The Interestings Review: Is It Possible To Be Happy For Your Friends? ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4 Stars)
⚠️ FULL SPOILERS AHEAD. SERIOUSLY. I spoil EVERYTHING. ⚠️
📚 The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer — Book Review
Some books make me question humanity.
This book made me question whether people actually like their friends.
Because wow.
Envy is basically the seventh member of this friend group.
And listen—I know jealousy is human. I know comparison is human. I know social media basically runs on making people miserable. But I simply cannot relate to characters who spend decades unable to be happy when something good happens to people they supposedly love.
Because if you can't celebrate your friends winning… how are you ever going to be happy?
And yet…
I absolutely devoured this book.
Which is perhaps the most interesting thing about The Interestings.
⭐ Rating: 4/5 stars
⚠️ Trigger Warnings
This book contains:
• Rape / sexual assault allegations
• Child abuse
• Substance use & addiction
• Depression & mental illness
• Death & grief
• Cancer
• Infidelity
• Child exploitation / child labor
• Emotional abuse
• Disordered eating
• Sexual content
• Violence
• Cult involvement
• Ableism
• Sexual harassment
• Strong language
🎭 What Is The Interestings About?
The Interestings follows six teenagers who meet at an elite arts summer camp in 1974 and spend decades discovering a terrible truth:
✨ Talent does not guarantee success.
✨ Success does not guarantee happiness.
✨ And your friends becoming rich may ruin Thanksgiving forever.
The group—who dramatically nickname themselves The Interestings, consists of:
🎭 Jules (formerly Julie), an awkward scholarship kid desperate for reinvention.
🎭 Ash, effortlessly beautiful and wealthy.
🎭 Ethan, a socially awkward animation genius.
🎭 Goodman, charismatic chaos in human form.
🎭 Jonah, quiet and traumatized.
🎭 Cathy, emotionally intense dancer.
What starts as a coming-of-age story slowly transforms into something much larger:
friendship + class + envy + aging + disappointment + the terrifying realization that adulthood was not what you ordered
🌲 Full Plot Summary (WITH SPOILERS)
Summer Camp Creates Lifetime Emotional Damage ❤️
Fifteen-year-old Julie arrives at Spirit-in-the-Woods shortly after her father's death and quickly becomes "Jules," because apparently all you need for a new identity is confidence and rich friends.
She falls into the orbit of the Interestings and becomes fascinated—especially with the glamorous Wolf family.
Ethan quickly falls in love with Jules.
Jules quickly does not.
This dynamic will continue for approximately one thousand pages emotionally.
Jules becomes obsessed with Goodman.
Goodman barely notices.
Which, unfortunately, is also realistic.
Everyone Grows Up (Badly)
The novel jumps around decades showing where everyone ends up.
And here comes the part that drives most of the emotional engine:
Some people become wildly successful.
Others don't.
Ethan becomes massively wealthy creating Figland, an animated empire.
Ash marries Ethan and enjoys enormous financial security.
Jules becomes a social worker living a comparatively ordinary life.
And ordinary turns out to be very hard when your friends own multiple properties.
Each Christmas letter from Ash and Ethan becomes psychological warfare.
Not intentionally.
But still.
The Goodman Situation 😬
This becomes the major fracture point.
After a drunken New Year's Eve, Cathy accuses Goodman of rape.
Goodman insists it was consensual.
The novel intentionally never provides certainty.
Ash desperately wants everyone to protect Goodman.
Cathy wants justice.
Jules gets pulled into the middle.
Goodman eventually flees the country before trial.
And here's where things become truly messy:
The Wolf family secretly supports Goodman for decades.
Jules learns the truth.
Keeps the secret.
Becomes complicit.
Which means this decision quietly poisons multiple relationships for decades.
Because secrets are basically compound interest for emotional disasters.
The Financial Gap Gets Bigger And Bigger 💸
Jules marries Dennis.
Dennis struggles severely with depression.
Money becomes tight.
Meanwhile Ethan and Ash become absurdly wealthy.
One of the most fascinating parts of this novel is how Wolitzer explores something people don't always want to admit:
Sometimes friendship survives differences in money.
Sometimes it absolutely does not.
Jules loves her friends.
Jules also envies them.
Constantly.
Painfully.
Relatably?
Maybe.
Exhaustingly?
Definitely.
Everybody Starts Falling Apart
Jonah reveals horrifying childhood abuse involving a musician who drugged him and stole his music.
Dennis struggles with depression for years.
Ash secretly continues financially supporting Goodman.
Ethan eventually discovers this.
Because Jules accidentally exposes everything.
Oops.
This creates complete devastation.
Ash and Ethan separate.
Jules and Dennis's marriage suffers.
Everybody is angry.
Everybody is tired.
Everybody probably needs therapy.
(Conveniently, Jules is a therapist.)
The Ending 💔
Ethan reveals he has metastatic melanoma.
He and Jules finally confront decades of emotional tension.
He kisses her.
For a brief moment, readers may think:
"WAIT IS THIS HAPPENING?"
No.
Because Jules realizes what she has always known:
She never wanted Ethan romantically.
Not at 15.
Not now.
Not ever.
She encourages Ethan to reconcile with Ash.
They do.
But Ethan dies.
He suffers a heart attack after cancer treatment complications and dies at only 52.
After his death, Ash gives Jules something Ethan created decades earlier:
A storyboard showing teenage Ethan and Jules together at camp.
Walking.
Laughing.
Stars above them.
The life Ethan always imagined.
Jules places it away with her camp memories.
And that's the ending.
Not dramatic.
Not explosive.
Just people carrying old versions of themselves forever.
Which honestly feels exactly right.
💭 My Thoughts
I didn't love many of these characters.
Actually…
Some of them drove me absolutely insane 😂
The thing is:
I kept reading.
And reading.
And reading.
Because somehow this book transforms ordinary human messiness into something genuinely compelling.
This is not a plot-heavy book.
This is not a fast book.
There are entire sections where people mostly:
• think about things
• compare themselves to others
• attend dinners
• become quietly resentful
• continue attending dinners
And yet…
I was invested.
Because the book understands something uncomfortable:
Many people never stop comparing themselves to their friends.
Personally, I struggled with the envy.
A lot.
Because I simply cannot imagine spending decades unable to celebrate people I love.
That sounds exhausting.
But maybe that's exactly why this book works.
It isn't always showing people at their best.
It's showing people as they are.
And unfortunately…
that felt pretty human.
📖 Who Should Read The Interestings?
✅ Readers who love literary fiction
✅ People who enjoy character-driven stories
✅ Readers who loved messy friendship books
✅ Anyone who enjoys watching decades of emotional complications unfold slowly
❌ Readers wanting fast pacing
❌ Readers wanting highly likable characters
❌ Readers wanting huge plot twists every 20 pages
📚 Books To Read If You Liked The Interestings
The Most Fun We Ever Had — Claire Lombardo
(Messy families, decades-long relationships, emotional chaos)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
(Friendship, ambition, success, resentment, creative people being complicated)
Commonwealth — Ann Patchett
(Long timelines + interconnected lives)
The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt
(Coming-of-age, friendship, art, and enormous emotional damage)
Fates and Furies — Lauren Groff
(Marriage, perception, secrets, and flawed humans everywhere)
Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sometimes you don't have to love the characters.
Sometimes watching them make questionable life choices for 450 pages is enough 😌
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