I finished this book, though I'm not sure why. It was readable, if a bit (a lot) unbelievable. Pickle was an awful character and I saw no signs of progress in him.

This book starts with a girl on a bridge. A man has jumped. Stan and his wife, Karen, both in a drunken state, almost hit her, and in doing so, their lives change. They call Stan’s twin brother, Pickle, a policeman, to get them out of trouble. They take the girl, Junie, into their home. They try to stop drinking. Pickle decides to pursue a romance with Junie, even though she has just experienced a major trauma. It also contains an awkward love triangle. The characters’ backstories are imparted through flashbacks.

This story sets a new bar for unlikeable characters, though I did like the dog. I can deal with unlikeable characters if there is some underlying thought-provoking message, but I didn’t find such a message here. The usual contemporary sensationalistic themes are included: vulgarity, graphic sex, drugs, psychopathic behavior, infidelity, greed, control, abuse, and disturbing childhood memories. I usually like character studies, but this one tries to tackle too many dysfunctions, and, in the end, I didn’t feel did a good job with any of them. The attributes discussed in relation to suicide were particularly ill-informed and distasteful to me. It will likely engender strong feelings of either like or dislike.

I do love a book with good, dysfunctional characters and I definitely got that here! Funny in places but with a sort of tragic undertone, we follow a couple, his twin brother and a strange woman as they try and make sense of the world and find their places in it. Often funny and quite weird, this book turned out to be a thoroughly satisfying, albeit a bit bonkers, read.
It all starts as Karen and Stan are returning home from a party when they crash their car to avoid a woman, Junie, standing in the road. It transpires that Junie's boyfriend has just jumped from the bridge they crashed on. Fearing the cops will discover they are drunk, Karen and Stan call Stan's brother Pickle to help them. He's a cop too and hopefully will be able to smooth things over. Which would have probably worked had Karen not taken a shine to Junie and offered her their basement to stay in as she grieves for her boyfriend. A decision that Pickle finds hard to swallow given that his part of the brownstone the couple live in has not yet been renovated and he is still living in a cramped flat. And so begins a car-crash of a story that affects each of our four characters and their relationships to each other.
As with all books I read, I do need to connect to the characters in some way. I need something to connect to or emote with them. Here, I did get that connection, albeit in a mostly negative way as the author has created the most horribly dysfunctional characters with few redeeming characteristics. In fact, the only character I really liked was Doodles, Karen and Stan's dog!
Karen and Stan bickered and drank their way through the book, Junie exhibited more than a healthy share of pathos and Pickle, once I got to know the man behind the badge, turned out to be a bit nasty. But, as the story unfolded, the reasons for said behaviour became more and more evident and they started to become more believable, which meant that what happened in the end worked.
Some of the things that happen along the way are a little dark and the book could have got a bit too heavy if it wasn't for the humour interspersed throughout. Some of which was obvious, a lot oblique and some definitely on the black side! But this is what kept me going in a book that was, at times, a bit uncomfortable to read. But it's a book about dysfunctional characters all coming together, bringing certain things to a head, so you don't expect it to be all hearts and flowers!
All in all, a good solid read and a very brave debut novel. I'm looking forward to seeing what the author serves up next time. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Marcia Butler's debut novel comes after a successful memoir. The story is about four lost souls in New York. Two are identical male twins, Stan and Pickle, and the two women are Karen, Stan's wife, and June, a stranger brought to live with Stan and Karen.

Stan and Karen, drunk as usual, had to stop suddenly on the George Washington Bridge to avoid hitting June who was standing in their lane of traffic. It was raining, and June appeared still like a statue. When they convinced her to get in their car, she explained that her boyfriend had just jumped over the bridge.

Events then turn fantastical with an invitation to June to stay with Karen and Stan in their brownstone. An ulterior motive might be that they did not want to get caught driving while intoxicated, again. June went along with the idea and became a permanent fixture in the basement of the brownstone.

Pickle gets a call a minute after the accident. He is a cop, and they always call him when a problem that might deal with the law pops up. The saga following that one horrible night on the GW bridge brings four people together as well as pulling them apart. Pickle's Progress is a compelling story of four very unhappy people who suddenly find some hope in life. They may get a second chance at peace and happiness.

Thank you to Marcia Butler for being so sweet many months ago and offering me an opportunity to review this book! And also for mailing me her autograph! I always love to connect with new authors, and while Marcia is not new to the art scene, this is her debut novel.

Pickle's Progress is about four people, all with their own struggles, just trying to make it through life in New York City. Stan and his wife Karen are struggling in their marriage. Pickle is Stan's twin brother and has forever been the black sheep/lesser loved child of their mother. Junie is the bystander of a car crash on the George Washington bridge caused by drunken Stan and Karen, and Junie's boyfriend just happens to have jumped to his death off the side. All four of them are connected in their own twisted way, and we will find out if there is a happy ending for any of them by the time the last few pages roll around.

I honestly kind of struggled with this book. While I really appreciated the book conceptually and understood where Marcia Butler was trying to go, the plot ebbed and flowed for me. There were times when I was fully invested, and other times when I found my interest wavering. The one thing that I found super distracting which could have impacted my investment in the story is the dialogue. The dialogue did not feel authentic at all. It felt very scripted and, in my opinion, kept the book from feeling realistic and relatable.

I also had a hard time with some of the decisions that the characters made throughout the book. For example, after the car crash, Junie is invited by Karen and Stan to stay in their home as she recovers from witnessing the traumatic suicide of her boyfriend. I had a really hard time believing that a real person would move in with a pair of drunken strangers without question.

If Marcia Butler was going for completely unlikable characters, she hit the nail out of the park though (and my impression was that was the direction she was trying to go). I could not stand any of the main characters. They all had horrible qualities and character flaws that made them completely despicable. Butler certainly accomplished the development of uniquely defined characters that I think will ignite some passion and emotion for any reader... good or bad (which is something I think any author should strive for).

Overall, while this wasn't my favorite book of all time, it did have some redeeming qualities. While there were highs and lows, as a complete package it was just okay. But don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself and tell me what you think!

-I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Marcia Butler, and Central Avenue Publishing for the opportunity to review.-

The title of this book drew me in as I could only think of one other novel with “Pickle” in the title, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. The latter is an 18th century satire in which a young, self-centered country gentleman becomes alienated from his cold-hearted mother, the father who snubs him, and his dissolute brother. Little did I realize how these ideas would resonate through Pickle’s Progress. Pickle and his brother Stan are such identical twins their mother dressed them differently so she could tell them apart. Though identical, the mother prefers the eldest-born (by mere seconds), Stan. who is given every imaginable opportunity including upper-crust college education. Pickle, on the other hand, drops out of community college and becomes a cop. Pickle falls in love with Karen, but through machinations of their mother, Karen marries Stan. Together they become a successful Manhattan power couple.

The opening scene is a tour deforce, setting up the power struggle between the brothers. Stan and Karen are alcoholics, who drive while intoxicated. They have an accident in the rain on the George Washington bridge and nearly run over a young woman, Junie, whose lover has just jumped over the railing. Pickle must rescue his brother and Karen for the umpteenth time as well as get a statement from Junie regarding her lover’s suicide.

This book is a mass of dysfunction in both Karen’s and Pickle and Stan’s families and a bizarre love triangle between the three that has somehow been stable for many years. When Karen asks Junie to move into the brownstone she shares with Stan, the triangle becomes an quadrangle and the structure becomes unstable. There are issues of child sexual abuse in Karen’s past that are never fully resolved. While the opening is exceptional, the middle is something of a slow muddle, then there is an unexpected twist marked by a point-of-view shift that is a bit startling. Overall, it is an unusual domestic thriller with little overt violence, but lots of psychological abuse by all parties.

Holy moly what a gut punch of a book. I don't think I have ever read anything quite like Marcia Butler's "Pickle's Progress." The 4 characters, contemporary New Yorkers who are both endearing and revolting, are some of the most heart-wrenching and intricate characters I've ever come across. The story is a roller coaster, and words are so raw it will truly feel like you are right there feeling the emotions and the pain, and sometimes even the humor. I feel like this will go down as one of the truly great New York novels, and cannot wait to read more from Butler.

Twin brothers, a dog, a wife, a young woman and love. Funny, intelligent, betrayal, original, make this a fast paced great read!

A delicious New York novel brutally funny characters you will not forget.Marcia Butler has a sly sense of humor she’s an author to follow,#centra avenue publishing

I did not finish this book and will not rate it anywhere else. I just could not get into it and didn't really like the characters.

This is Marcia's first novel - I loved her memoir so much - I just knew this was going to be amazing!! Her writing is such a joy to read. You can tell how much fun she had writing it. She takes us on a journey of people thrown together through circumstance. The ending is amazing!!!

The opening scene is an attention grabber. Manhattan based architects Karen and Stan are returning home from a party in the early hours of the morning, they’ve drunk too much (as is their habit) and they’re bickering (as is also their habit). As they cross the George Washington Bridge their attention is seized by a woman standing in the road, causing them to crash their car into the roadside barrier. They soon learn that the girl is called Junie and that her boyfriend has just jumped over the side of the bridge, fulfilling his commitment to what was, in fact, a joint suicide pact. The couple call out Stan’s twin brother, Pickle, who happens to live in an apartment that looks right onto the bridge. Pickle is a cop, surely he’ll be able to take control of this and sort things out.

We’ve now met all of the key characters in this book – in fact these four are pretty much the focus of everything here. Oh, not forgetting Karen and Stan’s dog Doodles. Stan and Pickle are identical twins who have always been impossible to tell apart and this has remained the case even to this point in their lives. Pickle is often gruff and direct and is haunted by the fact that as the second born he felt unwanted by their manipulative mother, whereas Stan is jumpy and fraught with obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Karen is a little harder to read, she’s clearly naggy and bossy but there’s more to her than this and it takes some time to discover what lurks beneath, and why. Junie is quiet and obviously damaged – it’s not clear if she can move on and get past this grim episode.

The four become embroiled in a complex set of relationships which on the face of it seem unlikely (even unbelievable) but which by the end seem possible or even inevitable. There were times early on where I though some of the interactions were trite, the conversations not quite ringing true for me, but these were relatively few and as the story slowly swallowed me up I felt vaguely guilty for even thinking this. For me this is a book that starts well, drops off for a while and then gets stronger and stronger. By half-way I was pretty much hooked and not long after I was turning pages with a sense of trepidation but also with an element of optimistic anticipation of what was to come next. The story played with my emotions from one page to the next.

As tale of New York life – it’s hard for me to imagine this playing out in a sleepy small town – and of people with mixed up thoughts brought about by the sheer trauma of living the lives they have I think it really hits the mark. It’s sometimes happy but more often sad and it kept me guessing about how the issues besieging this foursome could or would be resolved. And I liked the fact that all the answers are not provided, just enough for readers to make up their own minds as to what happens next.

A four-star beginning followed by a three-star middle and a five-star ending. My dodgy arithmetic awards it four and a half stars (rounded down to four). But I’ll need to think on that for a while as if this book haunts me like I think it might then five stars might just be the right award.

I enjoyed reading this book - I found the characters and the story to be enjoyable - I did find it just a bit predictable but sometimes that is okay. I did enjoy the author's writing style and I look forward to reading future books written by her.

Thank you netgalley and Central Avenue Publishing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. #PicklesProgress #NetGalley

When I downloaded Pickle’s Progress from NetGalley I was excited to read it. The blurb made it sound edgy and interesting, and the author’s introduction even more so. However, the more I read it the less I liked it, and the more I realized that the story is nothing like the description. There is no warmth or humor or love. The characters are all unlikeable. A novel can still work if the characters are unlikeable, but not if they are also uninteresting. They all lie, cheat, whine, sneak around, pretend to be what they are not, and have some pretty serious issues stemming from past or present events, but you don’t really care. Just when you start to like someone or feel sympathetic, more is revealed about their past or present behavior and issues that makes it impossible to relate to them.

I love to read and try to give each book the benefit of the doubt, especially when it’s an author’s debut novel. Frankly, though, had I not committed to writing a review when I downloaded the book from NetGalley I would have stopped reading about half-way through. I kept hoping for some logic or purpose to the flow of the story but there was not, and the ending was unsatisfying. I do thank NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for the opportunity to read Pickle’s Progress and provide this honest review. I just regret that it could not be a more positive one.

I really enjoyed the story and the characters. This has potential to be a 5 star book, but the story slowed down in the middle and I lost interest a little. Based on the wonderful start of this book, I am interested in reading the next book by Marcia Butler because I feel like her books are going to get better and better.

I find it intriguing when there is such disparity in a book's ratings, and given that this is a debut endeavor, am prone to cut slack on content and style. However, I should have paid more attention to the nay-sayers and left it alone. The strong beginning indicates the author has good ideas, but the execution doesn't pan out, with cookie cutter situations, characters, and terrible dialogue. New York City itself provides the most interesting passages. There are observations that could only be made by a resident, and those parts of the book rang true, leading me to be willing to give her another chance with future works.

Pickle´s Progress: A Novel
by Marcia Butler
due 4-9-2019
Central Avenue Publishing
3.9 / 5.0

Manhattan alcoholic power couple, Stan and Karen McArdle, successful architects, and Stans identical twin brother, Pickle are caught in a weird twisted love triangle. Pickle is a cop who has repeated helped his brother, Stan beat DUIś because Pickle has a secret. One he has kept from his brother. He is having an affair with Karen. Driving home after a few drinks, Stan runs into a guardrail on the George Washington bridge when he sees a woman, Junie, standing at the rail, traumatized by her partner who just jumped over the ledge. Karen invites Junie to stay with them, and soon Pickle begins spending time with Junie.......
This is a story of dysfunction and love. The human weaknesses and bizarre and unusual choices made by these dysfunctional and disturbed people are an interesting study and unforgettable, the lack of conscience is amazing. Several twists keep the story fluid and engaging.
i enjoyed this twisted tale of a dysfunctional love triangle.
Thanks to Central Avenue and netgalley for this e-book ARC for a fair and honest review.
#PickleśProgress #Netgalley

Pickles Progress follows the rather dysfunctional McArdles; Pickle, his identical twin and sister-in-law. Together the three have a strange and twisted relationship whose delicate balance is challenged by a chance encounter with Junie. Following a shocking loss, the McArdles take Junie under their wing and their lives begin to shift and change as she interacts with each of them. Full of bizarre behaviour and unexpected choices, this is an interesting insight into their shifting bonds.

Unfortunately found it difficult to get into this book. Hopefully this was just due to my own interests not being in this area at the time.

Stan and Karen McArdle are an alcoholic power couple who run an immensely successful architect/design firm. Although the book seems set in present day New York/New Jersey, for some reason they always seem to be watching and referencing Knot's Landing. Architect Stan's identical twin brother Pickle the policeman forms the third leg of a twisted love triangle. All three main characters are beautiful at a superficial level, yet struggling with psychic wounds from childhood. The author provides no medical or epigenetic basis for her twins being more identical than most identical twins, nor is there anything attributed for the McArdle's sudden ability to go cold turkey following the accident that introduces them to their mysterious houseguest, Junie. It is all very complicated and confusing. Filled with psychological twists and turns.