Book: Bright Futures
Author: Alex McGlothlin
Publisher: Bituminous
Year: 2025
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “David Hall has graduated college and decided to pursue a non-traditional route. Instead of going to business school he’ll spend the summer at his girlfriend’s lake house in Appalachia with an aim to write the Great American Novel. When the words don’t flow as easily as David had hoped, and his girlfriend inexplicably begins spending increasing time away from David, David’s world goes into a tailspin.”

Review : It’s a funny thing to tell you that this is the first book I’ve ever reviewed that had so few reviews I wasn’t able to find an image of the book cover to use here for you. This book came to me via a publicity service and was billed as being a coming-of-age psychological thriller with a hint of romance and while all of those words are technically true, they’re doing all the work of describing a novel without any further depth beyond what you’ve just read. I could describe the plot to you, as I have in numerous other reviews, but sadly all I would be doing is regurgitating what the synopsis (above) already had to say. There is very little depth to Bright Futures and while the technicalities of the writing were fine, for an advanced copy the actual meat of the book goes no deeper than surface level – all while McGlothlin tells you via his protagonist that this is a coming-of-age psychological thriller with a hint of romance. McGlothlin is going through the motions and, if you’ve read any of my past reviews, you know I find this to be an insult to the reader.

David Hall, our main character, is a not-so-subtle misogynist, former frat-boy, and excessive partier-bordering on alcoholic who’s just graduated from his Southern college with big dreams of writing the next great American novel. Unfortunately for the reader, McGlothlin inserts Hall’s book within his own book, so that by the time the reader is 3/4 of the way through Bright Futures we have an entirely new novel to read – Hall’s so-called great American novel. It is jarring, to say the least. I am actually all for a book within a book, give me something so meta it blows my mind, I’m ready! This, however, is not that. Hall’s novel is contrived and graphic, and McGlothlin throws us into a violent and ablest narrative that I found myself flipping through and skimming over just to get away from. It adds absolutely nothing to the plot of McGlothin’s book, in fact I think it detracts from it, furthering the story so little that it actually does Bright Futures a tremendous disservice.

McGlothlin’s attempt to create a psychological thriller goes off the rails before it even begins – though, perhaps we can call Hall’s book within a book a psychological thriller, but it was more gratuitous violence, ableist slurs, and contrived storytelling than it was psychologically thrilling. It’s true, there’s a small element of suspense in Bright Futures, but it is very small indeed, so spaced out that by the time the ends are ready to be tied up, I’d forgotten the entire suspense-ish plot from chapters before and had to remind myself of what was going on. Hall is unpredictable, but not so much in character development as he is in poor writing – rather than a distant girlfriend whose actions eat at him until it’s all he can think about and he begins to act accordingly, we see a distant girlfriend whose actions seem to leave him only vaguely phased until he decides at the drop of a hat and with no real warning that he’s going to follow her. There’s a lot to be desired when it comes to plot arc, character development, and substance; we encounter a lot of ogling, a lot of “boys will be boys” kind of conversations, and a lot of mindless talk about Hall’s (really very bad) novel. That’s about all there is.

Advice : This book has 10 reviews on GoodReads and 4.8 stars, all of which I can only assume came from friends, family, or those who also received a free advanced copy. I choose to review in a way that’s honest, and so I can only tell you now that this is a book I would avoid – it won’t be hard to do. As always I’m grateful for the advanced copy, but they can’t all be winners.