Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley

Cult Classic Reviews

• 
  Sloane Crosley

  Cult Classic features clear font, modest margins and straight lines (zero wobbles). I found it to be a smooth reading experience and hope you’ll feel the same.
• 
  Rachel the Page-Turner

  This is such a strange book. I liked it, but I didn’t. I was interested in it, but I wasn’t. I thought the plot was cool, but I also thought there wasn’t much of a plot. I enjoyed the writing style, but I also found it a bit young and pretentious. How to begin reviewing this one?!
  
  Lola is a young hipster in Manhattan, and she has a never-ending string of ex-boyfriends that she keeps running into. Soon, she realizes this isn’t fate, it isn’t destiny - it was all a plan set up by her friend Clive, who has seemingly started a cult. Don’t call it a cult! It’s kind of a cult. Is it a cult?
  
  She eventually realizes that she’s meeting all of these exes for a reason: to get closure. Lola is engaged now, but she’s not sure if the man is really the one for her, or if it’s just a relationship of convenience. Seeing her past relationships gets her wondering why she hated some of them, why she liked some of them, and why she ended it with all of them.
  
  Written in a surrealist manner, this book flips you around and leaves you wondering what all of this is for … and you get your answer, with a very abrupt ending. Overall, this was decent, but I think it just wasn’t for me, thus the three-star rating. It felt like it was for a younger, hipper audience than me, but you may find that it blows your mind.
  
  (Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sloane Crowley, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.)
• 
  emma

  I felt drawn to this book by The Universe.
  
  Somehow I had never heard of Sloane Crosley to this point, even though she's a bestselling author, a magazine writer, and the kind of witty New York-based person with a Twitter account I make it my business to be aware of.
  
  But it made stumbling across this book - when stalking the Goodreads profile of a stranger I found vaguely cool, one of my favorite activities - all the more serendipitous.
  
  The sheer mystery of how much I wanted to read it based off of so little information must have transferred to my perception of it, because for some reason I thought this was more Experimental Lit Fic than Cool Contemporary. Did I want it to be the former? Yes. But when I took it for what it was I really enjoyed it, so.
  
  Maybe the lesson is for me to stop being the kind of difficult brat only found in rich little girls from the 19th century.
  
  And it was genre-bending anyway! And very funny. And thoughtful enough continually that I had to really take my time (a nightmare/dream for me, a speed reader who also wants to actively feel her brain getting bigger).
  
  Modern dating really sucks!!! It deserves this kind of semi-spooky magicky mystery making fun of it. Relatedly I both fear I am our main character and badly want to be her.
  
  Kind of a choose your own adventure in that way.
  
  The only real complaint I have is this: This kind of "and then he was dead" ending is supremely corny, but I loved the last few paragraphs of this.
  
  And you all know how I feel about a good ending. I black out everything else entirely.
  
  But the other stuff was good even still.
  
  Bottom line: A win for the universe!!! And more importantly, me.
  
  ----------------------
  pre-review
  
  the real nightmare was the relationships we made along the way.
  
  review to come / 3.5 or 4 stars
  
  ----------------------
  tbr review
  
  i feel drawn to this book by The Universe.
  
  so it'll be really awkward if i don't like it.
  
  (thanks to netgalley for the e-arc)
• 
  Angie Kim

  UPDATE: I was right--I ended up loving the rest of the book, which I listened to on audiobook (HIGHLY recommended, as it's read by Sloane Crosley herself, and she's very funny in a dry-wit kind of way). The story/plot was very strange (I mean that in the best possible way), a satiric interrogation of new-age + tech(ish) business models, combined with a journey through Lola's past relationships and hook-ups (of which there were MANY). There are so many sentences that made me laugh out loud but also think. Many insights about relationships, city life, modern dating, and friendships. The story itself lost a bit of its steam for me by the end, but the humor and insights kept going all the way to the end, which, to me, is what mattered for this book.
  *******
  OMG I LOVE SLOANE CROSLEY AND I'M SO EXCITED!!!!! I just started reading today, but I'm giving it 5 stars based on (1) how excited I am, (2) how intriguing the first page was that I simply had to keep reading and reading and reading...until I realized I was late for a zoom AND I burned my lunch, and (3) how much I loved the first chapters I read. If the rest of the book makes me laugh and think half as much as the beginning, this will be an easy 5+ stars from me!
• 
  Dr. K

  It's not me, it's you and all your exes.
  
  I'm not the right audience for this book but I thought I was. The title and opening had me so excited and led me to thinking this was one kind of book when it's actually another. And what it is is not something I really care for.
  
  80% of this book focuses on Lola, our narrator, interacting with an ex and rehashing their relationship. And each relationship was, to me, painfully mundane. They bled into each other and lacked substance. The narration was also focused on being witty and emotionally detached and making witty comments about the emotional detachment which was...not my scene. I don't find lukewarm apathy towards people in my life very relatable, which is largely why this book drove me up the wall. The other 20% focuses on some cult stuff that's really more of a loosely sci-fi esque wellness center and is otherwise remarkably bland. I couldn't help but picture a Scientology spa.
  
  That said, I will recommend it for a specific audience. If you think it would be cathartic to go through a roster of mediocre Tinder dates from the perspective of a mid-30 year old New Yorker, then this is the book for you. But, to me, reading this felt like being cornered at a party by someone I didn't want to talk to.
  
  More thoughts here:
  https://youtu.be/-s8LI8RxP7c
• 
  Debbie

  Ex-boyfriends. A cult. Hm…
  
  Wouldn’t it be fun to run into your exes, one by one? OMG, he’s going bald? Do I still want to jump his bones? Or gawd, what the hell did I ever see in him? These are no doubt the questions that Lola, the young heroine of this bizarro gem, has going through her head as she runs into each of her exes. Ha, those questions sound all People magazine-y, when really, that’s not the vibe going on in this book. Lola’s thoughts go a lot deeper; it’s not just surface things she notices.
  
  This book is original, complex, witty, and pretty amazing. The blurb says it’s a “masterfully crafted tale of love, memory, morality, and mind control, as well as a fresh foray into the philosophy of romance.” The blurb nails it! That description is way better than anything I could come up with! It’s a jumble of genres—magical realism, drama, thriller, rom-com. Add a cult with an odd plan and you have yourself one strange story.
  
  The book has two things going on: Lola running into old boyfriends, and Lola dealing with a cult. It sounds like a weird combo, I know. What can meeting exes possibly have to do with a cult? Believe me, it’s clever. Both plots had me riveted, and I couldn’t put the book down.
  
  I used to not like magical realism but that’s ancient history; more and more I’m liking it. (Gawd, maybe I’m having an identity crisis?) Here, it’s very original, and I loved the otherworldly parts of the book. I especially liked the descriptions of the building where the cult lived, which is weird because the description part of a book is usually my least favorite thing.
  
  Two complaints, though. One, the language is so rich and sophisticated, it’s sometimes too much, and it gives off an abstract vibe. I had to stop, start, stop, start, while reading (I had to reread sentences a lot). It wasn’t a smooth ride. Every sentence was carefully sculpted, the insights so many, but sometimes I got frustrated and wanted the writer to lower the comprehension level just a little. I had to be on my toes, and occasionally it seemed like too much work. It’s strange, because sometimes I didn’t have a reading stutter. I can’t figure out whether at those times the writing was more accessible, or whether at those times my brain was working a little better for some reason. I don’t think other readers will find themselves stuttering; I think it’s operator error here.
  
  My second complaint is that I wanted the exes to stick around so I could get to know them better; it was character interruptus. Their profiles were wonderful; detailed and luscious. But the boyfriends were here one minute, gone the next. The author did a fantastic job of giving us the exes’ essence (try saying that three times!), but I felt like she didn’t know how to put them together into a novel. Each was a stand-alone; perfect meat for a short story. There needed to be more interactions. Because each ex wasn’t around for long, there wasn’t a chance I’d keep them straight. Luckily, they weren’t mentioned much, if at all, after the meeting, so I didn’t have that additional brain strain.
  
  I picked this book up because I had read half of Crosley’s
  I Was Told There'd Be Cake: Essays long ago, and I remember liking it (so why didn’t I finish it? LOL. Only my subconscious knows for sure). Based only on a half-finished book I read long ago and couldn’t remember, I hit the Request button on Edelweiss. Okay, well, yeah, the blurb did make the book sound intriguing, but still it was risky behavior. But I scored, yahoo!
  
  Oh, this is one good read! Check it out!
  
  Thanks to Edelweiss for the advance copy.
• 
  Sarah

  I'm not sure what I just read. Aside from a handful of very, very clever and unique one-liners, I found this book cumbersome, the protagonist tiring and unlikable, and every single character to be predictable, one-dimensional and common: caricatures of in-vogue, cynical New Yorkers looking for love. I guess the concept was pretty original, but could've done with fewer quips and a bit more heart. Being unable to sympathize with protagonist and even identify one character to root for made it hard to appreciate this as the sort of bizarre, fresh, 21st century rom-com that I think it was trying to be. I understand the whole thing was meant to poke fun at today's dating world, as well as how much equal weight we put on both AI/machine learning and, say, sage-burning and crystals, but I still think it could've made us CARE about the characters a bit more.
• 
  Fitz

  I am halfway through and loving Cult Classic. Crosley's eye for detail and suspense are two things you don't normally see much of together. I keep coming back to Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, plot-wise, though this is much more real and urban and less depressing. Like what Severance is to Station Eleven. I will say that there are a lot of insider New York refs, though that seems to be intentional. For the most part, I got them via context but on occasion I was left out in the cold by them but thus far I am most drawn to a) the humor [I laughed out loud, alone, in my car, multiple times] and b) the sneaky polemics on romance which are universal. Just this novel is super specific in parts. Mostly it's just a really really smart read that's keeping the ball in the air an keeping me entertained!! Thanks NetGalley for the early read.
• 
  Sunny

  A bit of a slay. Maybe 4.5
• 
  jenny✨

  not the book for me!
  
  i was intrigued by the premise of cult classic and really wanted to give sloane crosley's writing a shot, since i've always meant to. unfortunately, i found this novel dreadfully boring; a decent chunk of the story went over my head, while the remaining bits felt pretentious and dry. other readers seem to have really enjoyed cult classic though, so i'd encourage folks to read those reviews too.
  
  thanks for buddy reading with me,
  sheena 💜
• 
  Meike

  What a witty romp: 37-year-old Lola, our narrator, is about to get married, but she doubts whether Boots is really the man she wants to spend her life with - from this romantic trope, Crosley extrapolates an over-the-top fantastical story in which our protagonist keeps on bumping into former boyfriends. Witnessing the insanity are Lola's former co-workers from "Modern Psychology", a prestigious periodical (so Lola claims; the articles she later mentions seem to have been less-than-reputable) that, amidst the crisis in print journalism, had to be shut down. While Lola is now working for Radio New York, a website compiling arts and culture news and a pet project of a venture capitalist (media criticism! after all, Crosely is a print journalist), her former boss Clive has become some kind of rich alternative psychology guru - does he have anything to do with Lola suddenly meeting a whole string of former lovers?
  
  While the backstory that details the mystery of what's behind our protagonist's maybe-not-ro-random sightings of exes is clearly not meant to be believable and only mildly interesting (although it does dish out some points about
  The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power and new age hysteria reminiscent of the alternative facts hype gang), the real star of the book are the numerous vignettes in which Lola interacts with her exes and ponders relationships. Lola has dated quite a lot of very different guys, and the backstories, often told in a funny tone (even if they're not funny in themselves) are just a pleasure to read. Lola is an unrealiable narrator, but she is open about her human flaws, which makes her quips and misadventures entertaining.
  
  "Romance may be the world's oldest cult." - the novel states at some point, and yes, Crosley works with familiar ideas, but twists them. "Love leaves a neurological footprint. A search history of the soul." - and this is the more serious core of the text: What does our relationship history say about us in the course of time, and what does it accumulate to?
  
  I had lots of fun reading this book, and I want to see it nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction.
• 
  Maria

  I didn't read the synopsis before diving in and was pleasantly surprised to find this book to be a romantic Christmas Carol with I ♡ Huckabees vibes.
  
  Can you imagine being able to do feedback sessions/exit interviews with all your exs years later after emotions have died down? It's like an overanalyzers dream.
• 
  Avery

  the self-hating, irony-poisoned millennial narrator made this extremely difficult to get through 😭
• 
  Sheena

  I don’t get the hype. I was bored to death ☠️
• 
  Bandit

  I’m just really into cults. Theoretically, that is. The subject fascinates me. In fact, put a word cult in the title or a description of a novel and I’m there. So, that was the main attractor with this book. I’ve heard of the author before but haven’t read any of her work, she seems to oscillate between fiction and nonfiction and, going by the quality of the writing in this book, probably does so excellently.
  This novel for me turned out to be one of those things where you can really appreciate something intellectually without engaging with it emotionally all the way. Which is somewhat ironic, because the book is all about emotions, specifically of the romantic persuasion.
  Its protagonist, a 37-year-old woman named Lola (Lo lo lo lo lola) who after a lifetime of fairly aggressive dating and equally aggressive obsessing over her exes might finally be ready to settle down with a nice tall man named Boots who adores her. The question is does she return his affections or is it just, indeed, settling? Lola’s much too addled to decide, her cupidity for cupid’s arrows has rendered her an indecisive mess. She’s a fun (and glibly funny) mess, but a mess all the way. If only there was some way to help her…oh, wait…
  There is, there absolutely is. A cult (which of course doesn’t want to be known as that) lead by her former boss (a once upon a time respectable publisher of Modern Psychology turned a once upon a time tv shrink personality turned into…no one of notice), a cult dedicated to assisting people in getting past their relationship trauma and PTSD by helping them confront their exes. There’s actually a complicatedly ludicrous new agey way in which they go about accomplishing that by concentrating their mental powers, etc. but we won’t go into that.
  Instead, we can focus on Lola, much like the cultists do, since this is very much the Lola show. Lola starts coming across her exes, in a succession most would find alarming, and reevaluating her past relationships, obsessions and motivations. It’s all quirky and kinda sorta charming and oh so quintessentially New York and yet it is much too clever to be dismissed as a romcom or chicklit or some such crap.
  For Croskey is such a clever writer. The way she turns out sentences sparkles. I read them and wish/dream of doing the same. Her characters are giving such terrific dialogue lines, they spar and joust with verve and panache and snappy pop (and otherwise) culture references that would make a Gilmore Girl swoon. And yet for all of that cleverness, they come across as superficial. Or maybe not superficial per se, but not entirely relatable or likeable, staunchly maintaining emotional distance. Maybe it’s because they are such stereotypical New Yorkers, the kind of people that overthink going to the same trendy restaurant two days in a row. Maybe it’s because they are so hopelessly self-involved. Maybe it’s because they are so thoroughly buttered in first world privilege.
  At any rate, they read like slick glib clichés, albeit darkly humorous and clever. So, while intellectually I was so into this book, emotional engagement just wasn’t there. The only character I kinda sorta enjoyed was Boots, the guileless steadfast Boots, who as it turns out has a surprise of his own to reveal.
  Is cleverness enough to win the day? Well, yes. It certainly beats the alternatives. I’ll take a smart emotionally distant book over a twee schmaltzy heartwarming tale any day, but it does leave something to be desired. Maybe it’s just the millennialism of it all (the characters are on the very end of that spectrum), maybe it was the tedium of their inherent NewYorkness.
  Nevertheless, this was original, smart, funny, very well written and a most auspicious introduction to the author. Plus, there was a cult. And a very good ending. Not a classic, but pretty good. Thanks Netgalley.
  
• 
  Sophie Wood

  this is one of the best book endings i have ever read. i was audibly gasping through the last ~40 pages. without giving too much away (because i hate reviews that have spoilers) it gives you the feeling of “?!” but also the feeling of satisfaction.
  
  FURTHERMORE — this book is just hilarious. i love sloane’s writing style, and i will be stealing some of the jokes made in this book as my own so that i can make men feel small and inferior 😚🫰
  
  so ya. go read this book when it comes out
• 
  daniella ❀

  i need a movie adaptation of this
• 
  Natalie Saar

  I"m a longtime fan of Sloane Crosley, so I was thrilled to get the opportunity to read "Cult Classic." It did not disappoint, and I think may be Crosley's best book yet. "Cult Classic" follows the story of Lola, who is engaged to Boots but isn't really sure about their relationship. It starts out like a fun, easy read then takes a quick turn into uncharted waters. The story is wholly original, with an ending I never saw coming. But what makes this book shine is Crosley's witty, quick style that brings humor to even the least funny situations.
• 
  Anya

  I could read 1000 pages of Sloane Crosley complaining about men from NYC
• 
  Piper

  I was so into Cult Classic when I started reading it because it was so funny & just the kind of fast-paced literary fiction I have gravitated to in recent years but I could not have predicted the turn it took and yet it wasn't sharp. The spinoff into something more MAGICAL came really naturally with a very rewarding ending that I did not see coming. It's a comic novel (there were times I thought "this could never ever happen") but I gulped up every page. This novel is like an upbeat quirky version of My Year of Rest And Relaxation.
  
  Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of Cult Classic in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
• 
  Roman Clodia

  This is that smart book which is also fun, a bit kooky, and easy to read that I always want to take on holiday. Lola's voice is witty and sharp in that distinctively NY way, and the dissection of modern dating is irresistible, and not in a chic lit-y way. In fact, the ideas about closure and the baggage of relationships give this some depth without compromising on the wackiness - overall, cool and exuberant.
  
  Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
• 
  Brenna Sherrill

  Cult Classic is somehow the kind of book that has both too much and not enough story to tell. When starting this on audio, I had to listen to the prologue twice because it felt like an important bit of world-building that I wouldn’t want to miss out on. In the end, I’m not sure how that prologue was actually related at all to the rest of the story, which is pretty indicative of my reading experience.
  
  This semi-magical-realism-or-is-it-just-coincidence-or-maybe-mysticism? situation that Lola finds herself in when she keeps running into exes in the same place is interesting at first, but I think the explanation for why it’s happening comes too late in the book—or maybe it was too early? I just wasn’t getting it, or at least not getting anything from it. These brief interactions felt like lots of scenes Crosley could’ve developed into full stories of their own, but chose not to, and I found that an unfulfilling reading experience.
  
  As I write this, I’m realizing my problem with this novel is very sixth grade, because it feels like a show-don’t-tell situation. Lola tells us about people who have been important in her life, Clive in particular, but I never saw or bought it. This is why I say the book is too much—I think there’s a lot left underdeveloped, but it’s also too little in that it feels like nothing is happening. Not an ideal takeaway.
• 
  Brandice

  In Cult Classic Lola is out to dinner with former coworkers one night in NYC when she steps outside for a cigarette and runs into an ex-boyfriend. Then, shortly after, she runs into another ex, then another and another — “A” run-in may be coincidental, but several run-ins are not.
  
  Lola tries to grapple with what exactly is going on — She’s currently engaged to a nice, normal guy, has a dramatic best friend, and continues to be annoyed by her ex boss, who many people seem to have put on a pedestal.
  
  Cult Classic is odd, different, and kind of confusing at times. I legitimately wasn’t sure what was going on for the first 50ish pages. Yet it also kept me intrigued — The writing was smart, with humor. I needed to know what was going on and how things would play out!
• 
  Myla Berns

  This book looked straight into my soul. SO good.
• 
  Trista

  I’m changing my rating of this book from 3 to 1 star because thinking about it makes me mad.
• 
  AcademicEditor

  There are very few authors who get to jump the queue in my TBR. There are very few books I'll round up a 4.5 to a 5 star rating for. But Sloane Crosley is that writer for me.
  
  The premise was interesting--is the protagonist, a late-30s New Yorker, just having cold feet about getting married whilst running into ex-boyfriends around town, or has her charismatic ex-boss actually started a cult with her as its test case? Lola is avoidant by nature, which I totally relate to, but it did feel a little strange how little we learned about her family of origin or non-work friends in the context of her troubled relationship history. Not to give too much away, but I was actually surprised by the ending--I had fallen for the 11th hour red herring, and thus was not seeing the forest for the trees. However, there were some threads that were not tied up (what about the ring and the shelf that fell down? Were there no consequences at work for Lola's downward spiral?), so as noted above, this is a 4.5-star read for me.
  
  There are some stunningly beautiful passages--I was highlighting away on Kindle. I'll leave you with just this one:
  "My worries were more abstract yet more pernicious. I worried about the betrayal of memory and belief. I worried my former love life was a bomb waiting to go off or, worse, that it would never go off. That I would wake one day, having buried the past so well I’d find myself unrecognizable, having moved to a city I hated, slowly losing touch with my friends, then with the culture at large, until the only books I read were the ones I read about in nail salons, the only art I knew was presented to me through my phone, and the only plays I saw were the ones that had been adapted for the screen. And I’d have to pretend there was nothing wrong with this because there was nothing wrong with this. Not for that version of me. But is this what all my romantic dramas had been for, their natural conclusion? A life of palliative television?"
  
  Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
• 
  Claudia

  I seriously need someone to help me pull my thoughts together on this one. This was such a wild experience of witty, funny, off-the-wall, and surprising emotional depth wrapped in a story with unlikable main characters that you still hoped would figure their issues out but with very little hope they really would.
  
  Cult Classic follows a woman who is surprised to see her ex-boyfriend. Then surprised to see another. And another. Eventually she finds out that there may be a reason and its…weird. For her and us.
  
  A modern day Christmas Carol if Scrooge was a serial dater and commitment-phobe and Jacob Marley was a cult leader, confronting a series of ex-boyfriends, lovers, etc. in order to maybe finally settle down.
  
  The writing is sharp and witty with almost constant barbs and banter that almost bury the deep and philosophical that comes in between. I found myself wanting to highlight passages which is a struggle in the audio format. I think I may need to purchase a physical copy to be able to peruse and sparse out my favorite parts.
  
  Our main character comes especially prepared with comedy that will make you laugh but also realize that they keep you at a distance from ever really getting to know her. Which felt like the point since she wasn’t allowing anyone to really get close to her. It makes it feel intentional that she isn’t easy to like in a super interesting way.
  
  I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending but I feel like I will be thinking about it all for a long time and that I would probably re-read in a heartbeat.
  
  I would compare this to the style of My Year of Rest and Relaxation. So if you like Moshfegh this might be for you (and similarly if you hate it, then its probably not).
  
  Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for a copy of this audiobook. The book was narrated by the author who did an ok job, but could have made character voices a little more distinct as some scenes with a lot of back and forth got kind of confusing on who was talking.
  
• 
  Olivia (Stories For Coffee)

  What started out as an enigmatic read exposing the horrors of romantic relationships that weigh on your shoulders as you progress through this world eventually dissolved into a story that didn’t necessarily hold my attention.
  
  The climax of the story was set too far down the line enough to leave an impact, and the ending wrapped up in a way that was lacking.
  
  An interesting premise that left me wanting more or a different route altogether.
• 
  Jessi Collier Wakefield

  No thank you. There is just waaaaay to much pretension, even the ironic type for me. This is not my world and I have no desire to to be there. Just not for me.