Although this is a charming book, which I feel a lot of people would enjoy, sadly it was not really my cup of tea. The characters are endearing, and it is a sweet coming of age tale, but for me it felt that there was more that could be done with the story. That said, it is beautifully written, and the author paints such clear pictures of all the characters and locations. I wanted to love it, but it was a little lacking in drama for my tastes.

Friendship, teenage lust, soul searching, family and sanctuary.

When friends become family and boundaries are crossed will the love remain?

A lovely book set in the 70's between London and Devon, sounds like it shouldn't work but it does!

A beautifully written account of friendship and love, among the life’s hardships, set in the dreamy countryside of Devon vs. the serious real life London. I had a pleasant experience with this book, which is very calming, yet poignant with details and soothing descriptions of nature and young love. It is like a pumpkin spiced latte on an autumn evening, delightful to sip on and strong enough to get one focused on the important things.

The characters are well portrayed and each and every one of them is distinctly rounded up, a well accomplished feat for a seemingly easy to read young adult novel. It seems like a ya, though it touches some serious topics as well, like family poverty, difficult childhood, unrequited love, etc. Plus the whole thing is spiced up with Anglican vs Quaker references, which I must say, I found a bit odd in the beginning. Though religion plays a major role in the characters’ development throughout the book, so one should not be harsh about it.

All in all, I enjoyed this novel and warmly recommend it as a weekend read. It requires patience and/or a calm mood and the expectation that the action is slowly unfolding, with the speed of an old mobile, yet like a sunny breeze while watching the river unfolding its currents and waves.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A book about female friendship, you say? Sign me up, I say.
Here was I, 22-year-old Cass from Leeds, expecting a powerful insight into the lives of young women who attended university in Britain in the early-1970s. All I wanted was vividly real characters and a tale that would wholly suck me into their lives - it wasn’t too much to ask, was it? - but what I got instead was a preachy, offensive and rather badly-written book that was even more pretentious than I am. And honestly, the world-building was so bad that if the synopsis hadn’t informed me that the book was set in the early-1970s, I would have placed the setting over three decades earlier based on how the characters thought.
Firstly, the dialogue is bad in that ridiculously clunky way that hindered my progress in trying to fight my way through its pages - the characters would use phrases that weren’t realistic to everyday use and would give far more exposition than was necessary. And don’t even get me started on how offensive some of the things the characters thought/said were! At one point, a character jokes that she was fine with the guys she had gone out drinking with as “they would only rape [her] if they thought [she] was a Tory”. At another point, someone thinks that finding themselves able to afford a flat would surely “soften the blow” if their parents had died in a similar way that her best friend’s had only a few months before. Things like this, that pop up over and over again the novel are, at best, ignorance and, at worst, offensive.
Leading on from this, the characters thinking in such ways make them wholly unlikeable and because of that, I lacked any sort of empathy towards them and honestly just wanted to fling the book through the window and be done with it. Furthermore, they all seemingly have strict ideas about what constitutes a good moral character - engaging in voluntary work, religious inclination, interest in high-brow culture - that it makes it seem very clear that the characterisation has been influenced by the author’s own views, and using your art as a vehicle for your own narrow-minded ideology is something that frankly, I just cannot agree with.
There is no feminism in this book, not a bloody trace of it, despite an almost entirely female cast. There was no love between these girls or even just them accepting one another for who they are without any judgement, there was just a critical analysis into why you’re probably a terrible person.

I'm really sorry to say that I did not like this book, maybe it was just not for me.
This book is about two friends, who just finished high school and start college/working. I will not say much more because the book is quite short and I don't want to give any spoilers.
I really liked the beginning of the book, where all the characters were introduced. But from there on I got a bit bored reading the book.
Maybe I just didn't get parts of it because religion is a really big part of the book, and it takes place in 1970 which is also quite different from our time.
My main issue was with the fact that all the characters were too perfect, always polite, never, mad, always hard-working. Which are all good characteristics but it also meant that nothing really happened in the book ..