Theo of Golden was my book club’s pick for May. Almost everyone in the group loved it.
I was the outlier.
And because I was the outlier, I found myself thinking about the book far longer than I normally would have. Not because I loved it, but because I was trying to understand why it didn’t work for me when it clearly resonated so deeply with so many other people.
The more I sat with it, the more I realized my discomfort wasn’t just about the pacing or the writing style. It was something more structural. The novel felt emotionally manipulative in a way that many readers experienced as moving and profound, but which I experienced as strangely hollow.
That reaction surprised me, because on paper this is exactly the kind of book I should have loved: a quiet literary novel about art, grief, kindness, and human connection in a small town.
Instead, reading it often felt like being trapped inside a very earnest sermon.
Theo of Golden, written by first-time novelist and musician Allen Levi, was originally self-published before becoming an unlikely word-of-mouth phenomenon. Set in the fictional small town of Golden, the novel follows an elderly stranger named Theo who quietly arrives in town and begins purchasing pencil portraits hanging in a local coffee shop, returning each one to its subject in exchange for their story.
The story behind the book’s rise is, honestly, quite lovely. Levi reportedly wrote the novel largely for himself, unsure whether he would ever even publish it. Friends encouraged him to release it independently, and through book clubs, Facebook groups, and sheer word of mouth, the novel slowly transformed into a literary phenomenon before eventually being picked up by a major publisher.
There’s something genuinely heartening about that story. In an industry dominated by algorithms, branding, and relentless marketing cycles, there’s something romantic about a quiet, earnest novel finding readers because people simply wanted to hand it to one another.
Which perhaps also explains why I felt conflicted writing this review.
Because my criticism here is not really about Allen Levi himself, nor is it an argument that readers are wrong for loving the book. In many ways, I understand exactly why they do. My reaction has more to do with what I personally look for in literature: complexity, ambiguity, psychologically layered characters, and emotional insight that emerges organically rather than being carefully directed toward the reader.
What struck me most about Theo of Golden is that it occupies a strange middle ground: it is neither truly plot-driven nor genuinely character-driven. Things happen, certainly. Theo moves through the town, meeting people and creating his “bestowals.” But the narrative itself barely evolves. There’s little momentum, tension, or transformation beneath the surface. At the same time, the characters aren’t developed enough to sustain a quieter, introspective novel either.
Most of the people in Golden exist only long enough to receive Theo’s attention and illuminate some moral lesson before fading back into the scenery. They rarely feel like fully realized people with interiority and contradiction. Instead, they feel arranged around Theo as props for emotional revelation.
Even Theo himself never quite transcends symbolism. He feels less like a human being than a benevolent caricature: part saint, part wandering therapist, part Christ figure. The book clearly wants him to embody radical kindness, but because he is written as almost impossibly perceptive, generous, patient, and morally centered, he never feels psychologically real.
The “bestowals,” which initially seem like they will become the emotional engine of the novel, also end up feeling disconnected from one another. They function more as a collection of sentimental encounters than as a narrative device that deepens the story in a meaningful way. By the halfway point, I kept waiting for the book to become something larger than a sequence of carefully curated emotional moments, but it never really does.
The writing itself also didn’t work for me.
There are passages of genuine warmth scattered throughout the novel, but they are buried beneath observations and dialogue that often felt trite or self-consciously profound. Lines like “accountants aren’t supposed to cry” aim for emotional wisdom but land, at least for me, with the weight of a greeting-card aphorism. The novel is filled with these moments: observations clearly intended to feel profound, but which often felt manufactured rather than earned.
At times, the dialogue felt less like people speaking and more like characters reciting thematic statements at one another. I found myself thinking not about the characters, but about the author behind them, carefully arranging scenes to ensure the emotional lesson arrived at exactly the right moment.
What complicated the reading experience further for me was the underlying tone of moral self-congratulation running through the novel. At times, the book felt less interested in kindness itself than in performing goodness. There’s a persistent “look how compassionate this man is” quality to Theo’s interactions that increasingly made me uncomfortable.
The novel also occasionally slips into a kind of white savior framing that I found difficult to ignore. The portrayal of non-white characters especially left me uneasy. Many of them felt flattened into stereotypes or reduced to vehicles for Theo’s enlightenment rather than individuals with lives and agency of their own.
The repeated use of the word “illegal” to describe immigrants also made me visibly wince while reading. It’s one of those moments where a book unintentionally reveals the worldview sitting underneath it. Even if not maliciously intended, it created a distance I never fully recovered from as a reader.
And yet, despite all this, I can also understand why so many people deeply loved the novel.
There is clearly a hunger right now for stories about kindness, gentleness, and human connection without irony or cynicism. Theo of Golden taps directly into that emotional desire, and I don’t think that should be dismissed lightly. Even many critical readers admitted that, despite frustrations with the writing or pacing, they appreciated the reminder to be kinder and more attentive to other people.
A psychologist friend of mine once told me something interesting: human beings often need an “external model” for goodness. Someone to emulate.
Historically, religion filled that role for many people. Saints, prophets, and spiritual teachings offered behavioral templates for compassion, generosity, forgiveness, and restraint. But as organized religion occupies a smaller role in many people’s lives, perhaps fictional figures now sometimes step into that vacuum.
And maybe that is part of Theo’s appeal.
Theo may not feel entirely real to me as a character, but I can understand why readers find comfort in him as an idea. He represents a fantasy of radical attentiveness, of truly seeing people in a world where so many feel invisible.
Even if the novel itself felt sentimental, simplistic, politically clumsy, and emotionally over-engineered to me, I can still appreciate the impulse underneath it.
I just wish the book trusted its readers, and its characters, enough to embrace ambiguity, complexity, and genuine humanity rather than turning everyone into props inside a moral parable.