I could not get myself to finish this book. The storyline is all muddled up and i actually pushed myswlf to read through but eventually gave up at around 30%.

What a relief to read this novel. I have read so many newly published novels in the last two or three years which have been nothing short of disasters. Usually written by young women who have one tiny idea that they spread thinly over 300 pages propped up by chronically bad dialogue and lumpen attempts at humour.

This is Gonna End in Tears is far from that. This is a well-written, evocative novel set mainly in the early 1980s with some flashbacks to the 1960s. It focuses on the relationships between three childhood friends, Miller, Ash and Olly, and the outlying relationships that they and Miller and Ash’s son Nate have with other residents of the tidal island Wonderland.

Klaussmann conjures up the era and the claustrophobic sense of a tight community well and is especially good at drawing out the experiences of the teenagers who are on the cusp of leaving school and moving away to college.

All the characters are cleverly drawn together by the central plot device of a film crew descending on Wonderland to film an adaptation of Moby-Dick, a device which the attentive reader can have some fun unpacking as well as a sub-plot involving Melville’s story Billy Budd.

Whilst this novel is a departure from Klaussmann’s first two, it is no less enjoyable and I will be interested to see what she writes over the coming years.

Olly, Ash and Miller have grown up together. In their community, they have always been perceived as a unit which nobody could intrude. In their small East Coast town, life is easy in the 1950s and dream are big. Forty years later, things are different. None is left of their friendship, Olly is on his own, now also without a job and Ash and Miller are negotiating their separation. It is Olly’s aunt Tassie that cannot stay any longer in her care home that brings them together again. It is not easy to confront the past, especially while watching a young threesome bunch repeating their mistakes.

I totally adored Liza Klaussmann’s novel “Tigers in Red Weather” and thus was eager to read her latest novel “This is Gonna End in Tears”. She did not disappoint, quite the contrary, the story is the perfect read for a hot summer where you sense that it needs some escalation to be able to breathe again. Full of suspense even though it is not a mystery, you read on to find out how all the tension between the characters will finally dissolve.

“Well, that was the point, what he’d only recently realized: there is no point; everyone thinks they’re the hero of their own story, when actually there’s no story at all. Just an outline that gets filled in with nonsense and accidents and happenstance and luck. And the, well... and then nothing.”

What I appreciated most was how the author detailed the characters. They are all unique in their disappointments of life, in their mixed emotions and inability to actually speak about what goes on in their mind. The atmosphere profits from this, you feel that something must happen, that they cannot just go on like this.

It is a novel about friendship and dreams and expectations of life, about creative minds and everyday chore, about bonds that are strong and bonds that can feel like handcuffs. An intoxicating read from the first page which I could hardly put down.

It reminded me of the Big Chill even if there's just three main characters: there's a strong relationship that mixes love, friendship, and memories.
The three MCs are so involved in their relationship to forget the other people and what is going on.
Liza Klaussman delivers a strong story written in a fascinating way, mixing music and events.
I loved the characters and loved the atmosphere.
It's an excellent story, highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

If you like Taylor Jenkins Reid, then this book will be perfect for the fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid.

The story is centered around three people--Ash, Miller and Olly. They were inseparable as friends but soon, their friendship turned sour and got separated in their own ways. Ash and Miller got married and is leading a wedded life in Wonderland with their son Nate. But the three friends reunite again when Miller who is now in her forties realize that her marriage wasn't great and Olly comes back into their lives after getting fired.

The story is set in the 1980's and 1950's when the three were thick as friends. so it was kind of great reading a story set in the 1980's. Initially, this book started out a little boring but by the middle of the book, it got interesting. The story is realistic, talking about the complex relationships and the lifestyles. The writing was great and the author did a good job of drawing the reader into the story. I actually enjoyed reading this book. There's a great storyline and the characters are also great as well.

Overall, this book worth four stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

There were so many aspects of this novel that I really enjoyed; the heady 1980’s atmosphere and the lyrical elements within Klaussmann’s writing style. The two main timelines explain the three MC’s relationships; one in flashback as Miller, Olly and Ash attempt to live the teenage dream and one in the present as the three are reunited as adults.
I’m always really drawn to these types of contemporary stories where nothing is initially told to the reader, instead references to complicated relationships and defining moments are alluded to. I loved the way the dynamics between Miller’s son, the best friend and the girl next door are interwoven to the adult’s recounts of their past. This isn’t a story with a fast paced plotline but instead attempts to chip away at the memories we hold as we grow up and how some things can be romanticized or misinterpreted with time.
A really beautiful style of writing throughout, however on a personal note I didn’t fully believe in some of the MCs characteristics but overall a very enjoyable read.
(3.5 stars)

This is Gonna End in Tears
By Liza Klausmann

This is not an easy book to review because a lot of the things that I love about it are just the things that send most people running, screaming. It is slow paced, but deliberately slow. Nothing happens, yet everything happens. All of the characters are deeply flawed, but utterly human. It's hard to find any to like or root for, but the dynamics spark off the page.

If you love small town, backwater settings, you might like this. If you don't like the tete a trois trope, you might hate this. It has a very strong first quarter and then it meanders a lot until the last 15%. As I said, the pace is slow, so if you are hanging in there, waiting for something to happen, it's not going to, but if character driven slice of life is your jam, you won't mind that and the ending is satisfying.

For anyone who was coming of age around 1984 this book will be a real trip down memory lane, studded with song titles and lyrics that you probably have forgotten about but will instantly root you in the time and place.

Thank you to #netgalley and #johnmurraypress for the egalley

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4779771890

Enjoyable but not quite great.

There are lots of interesting characters in here but none of them seem like real, believable human beings acting in real, believable ways. As a result it is quite hard to connect with, or care about, any of them.

And as for the plot, it meanders along pretty slowly, before a sudden huge event right at the end which is skipped through in a page or two. I would have preferred for more time to have been spent laying the groundwork for this, and delving into the aftermath - as the book currently stands it doesn't feel like much more than a plot device.

On the plus side - some beautiful writing, interesting ideas and the author is great at creating atmosphere. But this just didn't quite come together for me into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Growing up, it was always the three of them: Miller and Olly and Ash. They stuck together like they were keeping a secret; they were successful, best friends, and lovers. It was perfect - a shining life - until it fell apart.

Over the long, hot summer of 1984, unanswered questions draw the three of them back together. They are all consumed with the possibility of a redemptive third act that they don't notice what's going on between Miller's son, his best friend and the girl who lives next door.

Welcome to Wonderland!

This novel is intoxicating; from the first words to the last, you will be hooked. I finished it in a day, a day spent lying on a lounger in the back garden and soaking up the sun.

Klaussman’s gorgeous writing has such a dreamy quality whilst being true to real-life circumstances and complicated relationship dynamics.

Covering childhood friendship, first loves, hope & promise, betrayal & forgiveness, sex, music, art, film and more. You will feel you're living their long hot summer with its sultry and barefoot vibes, that you're right there with these messy people as their big secrets are revealed gradually.

Klaussman successfully jumps between timelines and characters in a way that kept me interested and emotionally connected to the characters - I couldn't wait to see how their stories turned out.

After all, we all search for self-fulfilment and in the end, sometimes we get lucky, sometimes we fail.

Thank you to Netgalley & John Murray Press for the advanced copy, in return for an honest review.

Found the story dull and slow. Found the blurb promising but the execution a disappointent. Didn’t connect with the characters and wasn’t bothered about finding out how it ended.

While I wasn’t immediately blown away, the book turned out SO enjoyable that I loved being a part of this small town and its weird life, and I never wanted it to end. There are family secrets, old stories that come up to light, a film adaptation of Moby Dick being shot in the small beach town, and lots of 80s music references. The book might start slow, but it’s a slow burn that builds until everything and everyone converges into a big finish -- a perfect summer read.

The first 100 pages or so didn’t feel hugely compelling to me, in particular the 3 main characters/lifelong-friends-with-a-complicated-history. I found them neither interesting nor likeable, although I eventually grew to really love Olly and his unexpected depth (same Ash, except this happened mostly towards the end). The book also kicks off with so many time jumps (50s East Coast/60s California/80s East Coast) and so many points of view, that I found it too scattered. Finally, I had a tough time getting into Klaussmann’s writing: everything is so detailed, all the time, that the more she wrote about whichever brand of polo shirt/sunglasses/almonds/drinks the characters prefer, the more those characters felt like an artificial list of facts and stereotypes.

But then, OH BOY. Something clicked, the writing turned beautiful, and it was like magic was coming off the pages. This is Gonna End in Tears truly sucks you right into an 80s beach town, through every phase of summer and its long, sweaty and barefoot vibes, that you just feel right in there with those messy people as their big secrets are finally revealed. I love the trio’s complicated dynamics, and how the story brings in a group of teenage friends who are trying figure out what to expect from life and each other after high school. Loved the easy conversations, the relatable awkwardness of teenage years, and how the kids are each trying to quietly overcome their own teenage inner demons. It felt real, relatable and beautiful.

As others have pointed out, if you liked TJR's Malibu Rising you'll likely enjoy this too. It also reminded me of Richard Russo’s Empire Falls (one of my favourite books!) with its small beach town setting where both adults and teens alike try to navigate their own compIicated dynamics. And a big thank you to Netgalley for the advanced copy, I've already told several friends to put this on their summer shelf.

I loved Liza Klaussmann's Tigers in Red Weather, if you haven't tried it, do, so I was really looking forward to This is
Gonna End in Tears. Unfortunately this didn't hook me like Tigers did, I really wanted to love it but I couldn't connect with the three main characters who I just found irritating, Miller wasn't working for me and Ash was just annoying, and the descriptions of Wonderland didn't hack it either. I usually fare well with a narrative which moves through time but again it just didn't quite work as it should. I'm gutted about this review so please give Liza Klaussmann a read, I couldn't fault Tigers.

I was looking forward to reading this book as the blurb really appealed to me. Unfortunately I failed to finish it and stopped reading half way through. I dint like any of the characters and found the story dull.

A really great story with lots going on in the story. The characters are great and I enjoyed how the different threads wove together to become the overall story

This book wasn’t for me, I’m afraid.
I never really became convinced by any of the characters and didn’t like or really care what happened to any of them.
It started quite promising, and I thought it was going to be a classic story with a triangular friendship where one is left in the cold for a possible variety of reasons. I suppose it’s the story behind why one is out in the cold that makes us keep reading.
I confess that I stopped reading part way through and read another book before picking this one up again. And then I skimmed a lot of the lengthy, and to be honest dull and pointless, conversations about nothing very much. There seemed to be a lot of ‘filling’. And digging into other characters which distracted from the main story and characters who were no more interesting anyway. The searching for a whale being an example.
The ending was bizarre and, to be brutal, unsatisfying. We never found out the answer to the ‘big question’ and the focus was squarely placed on minor characters.
Maybe my reading something else and my skimming caused me to miss something, if so I can only apologise. But if the book had held my attention I wouldn’t have paused or skimmed, so there’s that.
I hate being so negative about a book, because it is only my opinion, and on a different day at a different time in my life I might have loved it.
Thanks to Netgalley and John Murray publishers for the advanced copy.

This focuses on a group of three friends, and the people they are closest too, who grew up on a small island with Quaker roots, over a 30 year period. The author successfully jumps timelines and jumps characters in a way that kept me interested and moved the story forward. I really loved this book. I was emotionally connected to the characters and couldn’t wait to see what happened to them. I’d definitely recommend!

"God, the good parts are so good. Even the bad parts can’t make the good parts any less good."

Excuse the irony, but this is exactly what I thought upon reading this quote. WOW. That sums up this book. There are unquestionably parts that could be called bad, or at least not good, but the emotional journey and the world it sucks you into is so worth the good parts.

Miller and Ash are married, with a teenage son, Nate. They live in Wonderland, the quaker seaside town in which they grew up.

Neither of them is happy.

Olly is not married and just got fired, He sees no future, no direction in his life. He tries to end it.

This implies that he isn't happy either.

This story centres around Miller and her past with Olly, and her present with Ash. There are a few side-plots, mostly centred around Nate and his friends Suki, Cam, and Jess, Olly's Aunt Tassie, and a movie - Moby Dick - being filmed in Wonderland, but the core of the story is Miller.

The Characters are, for the most part, well developed, although I wouldn't say that any of them are truly likeable (maybe the point) and because of that, we get quotes like this - "What do you want me to say? I’m obviously not as good a person as you are; in fact, I’m probably a really bad person. I’m imperfect and I have messy emotions and I can’t toe the line and I do disagreeable things sometimes. Awful things, like fall out of love and hurt good people.”

The dialogue is intriguing but sometimes feels a little bit unnatural, which is fine. Like this "Did you know Synchronicity is actually a theory that certain things that happen in life are all connected? You know, coincidences that aren’t coincidences, and signs, and dreams. All that stuff that people try to tell you isn’t real, but you just know it is" is said by a teenager as a form of casual converstion, and while its a stunning sentiment, I think that a teenager being that eloquent is....... unlikely. But we also get lines like this -" You know what girls want? Girls want words. Good words. Great fucking words, words that make them want to die and melt and be madly in love.” - which is just POWERFUL above all else.

I'm a sucker for omniscience and let me tell you that this book delivered on that. I wasn't even sure whose eyes I was seeing through at first, whose head I was in, but I managed to get so many perspectives, some heartbreaking ('there is no point; everyone thinks they’re the hero of their own story when actually there’s no story at all. Just an outline that gets filled in with nonsense and accidents and happenstance and luck. And then, well . . . and then nothing.'), some thought-provoking ('Sure, it was weird, her transformation, as she called it, but then again, why not? If she didn’t want to be Aunt Tassie anymore, who was he to judge? In fact, he sympathized profoundly with wanting to be someone else. He had begun to think that perhaps she was the sanest person he knew), and some hilarious ('Aunt Tassie had said very little from the moment he’d picked her up, only whispering once that something was happening, which seemed to Ash a sensible thing to say, seeing as something was indeed happening.'), but all valuable.

My main critique is on the pacing, in that I found it to be a very slow burn, in a way that I found to be frustrating. And at the end, the last section, the progression was too fast, like it had suddenly been doused in accelerant. While the end made me cry, the speed of events just felt too chaotic.

That's why this book is getting 4 stars, and not five.

I'd recommend this book to fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid, as I feel like it has Malibu Rising vibes.

I will be reading some of the author's other work - for sure.


This is Gonna End in Tears surprised me. And I think it might surprise other people, too.

I loved the author's debut Tigers in Red Weather so was thrilled to get the opportunity to read this. I'm not quite sure how to do justice to this stunning novel, I loved it so much. Ash, Miller and Olly are childhood friends who grew up in an East Coast town in the 1950s. 40 years later in 1984 their relationships are falling apart and this novel moves backwards and forwards across the decades to tell the story of their lives. Liza Klaussmann's writing is beautiful. It has a gorgeous dreamy quality to it and reading this over the course of a hot and sunny 24 hours I was completely immersed in the characters and their world. I loved the 1980s setting, the soundtrack and the period detail and felt that the characters were beautifully drawn. I absolutely adored this and would highly recommend if , like me, you are a fan of Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this stunning novel.

I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn’t connect with the characters or writing style. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good book, of course—everyone has different tastes so if the description appeals to you, give it a go.

This book started out great and then suddenly fell flat and never really picked up again for me so was bit disappointed with it …