky, sarcastic, and often very funny. This novel will have you laughing out loud at parts and is a fun addition to the „books on books“ genre.