Happy Hour: A Novel

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This is a charming, fun and thought provoking read written with warmth and sensitivity. The characters are wonderfully entertaining and I love Franny’s dark wit. An adorable and feel-good read! I already have plenty of names I don’t recognize in my phone, and I usually have to save them with an identifying noun. I can only faintly recall who ‘Todd Abyssinian Cat,’ ‘Hera White Boots,’ or ‘Cole Sculptor/Mediator’ are. If there is a finite capacity in one’s mind for names, I have surely reached my limit.” I will say that I did enjoy reading her thoughts on the art of conversation and I did find the novel to have a strong atmosphere and sense of place. You can easily envision the kind of events and parties the girls take part in, as well as the kind of crowds occupying these places. It just so happens that like Isa herself I’m not all that keen on the rich and pretentious. Unlike Isa however, I do not, and would not want to, move in their same circles. For all her complaining Isa doesn’t really try to forge more meaningful connections nor did she seem to really care about Gala. Their friendship seemed one of convenience and nothing else.

If your days of living for perpetual glamour are now behind you (or yet to come), this magnificent debut is an excellent reminder of what it costs and how it’s done.”

Equal parts sad and hilarious, Jacquie Byron’s Happy Hour was a reassuring tale that I enjoyed over the Christmas holiday period. After interviewing the author of Happy Hour earlier this year, I have had a deep desire to read her first book. I really enjoyed the mix of humour and sentiment with this one, Happy Hour was an uplifting read. Happy Hour is richly written, vividly rendering a stinking city, its tangled social circles and the airy pretence of an exclusive party crowd ... it is refreshing to read a book about fun and frivolity whose climax does not rely on the moralisation of peril. Sarah Carson, inews

Happy Hour] combines fun and glamour with Granados's sharp sense of how moneyed society really works. Alex Quicho, BookforumThis is exactly my type of book: a wry, Moshfeghian female protagonist in her 20s, navigating her way through a hedonistic, cosmopolitan New York City summer with a few dollars to her name. So obviously it gets five stars. If you read and liked: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, The Bell Jar or Sweetbitter you would probably like this - in fact you might like it more! Zero plot, just vibes. Languid, warm, luxurious and seethingly sharp.