Juliet, Naked

I was really excited when I saw this book in our little library. I've been wanting to read a Nick Hornby novel for sometime to see what all the fuss was about. I probably should have started with one of the greats: High Fidelity, Fever Pitch or About a Boy.

Quick synopsis: Duncan is obsessed with has been 80's rock star Tucker Crowe and Annie, Duncan's 15 year partner, likes Tucker Crowe as much as the next guy. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker Crowe, even calls himself a Crowologist. When an unfinished version of Tucker Crowe's most famous album, Juliet, hits the market Duncan raves about it on his online Crowe community website. The problem is Annie thinks it's crap and tells Duncan so in an excellently written review on the same website. Her review infuriates Duncan and gets a different reaction from recluse Tucker Crowe, an email.

Annie and Tucker begin corresponding without Duncan's knowledge and Duncan starts canoodling without Annie's knowledge. Then stuff really starts to get complicated...

Juliet, Naked was lukewarm for me. The main characters were excellent and flawed and real and just the kind of characters I love. But the secondary characters were so absent and flat it took away from the good dynamic of the main characters.

Even though this was a character driven book the plot was a major player as well. Hornby had a nice balance of plot and characters so I was invested to see what happened and to learn more about these people.

The thing that disappointed me most about this book was the ending. Don't worry, no spoilers.

This book didn't end so much as shrug its shoulders and stop telling me its story. Usually I love the open ended book. It's one of the things that makes a book stay with me. I think about what could happen after. Juliet, Naked didn't end. It just stopped. Disappointing because of the characters and plot that I thought were promising me so much.