One’s Company

A Novel

De: Ashley Hutson

Narrado por: Rachel Jacobs

Bonnie Lincoln just wants to be left alone. To come home from work, shut out the voice that reminds her of some devastating losses, and unwind in front of the nostalgic, golden glow of her favorite TV show, Three's Company.

When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose vision—to completely shuck off her own troublesome identity—takes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three's Company and slip into the lives of its main characters: no-nonsense Janet Wood, pleasantly airheaded Chrissy Snow, and confident Jack Tripper. While her best friend, Krystal, tries to drag her back to her old life, Bonnie is determined to transcend pain, trauma, and the baggage of her past by immersing herself in the ultimate binge-watch.

©2022 Ashley Hutson (P)2022 Spotify Audiobooks

This might be my favorite book of all time.

I loved this book. Every chapter I was engrossed in the story. I enjoyed every second.

Quirky, Dark, Entertaining

I truly enjoyed this book mainly for how different and unusual the story displayed how one handles grief.

Great, unsettling read. Great performance but some wild mispronunciations.

This story gets to something raw and scary about grief, and about our desperate desire to remake ourselves in the wake of tragedy. I loved the narrator, but the editing team or whoever needed to catch some of her mispronunciations and correct them. No judgements but there were some really jarring ones. Examples: chasm and homage. There were a number of other noticeable ones I can't remember at the moment.
Skip this one if you don't like characters who are mentally unstable or having your heart ripped out of your chest. Gorgeous and haunting.

Strange, absurd, funny, heartbreaking

Having trouble rating this because I can’t tell if I loved it or not. I don’t even know how to explain it but if I had to I’d say The Truman Show meets WandaVision meets Barbra Streisand’s fake shopping mall basement.

It was a fascinating premise that took some odd turns. I didn’t love the third act but it was definitely an interesting read unlike anything else I’ve ever read before.

Thus is probably the best book I've read this year!!!

Loved thus entire book. Just phenomenal. If you've ever watched the T.V show, 3s company, you will love this book.

About 17 min too long

Original story. Towards the end, the story lost steam and it just meandered and lingered longer than it should have.

Spoilers for later in the book

On the surface this book is alright. It’s the interesting story of a woman who’s dealt with extreme trauma and wants nothing else but to withdraw from the world after winning the lottery. On a deeper level that grows as you read, this book is a confounding mess. Just from a story perspective I felt awful for this character. She’s a bad person who doesn’t care about others to such an extent she even neglects a puppy who loves her. However, the author does so much to torture her it becomes unbearable. She’s dealing with so much trauma, and other characters brush it off like it’s nothing, or are unaware of it. All she really wants is to be alone, and nobody can even give her that. Top it off that everybody who does know about her trauma is incredibly inappropriate about it. By the end I just wanted this character to get her wish of being left alone, not in a way that made the book compelling, but in a stop it he’s already dead way. On another level reading this book as a neurodivergent person, and seeing so many people who say they support nuerodivergent and disabled people also say they like this book, is distressing and disappointing. This character has something awful happen to her and her only response is to ask people to leave her alone. For that she’s treated like a monster, and at one point somebody even victim blames her for what happened, which if you read this book you know is pretty unforgivable. This book ends with the main character being deemed too crazy to be in society and having her free will striped because she’s too much of a danger to herself and others. While she is a danger by the end, the reason for that is so unspecified it feels like youre reading something from the 60’s. She has donkey brains, the end. She might as well be in a padded cell by the end, and I half expected an Indian to throw a water fountain out a window, except that’s from a good book and this isn’t one of those. This is the type of book people who didn’t like the Bell Jar because the main character was mean enjoy. Because they don’t like the reality that nuerodiverse people are humans and not fun dolls for them to infantilize or defame

Bored to tears

At about an hour in, I decided to speed up the playback. It was still pretty boring for awhile, then they drop the trauma bomb on you. It's just one tragedy after another, no one is particularly relatable. Some people are despicable. I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Maybe i just don’t get it

I hated this book. Generally i love books in the women vs the void subgenre but this one just sucked. I just hated the story and the characters and it was sad in such a weird and pointless way. I wish I’d read more reviews on the internet before buying instead of just reading the Audible reviews. I tend to love stories about weird women dealing with trauma and neurodivergence but apparently those things are not enough to make a character interesting. I guess it was well written? Unless i was supposed to sympathize with the main character… i never once felt for her. She was just awful and the whole story was just yuck.