4. Interesting book and definitely tried to capture the vibe of something like Nightbitxh ish. Where it fell short in that not one of the characters was super relatable c thanks for the arc

I was drawn to the perfectly apt description: that this is a cross between Talented Mr. Ripley and Nightbitch. Yet, Man's Best Friend doesn't seem to offer anything more than being a combination of those two already-existing stories.

El is an unlikeable protagonist, fitting in with the catastrofemale/she's unwell genre of main characters. A failed actress now working at a bakery, she's obsessed with the idea of success that both her NYU friends and former private middle school friends seem to have. She's bitter, jealous, and unmotivated.

Meeting Bryce allows El to enter the world of the wealthy, though with the tradeoff that her new beau is certainly a loner with control problems. Her codependency - largely portrayed through a forced thematic focus on dogs as loyal companions slowly rewilding - allows her to initially ignore her suspicions of him.

As a story about a lonely woman finding her place in the world, this is mid. Fans of the unhinged woman genre will find at least something they like in this book. As a thriller, which picks up about halfway through the book, this is overly obvious (not to give spoilers, but the book description literally compares this to The Talented Mr. Ripley so you know exactly where the thriller component is headed). The writing was uneven: some paragraphs overwritten, others seemingly unedited. There are too many side characters that don't necessarily add to the story - did we really need a subplot about friends trying to save the local restaurant? And the ending was disappointing at best. However, I'd still call the experience of reading this pretty fun.

While I found plenty of elements unsatisfying, there is clearly a lot of promise in Alana B. Lytle's future work. Should she release a sophomore novel, I would happily give it a shot.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the e-arc.

Novels steeped in the toxicity of love are often breeding grounds for all sorts of unsettling feelings, and make for tense, thought-provoking reads. I love a relationship gone all wrong, so I knew that Alana B. Lytle’s debut, Man’s Best Friend, would be a book I would find intriguing.

Featuring the lives of the rich and aimless, Man’s Best Friend follows El, a failed actress, who jumps at the opportunity to get involved with Bryce, who just happens to belong to a wealthy and prominent family. Bryce (who is not particularly El’s type, but will do) opens doors for El, showing her a world that she has only caught glimpses of while hanging out with her (also wealthy) kind-of-sort-of best friends. As El discards more and more pieces of her life in favor of what Bryce has to offer, she isolates herself from everything and everyone that makes her who she is. As time goes on, El begins to wonder if she can truly trust Bryce … or is there something much more nefarious at play here?

Man’s Best Friend gives off major Tell Me Lies (a la Carola Lovering) vibes, and having loved that novel, I was excited about this book too. For the most part, Man’s Best Friend holds up, showcasing how women often lose themselves to codependency in toxic relationships, putting their entire heart and soul into men who will ultimately destroy them. On the other hand, Lytle (fun fact - the author is President Joe Biden’s niece!) doesn’t push the toxicity of this relationship quite far enough for me. Things between Bryce and El stay on fairly solid ground, although major trust issues are at play. While Bryce is no doubt a liar and manipulator, the book focuses more on how those traits manifested in his past relationships and obsessions, rather than in his current one with El.

Regardless, I still felt compelled to keep turning the pages of this dark and ominous read. Filled with characters you will love to hate, Man’s Best Friend exposes the scary side of love … or is it just obsession?

Recommended to fans of Tell Me Lies and You.

The premise of this book was very interesting to me, but unfortunately it didn't work for me, more of character study than a thriller and some weird and confusing turns that didn't help move the story on. Really wanted to like it but did struggle to finish it

2.5 stars ⭐️

I received this book as an arc so I wanna start off by thanking both the author and publishers for letting me read it early. I thought it was interesting, I like how the character isn't supposed to be likable, it's fun to read different things in their pov's.

Some of the writing/things going on reminded me of 'Less than Zero' (just in the sense of partying and how the friends treat each other) I didn't like that book but I think this one was done better and actually had some substance.

I think it would be cool if the book had some more suspense. I don't wanna spoil anything but I would of liked some build-up.

One last thing but I didn't really like Bryce, he was clingy and honestly sad (which honestly might be the point) but he has money so tbh you go girl!

Despite being a few years younger than the protagonist, I understood her aimlessness. Life is complicated, and most of us have no idea where we’re going, especially those of us who weren’t born into wealth. However, I feel the description of the book does not fit the actual plot. I went in expecting a thriller and mostly got a character study. I enjoy character studies, of course, but you can’t promise me surreal and then not deliver. Nothing particularly strange happens, with Bryce or anyone/anything else, until over halfway through the book. At this point in both my life and my literary journey, I’m used to male shenanigans, so none of his prior red flags fazed me. In addition, El’s ending felt like it came out of nowhere, and I didn’t understand how her back-and-forth character development throughout the book led to that point.

Nothing in the book gripped me, and I found that the plot began to lose me towards the end. I found myself more excited to finally finish it and be able to read something else than to see how the story ended.

Man's Best Friend was a book that really hits home when you feel as though you are striving to achieve something and missing the step. It's a very poignant book for anyone who has ever struggled in NYC, toggling between who you are and who you want to be. Moreso, what you're willing to do to get where you want to go.

Ok so I really struggled with this book. It was confusing and all the characters were not likable. & the FMC was annoying imo. She’s the narrator so that was a huge meh for me.

The plot points that focused on dogs….why? It’s confusing and throws everything off so much. I don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong I love the dog/owner relationship but it didn’t make sense the way it’s brought up and done here and takes away from the book.

This was a 2.5 star book but I rounded up. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Man's Best Friend in exchange for an honest review.

Maybe a controversial take but I LOVE me a mean, bitter, directionless protagonist. A late-twenties working class New Yorker who has recently given up on a career in acting, El's resentment towards life and her fabulously wealthy friends is never not simmering near the surface. She is scathing in her internal assessment of the world and the people in her life, slowly losing friends as she succumbs to the "love-bombing" of an unsettling man in her new relationship.

It is nice to follow noble protagonists, and certainly much easier to root for and sympathize with their actions. However, there is something refreshing and cathartic getting to watch someone heedlessly pursue their worse impulses, a character archetype which is easy to dislike but ironically honest in their uncompromising assessment of an unjust world (see Emma Cline's The Guest for another example of this done slightly more expertly).. Very few, if any, characters in this book do not contain severe and uncomfortable flaws. I was especially compelled by Lytle's commentary on virtue signaling and the hypocrisy of the elite throughout he characters of El's NYU classmates and former friends.

I was also not expecting this to take a sharp turn into thriller territory: minding spoilers but I enjoyed slowly starting to piece together what was going on with Bryce and his obsessive love of El. Lytle did a good job of capturing the dangers of ignoring small red flags early on in relationships, and the snowball effect of desperation leading to ignorance and ultimately passive acceptance. The book lost a few stars for me on account of a heavy & ultimately clumsy dog metaphor (see title) that never really landed and felt out of place whenever it was shoehorned into the story: I understand what the author was getting at but it never felt subtle enough to be meaningful and the inclusion of the few chapters from dog(?) perspective could easily have been taken out.

usually i love insufferable main characters but they have to be done in a way that moshfegh does it... this fell flat for me and was not as enjoyable as i would have hoped for.

This was a pretty quick read but I had mixed feelings about it. Bryce really didn’t seem that bad and a lot of El’s responses to his behavior didn’t seem to fit the situation. El isn’t really a likable character but you also don’t hate her. She’s just a little bit boring. Her personal felt confusing - she was supposed to be the sad single 30 year old who gave up her dream of being an actor but was also described as confident and independent. It felt contradictory. The introduction of her 2 sets of friends from college and middle school didn’t really flow and felt clunky. The parts about her dreams weren’t necessary and the ending gave you nothing.

El was insufferable. I get that was probably the point, but it made this book extremely unenjoyable. Quite an anticlimactic ending. Felt unsatisfying

Man's Best Friend does the unlikable main character trope right - I'm relieved I'm not friends with this girl, but her POV was engaging and reasonably understandable even in her most brutal moments. El has what feels like a terminal case of Millennial Drifting Through Life With No Purpose Disease with a side of Are The Straights Okay?! but I also don't NOT relate to her whole vibe as I've also given up careerist dreams without replacing them with anything else in particular.

The mystery/thriller aspect of this book is really what shines as El goes down the rabbit hole to find out exactly what the hell is wrong with her new boyfriend even as she entwines herself further and further into his life. It was refreshing to read a book in this genre without the typical domestic thriller protagonist (woman, married to some guy, has a couple kids, somehow younger than me despite acting like what I think "middle-aged" is supposed to mean), and I appreciated that El got to just kind of suck at life even as you root for her to somehow win this one. I'll pop a couple spoilers in my Goodreads review since I can't tag them here, but overall I found this a satisfying read and I was happy to see something like this done differently than usual.

My thanks to Penguin Group Putnam and NetGalley for the ARC.

I really wanted to like this, on the premise alone. Unfortunately, the execution fell a little flat. The story begins with a snippet from the perspective of a dog, running away. Though that did end up coming full circle, every time this cropped up, I felt a little removed from the story being told. Ultimately, the narrator, as well as the surrounding characters, weren't ones I could enjoy spending time with. Everyone felt like a less fleshed out version of someone from Gossip Girl.
I really appreciate the opportunity and hope this book finds its readers!

I didn't think this book was for me. I couldn't connect and didn't like the writing style. El ignored too many red flags for me.

I enjoyed this book but thought at times the author was really stretching to make the title of Man's Best Friend relevant to the story at all. The entire plot about dogs running away was silly, didn't fit in and should have been scraped. If that piece had been gone, it would have been what it was, a just fine thriller.
Honestly, I was hoping it was going to go really dark and have someone being kept as a dog but I am a horror reader so that would have made this book stand out.

I was initially confused when I started to read Man's Best Friend, the start of the book starts in the midwest and the perspective is from a dogs point of view. The story is about a fail actress and her desire to go from rags to riches. Throughout the story dogs are loosely tied in and towards the end of the story it comes full circle, but it was very loose.

I really struggled with this book. We follow El, who went to NYU to study acting but now that she's hit 30 she has given up, as she isn't landing any roles. She seems to spend most of her time being jealous of her friends for being more wealthy and successful than she is. Then, at her friend Julia's party, she meets Bryce and her life takes a turn.

A large part of why I didn't like this book is because El is so unlikeable as a character, so if you're fine with unlikeable narrators you may enjoy this book more than I did. El is just kind of floating through life, defining herself entirely based on the people she's around. She's a terrible friend, and doesn't take accountability for it. When it came to the more thriller-ey aspects of the book I really should have been more concerned for her welfare, but I didn't care enough about her as a character to be concerned.

Like I said, if you're a fan of an unlikeable protagonist you'll probably enjoy this book a lot more than I did, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

This was such a great, suspenseful thriller! I couldn't put this book down and I would love to read more by this author. You'll never guess the twist at the end!

I really thought I was going to enjoy this when I started. However, as the story continued, I stopped. The story line was just a little confusing and wasn’t at all what I thought going into it from the description. The MC was not at all relatable and I found her to be a little whiny. And they way it ended kinda left me with a bad feeling, like I needed to shower.