There was a period of my life where I read nearly every single book Chuck Palahniuk put out. It felt like he was doing things with his writing that no one else was doing. His books were shocking, irreverent, and yes, sometimes disgusting. But they always felt like a breath of fresh air. It’s been awhile since I’ve read a book by him, so I was excited to dig into his latest title, “Not Forever, But For Now.” All of the same elements of Palahniuk’s writing are there: lots of gross references, characters with zero moral compass, and this wild display of imagination. And yet, this book somehow ended up feeling somewhat boring to me.

The novel is from the POV of Cecil, one half of a brother duo who’s being raised within a super wealthy family on an estate in England. It’s quite a unique family, made up of assassins who have secretly offed some of the most famous celebrities (Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, etc.). Cecil’s life consists of recounting his brother’s murders (mostly of their staff) and watching nature documentaries. However, Cecil and his brother are not ordinary in the slightest and their relationship is quite disturbing (which is a massive understatement). The question becomes whether the brothers will follow their family’s footsteps into the assassin business.

There are tons of bad reviews on Goodreads for this title – many of whom talk about how gross Palahniuk’s writing is. This is a completely valid point. There is something to offend literally everyone and a trigger warning should be posted for every possible thing you can think of. But this is Palahniuk’s style (for better or worse). To me, this earns only two stars because it ended up with a pacing issue. The only real action of the book occurred near the end, and by then, I had kind of lost interest in what was going to happen to Cecil. When you’re bombarded with lots of descriptions of assault and murder (and oh so many body parts), there has to be a payoff when it comes to plot. And there simply wasn’t enough plot for this to be worth raving about in my opinion.

At the end of the day, Palahniuk’s writing is tailored for a small segment of the population that can appreciate such twisted material. The time when I could stomach some of this content has most likely come and gone. But I’m glad he’s still doing his thing – maybe the next book will be better.

2 stars

*Free ARC provided by Simon and Schuster in exchange for an honest review*