Come As You Are by Jennifer Haupt is a realistic story that evokes a lot of 90’s nostalgia and will intrigue younger audiences interested in this time period. The story was a bit slow moving and the characters are immature and self absorbed, but authentic and believable. The music scene was just on the periphery of the story and that was really what drew me in to wanting to read the book. I was looking forward to a deeper dive into the 90’s music scene but I felt it fell a bit flat.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review.

Written in two different time line, "Come as You Are" covers the span of about fifteen years. The narrative alternates between the early nineties and the present time in 2002. Skye and Zane narrates the story.

I found the writing style to be 'okay'. It isn't great. It isn't bad either. The writing lacks a steady flow. It's description heavy. It seemed like the author is telling you what has happened instead of showing you. I don't like that kind of writing style. I like to be present there with the characters when something important happens. I think the book could also use more dialogues and interactions between the characters.

The shifts in the timelines and narrators are haughty and confusing. It degraded the standard of the story. There are also some flashback which added an unnecessary layer to the story. However, I personally didn't face too much problem with the writing except at the very beginning. The first couple of chapters will confuse anyone but later on it gets easier to adjust with the sudden alternations.

I liked the characterization. There are two main characters and a few side characters. All of them are well crafted and realistic. I won't say they are easy to connect with because I had difficulties to do that. But they are very relatable and realistic. All of the characters make bad decisions at times. When you'll read about them, you are bound to think " Wouldn't I do the exact same thing if I was in their shoes? " The characters are not lovable and a little frustrating. In my opinion it made the story even more interesting.

Skye and Zane were neighbours. They were very young when they meet for the first time. Both were loners. Their loneliness and live for music brought them together despite their two years of age gap. I loved their frienship. It was pure and wonderful. Though their friendship becomes a bit problematic at times, I found it very realistic. The romance is not the focus of the story. Infact, I doubt that it can be called a romance. The author portrayed the romance as merely a small part of their lives, which I really appreciate.

Jennifer Haupt has painted an accurate picture of the 90's Seattle. She brings that time back to life through her writing. The mentions of 90's music and culture are real and correct. There are mentions of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Screaming Trees back before they were known. I believe the 90's kids and teens will enjoy this book immensely. It would be an amazing tour to the memory lane. I'm not a 90's kid, I was born in the 2000'. So, the re-capture of that glorious time didn't mean much to me. Still, I enjoyed it.

The ending is the best part of the book. It ends in a very realistic way. I really wanted the book to end in a specific way and I'm extremely glad that Haupt didn't disappoint. Many poeple may get angry at the ending. But I thought it was perfect.

"Come As You Are" is a beautiful novel. It's intense, gritty and very dark at parts. It fits perfectly to the grudge period of the nineties. The story is raw and emotional. It wasn't anything unique or complex but still very thought provoking and education. The book has its drawback but overall I really enjoyed it. It was an easy and quick read. I had a pleasant time. Would recommend.

This was an okay story but I found it to be dragged out. It didn't really hold my attention, and I didn't really care what happened to the characters either way. The better parts of the book were in the flashbacks. I thought there would be a bigger reveal with what happened on the night that Lauren died, and I was kind of confused with what happened with Skyler and Zane towards the end.

3 stars because I was pleased with the ending and how everything worked out.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Come as you are is a reminder that life can't be perfect, but it is a journey we take and if we are willing we can try and make it better.

It is also a complicated love story of Zane and Skyler, a story that started when they were just two gauche teenagers living in their own worlds together and apart. Zane and Sky decided to be the best buds ever, it didn't take them much to understand each other's needs. He was a guitar player and a singer, trying to live a rock-n-roll life. She was smart and artsy, trying to follow him and his ideas. They were haven for each other, a help to survive teenage years and high school, especially since Sky went to the older class because of her talent and intelligence. After a night spent together, Sky discovered that she was pregnant and she needed to decide if she wanted to keep the baby...

The story mixes Skyler's past and present - we see her as a gawky teenager dealing with the teenage problems, on the other side we see her in the present taking her life in her own hands and trying to make best of it. She is vulnerable, having unhealed wounds from the past, however, she is trying to reason them in the best way possible.

Thank you Netgalley, author and the publisher for an ARC.

I think a reader's reaction to this book would be heavily informed by their own history and whether or not they experienced the grunge scene in Seattle during the early 1990's first hand. Some of the other reactions were through the roof, fond remembrances of an original music scene in a rainy city while wearing torn jeans, flannel, and going umbrella-less taking pride in their drenched clothes and hair. Switching back and forth between the Seattle scenes and ten years in the future in New Mexico, however, highlighted Haupt's theme of bad decisions based on family tragedy and their consequences. I did like the characters, flawed as they were, and enjoyed Skye's journey in particular.

Unfortunately I wasn't a fan of the writing style and it didn't feel as though a great deal really happened here. Not for me sadly.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I liked the general storyline and setting, but the writing left me wanting more. The shift in timelines and narrators was often confusing, and didn't necessarily make the plot richer or more intriguing. I did appreciate the tidy epilogue that let me see into the characters future, and it did get better as the book went along.

Come as You Are is a story mainly based in Seattle and Albuquerque, the background in these two cities set the stage for the story of Skye and Zane. The timeline jumps back and forth from the 1990’s to the 2000’s. This is a very character driver story and the author gives us rich details on all of the characters allowing the reader to really understand all of the dynamics behind each character’s actions. Driven away from Seattle because of a tragic family event, we mainly have the story told through Skye’s perspective as she struggles with life’s decisions and how to connect with people. Each character has dealt with the tragedy in different ways and the author does a good job of giving us a birds-eye-view of the life of a family. Not every character is likeable per se, but because of that detailed back story we can at least understand and feel for everyone involved.

This felt like a very realistic story. The referenced to 1990’s Seattle and the scene going on there felt genuine. The story also felt authentic. This is a good read for those who love a character driven story about loss and family.

So evocative of an interesting time in recent history, this book is an experience in that regard alone. I found the characters a bit difficult to like and that detracted from the story a bit for me. But such a great journey into the grunge era.

A love or hate story, I couldn’t quite decide. The to-ing and fro-ing by Skye gave me neck ache. As for the ending it just made me go “really.” Montana just made me want to stuff her in the nearest attic and lock the door till she found some manners.

What a great trip back in memory lane. If you fondly remember Nirvana and flannel, this is a great book for you.

Come As You Are is the story of Skye and Zane, forever entwined by a lovely child named Montana and the mysterious death of Skye's sister. Through a series of flashbacks and diary entries we learn more and more about Skye's preteen and teenage life in Seattle and her current life in New Mexico with her boyfriend Aaron. The chapters flow seamlessly as there is a bit of a mystery and the tenseness of a thriller as you can't help but be sucked in to the lives of these two charming characters and root for them to make the right decisions.

Jennifer Haupt is such a talented writer. Her prose draws you in and in this case both New Mexico and Seattle were painted so well that they seemed like characters in the novel. I couldn't help but squee a bit when there were mentions of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Screaming Trees back before they were known...

The story is beautiful and afterwards you will feel like Zane and Skyler are old friend. Highly recommend if you want to look back to your grunge years (or your parent's grunge years), like a little snap in your coming of age stories.

then Come As You Are is for you #ComeAsYouAre #NetGalley

(Do you have the Nirvana song in your head just from looking at the cover? Of course you do! As do I, and as we should.) Jennifer Haupt does a masterful job of bringing the '90s (and early '00s) back to life in this novel, not in the glamorized way we might have memorialized it in movies and MTV, but as lived by the real teens in the grungy clubs of Seattle. We really did wear thermal underwear under our ripped jeans, and said "no doubt" as an answer to everything. Ha! I'd forgotten. I'm not sure how Haupt recovered those little details, but I treasured them.

The characters all felt very real too, and I applaud Haupt for being brave with them, because their lives and flaws and tragedies are difficult subjects to write about. She pulls it off well, and I came away with a humble sense that despite all our own flaws, we should all do as Skye, Zane, Carolyn, and Aaron do, and move ahead anyway, trying our best to treat our loved ones well. What more can anyone wish to do? That's worth much more than fame and wealth as a grunge star.

I also liked that we get New Mexico as a secondary setting (other than Seattle)—it's got its own brand of magic, and I enjoyed the tastes we're given of the culture and scenery there. A well-rounded blend of a novel all around!

Thanks, Net Galley and Central Avenue Publishing for offering me a chance to read this one.

I loved Jennifer Haupt's In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills so I was eager to read this new novel. Wow, is all I can say! What a stellar read. She has a knack for getting under your skin, finding the tender spots of the human condition and delivering stories of complex relationships and inner searching. She spent a good many years as a journalist writing about grief and all her experience pours out onto the pages of her novels.


This one is set in Seattle, its grunge music culture of the early1990s, and six years later in Albuquerque NM. The title, a nod to Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. The first stanza of Nirvana's Come As You Are reads

Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy

The novel is a perfect echo of the song. Skyler and Zane were neighbors, friends, lovers, and the parent of a child. Their relationship breaks apart but they are drawn back together in the hopes they can create a better life for her.

Haupt carefully creates such memorable characters, flawed and very human, that I was fully invested in them and their struggles to find a better future and repair the past.

Highly recommend this one!

Being a nineties kid with an interest in the Seattle grunge scene I really enjoyed this character driven novel. a novel about connection and trauma, the characters are well-drawn and well rounded and the angst of the age and their age is sympathetically drawn.

Zane and Skye are a huge part of the 1990’s Seattle grunge scene. He’s a musician and she’s an artist. When tragedy strikes, it changes their relationship forever. Ten years later, they have different lives but have come back together.

If you’re a lover of Nirvana and the Seattle grunge scene, you’ll like this one. There is a really good story as well, but the mentions and setting of the grunge scene hit it out of the park for me. The characters were very well developed and I really liked them all and watching them grow. There’s a good coming of age story as we go through different decades with the characters. It was sentimental and heart-felt, but also gritty at times. While a lot happened, we witness it more from the characters’ emotional world-views than action-orientated… and that was something special.

“Music is religion. They don’t need God; they are young. Fucking demigods. Free.”

Come As You Are comes out 3/1.

“Come As You Are”, that cover (I love it) and the description (Told me I needed it), the story (I got lost from it, not in it as I’d hoped).

This is crushing me to do and I didn’t know whether to put this as “no feedback DNF” or here in review. It’s so insanely rare for me to DNF a book and to give a book less than 4 stars, but I didn’t finish it and I’m not even going to officially rate it because it would be a one star and I don’t have the heart to do that. Especially since I didn’t make it very far into the story.

It took about an hour and a half of extreme frustration to get to 15% because of the names and the timeline. I’ve never faced a situation like this and it seems I’m the odd man/woman out here.

The issue I had was having to constantly go back and forth trying to figure out who was whom. If I’d had a paperback it would have been easier than tapping back and forth back and forth. The problem, for me was keeping track of the characters. Their introductions were so difficult for me. They were presented in a way which made me have to keep making notes like “her sister”, “Tana her daughter”, “Zane her ex”, Aaron her new. All those names were said one, two maybe three pages before we’re told who they even are, leaving me frustratingly saying “who’s Aaron??”. Just out of the blue new name no “Montana ‘my daughter’” pages later we learn who he is. Then there were two other names which came into play and it was immediately told who those names belonged to. Example: “The horse, Chindi” and “Aaron’s mom, Enola”.


There were also moments like these: “……..his horse, Chindi, teaching her to ride and letting her help out at the stable. She grips the handlebars of the bike”.?? She’s on a horse………

Maybe I could have just said dnf, but I found it important to share and it’s a shame because I so wanted to love this book. I stepped away from it and kept trying to go back, but by that point I just lost interest and now here I am feeling rotten for not giving a glowing review.

The biggest thing I could say is, if those characters all have a mention of ‘who’ they are, at the time they’re brought into the story, I’m sure it would have been a completely better experience for me.

I’m so sorry for no glowing review. Thank you so much to Central Avenue Publishing and to NetGalley for the chance to have read this book. I kinda want to crawl in a hole and hide right now. Just those little tweaks so we’re not saying “who is “he”?”, “Who’s ‘that’ now?”. With that, I may have read all the way through.

P.S. New to NetGalley……just learned I can’t share this without a rating.

Thank you Central Avenue Publishing and NetGalley for sharing Jennifer Haupt's thoughtfully crafted examination of two lives, Skye and Zane. These two characters are entwined through at first an early adolescent friendship forged from loneliness and a sense of outsiderness and then into a more complex relationship when Skye and Zane have a daughter together. The pressures of unexpected young parenthood, grief over the sudden accidental death of Skye's sister (and Zane's friend), and lack of support from Skye's parents, particularly her father, lead Zane to leave Skye and their daughter without notice. A few years later and Skye is working multiple jobs to care for her daughter and preparing to marry when her father dies and she is drawn back to her past with her family and Zane. Zane, who is struggling still with a desire to be a musician and a history of addiction, and still his love for Skye. This is an elegantly written coming of age story, one that I enjoyed because of thoughtfully presented characters and for the connection to the 90s when I too was a teenager.


This story poses interesting questions to the reader and examines the complexity of young love and how the past informs the present, how moments in time have enduring impacts (what happened to Lauren, actions that lead to unplanned pregnancy, perceptions and decisions to leave/stay). I think it is important for readers to also have an appreciation for the time in which the story unfolds, to read the book as it presents the music scene and Seattle life that shaped Skye and Zane and to understand that teens in the 90s had different influences and experiences that adolescents today; Gen X grew up outside of social media, without cell phones, and with the noted diffidence and ambivalence that captures 90s music and grunge (here we are now... entertain us). This context is part of the book and matters to how a reader can understand Skye and Zane and the settings and attitudes that shaped them as individuals, as a couple/friends, and then as parents. This is one aspect of the book and writing that I really liked, the placement of the story within a very specific time and place, with key references to music groups and songs.

I also liked how, even as Skye was a challenging character to like at times, she was written in a realistic way; she was hurt by her family, stubborn in her independence, genuine in her sorrow and committed to parenthood. Her movement towards understanding how Zane is a part of her life and to her daughter, to understanding that to raise a daughter in the present she must reconcile her past.

Recommended for those who can appreciate how the 90s shaped these characters and fans of character driven books. I think this would work well for general book clubs as well!

where to find this review in the coming weeks
dont-stop-reading.com
goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/131395833-meghan-pageus
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I was given an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a very well-crafted book about some kinda unlikable people. I mean, I found them more trying than relatable, but I couldn’t put it down- tore through it in one sitting. Probably easier to love through the distance of a kindle app

‘Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy’ By Nirvana

An ode to Kurt Cobain about two misfits drawn together by their loneliness and love for music in the early nineties. The grunge scene in Seattle. A dual timeline.

I love it when I have no expectations, and a book surprises me in such a good way. The premise sounded interesting, and from the moment I started reading, Jennifer Haupt drew me in with her beautiful writing.

When Skye and Zane meet, at twelve and fourteen, they become best friends despite their two years age difference. They’re both loners and have a shared dream: going to Los Angeles after graduation, Zane for the music scene, Skye to draw. But when an accident turns their world upside down, they hook up, and Skye gets pregnant. Fast forward ten years. Skye is raising their daughter on her own and is engaged to Aaron, a Native American. Zane is out of the picture. But then Skye’s Dad dies.

Come as You Are is written in a dual timeline, in the first part alternating between Skye’s and Zane’s teen years in the early nineties and the present time in 2002. It’s not your standard tearjerker family novel. The story is raw and gritty and dark at times, so fitting to the grunge scene in the nineties. Even though there are two timelines, Jennifer Haupt also uses flashbacks. It could feel confusing, and it did at first, but at the same time, those flashbacks gave the story an extra layer and even more darkness. The music references were spot on, especially for fans of Nirvana. There were other references too, like the one about a Johnny Depp wannabe, referring to the first years of 21 Jump Street. If you don’t know Johnny Depp from that time, just google!

I’m so glad I got to read this story and highly recommend it to everyone who loved the nineties, Nirvana, or just loves to read a raw and dark story about love, growing up, and parenting imbued with hope. Be aware of drug use and self-destructive behavior, though, especially in the first part.

The protagonists are Skye Albright and Zane O’Rourke, two kids in Seattle who bond over their outsider status and their love of music and its ability to express their alienation as well as their dreams. When they meet in 1987, Skye is 12 and Zane, who lives across the street, is 14. The novel goes back and forth in time, ending up when they are both almost 30.

When Skye was 17, her older sister Lauren died in an accident. After the funeral, Skye became pregnant and left home. She told her parents in a note she needed to figure out who she was “without Lauren or my parents, or anyone.” She didn’t call home until she was seven months pregnant, only telling them about the baby then. It was also the last time she spoke to her father.

In 2002, Skye is living in Albuquerque. Her daughter Montana is nine and she is engaged to a caring Native American man from the Sandia Pueblo named Aaron. All is going well until she gets a call from Zane, the first time she has heard from him in six years. Then her mother calls as well, to tell Skye that her father died, and she knows that is why Zane called; he was hoping to see her and Montana at the funeral.

Aaron immediately gets that Skye has unfinished business with Zane - unfinished feelings about him, as well as unspoken truths that need to be uncovered.

Skye has to figure out who she is in love with, and whether the wounds of the past can be healed if she is to move forward with her life.

Evaluation: I had a hard time liking this book because I couldn’t stand either Skye or Zane. They seemed like realistic characters though, sad to say. I think they found more satisfaction at the end than I did as a reader.