Dubno has talent as a writer, but I’ve grown bored of New Adult books that are just a narrator explaining how much they hate their own friends.

What’s billed as skewering social commentary is really just a litany of complaints and a catalogue of problems with no solutions. The narrator speaks with dripping contempt about pretty much everyone she knows. Yet she keeps spending all of her time with them. She could-gasp-find new friends, but then she couldn’t reap all the benefits she receives from hanging around the people she lambastes without their knowledge.

All of which actually makes her more unlikable than the people who she wants us to sneer at. As bad as they are, she actually seems worse. And seriously lacking in self awareness.

I suppose a book like this can work if it’s exceptionally funny, but this has little humor, and what it does have mostly feels unproductively petty. Though I do agree with the narrator that strangers who rush to tell you that your shoe is untied are the absolute worst.

My Selling Pitch:
Imagine the worst person from your college arts program. Now imagine there’s six of them and you have to sit through a dinner party where they all try to prove they know the NYC art scene the best. It kinda works as satire, but you're also going to want to put your head through the wall.

Pre-reading:
In the running for best cover of the year.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on)
Thick of it:
A me!
I'm a Capricorn ISTJ.

I like labels, girl.

She's giving Dorothy from A Certain Hunger.

This writing style is a lot.

I AM a Samantha lol.

It’s reminding me a lot of My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

Ayyy, a local

It’s got the American Psycho monologues.

A predatory art couple like Conversations with Friends and Artists and Muses.

An unreliable narrator? She’s so hypocritical.

Ma'am, this is gay.

I feel like this is reactionary to the friendship in MYoRaR.

The actress they're waiting on has to be Rebecca, no? (Surprised we didn’t go this route, but the way we did go works too.)

I have no sympathy for this main character.

It’s very Caulfield. (Book brings it up too lol.)

Bloodies are my fave!

I'm a layered gold necklace person.
I feel like that jewelry reference will go completely over men’s heads, but she’s brought it up twice now, and the girls that get it, get it.

Just say Sydney Sweeney lol.

I’m a bad lit fic girly. I had to Google the relation between Murakami and Catcher. He translated it into Japanese.

What a cunt. Omg, I hate a performative male.

I really hope this is satire, and the author isn’t actually denouncing the MeToo movement because what the fuck. I mean, she’s been insufferable all book, so I feel like it’s just showing that she is exactly these people that she hates but-
And like there’s so much projection and avoidance of her getting assaulted by this couple so- some of the mental gymnastics of My Dear Vanessa.

Twilight drop lol

Isn’t it every seven years? (It ranges from 7-10, but I feel like I always hear people say 7.)

Title drop

Post-reading:
Now here’s a book where everyone sucks, but you still kind of enjoy your time because at least you come out of it looking better than they do. And then you remember that your idea of a good time is unsolicitedly critiquing books on the Internet.

If you’re recreationally picking up NYC lit fic, congratulations, you are as pretentious as everyone in this book at least to some degree.

The writing style’s a little rough. Our narrator is not a likable or sympathetic figure. I think if you can’t pick up on her hypocrisy quickly, this book is going to be lost on you. It’s stream of consciousness. We go off on a lot of tangents. I’ve never minded that. I feel like it just makes a piece of writing extra voicey. I listened to this as an audiobook, so the formatting didn’t trip me up.

It reminded me a lot of Sally Rooney‘s Conversations with Friends and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I think if you like those books, there’s something for you here.

Unfortunately, I haven’t read the book that this one is based on, so there might be more to dissect here if you have better reference points. Similarly, I describe myself as a bad book girly all the time because despite reading so much, I read genre fiction so widely that I get to almost no backlist or classics, so a lot of the references were lost on me. I mean, from context clues, you can get the gist of the point she’s making, but they’re probably punchier if you actually know the media she’s referencing.

I think personally I could’ve used a few snappier lines. All the dressing downs are very extended and a bit philosophical. I could’ve used some zippy one-liners just to break it up.

I’d say give this a read if you like picking apart art and intellectualizing it, or if you like a bit of satire about how performative the left can be sometimes. I think this book is especially for mood readers who devour their cheesy romances and chase them with dreary lit fics and wipe their mouths with dude bro sci-fi. I think it’s a good reminder that it’s all art. You’re not morally superior just for preferring one genre over another.

I’d pick up this author‘s work again. I’d be curious to see what she comes out with next.

Who should read this:
Art critics
Lit fic girlies

Ideal reading time:
Academic pretension screams fall to me.

Do I want to reread this:
No, but I’d pick up the author again.

Would I buy this:
Yes, I love that cover.

Similar books:
* Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney-lit fic, queer romance, social commentary
* My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh-lit fic, social commentary, NYC art world
* American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis-satire, psychological horror, unreliable narrator
* Sirens and Muses by Antonia Angress-lit fic, social commentary, queer romance, NYC art world
* Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger-classic, unreliable narrator, social commentary
* Diary of an Oxygen Thief by Anonymous-lit fic, satire, social commentary
* A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers-satire, horror, social commentary

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Told in first person as our main character returns to her home stomping grounds of New York, feeling like New York was its own character itself. As the narrator is not only reminiscing with old friends and city but remembering a recently passed friend. Overall like a trip down memory lane.

There is definitely some inner conversations and references I can tell I am not cool enough to be privied to but it didnt bother me. Like I needed to research New York itself a little more to beforehand. I wasn’t a fan of the formatting myself- just long paragraphs, with no breaks or really any dialogue. Like ramblings. The narrator was on her high horse quite a lot, passing judgments to those around her - and I think I would have liked her to come across less snobby, less haughty. As she critiques the people in the room she never gave a reason why she was so much better than anyone else. So just a novella capitalizing on vapidness. Although the actress was satisfying.

I think I needed to be in the mood for something this specific and niche, and I just wasn’t there.

LOVE AND HAPPINESS
BY ZOE DUBNO

With regrets I will not be posting a review on Goodreads or any other platform I usually post on for this novel.

In my estimation the feelings, thoughts, emotions and most importantly ideas the author was attempting to get across to her readers could have been accomplished in a magazine article or perhaps a short story.

First of all now that I reread the synopsis I realize Dubno delivered all she promised she just took way too unnecessarily long to do so.

I chose this book as I love all sorts of novels based in New York. Also I have enjoyed reading memoirs of tortured artists, musicians and other creative types. I have enjoyed following Capote and his Swans so I thought this book would be right up my alley.

It took until the last hour of reading to extract the precious nuggets the author needed to share.

She has a wonderful vocabulary which put my Kindle to work.

Other than those thoughts there isn't much more I would like to say about the book.

There maybe readers out there that may enjoy this book so I really do not want to disparage her work to my friends on Goodreads or any individuals on Amazon. Barnes and Nobles or Storygraph who may be trying to decide if they would like to read Love and Happiness.

Sending wishes for success, love and happiness to Ms. Dubno.

kinda obsessed with the word vomit that is this book. i think its best enjoyed in long stretches of reading so you can get the full affect of the stream of consciousness. the writing was clever, and full of humor. living in her mind is exhausting and i needed a few breaks. at times i felt like it dragged, but i think that’s the point? overall enjoyable!

thank you netgalley and scribner for the arc!

It’s one long cultural dinner party for artists.

Several months after our unnamed main character moves back to New York, she learns of Rebecca’s death at 30. Ten years Rebecca’s junior, our main narrator loses touch with Rebecca for 5 years. Last she heard, Rebecca still craved fame, working as an actress and director. She took prescription painkillers for her depression, and the cocktail of drugs would eventually kill her. Before the two women shifted from close friends to strangers, though, the MC had not moved from The City yet. Their relationship shifts when the MC grows closer to Nicole and Eugene, a wealthy couple who protect their high-brow clout in the art world. At 19, eager, naive, and excited to become a writer, the MC becomes their protégé and protectee. The symbiotic relationship—she, amusement; they, benefactors—exists until the MC sees through their bizarre approach to creating and gatekeeping culture. When she extricates herself from their toxic ensnarement, she and Rebecca have already drifted; the MC learns from her new Bohemian friends to look down on Rebecca’s anxiety for fame and her lack of success in creating art.

Although she has no interest to socialize with Nicole, Eugene, and the other avant garde-ers, she emerges from the woodwork to honor Rebecca at the memorial service. The story, then, is her first-person telling of her experience with and assessment of N and E’s tutelage and her transformed philosophy of art and culture. Dubno’s debut reminds me of Bosker’s journalistic endeavors in Get The Picture as she investigates how some American artists participate in their cultural sphere. In Dubno’s fictitious work, the MC critiques the “criteria for . . . membership” into the cultural community. A famous actor at the dinner party also delivers monologues, offering her criticism of the artists in her company’s self-importance. She announces, “I’ve gleaned, you guys in the art world need to elevate everything to make it feel worthwhile. Why not just admit to enjoying a beautiful object, instead of finding the need to justify it to yourself by discussing it in unintelligible language that doesn’t describe why you like it?”

I generally don’t mind a sarcastic narrator who brings a mood of transcendent judgment. Perhaps the contrast from young and ignorant to grown and intelligent seems unpalatable. The contrast is fine as such, but the mode of “everyone is asinine except the transcended few” might seem unbelievable to me because I don’t work in the world of art (and, by and large, the spirit in my field is unlike what Dubno details here). In sum, I understand the author’s questioning of the philosophy of artists—I’ll always remember Makoto Fujimura telling me not to let art intimidate but heal. However, I hoped the narrator’s glum and bitter voice would even out before she reaches another moment of enlightenment, drunk after the party, manifesting happiness and love to others.

Dubno includes a note at the end of the novel and explains her inspiration behind using “Thomas Bernhard’s 1984 novel, Holzfällen, translated into English as Woodcutters.”

My thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an ARC. I shared this review on GoodReads on September 6, 2025 (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7886584996).

The writing style kept me wanting to continue to read. The character development of the MC was done very well. I was invested in two prominent characters and their journey throughout the story. I will read more from Dubno.

Happiness and Love was a blast to read! This story is entertaining from start to finish and I can’t wait to read Zoe Dubno’s next book. I highly recommend this satirical piece examining friendship, class and culture with razor-sharp wit!

Living inside the head of a miserable, judgmental hateful main character with one long stream of consciousness was brutal. No chapters, no paragraph breaks felt suffocating with the nonstop barrage of misery. But in a good way?

I always love when a book does something new and unique. It felt like an accomplishment getting through this. A real doozy.

Not my favorite book ever but I’m glad I read it.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

Happiness and Love completely swept me away. What struck me most was how real and authentic the characters felt, every emotion, every choice carried weight and honesty. It’s rare to feel this connected to fictional people, but Zoe’s writing made them unforgettable.

This book balances tenderness and truth so well. It’s heartfelt without ever feeling forced, and it lingers long after you close the last page. I found myself rooting for these characters as if they were friends.

I’ll be recommending this one widely, and I can’t wait to read more from Zoe. A beautiful story that feels both deeply personal and universal.

this book would kill those booktok creators who claim they skip paragraphs that are too long and/or solely read a book’s dialogue.

“happiness and love” is an absolutely unflinching portrayal of the upper echelons of the (new york city) art scene with razor-sharp observations on the elitism, the social climbing, and the showmanship of it all. our unnamed narrator spends the 200+ pages of the novel revisiting her experiences surrounding those in the city’s art scene, after returning home to new york from europe to attend her friend’s funeral. while sitting on a sofa in her former patrons’ apartment for a “memorial service” that ends up being anything but, our narrator eviscerates the attendees and their true motives, coming to the realization of how performative those in her past life truly are.

as for its execution, this was difficult to read, and i mean that on a craft level. the entire novel is one continuous paragraph. no chapter breaks, no line breaks, no quotation marks (just italics for dialogue). it was claustrophobic and exhausting. on the one hand, i get it—the narrator is essentially rambling on and on about her experiences as she dissects the scene in front of her and her past, and the exhaustion the thick block of text creates is reflective of how the narrator is feeling. but it also just made it so unnecessarily difficult to read that it felt like a slog to get through at times. and as with all works that utilize the stream-of-consciousness style, some parts would flow well and others would stall. granted, i did find that i found a rhythm around the 55% mark, but i shouldn’t have to force myself through half of a novel to, only then, find my footing with the prose.

my favorite parts were when the narrator reflected on rebecca and her personal experiences with her; and, unfortunately, these bits were outweighed by the class analyses. the narrator continuously brings up how distasteful it is to center a dinner party around an actress’s expected presence while framing it as a memorial service for the deceased rebecca, but most of the novel was a rambling critique of her peers, and rebecca’s person/character fell through the cracks. i always like to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like this, but it almost felt like dubno was trying to balance the two—the narrator’s grief over rebecca’s death and her disdain for the world her and rebecca took part in—but it became less and less rebecca-focused as the book went on, despite rebecca being the catalyst for the narrator’s return to new york in the first place. the narrator also repeatedly points out the issues with the bourgeoisie, but at the same time i don’t think she’s necessarily exempt from that. she does everything she can to separate herself from *them* when, in reality, she lets herself be repeatedly sucked into their world and their lives, as if she has no agency of her own.

it was also really fun to read the actress, who was invited to the memorial-not-memorial as the focal point of the evening, completely annihilate all the attendees. she was a powerhouse! lastly, i appreciated the optimism and the overall sentiment of the ending of the novel, but it felt like a very quick switch from the heaviness that hung within the other 95% of the narrative.

despite some great moments of awareness and eloquent critiques on the rich and the “cultured”, i expected to enjoy this more than i did. while i understand its intention, i think the ~internal monologue with no room for pause~ format really detracted from my reading experience, while still being able to acknowledge what that style was attempting to achieve in the process.

2.5

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

Happiness and Love is a retelling of Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard. Told without paragraph or chapter breaks the entire novel is a stream of consciousness account of a dinner party with people that the narrator hates.

In the beginning the narrator is entirely unlikable, exhibiting many of the same qualities that she is mocking in the other party guests. However, unlike in the Woodcutter, the unnamed narrator in Happiness and Love does some genuine self reflection and there is a bit of character growth. She does not become an entirely new person and she is still quite insufferable by the end, but I did prefer her character arc to that of the Woodcutter's narrator.

Overall I thought that this was a really strong debut novel. And, although it can stand entirely on its own, I would recommend reading it in tandem with Woodcutters. The stories echoing back and forth really added to my reading experience.

is basically a front-row seat to the most awkward, toxic dinner party you can imagine—and it’s such a fun ride. The narrator shows up to what’s meant to be a memorial for her former best friend, Rebecca, but the whole thing quickly reveals itself as a shallow social event hosted by people she can’t stand. From her spot on the sofa, she sizes everyone up with brutal honesty, mocking their pretensions and fake performances while also recognizing she’s not totally innocent either. It’s sharp, funny, and just the right amount of mean.

What I loved most is the voice—it’s dry, clever, and keeps you hooked even though not much “happens.” The whole night basically revolves around waiting for a hot new actress to arrive, but the tension builds so naturally that when things finally blow up, it feels incredibly satisfying. At under 200 pages, it’s quick but packs a punch: part satire, part character study, and all about how ridiculous (and empty) people can be when they’re too busy performing for each other.

I absolutely loved the dinner party aspect of this story. Anyone around my age will find this incredibly relatable and interesting. Really connected with this one!

An ambitious, stream-of-consciousness debut, Happiness and Love updates Bernhard's Woodcutters for the modern age, in which the self-proclaimed cultural elite are primarily successful in fulfilling their own egoistic need for indulgence.

Our narrator finds herself at an excruciating dinner party with these former friends, with the entire duration of the novel taking place in a single scene. It is clear our narrator herself has a distaste for the general milieu but is still working out the specificities of her own thought as we trace some of the contradictions and development of her internal, misanthropic reflections. The narrator is worthy of criticism herself, as her critical distance from these insufferable bourgeois "intellectuals" grants her a moral superiority in condemning theirs. Hardly different, no?

This was witty, cutting, reflective, and overwhelmingly fun.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the e-arc.

Thanks to NetGalley, Scriber, and Zoe Dubno for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love, the narrator (a young writer) sits on a white sofa in the corner of a dinner party observing her former friends (writers and artists). The dinner party is happening at Eugene and Nicole’s apartment the day after a funeral for Rebecca, a member of the friend group who died by suicide. Guests are passing the time because dinner is on hold until the guest of honor, an LA actress, arrives.

Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love has a stream of consciousness feel, enhanced by a lack of paragraphs, breaks, or chapters. And, the narrator’s head is a scathing, burning place to be.

While she waits for dinner, the narrator critiques each person in the room, providing examples from her interactions with them to demonstrate not only their hypocrisy and lies but the depravity of the entire New York City art scene. When the actress finally arrives, she gives voice to the narrator’s thoughts, speaking candidly about the party guests.

Happiness and Love reads a little like Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers in Bridgerton. There’s not salacious gossip, but there are plenty of examples of society folks acting despicably. Happiness and Love includes some humor, but the narrator’s self-deprication (she feels like she “fell” for the fakeness of the group) leaves the book with a dark feeling. Further, the examples of bad behavior began to feel repetitive by the middle of the book. While I could somehow connect with the rich and privileged society of Bridgerton, the world of Happiness and Love felt elite and artistic in ways I couldn’t connect with.

I am so grateful this book was sent to me to check out- unfortunately this is not my cup of tea and I DNFed pretty quickly when I realized the entire book is one chapter, and just a running train of thought of the main character. To me this felt pretentious artist life and all of this type of discussion goes over my head.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

I was SO excited by the premise of this book but the execution didn't work for me. This was, functionally, hard to read. There are just paragraphs of streams of consciousness and thoughts and it was...odd I guess. But not in a fun way. In a way that felt like homework.

Thank you Scribner Books @scribnerbooks for this free book.
I very rarely do this, but it was a DNF for me.
“Happiness & Love” by Zoe Dubno. Genre: Satire verging into cancel culture. Location: New York City, NY, USA. Time: One evening at a dinner party.

Cynical, intellectually wordy, arty narrator silently and mercilessly trashes everyone at an upscale pseudo-artsy dinner party. Many of her descriptions are aimed at toxic capitalism and classism-yay! But our narrator’s no paragon of virtue herself-musing about a woman hiding her thick legs under a long skirt, and ugly women wearing bouffant hairdos (seemingly to distract from their ugliness). It’s a look at classism and capitalism through the lens of cynical, blasé New Yorkers (including our narrator). I wonder if those who love this book enjoy cancel culture? For me, the constant holier-than-thou vitriol overwhelmed the satire, but that’s just me. It’s a DNF for me 📚👩🏼‍🦳

The narrator, a writer, is finally back in New York, a city she's been avoiding for years—along with the friends who still live there. She has no plans to see anyone, but one morning she bumps into Eugene on the Bowery. She's been back for weeks, and has no intention of reconnecting with her old life, but instead tells him she's only just returned.

He invites her to a little dinner party the next night for an actress she's never heard of. It’s here he tells her about their friend Rebecca's death, a fact she already knows but lets him have the satisfaction of breaking the news. Against her better judgment, she accepts.

On the night of the dinner, she watches this whole arty crowd from the corner, systematically destroying them in her head. They all think they're so clever and original, so superior, stylish, and artistic. But with the benefit of having been away, she sees them for what they really are, and she berates herself for even showing up. Eventually, the "star of the show" arrives, and we're a hair's breadth away from the evening completely crashing off the tracks and reaching a finale of deliciously delivered truths, accompanied by a divine meal and fine wines.

This is not an easy read by any means. There are streams and streams of consciousness, no paragraphs or chapters, just pages and pages of internal thoughts that are often vicious and vitriolic, but frequently hilarious. It’s so smart, astute, and acutely observed that I can't deny it is anything but very well written. It perfectly conveys her life, along with Rebecca, Eugene, his partner Nicole, and the writer Alexander, enabling us to see their lives for what they are as she tears down their pretentiousness. Honestly, there were times I wasn’t sure exactly what the narrator was talking about, but I definitely got the gist. It’s worth sticking with it for the takedown, which is incisive, cutting, destructive, brutal, and bang on point. These are not likable people, and they so richly deserve it! A round of applause, please!

The ending is fantastic as she wishes everyone "all happiness and love with bouts of something else!!" It's just so good.

Apparently, the book is based on Thomas Bernhard’s The Woodcutters, which is referenced several times, but since I haven’t read it, it meant nothing to me.

Overall, it's a very different kind of book, and if you can get past the writing style, it’s well worth the read.