“Equal parts funny and searingly beautiful … Marissa and Adam are so elegantly painted and painfully real that any feeling of cliche falls away. Spending time with them is sometimes devastating and sometimes hilarious, and it’s well worth the ride.”
— New York Daily News

“This compact, well-crafted novel, alternating between two points of view, asks the age-old question—how do you get from where you are to where you want to be?—but does so with indelible protagonists and a vision firmly anchored in the reality that surrounds them. … Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal

“Self-discovery at its most poignant.”
— Departures Magazine

“Joshua Max Feldman has written the quintessential Thanksgiving novel.”
— Marcy Dermansky, Author of The Red Car

“START WITHOUT ME is an exceptional novel. … A tender, funny, beautifully written evocation of the maelstrom of the holidays and the potential to connect.”
— Zachary Mason, author of Void Star and The Lost Books of the Odyssey

“Feldman’s engaging novel offers sublime levity to balance the gravity of his characters’ various struggles, and Adam’s and Marissa’s tales interweave effortlessly as they search for meaning among many doubts and what-ifs.”
— Booklist

“With consummate compassion, Feldman takes note of every awkward movement of [Adam and Marissa’s] unlikely, painful, comical and consequentially graceful Thanksgiving together.”
— Bookpage

“Start Without Me is a sometimes harsh, sometimes sweet, wholly gratifying novel.”
— Shelf Awareness

“A smart, pitch-perfect story about how our families are made up of people who know us better than anyone — and yet somehow often don’t know us at all.”
— #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Christina Baker Kline

“A very entertaining and moving novel.”
— Chigozie Obioma, Author of The Fishermen