MixedThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)... the most well-defined characters in this thickly populated book [are Casey\'s two suitors]. The older, more established of them is especially finely drawn, a nuanced portrait of alternately endearing and repellent male neediness ... Unfortunately, unlike, for example, Sigrid Nunez’s writer-narrator in The Friend (2018), whose reflections are the sort that emerge from years of profound engagement with literature as both a reader and writer, Casey seems content with New Age pieties ... This is the language of self-help books and Goop ... there isn’t much insight on display, more a kind of sensitivity signalling. King’s narrator—or, rather, King herself—also makes some irritating mistakes ... None of this seriously detracts from Casey’s likeability as a character. But the arc of her follow-your-dream story, with its somehow not- surprising ending, does seem rather facile.
