User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I'll be honest and say that toxic female friendships are a guilty pleasure of mine in books. To see how nasty one woman can be to another all while under the guise of friendship in an effort to upstage or usurp the other is like book crack. I can't get enough.
When I saw Devotion pop up on NetGalley I didn't even hesitate to request it but oh wait? I can only wish for it? So wish I did and Ecco granted my wish which rarely happens to me. What luck!
Ella is a broke 26 year old woman living in NYC and sleeping with men solely to have a meal put in her stomach. Imagine her surprise when she interviews with a wealthy family for a nanny position and they take her on immediately with hardly any questions asked. She feels as if her life is suddenly taking a turn in the right direction.
She immediately becomes obsessed with Lonnie the mother in which she was hired to help. What you as reader are wondering with each flip of the page is: does Ella love Lonnie or hate her? Is she trying to be friends with her or is she trying to become her? Lonnie takes for granted everything she has where as Ella can only dream of such a lifestyle of leisure.
Needless to say things are going to get complicated.
I really wanted to love this book but it fell a bit short of my expectations. The comparisons to Social Creature had me so excited but this book isn't nearly as dark or shocking. In fact, after turning the last page I was kind of wondering what the point of this book is. If you want a birds eye view of a dysfunctional friendship then you will find that here but that's really it. There wasn't any type of shocking twist or any OMG moments. There was no I can't believe that happened or that he or she did this. It just sort of fizzled out into the ether. Still the writing is sharp and I was compelled to read to the end I just wish there was a bigger payout for getting there. 3 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for proving me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Rating: really liked it
DNF
Cool cover though 😎
Rating: really liked it
This book started out strong for me. It had a great premise- a weird, twisted relationship about a woman and her nanny. Their relationship was one of friendship, yet with a dark, obsession based theme that was fascinating. It was almost as if the women had a "frenemies" type relationship where they were in competition with each other.
When Lonnie and her husband James took on Elle as their nanny they opened doors to whole new world for her. As Elle had been struggling to make ends meet, she is now whisked into a world of fancy homes, vacations and parties that she would never have been privy to in "her world" outside of her job. As Lonnie welcomed her into their lives with open arms, she also gained a friend in her. She loaned her clothes, treated her to things that a normal employer what not. She made her a part of the family and saw her as a confidant and friend.
It seemed Elle was in complete fascination with Lonnie. It was bordering on a obsession as she seemed jealous of any attention that Lonnie paid to anyone except herself. I loved the crazy single white female vibe this was putting out.
As the ending approached, it fell a bit short for me. I was expecting much more from the continuous build up throughout the book. Without spoiling it for anyone, I personally felt like it left me with some unanswered questions, which of course was the intent but I was hoping for more of a clean cut ending. So the ending fell a little flat for me. Otherwise a great debut. I am looking forward to what the author comes up with next! 3.5 stars
Thank you so much to Harper Collins / Ecco for this gorgeous ARC.
Rating: really liked it
Perhaps I somehow overlooked it, but this novel seems to be missing a point. Devotion appears to be a story about absolutely nothing.
Maybe it's a character study of female relationships, but honestly, even that seems a stretch. What it is, fellow readers, is a book full of plot holes, story lines which go absolutely nowhere, a total lack of character depth, and an annoyingly anti-climatic conclusion.
It's presumptuous, clichéd, unfinished, and ultimately boring. While the sentence structure and word choices were beautifully rendered, the cohesiveness was less than desirable. Trying to read the passages felt clunky and uninspired.
Because we learn next to nothing about Ella, it's nearly impossible to understand her motivations, or anything she's thinking and feeling.
Is she a lunatic? I read the entire novel and I still have no idea.
And what was up with Lonnie? Again, your guess is as good as mine.
Devotion just meanders along, going nowhere fast.
Recommended? Not a chance. I'm honestly a little peeved I wasted part of my life on this one.
1.5 stars rounded up**Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy.
Rating: really liked it
Devotion is this summer's Social Creature, a propulsive 'poor girl meets rich girl' story set in Manhattan, chronicling the mutually destructive relationship between two young women, Elle and Lonnie. Elle is hired as a nanny for Lonnie's infant son, and soon her resentment toward her employer turns into an unhealthy obsession.
Despite the inevitable Social Creature comparison, Devotion isn't quite as suspenseful or climactic, and its protagonists left less of an impression on me. Even so, I had a hard time putting this down; for a slow-moving story it never really loses momentum, and it has that 'need to know what happens next' quality that mercifully doesn't feel like a cop-out when nothing ever really happens.
Madeline Stevens achieves this with pitch-perfect characterization of the novel's narrator, Elle, whose 'do I want to be her or do I want to sleep with her' dynamic with Lonnie is the morbidly compelling thread that holds this plotness novel together and keeps you turning pages. Ultimately: a quick, addictive read that doesn't offer much in the way of thrills or chills, but still has an eerie and unsettling quality that makes it impossible to look away, and which offers a deceptively nuanced commentary on living on the periphery of extreme wealth.
Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
The only thing I have to say about this one is that 2.80 rating????
I generally live for stories of obsession, but this sucker was a one way ticket to Dullsville. Is getting a book published a condition of obtaining your MFA? I'm not saying everyone with an MFA ends up writing terrible books, but the ones whose resume
only seems to be that they have obtained their MFA sure do tend to tip the scales to the low stars side of things for me.
Rating: really liked it
Well, that was anticlimactic.Also kinkier than I was expecting.
It sets the scene like this: Ella becomes a nanny for a rich couple, and becomes a little obsessed with Lonnie. Ella has nothing and Lonnie has everything so Ella naturally covets Lonnie's life, and it begins to get a little creepy.
Now, firstly,
we don't actually get all that much info on Ella. She's poor to the point of starving, yet we don't ever find out much about how she got to that point and it makes her character quite weak. I never really understood where she was coming from, because everything about her and her life was so vague.
Ditto Lonnie and James. Which is weird, because the book spends most of its time obsessing over Lonnie, but it's more about what she has and how she behaves. There's no history for any of the characters which makes them pretty bland.
In fact, the character building in general is kind of ... shallow. I never properly understood who I was dealing with, so it left me fairly detached from the story.
Ella's obsession with Lonnie is definitely unhealthy, and pretty creepy. She says some weird stuff, and it's evident very early on that she's going to cause some drama for the happy family.
Only ... she doesn't really?
Like, the whole premise of the novel seems to rest on Ella's unhealthy obsession getting out of control, but nothing ever really happens? Ella lusts after everyone and there is seemingly sexual tension in everything, but in the end ...
nothing really happens. You expect there to be drama, but there is nothing. An eyebrow-raising scene that seems completely out of left-field, but overall not anything particularly exciting.
Honestly, I was waiting for a twist that would completely blow my mind, but all of my guesses could not prepare me for the absolute nothingness of the ending. This could have gone in so many crazy directions and instead it just tapers out. Pretty disappointing.
Honestly, the endings I created in my head were way more exciting, and probably made about as much sense.
It did keep me entertained throughout and there were some clever phrases and things, but in the end it just seemed like such a pointless book. I never really felt anything reading it except maybe slightly uncomfortable here and there.
Rating: really liked it
Ella is twenty six years old and broke. She gets hired by a rich couple to be their nanny. Ella is soon obsessed by the young mother, Lonnie. They are both the same age but their lifestyles are very different.
This is quite a creepy read. I did prefer the first part of the book. The second part seemed a bit lacklustre to me. It's also quite a slow burner. We are told the story round Ella's point of view. It covers some emotions like jealousy and loneliness. It didn't quite reach my expectations but maybe I expected too much. I did enjoy this story.
I would like to thank NetGalley, Faber & Faber and the author Madeleine Stevens for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
I don't know why, but when I see a book with a two-star average, my brain goes WANT. Like, way more so than a book that has a four-star average.
Rating: really liked it
This is a hard book to review. The cover is cool and the author is from a small town not far from where I grew up so I want to be supportive! And for most of the book, I was pretty engaged with the characters, as unlikable as they were. But the ending was so disappointing that it tarnishes the experience of the entire book - one character disappears but not for the reasons they should have, many threatening things never resolve into mattering (which renders this strange story about a minister who killed women something just thrown in for... tone? and since it didn't end up being important in the story it starts to feel uncomfortably like the author just put that story line in there to show black people as dangerous to establish a "bad neighborhood.") And even though we see the story somewhat from Ella's perspective, we never really understand what is motivating her obsession. Lots of women are poor, it doesn't turn them into obsessive predators. So this really didn't end up working for me.
I received a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss although I'm a bit belated in my review. It came out August 13, 2019.
Rating: really liked it
Devotion is sort of a cross between The Talented Mr. Ripley (which I haven't read) and Social Creature (which I have read). The basic set-up is this: Ella, a broke white woman living in Brooklyn, is hired to nanny for James and Lonnie, a wealthy Upper East Side couple. Ella, who's clearly very unstable, becomes obsessed with Lonnie, who to be honest seems like a perfectly nice, if privileged and somewhat unhappy, young woman.
I love a good obsession story, but I thought that this lacked depth. Ella very quickly begins doing very bizarre things because of her obsession, but we don't really get to learn very much about her or why she's doing these things. Has she done this before? She seems like an obsessive person, since she also latches on to the story of a neighborhood cult/serial killing (a thread that ultimately goes absolutely nowhere), but at the same time her interactions with everyone around her seem perfectly ordinary. I just really hate this trend in some literary fiction where characters are explicitly written to be weird and bizarre and unhappy for seemingly no reason. If you're going to write what is basically a character study, I'm gonna need a lot more character development.
The book moves very slowly, with a rather meandering plot that doesn't quite seem to know where it's going or what it hopes to achieve. The climax wasn't properly addressed or given the time it deserved to sink in, for the reader or for the characters. The side characters seemed to sort of float along on the sidelines. There were so many plot threads that seemed significant but just completely fizzled out. Ultimately this felt utterly pointless; there's no thrill or satisfaction to be had here.
What I did like about the novel is the writing; it's lush and descriptive, with lots of sensuous sensory details. At the same time, it flows nicely, which makes for a quick read.
Rating: really liked it
I devoured Devotion in short order- a beautifully descriptive prose sinks you into the life of Ella and her ever growing devotion to Lonnie her employer, both women are gorgeously drawn, ethereal and quirky in their own separate ways, when brought together things end up somewhat explosive.
The whole story has a strange, unearthly feel to it, you almost feel like these women haunt you as you read- the central theme deals with this odd attraction where two personalities almost become one. The supporting cast levitate around them, cause and effect giving rise to an ever growing sense that something will go wrong. It is a story of love bordering on hate, of obsession and consequence, of having versus not having and all the things we want that are beyond our reach.
I found it both clever and compelling, terrific literary writing and an utterly gripping tale.
Recommended.
Rating: really liked it
This book was probably one of the worst books I’ve ever read. The story line seems promising but in reality there was really no plot and nothing happened. The writing style was so boring and hard to follow. I almost didn’t finish it and towards the end I was just skimming pages. The characters were boring stereotypes. Don’t recommend at all.
Rating: really liked it
A "Single White Female" novel for the millennial age (with The Talented Mr Ripley vibes),
Devotion is a suspenseful story of one woman's obsession with her employer.
Ella is 26 and unhappy with her life. She has unfulfilling sex with strangers and no money, but one day all that changes when she lands a job nannying for a rich young woman, Lonnie. Lonnie is the same age as Ella and everything that Ella is not - married, a mother, and has an enviable wardrobe and figure. Ella's behaviour quickly becomes stranger and stranger, and her and Lonnie's lives become intertwined throughout the novel.
I found myself a little disappointed on finishing
Devotion, a kind of "is that it?" feeling, but equally found it hard to put down while I was reading. Although the plot is a little slow moving the pages flew by and the story was just suspenseful enough to keep me guessing.
Thank you Netgalley and Faber & Faber for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
This is one of those books that isn’t sure what it wants to be, and that makes for an uneven reading experience that’s ultimately not as satisfying as it could have been.
Twenty-six-year old Ella has absolutely nothing going for her when she takes a job as a nanny and quickly becomes obsessed with the baby’s beautiful mother, Lonnie. Lonnie is the kind of person who is so beautiful and privileged that she can get away with eschewing all boundaries—in her marriage and in her friendship with Ella. As Ella immerses herself into Lonnie’s world, her boundaries slip away, too, and it’s clear that nothing is going to end well for any of them.
Is this a psychological thriller? A Bildungsroman? A dream-like plunge into unhealthy obsession and desire? Who is it really about—Ella or Lonnie? I’m not really sure. It also doesn’t help that this novel includes one of my number-one fiction pet peeves: writing within writing. (Lonnie is an aspiring writer, and we are often subjected to multi-page excerpts from her latest project. Why do writers do this? All it ever does is take me out of the book they’ve written. But I digress.)
All this aside, I didn’t entirely dislike this novel. It’s tense and readable and I enjoyed many of Stevens’ sharp observations—even some that ultimately felt random. It’s fun to read about toxic female friendships. There was a lot of potential here, but in the end I’m just not sure I get what the point of it all was, and that’s frustrating.
