This book is a collaborative novel with extracts and writing from several well-known authors, although you don’t find out until the end of the book who contributed and wrote to each chapter. The story follows an apartment building and its occupants in New York throughout the Covid pandemic in 2020. Each occupant of the apartment building tells a story when they meet on the rooftop every evening, covering stories about love, loss and ghosts.

I didn’t really know what to expect from this as I’ve never read a collaborative novel with so many different authors and different writing styles but this book was excellently written and very fluid throughout.

Some chapters were easier to read and follow than others and there were a few chapters where I lost interest because the story was a bit harder to work out.

The ending was completely unexpected and really very interesting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Books for the eARC of this book.

I'm not a short story fan, but the idea of a collaborative novel set during lockdown intrigued me. There are so many well known writers involved with this and what I liked was that as you read you do not know who is writing which section. It is not set out as a collection of short stories, what we have is an apartment block at the start of lockdown in New York and our main character - I suppose - is the superintendent of the block. Every evening she and some of those who live in the block gather on the rooftop to cheer for the health workers and then they tell stories, some about their own lives and so just stories. The chapters are headed Day One, Day Two etc and each day/evening sees these people gather to cheer and tell stories and argue between themselves. For me this did not read like a short story collection, it was more a chance to sit and watch and listen to a group of people - which is what our superintendent does, as she sits with her thermos of alcohol recording not only the stories beng told but the numbers of cases and deaths. This is a sobering reminder of a period that we all lived through and although not everyone of the residents stories grabbed my attention, the residents themselves as I came to know them over the fourteen days did. An original idea. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for kindly providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited by this book but it struggled to hold my attention. It started off well but some of the stories weren’t as interesting and I felt myself drifting off, and then it was hard to get back in.

Parts of this were compelling but it overall, it fell flat for me. I just felt like my attention was waining for most of it.

So many great authors here! It was great to be able to read their work but also to see the impact on lockdown on storytelling and see the world we lived through be explored in fiction.

I was excited to get my hands on Fourteen Days but I did find it a bit of an uneven reading experience. I enjoyed the parts with the main character and her relationship with her father more than some of the other stories which I found harder to sustain my interest but maybe that is to be expected from a collaborative effort.

I loveeeeed this at first, I found all the stories and characters so incredibly interesting. I also really liked the writing style, and not knowing which author was responsible for which chapter. However, the middle of the book started to drag a little and I found myself skim reading here and there because I was more interested in the present day characters than their pasts. The ending saved the book for me, I won’t spoil it but I think this encapsulates the pandemic incredibly well and felt almost like a time capsule.

A book like this, written by a number of excellent authors, was only ever going to go two ways - a masterpiece or a disjointed mess

Thankfully, for me, it was the former and not the latter. Whilst some people may not enjoy reading about COVID, lockdown etc. I really enjoyed this novel in its ambition and execution

Wow what a fantastic book with some amazing authors.

Completely different to anything I’ve read before but really enjoyable.

It begins one week into lockdown in New York and is a sobering reminder of what life what like a few years ago. A powerful story .

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK,Vintage for an advance copy in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I should have listened to my inner voice that reminded me I don't really get on with short stories, and not be swayed by the names , ALL the names.
Such a superbly brilliant idea... and there were times I thought this was more than living up to its promise... but at times it just felt disjointed to me.
Clever, original and somewhat entertaining non the less.

This time round, I think it might just be me.