Review: I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander

I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/MIRA, all opinions are my own.

It appears that I'm in the minority here, but this didn't work for me.  This is described as follows "In this darkly funny and surprisingly sweet novel, a woman creates a golem in a desperate attempt to pretend her life is a romantic comedy rather than a disaster."  The only thing accurate about this statement is that Eve's life is a disaster.  I didn’t see this as a rom-com in any way, and is lacking the comedy it promises.  This was depressing and sad, and kind of weird.  I felt was a case of a book that was marketed as one thing, but is in fact something very different and I feel very mislead after reading it.

Eve is suffering from deep depression.  Her father has died in the last year and she hasn't dealt with the grief and instead of leaning on her family and friends she unknowingly is pushing everyone away.  Her younger sister is getting married, and while Eve thought she was OK with being single she feels pressured to bring a plus one to the event.  The company she works for is facing layoffs around the holidays, and she is about to turn 40 adding to the pressure and her feelings of inadequacy are overwhelming.

What drew me to read this book was the lore of the golem, it is fascinating.  I'm always interested in learning about other cultures and religions and their traditions, mythology and folklore,  this promised just that.  Eve's family is Jewish, and her grandmother passed on stories of her survival as wells many of their traditions and lore before she passed.  As Eve spirals out of control, she remembers a strange tale about the golem her grandmother told and about how it offered protection in times of great need.  Eve is certainly in need, and she constantly feels unsafe.  In a drunken haze, Eve crafts herself a golem to take care of her.  Unfortunately it takes until almost halfway through the book for him to show up on the page, which made it hard to stay interested.  Then when he does, Eve becomes infatuated with her man made out of clay, and I thought their interactions were strange and kind of creepy.  I had a hard time suspending my belief for this particular storyline, because the golem never fully took on human characteristics and became real to me. Her golem takes his role as protector very seriously and Eve quickly realizes that she doesn’t fully understand what his purpose is and what he is truly capable of.

My main issue with this is that Eve doesn't take any responsibility for her own actions and she makes a lot of poor decisions.  I can forgive poor decision making if lessons are learned along the way, but she doesn’t seem to be interested in learning any lessons until the very end of the book.  She pushes everyone away, but blames everyone for her problems.  She has a cell phone that she never turns on so no one can get a hold of her, but laments that no one invites her to things and if she is invited she doesn’t participate anyway.  Not a fan of the walking contradiction.  She is literally unreachable and never checks her text or voicemails.  The best scene in the book is when her future sister-in-law calls her out for being unreachable and uninterested in being present for anything.  It really puts things into perspective, that Eve's resentment of everyone in her life is somewhat misplaced.  I appreciated that Ana (the SIL) not only calls Eve out, but also indicates that everyone makes mistakes and has to take responsibility for their part.  They have all had a rough year and need to be there for each other.  I had a really hard time rooting for Eve, she judges people without having all of the information about them or only remembering things that suit her narrative.  Fortunately, she figures things out in the end, but I had a really hard time connecting with her throughout the book.  It was only in the last few chapters that I felt the  emotional connection I was looking for with the book.

I thought the author captured grief and depression, especially during the holidays well.   She also captured feelings of inadequacy and fear of living in the world as a minority.  I think this was a really great opportunity to discuss mental health and grief, but those discussions were kind of glossed over and left me wanting.  I think the dark humor was lost on me.  I read some of the glowing reviews, and those readers connected with Eve in a way I didn't and they laughed out loud which I didn't.  Unfortunately, despite really wanting to love this book, I didn’t.  This one just wasn’t for me, and that is OK.  I know there are others out there who really connected with Eve and the author’s humor.  

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