“Deep in Essex and her own thoughts, Sophie had a feeling something was going to happen and then it did. Chris has entered the pub and re-entered her life after Sophie had finally stopped thinking about him and regretting what she’d done.
Sophie has a chance at creating a new ending and paying off her emotional debts (if not her financial ones). All she has to do is act exactly like a normal, well-adjusted person and not say any of her inner monologue out loud. If she can suppress her light paranoia, pornographic visualisations and pathological lying maybe she’ll even end up getting the guy she wants? Then she could dump her boyfriend Ian and try to enjoy Christmas.”

I really like Sara Pascoe as a comedian – so when I saw she had her first novel out, I thought I’d request a copy from NetGalley – and was very pleased to be granted an ARC (it’s out next week). I then noticed it had a massively wide variety of stars on the review platform – it appeared to be literary marmite – but I still wanted to give it a go.

The book is told from Sophie’s point of view – and it is seemingly just a massive brain dump of her thoughts and the tangents she goes off on. She clearly has mental health struggles – and the meandering views screamed ADHD to me (although I don’t believe that is ever referenced). It is occasionally interspersed with other documents – an email from her bridezilla sister, a letter from debt collectors, correspondence from her estranged father in Australia – etc etc – and these break up the storyline and give some context.

I have to say I kept reading – but I’m not really sure why – as it just didn’t seem to go anywhere, and the journey to nowhere wasn’t that exciting or funny. It wasn’t offensive or badly written – just a bit ‘meh’.

But as I said – some people appear to have loved it – so don’t necessarily take my word for it!

Thanks to the publishers and Net Galley for my ARC.