I think this novel would have worked better as a Twitter account.

Settle down, that’s not an insult! I love Twitter. I love comedy on Twitter. I love “weird twitter.” I love how well exaggeration works when you’re limited in other ways, say, to 140 characters. This novel is weird and full of exaggerations. It’s funny. But at 150 pages (in the ARC, anyway) it felt a little thin.

There are a couple of reasons I had Twitter in mind while reading this book:

• The author was profiled by University of Windsor and mentions that she’s writing a novel “which will “ravenously consume a variety of forms inherent in web-based composition in an attempt to capture the experience of living and reading in the digital world.” This piqued my interest, because a pet peeve of mine is when contemporary stories either ignore digital communications or create improbably situations to avoid dealing with them.
• Twitter is mentioned a few times in a book, but more generally, Adams plays with different narrative forms, like memoir, stand-up comedy, self-help, and choose-your-own-adventure. Taken together, it’s kind of satirizing what Twitter is today. Think about those “Twitter personality” people, you know, the ones with thousands of followers and dozens of tweets per day. They probably embody those types of writing too.
• You can easily dip in and out of this book, but you’ll want to keep going. It’s kind of like finding a Twitter account that’s all gold, so you go to their page and read all their tweets from the past six months in one sitting.

The story is reminiscent of Ali Bryan’s Roost: a bereaved single mother deals with the ridiculousness of parenthood and eventually gets their shit together. But where Bryan balanced the laughs with many poignant and uncomfortable moments, Adams stays closer to the slapstick side of things. I was left wanting more about the relationships – more about Carrie’s mom, her boyfriend, and her daughter. Not that I minded being in Carrie’s head, I quite enjoyed her cynicism and off-kilter humour, but I wasn’t that invested in her.

If you’re a regular reader here, you know that my genre kryptonite (TM Book Riot) is teen pregnancy.  I appreciate stories that reminds us that there are more than three possible outcomes (1. Abortion 2. Adoption 3. Give up your dreams and become a mom.) Carrie’s mother plays a very active role in raising her granddaughter, allowing Carrie to be both a mom and a typical University student all at once. Carrie’s breakdown probably has something to do with Carrie trying to integrate her outward and “teenage mom” selves and failing without the bridge her mom provided.

I had a hard time rating this book. I liked it, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it because I don’t think a traditional novel was the best vehicle for what Adams wanted to say. I got nothing against novellas (I dedicate a whole month to them!) but this book is marketed and priced as a novel, and it wasn’t quite what I expected. I easily read it in a day. The book was featured on TLC blog tours, and the reviews are very interesting – some readers “get it” right away and love it, and some hate it. I’m somewhere in between.

When I say this book could have worked as (or with) a Twitter account, here are some examples of what I mean. Please follow all these women immediately, and give this book a try, too. Let me know what you think.

@MortimusGerbil for the absurdity of parenting:

@officialbuup for the absuridity of working in an office:

@smickable for the absurdity of dating among other things:

Things You’ve Inherited From Your Mother by Hollie Adams is published by NeWest Press, who kindly gave me a copy to review. It’s available now. Check it out on Goodreads.