fatma's Reviews > The Most Fun We Ever Had
The Most Fun We Ever Had
by
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The Most Fun We Ever Had grew on me like a rash: the more I read this book the more I grew firm in my opinion that not only did I dislike it, but that I in fact actively hated it. Its bloated length—532 pages—is almost designed to make its every fault as glaring and grating as possible. (i started listening to its audiobook at 1.25x speed and finished it listening at 2.5x speed so make of that what you will lol)
Here's a very extensive list of some of the things about Lombardo's writing that deeply irritated me.
► The number of times Lombardo mentions how much Marilyn and David love each other. OHHH MYYY GOOODDD. we!!! get!!!! it!!!!! marilyn needs david like she needs air to breathe !!!! david worships the ground marilyn walks on !!! they have sex like 4097234 times a day and touch each other all the time and somehow communicate paragraphs' worth of information with a single look and wE GET IT YOU HAVE MADE YOUR POINT PLS STOP
► The number of times characters watch other characters having sex. There's at least 3 instances in this book where a character stumbles upon 2 other characters on their way to having, or actually having, sex. one of those times involves a 15-year-old character watching some guy giving his aunt oral sex and the other a teen girl watching her parents on their way to having sex on the sofa and that is, on both counts, very...uncomfortable, to say the least. and the scenes are described in detail too and I just...did we really need this kind of extremely weird voyeurism ?
► The language used in this book is just so bad; it felt as though the book was going out of its way to be shitty. Some choice examples: "We're in a weirdly speedy schedule tonight. Mom's in schizoid mode", ""Who's that horrible Judd Nelson boy who was sitting in the back row? He looks like a school shooter", "Her r*tarded eraser collection means a lot to her". The list goes on and on. Obviously each of these examples is bad, but it's the writing's persistent and unrelenting lack of sensitivity that got to me, its contempt for just about everything and everyone.
► i wanna talk about how the book portrays one of the characters—Ryan, Liza's husband—who has depression. i don't have depression so definitely take my opinion with a grain of salt, but the rep was, in my view, Not Good. in fact, it was Bad, Really Bad. the moment Lombardo introduced him i knew it wasn't going to go down well. because all he is in this book is a huge burden to his wife. that's literally it. he's a pathetic "man-child" who sits at home all day and plays video games and thwarts his poor wife's every attempt to get him to do something productive. first of all, HE IS DEPRESSED. i think that would qualify as a pretty significant extenuating circumstance. but more than that, the way he's represented makes it seem as though it's his fault he's depressed. like if he'd just get up and make an effort, everything would be okay. like oh his poor wife is working sooOoO much and trying soOoO hard to be good for him and he's refusing to cooperate or do anything for her sake !!! isnt he such a huge burden !! if only he would just, like, do better !! (view spoiler) it's just so reductive. don't give me a character who's depressed and then villainize him because he's depressed.
second of all, no one does literally anything to help him. it's quickly mentioned at one point in the novel that's he on Prozac, but that's about it. no one suggests therapy, or better medication, or new medication, or literally any help of any kind. does his wife think his depression will just disappear ?? that if he works hard enough he'll "beat it" or something ?? oh yeah, and his wife has a degree in PSYCHOLOGY—the irony could not be more painful.
Aside from the mess that I just outlined, I also didn't like any of the characters. Most of them were annoying more than anything else, but oh boy one of them, Wendy, might be the most annoying character I've read so far this year. I hated her with a burning passion. she was AWFUL 99.9999% of the time and no amount of tragic backstory can convince me that she wasn't.
Anyway, a family saga is only as good as its family, and when you don't give an iota of a shit about the family that said family saga hinges on, then that's not an especially good sign....
Here's a very extensive list of some of the things about Lombardo's writing that deeply irritated me.
► The number of times Lombardo mentions how much Marilyn and David love each other. OHHH MYYY GOOODDD. we!!! get!!!! it!!!!! marilyn needs david like she needs air to breathe !!!! david worships the ground marilyn walks on !!! they have sex like 4097234 times a day and touch each other all the time and somehow communicate paragraphs' worth of information with a single look and wE GET IT YOU HAVE MADE YOUR POINT PLS STOP
► The number of times characters watch other characters having sex. There's at least 3 instances in this book where a character stumbles upon 2 other characters on their way to having, or actually having, sex. one of those times involves a 15-year-old character watching some guy giving his aunt oral sex and the other a teen girl watching her parents on their way to having sex on the sofa and that is, on both counts, very...uncomfortable, to say the least. and the scenes are described in detail too and I just...did we really need this kind of extremely weird voyeurism ?
► The language used in this book is just so bad; it felt as though the book was going out of its way to be shitty. Some choice examples: "We're in a weirdly speedy schedule tonight. Mom's in schizoid mode", ""Who's that horrible Judd Nelson boy who was sitting in the back row? He looks like a school shooter", "Her r*tarded eraser collection means a lot to her". The list goes on and on. Obviously each of these examples is bad, but it's the writing's persistent and unrelenting lack of sensitivity that got to me, its contempt for just about everything and everyone.
► i wanna talk about how the book portrays one of the characters—Ryan, Liza's husband—who has depression. i don't have depression so definitely take my opinion with a grain of salt, but the rep was, in my view, Not Good. in fact, it was Bad, Really Bad. the moment Lombardo introduced him i knew it wasn't going to go down well. because all he is in this book is a huge burden to his wife. that's literally it. he's a pathetic "man-child" who sits at home all day and plays video games and thwarts his poor wife's every attempt to get him to do something productive. first of all, HE IS DEPRESSED. i think that would qualify as a pretty significant extenuating circumstance. but more than that, the way he's represented makes it seem as though it's his fault he's depressed. like if he'd just get up and make an effort, everything would be okay. like oh his poor wife is working sooOoO much and trying soOoO hard to be good for him and he's refusing to cooperate or do anything for her sake !!! isnt he such a huge burden !! if only he would just, like, do better !! (view spoiler) it's just so reductive. don't give me a character who's depressed and then villainize him because he's depressed.
second of all, no one does literally anything to help him. it's quickly mentioned at one point in the novel that's he on Prozac, but that's about it. no one suggests therapy, or better medication, or new medication, or literally any help of any kind. does his wife think his depression will just disappear ?? that if he works hard enough he'll "beat it" or something ?? oh yeah, and his wife has a degree in PSYCHOLOGY—the irony could not be more painful.
Aside from the mess that I just outlined, I also didn't like any of the characters. Most of them were annoying more than anything else, but oh boy one of them, Wendy, might be the most annoying character I've read so far this year. I hated her with a burning passion. she was AWFUL 99.9999% of the time and no amount of tragic backstory can convince me that she wasn't.
Anyway, a family saga is only as good as its family, and when you don't give an iota of a shit about the family that said family saga hinges on, then that's not an especially good sign....
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Reading Progress
June 15, 2019
– Shelved
June 15, 2019
– Shelved as:
to-read
July 8, 2019
–
Started Reading
July 8, 2019
– Shelved as:
audiobooks
July 11, 2019
–
20.0%
July 11, 2019
–
20.0%
"this is enjoyable so far but every once in a while a character will say something rli offensive and its starting to get on my nerves (e.g. a character just said the r word ? a billion people looked over this book and not a single one thought that its use of the r word was, um, problematic as hell ? ok...)"
July 13, 2019
–
30.0%
July 15, 2019
–
39.0%
July 16, 2019
–
49.0%
"wendy is such an asshole omg there is no sad backstory that can make up for how much of a dick she is to literally everyone"
July 17, 2019
–
64.0%
July 18, 2019
–
78.0%
"i started out listening to this at 1.2x speed and now im at 2x speed and this book *still* wont end why isss ittt sooo loooonnngggg"
July 19, 2019
–
Finished Reading
May 15, 2022
– Shelved as:
multigenerational
Comments Showing 1-50 of 264 (264 new)
message 1:
by
Thea
(new)
Jul 26, 2019 09:16PM
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this is the highest compliment i can receive it is an honour to also make you angry with me THANK YOU
thank you so much!! i totally get what you mean--there's been so much hype surrounding this book, and its been a really big title ever since it came out, but i rli didnt think it deserved all that hype... :/
This book does have tons of hype. I have read that the parents are portrayed as perfect who happen to have daughters who are all lost and struggling. I don’t have the patience for that kind of drama.
For me, I think it's less a question of "PC language" and more about just not using terms that stereotype or offend whenever possible. When there are perfectly good alternatives to those offensive terms, then why not use them instead?
And though I do agree that characters, like real people, use non "PC language" sometimes, I think if an author is going to include that kind of offensive language they have a responsibility to at least have it called out or questioned as problematic, rather than just accepted as matter of fact.
But yeah, this book was definitely not worth the hype for me at all... :( the characters and their melodramatic lives really didn't come together in the end...
thank you so much!! and haha i totally support your decision!! 11 hours is A LOT if youre not enjoying something c; if i wasn't listening to this on audiobook with the option to listen to it at 2.5x speed, i wouldve 100% given up on it.
yeah...this definitely wasnt the book for me. to each their own i guess 🤷
@Kim YES like how many times do we need to get told that marilyn and david worship each other it got irritating VERY QUICKLY
Not that I really have to justify to anyone my decision to finish or not finish a book, but I finished this particular book because I had already read a lot of it and I just wanted to get it over with.
Additionally, I don't see what's wrong with expressing my anger at a book that very harmfully misrepresented mental illness, as well as included offensive, problematic language that didn't need to be there. If I'm going to review a book I'm going to be honest about how it made me feel, whether that be positive or not. That's the whole point of Goodreads. If I think a book deserves to be taken to task for its harmful representation, then I'm not going to tone-police myself just to make my review of it more palatable.
also i definitely felt the same way about the privilege stuff too, this whole book was just not for me 🙄