Wry and incisive ... It’s a new view into the psyche of the disillusioned work force, or perhaps it’s just the same view with better benefits ... It’s all very funny.
Marisa relates her life with a self-deprecating sense of humor; some of her expressions are laugh-out-loud hilarious. What she does at a weekend work retreat is brilliant ... The story’s climax is deliciously stunning as her fantasies become reality. This debut gem is a fast page-turner that most readers will finish in a few sittings ... Serrano has written an intelligent, witty novel, featuring a fresh, lifelike character on a quest for happiness and contentment.
This novel is bound to resonate ... We are locked into a first-person, present-tense perspective that features the type of angsty, self-involved narrator I’ve come to expect more from YA than from this type of middlebrow fiction ... The desperation of the narrator puts Marisa in a complex relationship with the reader, somewhere between hero and anti-hero ... The novel has all of the trappings of a frothy, easy read, but as Serrano gradually excavates Marisa’s views about the world and herself, they are revealed as a jumbled mess of ideas so contradictory that they often lead to self-destructive behaviors ... The novel is especially good on these extreme forms of dissonance that Marisa lives with ... There were times when the novel’s repetitive descriptions of excruciating corporate boredom and of the minutiae of random YouTube videos dulled the otherwise sharp edge of the satire ... The prose sometimes struck me as clumsy ...I found it a little off-putting to be told (rather than shown) again and again how Marisa is slacking off and losing her control ... Has its funny moments ... Serrano unsettlingly questions whether her characters...can ever fully keep corporate playacting from becoming our truest lifestyles.
