Review by Booklist Review
In college, Jess and Ren were the kind of best friends who couldn't enter a room alone without someone asking where the other was. Some might call them codependent, but their relationship never felt like a problem to fix. They complemented each other, Jess' neatness and career ambitions smoothing out the edges of Ren's magnetic, chaotic personality. Jess' and Ren's adult lives look a bit different now that they're in their thirties, though they share a weathered beachfront house with their shelter dog, Sookie, and still feel the same bond they always have--until they meet the same man at a dive bar one night, and Quentin's presence changes everything. In Eisenberg's debut, Jess and Ren narrate chapters in turn, letting a season of change develop slowly, then all at once. Eisenberg's portrait of their devout friendship is equally heartwarming and heart-wrenching, proving that the deepest bonds transcend simple labels. Deserving space on shelves next to the novels of Elena Ferrante, Anne Perry, and Marian Keyes, Significant Others is a luminous and charming debut.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The moving debut from Eisenberg finds two 30-something best friends reexamining their bond after one of them gets pregnant. Jess, a real estate agent in Hawaii, is the more organized of the two, taking comfort in the transactional nature of her interactions with others. Her roommate, Ren, on the other hand, is as unreliable as a "phone on the nightstand with three percent battery and no alarm set." The two met as freshmen at the University of Hawai'i and their lives have been interwoven since. Now, Ren craves a reprieve from her stagnant life as a bartender and fitness instructor in Honolulu. When she unexpectedly gets pregnant after a one-night stand with a tourist named Quincy, she and Jess decide to co-parent with Quincy's help, now that he's coincidentally decided to move there. As the friends' relationship takes on new terms, the story builds to a crisis point involving a betrayal. The once inseparable twosome must decide if it's one more storm they weather together, or if their lives are headed in different directions. Eisenberg offers a well-honed glimpse at an unconventional family and the obstacles to growing up. Agent: Abby Walters, CAA. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A makeshift throuple--described from two alternating perspectives--makes for intricate, intimate complications. More than a decade out of college, Jess and Ren are still roommates, sharing a rescue dog and a house in Hawaii. Jess is the hyper-responsible partner: Raised in alcohol-soaked poverty, she's determined to maintain economic security at all costs--a likely outcome, given that she majored in business and runs her own real estate firm. Ren, bartender and part-time fitness instructor, has devolved into the child in this dyad. Though the two share expenses (loosely), Ren has grown accustomed to letting Jess attend to all the more taxing, adult routines of cohabitation: cooking, cleaning, etc. Though the two are very close, snuggling and sharing confidences, their relationship has never turned sexual. After a few halfhearted explorations with partners of varying genders, Jess has decided that she's just not into it. Ren pegs her as not necessarily asexual--"maybe just aromantic." For her part, Ren is guiltlessly free with her favors. When a drunken night with a visiting botany professor (described just vaguely enough to sound universally attractive) results in pregnancy, Ren, already at loose ends, decides to see it through, and then the professor reappears. Jess, rosily envisioning her role as co-parent, jumps right on board. That's the setup--before ambivalence seeps in from all sides. The author is a whiz at conveying complex emotions, often with a swift metaphor. When the anxiety-prone Jess suffers a bout of guilt and shame, she recalls the dual emotion as having "blossomed like spores all over [her] body." The women's distinctive voices are artfully delineated and come across as fully three-dimensional. It doesn't hurt that the sex scenes, when they arise, are not only believable but evocative. This accomplished first novel artfully limns romantic cross-currents in a thoroughly contemporary setting. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
