Alice Sadie Celine

By: Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Narrated by: Chloë Sevigny

“Obsessed!” —Chloë Sevigny
“I am literally obsessed.” —Busy Philipps

A hypnotic, sexy, and incisive debut adult novel following one woman’s affair with her daughter’s best friend that tests the limits of love and ambition from #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Riding Hood.

It’s opening night, but Alice’s performance in the local Bay Area production of The Winter’s Tale is far from glamorous. She doesn’t have dreams of stardom, but the basement theater in a wildfire-choked town isn’t exactly what she envisioned for her career back home in Los Angeles. To make matters worse, her best friend Sadie is not even coming.

Pragmatic, serious Sadie and flighty, creative Alice have been best friends since high school—really one another’s only friends—but now that they are through with college (which they attended together) and living on opposite ends of California, Alice would at least expect her friend’s support. Sadie, determined not to cancel her plans with her boyfriend, ends up enlisting the help of her mother, Celine.

A professor of women’s and gender studies at UC Berkeley, Celine’s landmark treatise on sex and identity made her notorious, but she’s struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. So, when Sadie begs her to attend Alice’s play, she relents, if only to escape writer’s block. But in a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Alice’s performance and realizes that her daughter’s once lanky, slightly annoying best friend is now an irresistible young woman.

Set over the course of decades—from Alice and Sadie’s early friendship days and Celine’s decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary Hollywood—Alice and Celine’s affair will test the limits of their love for Sadie and their own beliefs of power, agency, and feminism. Witty and relatable, sexy and surprising, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s debut adult novel is a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.

©2023 Sarah Blakley-Cartwright (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

Mostly unlikable characters dealing with age-defying immaturity

This book/audiobook is quite ambivalent. I hated the writing and the narration but i suspect those are exactly the way they’re intended to be.

I know a lot of this story is supposed to be sarcastic, but phrasing like describing a young woman’s natural blush as “rosacea “ and then lines like fear “pulsing in her amygdala” (paraphrasing) are just a turn off, even if they intend to describe the character’s tendency to intellectualize life and emotions.

The characters are superficial, sheltered with industrial levels of internalized boredom with a pathetic desperation to be unique or important. Almost like a tragic case of Affluenza.

That said i kept thinking, i could enjoy this story on a screen where the visual narration could eliminate a lot of the inner dialogue.

Lastly, I suspect in the original story the girls, Sadie and Alice may have been closer to 19, so that the a lot of the immaturity would make sense, but then again the book would have to cover more on exploitation that it definitely isn’t willing to do and despite trying hard to be edgy it plays it safe.

extremely dull and joyless performance

This vocal performance had absolutely no life or candor. It made already unlikeable characters even more unbearable. The story is semi interesting but a little tedious and again -joyless kind of a slough to get through and Chloe’s work did not help! I think i would have enjoyed it more if i just read it instead :/

One dimensional characters who are bored by their sad lives.

The main characters are flimsy—-detailed quirks with very little honest emotion. My lasting impression of this book is that it’s a great lesson in how not to be a mother, daughter, friend or adult. The main characters are all supremely unhappy with their lives and do little to improve their happiness. The reader’s irritating tone of constant ennui added to that.