Review: An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love by Lauren Appelbaum

An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love by Lauren Appelbaum
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was provided both a ALC and an ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This follows Mallory in the wake of her grandmother's passing.  Mallory has a nice quite life in Seattle where she works from home, does online yoga, and rarely has to interact with other people.   During the reading of the will, Mallory finds out that she has inherited her grandparent's cottage under the condition that she keeps an eye on her grandfather who lives in Florida.  Determined to turn the cottage into a rental property, she takes a quick trip to Florida to see what needs to be done and hire a property manager and check in on  Gramps.  There she finds out that the cottage needs quite a bit of sprucing up before it can be turned into a rental.  Gramps enjoys having someone to chat with and help him out with things

I didn't really understand why Mallory was classified as introverted, socially awkward for sure, but  Mallory does not like spending time alone in fact she seeks out contact with people even if she says the wrong thing sometimes.  At times she is completely outgoing, but she is completely clueless and when it comes to certain basic life skills and adult situations.  She gave off a more scared to try new things and not be perfect vibe than introvert.  I did enjoy her relationship with Gramps!  Mallory's initial attempts to connect with Gramps were a bit insensitive and pushy, her heart was in the right place.  Once they started to connect, their relationship was actually quite lovely.  The romance that develops between Mallory and property manager Daniel was OK but lacked the tension and chemistry I wanted.  She kept pushing him away because she was always going back to Seattle "the next day" then changing plans.

Mallory's work from home situation really irritated me, because it hit close to home and I'm going to step on a soap box for a second which I normally don't do in reviews.  As someone who has worked remotely since Covid, and worked from home several days a week for years prior, I know it is a privilege that I don't take for granted.  I know I am very lucky but I am also very aware of our company policies, she didn't even seem to know that there was a company policy for working remote which I find strange because most places have them.  I have worked with people like Mallory in real life that threaten that privilege daily, because they work where they aren't supposed to without permission, don't complete their tasks in a timely manner, or they get caught doing something else on the clock. In this case, Mallory was already fired once from a remote position and didn't get the hint that she actually has to do her work and got mad when her boss checked in with her about progress.  No one wants to be micromanaged, but a simple conversation with her manager about her family situation would have sorted that whole situation out, made this whole thing believable (in my opinion), and given Mallory a sense of maturity that she was missing.  To be clear most remote positions can actually be worked from anywhere depending on the company you work for, but there are tax implications if you work out of your "home base" for more than 30 days so there is accounting paperwork that could have been done with a quick conversation with a manager or HR, which her HR person mentioned when they noticed Mallory was using her VPN in Florida instead of Seattle, which if undocumented is a fireable offense at most companies.  If she had just asked to work in Florida or taken a leave of absence it would have made so much more sense, plus her job didn't have anything to do with the plot.  That's why this bothered me so much, because this could have been portrayed so much more accurately, but instead situations like this is why companies want to take away remote work, because employers think we are painting and installing flooring on company instead of doing our actual jobs.  End rant.

I think this book will work for alot of people but the whole work from home thing really took me out of the book because it is something I face everyday.  It is kind of a "this is why we can't have nice things" situation that those of us that work remotely face constantly and it hit really close to home and took away from my enjoyment of the story.  That paired with my inability to connect with Mallory on other levels didn't help.  For alot of readers that will not be an issue, so take my review with a grain of salt.

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