“The Most” Review

As I watch the progress bar on my Goodreads 2024 reading challenge stay still, and the number of books behind schedule grows, I decided the closest thing to reading a new book right now would be writing about one.  

I picked up “The Most” by Jessica Anthony during my last trip to Barnes and Noble. I know not to judge a book by its cover, but this one was beautiful: a back portrait of a woman wading in clear, blue water. It looked like the perfect, short summer read before going back to the world of academics where I mostly read Swift and Wordsworth. Plus, it had a Buy One Get One 50 percent Off sticker, which I now realize should have been a sign, especially for a book that was published in July 2024.  

At a whopping 144 pages, “The Most” is a story of a woman, Kathleen Beckett, who refuses to leave her apartment complex pool for eight hours and contemplates the past, present and future of her marriage while swimming. During this time in the pool, her husband, Virgil Beckett, goes golfing. They both reflect on their past lives and the affairs that they have had during the marriage. That is pretty much it for the book. No crazy turns or very intense scenes, just two people unhappy in their marriage and thinking of what they could have done differently. 

I will say that while this book is stereotypical, the wife who had an amazing athletic career is now unsatisfied with her family while the husband moves them around for his corporate job, it also had certain elements you would not expect. Both characters have interesting backstories which take up most of the book and allow you to travel back in time with them. It is easy to get lost in their stories and want to know why they made each decision, but it was not enough to elicit any strong emotions from me towards the characters, and by the end of the book I didn’t really like either of them. 

The book ended and left me with the feeling that I had wasted a bit of my time. It’s not that the story or general concept was bad. I enjoyed my time reading it and was sucked into the drama of the marriage. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was shorter. I think that it would have been more appreciated and impactful if it came in the typical short story format. By the middle of the book, it felt as though the author was trying to meet a length requirement for her publisher; just 144 pages and we can call it a book! 

Do I think it is a must read? Definitely not, but if you are looking for a short and odd marriage drama, then this would probably be at the top of the list. Overall, I gave it 3/5 stars. The writing was very detailed and well done, but the story and book as a whole is not something I would recommend. If it were a true short story though, that would be a different conversation.