This book has been everywhere, including the front page of the NLB Overdrive page. So I caved in, borrowed the book, and finished it in one day. Warning: I will mark spoiler-ish passages with [SPOILER] because there are parts at the end of the book that I want to talk about. If you want a spoiler-free reading experience, you should find a different review.

Where You’d Go, Bernadette, starts when Bernadette disappears before a trip to a family trip to Antartica. Her daughter, Bee, receives a dossier of documents, including emails and records, and uses that to piece together what happened before the trip. I can’t really say anymore because it would give away one major plot-point about the book.

The story was a lot more engrossing than I expected and I finished it within a day. I think that Bee and Bernadette and quirky and fun characters and reading about their lives and how it started unravelling was fun. That said, I hated Soo-Lin and spent a good bit of the book hating Elgin as well. [SPOILER] Soo-Lin and Elgin both work at Microsoft, and basically they start an emotional affair because Soo-Lin lies (or at the very least, exaggerates) about what Bernadette does and the two of them end up starting an affair. Soo-Lin, I hated because she just sees herself as a victim; Elgin because he was just so stupid about it. At least he seemed to realise that he made a big mistake at the end of the book, but I never really saw that for Soo-Lin. [/END SPOILER]

Speaking of Soo-Lin, her Victims against Victimhood thing was actually pretty great. I think it was supposed to be satire, but I honestly know people stuck in a victim mentality, which keeps them in their hurt, that I think something similar in real life could actually be helpful to people.

Although Bernadette and Bee are my favourite characters, the character who took me on a ride has to be Audrey. [SPOILER] Audrey starts the book as Bernadette’s nemesis and she does some ridiculous stuff in the name of social status and spoiling her son, but she also has some pretty major character growth. She spends so much of the book hating on Bernadette, but when she finds out that the people around her are planning to have her committed, she goes out of her way (literally) to warn Bernadette about it and is responsible for ‘waking’ her up.

A good bit of the book revolves around people (Elgin) planning to have Bernadette committed. And even before that, you can tell that Bernadette has issues, from just looking at the way she outsources her life to her virtual assistant. She may be a quirky and charming character, but you can tell that she has issues. Sadly, the book doesn’t really deal well with the topic of mental health – while it very vividly describes the way that Bernadette’s life comes down, her recovery is basically her facing reality and then running away and getting the chance to create again. The recovery story feels a bit too pat to me, but that’s the only part of the book that I wish was explored more in-depth. [/END SPOILER]

I’ve heard people describe this as comedy, but I don’t know, I didn’t really laugh out loud while reading this. I find it entertaining, for sure, and I recognised parts of it as satire, but that’s about it. Comedy, to me, is more towards the Discworld series, which makes me laugh every few pages. Perhaps it’s just my definition of comedy, but I thought I’d note it down in case there’s anyone else like me.

Overall, Where You’d Go, Bernadette has lived up to the hype. Apart from a different treatment of one issue, I enjoyed the entire story and there’s nothing that I wish would be changed. If you like novels about families who break and come together and how they interact with their world, this is something I think you’d be interested in.