A subtle, slow character driven debut novel by Carolyn Kuebler.

We spend around 12 months in small town Vermont with a range of characters narrating their year. A New York family moved to the area, a Christian Beekeeping family, an Inn Keeping family, a living on the edge family - whose teenage children form a strong bond. Cover off teen pregnancy, drug abuse, poverty and memory. I loved the story, but it took me half way through the book to understand the character linkages and some of the stories remained too untold for me.

Beautifully written, but lacking complete story arcs. I feel like I meandered through this book in a leisurely 10 days, I did want to pick it up each evening and see how lives progressed.

Thanks to Netgalley and Melville House Publishing for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Liquid, Fragile, Perishable
Carolyn Kuebler

I was very intrigued by the premise of this book
and the interesting cast of characters. A young teenage girl, Honey, raised on a beekeeping farm in Vermont by evangelical parents meets a boy, Will, one summer who is new to town and straight from NYC. Two different worlds colliding. Her folks, his folks, their small town life banging up against his family’s urban history.

But unfortunately, this intriguing storyline was only minimally explored and wound up feeling like it really wasn’t about them or their love relationship. Big opportunity missed!

Their story unfolds via many different voices, and while I could see the appeal of telling a story of how Honey and Will’s situation was perceived by others, it was confusing and unsatisfying for me. There was never enough in depth character analysis or time to get accustomed to each character’s voice. I wanted more of each persons story! But i appreciated the fact that Kuebler’s writing was strong enough to make me
want more!

The supporting cast was oddly the main cast because we barely heard from Honey or Will. Every couple of pages there was an abrupt change to a new voice, a different time, often days, weeks or even months later. Kuebler gave us two other teenage girls that were friends of Honey, their parents, multiple siblings and side characters including a postal worker and a random lady named Nell and her love interest Len who barely interacts with the rest of the characters. It was just too much and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was who and where we were in the story. It was distracting and frustrating.

I did appreciate that the writing quality is truly good enough to pull you into to each person’s interior world and get you invested in their lives. I loved the unique voices and different age ranges. That is talent to paint so many diverse characters well enough to draw you in.

Yet by doing too much, this book did too little. I honestly enjoyed the characters but they were too underdeveloped and not fully linked in to the main storyline. One character, Cyrus, has zero involvement with Will or Honey and their story arc. He’s full of angst and interesting story angles but his story is put out there for us and then never told. He’s just left swinging in the wind at the end! so frustrating! Truthfully Joanne the postal worker and Cyrus’s characters could be cut completely so more of Sophie, Eli, and Sarah’s story could shine.

Also, I would suggest better headings and a way to make the timeline and character changes less jarring. I struggled to follow the changes.

When I read a book, I want to take something away from it that made me think or let me live the life of a person I’d never meet. This book almost got there and absolutely Kuebler has that special something to paint a world in high def that makes it come alive. With better organization, less characters and more unification, I think this book could have gotten there but just didn’t in the end.

In the small community of Glenville, Vermont everyone is connected. Told with multiple voices over a year we watch as this small town and it’s residents move and change with the seasons and the uncertainty the future may hold.
If I could sum this book up in one word, melancholy. There is definitely a strong presence of global environmental changes. The feeling of being stuck despite trying to move ahead. An impending sense of something bad coming. There are no dramatic changes in emotions or feelings, everything stays around the same general melancholy.
Which sort of sums up how I feel about this book, don’t love it, don’t hate it, it’s fine.
Thank you to @netgalley and @melvillehouse for letting me review this book. It hits shelves May 7 2024
#bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksta #liquidfragileperishable #honey #read #bookreview #bookreader #readersofinstagram #readersofinsta #reading #readmorebooks #readeveryday #readmore #booklover

I truly wanted to love Carolyn Kuebler's "Liquid, Fragile, Perishable," but I ended up disappointed. The narrative's complexity, especially during narrator shifts, left me confused, and it took me until the book's 80% mark to truly engage with the plot. However, I must commend the author's beautiful writing style, which was the sole reason to why I finished the book.
I have decided to give "Liquid, Fragile, Perishable" two stars because while the plot fell short of expectations, the book's redeeming quality lies in Kuebler's beautiful writing, which motivated me to finish it after all.