Member Reviews

Great book- it’s based around relationships,sex and sexuality- expect the unexpected.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Penguin Books UK for my eARC. This is exchange for my honest unbiased review

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This is a love story, but a love story with twists – and one we don’t get to read about often.

This is a love story about Grace, Annie, and Violet. It’s a story about first time love – for all three characters – and how it doesn’t always end up quite as we expect it to be. Grace falls in love at first sight with a girl at a party. At the same time, lawyer Annie meets a successful man she thinks she could settle down with. And elsewhere, Violet, who rents Annie’s spare room, finds herself falling for a girl for the first time.

The three story strands eventually intersect about halfway through the novel – one excellent sentence shocks you into realisation at the end of a chapter – and we watch the fallout ensue. I enjoyed following the ups and downs of the three women’s lives, friendships, and romances, and although the setting doesn’t play a crucial role in the book, it was fun to read a story like this set somewhere besides London or New York (Grace, Annie, and Violet all live in Leeds).

A Love Story for Bewildered Girls is one about first loves and romance, but it’s also one about the strength of female friendship, the importance of family, and knowing who you are and what you really want in life – regardless of what anyone else thinks. On the whole, Emma Morgan's first novel is an easy, enjoyable read, with an ending you won't be able to guess.

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For me, a betwixt and between kind of book: a step up from chick-lit but not weighty enough for literary fiction. I like that it takes gay characters and a woman with depression as 'normal', without making a thing of them, but there are no real breakout storylines or insights.

It's hard to believe that Annie should get herself into the situation she does, and one of the highlights is when she emerges as the ballsy character we expect her to be. By the end, female friendship reigns supreme - nice, if hardly novel.

A cute, girly read, then (I felt all the characters were emotionally younger than their given ages of around 30) but not one which will linger in my mind.

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So nice to read a story about relationships, sexuality and sex which is not the typical- the characters are brilliant, really enjoyable and relatable (especially Annie), and I enjoyed the contrast in settings between the city and the old rambling Manor House.
The exploration of the relationships between Sam, Violet and Grace were so well developed- Violet exploring her sexuality and Grace exploring her emotional and dependency desires. I also loved that no one ran off into the sunset with a bloke not worthy just to complete a ‘happy ending’... this book has a much more satisfactory ending

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