Happiest of Thursdays, my book friends! It’s overwhelmingly hot here in PA and our house doesn’t have central AC, so the little window unit that could is doing its best to fight the heat. Up in the room where my TBR cart lives, it’s approximiately 3000 degrees, give or take a few (okay, it’s more like 90 or so, given the outside temperature).

Hot or not, I’m back with another TBR Thursday selection from the Book of the Month shelf of shame. This week’s pick is probably pretty familiar to many of you, and it’s…

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Synopsis:

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young–but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Bookshop.org synopsis

Why It’s On My TBR

Peer pressure probably inspried this pick more than anything. It took me two attempts to finish Normal People, though I did enjoy it fairly well once I was in the right mood (sad, contemplative, willing to tolerate dialogue without proper punctuation).

This would be my second Rooney and I think I’m hoping it will help me decide whether or not I’m in for the hype. Except that I just can’t seem to bring myself to actually pick it up and read it. It’s been sitting in the stack of shame for a while, and will probably stay there until I feel like I’m ready for my next Rooney.

Have you read this one yet, book friends? Let me know how it went for you if you did!