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This is one of those "I really wanted to like it" books. The sentence-level writing is gorgeous, and the subject matter--working in a high end NYC restaurant--is (for some of us) nearly irresistible. And at first I liked Sweetbitter very much. Young girl moves to New York, gets an amazing job, is immersed in the life of the city ... What's not to like?

But after a hundred pages or so (maybe even fewer), I started to get frustrated. While I was enjoying protagonist Tess's introduction to fine food and wine, I kept waiting for, well, a plot. Eventually I could no longer deny what I'd begun to suspect: there was no plot, unless you call a 22-year-old backwaiter falling in love with the attractive-yet-troubled bartender a plot. It's not.

Tess's relationship with Jake the bartender is as tedious as you'd imagine. The more interesting relationship is the one between Tess and Simone, the restaurant's doyenne and longest-serving server. Simone takes on Tess as her protege, teaching her about wine, urging her to go deeper, learn more. Simone in many ways is who Tess wants to be--well-traveled, at home in the world, mysterious, cultured.

The problem is neither Simone or Tess (or Jake, the troubled bartender) are fully developed characters. And they're the main ones, so imagine how unmemorable the secondary characters are. Simone is intriguing, but ultimately she seems like a type instead of real person. Same with Tess, same with Jake. But they're so close to being more than that! I finished this book wishing it had gone through one more round of edits (you will grow tired of the drinking and the snorting and the vomiting, I promise; you will begin to skim), in which the author had gone more deeply into her main characters. I had the feeling she didn't want to reveal too much about them because she was holding back for the penultimate reveal ... but to be honest, what we learn at the end of the book doesn't have much of a payoff. I think it's supposed to be shocking, but it isn't. Or it's not really that interesting--so, mildly shocking in a boring kind of way. I'd rather have real characters.

Anyway, if you're twenty and living at home in the suburbs this summer, dreaming about how great life will be once you're shed of your parents and your job at the mall, you'll like this book more than I did. If you're me, you'll read to the end (after vowing to give up in the middle), skimming as you go, because you're curious how things will turn out. But of course you already know how things turn out. They always turn out that way.