A lovely memoir, of girlhood, of obsession, of the joy of life. This was a delight to read. Highly recommended.

My thanks to Netgalley and HQ for a copy of “ I carried a watermelon “ for an honest review.
I like Dirty Dancing but Katy Brand LOVES IT,
You can’t help but be carried along by her passion for the film and I loved getting an insight into how aspects of the film have influenced her life..
I hadn’t watched the film recently but after reading this book I’ll definitely be sorting my copy out to watch.

I love Dirty Dancing. I think it’s an amazing film. I had a crush on both Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as a teenager. Katy Brand writes in her book how the film has impacted her life and I didn’t expect much from this book, I just love connecting with other people’s love for something that I also love. Katy shares my name (obv.) and lived locally to me, so I connected with that. The cultural references, like VHS struggles, I identified with all of that. The essays that Katy writes on Dirty Dancing are fascinating, going into depth on the – for example abortion storyline in the film and so it was fun but serious too. It isn’t fluff. Not that there is anything wrong with fluff. It felt like a satisfying read, you know sometimes you get to the end of a book and you’re almost like oh is that … it? Like a roast dinner with no Yorkshire’s, it doesn’t feel right. I felt I Carried a Watermelon covered everything. I loved it.

It was the coronavirus isolation of 2020 and everyone was stuck inside and it didn’t occur to me to mind….okay that’s a lie. I was bored (but safe and lucky). So I decided to read I Carried a Watermelon. The reason was two-fold: 1) I like Katy Brand, I think she is funny and 2) I love Dirty Dancing. I don’t just love Dirty Dancing, I LOVE Dirty Dancing. It is a love that a few people have. An obsessive love, a love in which no one can speak badly about Dirty Dancing because I will fall out with them. I got the sense (cleverly through the title of the book and the picture on the cover of Katy Brand brandishing a watermelon) that Katy Brand liked it too.

I Carried a Watermelon is a fantastic memoir – it is funny, light hearted, silly in places but overall it connects with the reader through this shared love of the classic 80s film Dirty Dancing. Brand walks you through her childhood when we relied of video cassettes with the threat of them being worn out or in Brand’s case hidden by her father, the depression – when the remake was made (I wasn’t as brave as Brand – I saw it in snippets, I couldn’t watch the whole thing). But through it all she has this really positive attitude and pro-women-gung-ho-ness about her.

I loved it. I genuinely couldn’t put it down and I am so very jealous that she got to go to the real life Kellerman’s resort.

One thing is for sure, I will not be putting Katy Brand’s I Carried a Watermelon in the corner – that was a bit tenuous but you know what I mean.

I Carried a Watermelon by Katy Brand is available now.

For more information regarding Katy Brand (@KatyFBrand) please visit www.katybrandofficial.com.

For more information regarding HQ (@HQstories) please visit www.hqstories.co.uk.

I Carried a Watermelon was a fab, fab read, I loved it that much I’ve since bought it in hardback to keep in my ‘proper’ bookshelf as I don’t tend to keep read books on my kindle. If you love Dirty Dancing then this is the book for you.

Absolutely loved this book, would definitely recommend , a must read for dirty dancing fans ;) , its one of them books that you will never be bored of reading over and over again

I have to confess to knowing nothing about Katy Brand before choosing this one, I just knew that I am loved Dirty Dancing! She writes in an accessible and engaging style and I thoroughly enjoyed this. I'd definitely recommend it to fans of the film...

A fun read about Kats obsession, addiction with dirty dancing , how she looks at the film, it’s relationships, the women and how we view the film as we get older too. It’s a fun and entertaining read about a film I and many others love, so great to see a fresh take on it and different views, opinions and how it guided others.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

I was thrilled to get a copy of I Carried a Watermelon as I’ve been a fan of Dirty Dancing ever since I first saw it when I was 11 – my cousin who’s 2 years older than me brought her video round to my house and I was mesmerised by what I saw. It turns out that Katy Brand is a similar age to me and was the same age when she first saw the film so I could really identify with her thoughts and feelings about the film so needless to say I adored this book!

Katy Brand takes us through her first experience of watching the film and how obsessed she quickly became with it. I could totally identify with her wanting to watch it over and over again but not being able to because she’d not recorded it. Also the pain of finally getting my own copy on video and it eventually getting chewed! She also explores the themes in the film and how it stands up to the test of time. There are some stories from behind the scenes, some of which I hadn’t known. Katy also visits the resort which was Kellermans and I loved these parts of the book, it felt like I was along on the trip and experiencing it all for myself!

I loved the way Katy Brand discusses how we see the women in Dirty Dancing and how our opinion of them changes as we grow older and I totally concur with what she says. The way as pre-teens we all wanted to be Baby and to have a holiday romance with Johnny but we didn’t really understand what happened with Penny or why it was such a big deal. Then you get a little older and you learn the fears of job insecurity and you understand what abortion is and suddenly it’s Penny you focus on as you watch; and now as 40 year olds we understand the older women such as Vivian and Baby’s mother a bit more.

I have a complicated relationship with Dirty Dancing, which I won’t go into here, but for years it was my favourite film, my go-to film when I needed cheering up. However, for a long time I lost all the happiness that the film used to bring me. In recent years I’ve slowly been getting that love back and this book has been the icing on the cake for that. I now want to grab some popcorn and get lost in Baby’s story all over again!

I Carried a Watermelon is a fabulous book for anyone who loves the film Dirty Dancing. I highly recommend it!

Did you wear out copies of Dirty Dancing on video by constantly rewinding and watching your favourite scenes? Did you end up making your records of the soundtracks jump because you were copying some of the dance steps? Can you recite the lines with the actors? Did you and your best friend constantly sing the songs together? Then you may share some things in common with this reviewer and therefore will absolutely adore this book. It’s crammed full of observations that are insightful and hilarious whilst showing how much of a deeper impact that Frances Houseman has had on a generation.

It's a sheer delight!

I Carried a Watermelon by Katy Brand is about her long-held obsession with the classic film Dirty Dancing

I'll admit that I was so excited to read this that I couldn't wait to be granted a review copy and spent my own hard-earned pennies on the hardback the day it was released.

This is Katy Brand's love letter to the classic 1980s film, Dirty Dancing. For anyone who grew up watching this film (and there is a whole generation of us), this is familiar ground. The film, made on a low budget and with no lofty expectations of box office success, is loved by so many people and Katy Brand explores why. This takes her, among other places, to a Dirty Dancing weekend at the original Kellermans' resort, to the popular stage show and into her own memories of the film and the impact it has had on her life. It's an engaging read - she is a witty and charming narrator and her conclusions are interesting. I'd never really thought about it, but it's absolutely true that the film is about female agency, solidarity and issues, all dealt with in a non- judgemental way that isn't often apparent in more modern films.

This is an entertaining read for anyone who is a fan of the film, even if you aren't quite as obsessive a fan as Katy Brand! It's nostalgic but also interesting in terms of the film's messages and legacy. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to take a trip down memory lane and reevaluate a favourite film from the past.

I adore Dirty Dancing and I’m so, so pleased to see it given such love and credit by Katy. If you somehow haven’t seen the movie yet, go and watch it. It might just change your life.

Also, I need to go to Mountain Lake Lodge for the Dirty Dancing weekend ASAP.

I Carried A Watermelon by Katy Brand

Like Katy Brand, I was a teenager when Dirty Dancing was released in cinemas and I loved it. I wasn’t allowed to go and see it at the cinema so I had to wait until my friend got it on VHS and we organised a sleep over. I loved it immediately and since then have watched it countless times. I can’t say I’d ever thought about it as obsessively as Brand does but it does stand out for me as a rare film with a female protagonist and I wanted to be Baby so badly. I blame her for my perm.

Brand’s book is a must for Dirty Dancing fans. It treads a fine line between autobiography and academic study of the film. There’s no doubting she’s a super fan but she also makes observations that show this is not simply a feel good film about dancing. The reasons I loved Baby when I was 14 still stand today. In a decade of the kind of glamour shown by her sister Lisa or dancer Penny, she isn’t overtly sexy. Although her clothes become skimpier, it’s for the dancing and because she’s a girl becoming more aware of her body and its ability to move. Before the final showcase her sister offers a makeover but relents: ‘you’re prettier in your own way’. She’s also intelligent and has aspirations beyond her looks: she reads, she keeps up with world affairs and wants to join the Peace Corps.

In characters like Baby and Jonny, as well as the decline of Kellermans and old fashioned characters like the waiter Robbie, the film presents us with a microcosm of social change. Women like Mrs Houseman, who incidentally rarely speaks, are the old order. Baby and Penny represent the new feminism - they have different aspirations and progressive moral values. Brand makes the point that the abortion storyline central to the film’s set-up is handled without any moral angst or disapproval. It makes the political point of access to safe, legal abortion but Baby borrows money from her father for Penny without any comment or question. Similarly, Dr Houseman treats her afterwards without any moralising on his part. He is disappointed that Baby has lied to him and borrows money for something illegal but he doesn’t utter a word against Penny for her choice. It’s observations like this that take the book above mere fandom and into a proper analysis of the film that makes you think.

Added to this is insider gossip from on set and from the original Kellermans where you can still stay on very popular Dirty Dancing weekends. I love Brand’s enthusiasm and unapologetic love of the film. This is a great gift for someone who loves the film and wants to know more about the background to the film’s production, but also more about where it sits in terms of social commentary. It will make you want to watch the film all over again.

Fans of the movie will adore this book. It is humorous and insightful in the way it examines the movie and it’s impact and meaning - both on a personal level for the author and for the wider society. It made me go straight to watch the film again this morning and gave me a new outlook on it. I have seen it several times before and enjoyed watching it again with all the information from the book. The writing style was engaging and easy to read and added an extra layer to the film.

I don't think I ever truly 'got' Dirty Dancing and always viewed it as a subpar Grease, but after reading this I'm definitely going to watch it with fresh eyes as an adult! This book is a love letter to the movie and ties in with comedian Katy Brand's own life. It's funny and beautifully written and just an absolute joy to see someone love a film so passionately. Would thoroughly recommend!

Anything to do with Dirty Dancing and I have to pick it up. It certainly did not disappoint from trying not to laugh out loud on the train while reading to nodding along with agreement at shared experiences I loved it. With each chapter being named after a song from the soundtrack I hummed accordingly as I read. A true love letter to a genuine classic film which will make fans old and new instantly want to rewatch the film...once they have finished this book.

I Carried A Watermelon by Katy Brand is a highly entertaining book. Katy Brands infectious personality comes across on every page.

I loved I Carried A Watermelon. I am most definitely not the target audience; I’m a bloke in his mid-60s and I have never seen Dirty Dancing (I had no idea what the title meant). I only tried it, with some trepidation, because I really like Katy Brand and her work – and I still loved it.

Katy Brand has had a lifelong (well, since she was about 12) obsession with Dirty Dancing. This is a long love-letter to the film, which she uses to make extremely intelligent, thoughtful and humane points about all sorts of things. These include the effects of dancing; father-daughter relationships; sexism; what is good, consensual sex; class (she’s brilliant on this) and a lot more. There is also a lot of autobiographical stuff, which I found very interesting, too.

The thing is, Brand is such a good writer with such an infectious enthusiasm for what she is writing about, that it’s immensely entertaining throughout. I even thoroughly enjoyed parts I would expect to be excluded from, like her superb analysis of the adaptations and remakes in which she absolutely nails what is so often wrong with modern, “bigger and better” versions of classics, or her description of a fan weekend at “Kellerman’s,” the setting of the film. I was right there with her, feeling every nuance of excitement and friendship, even though I’d never seen any of what she was talking about. The book is a pleasure from beginning to end.

This is a hugely entertaining book about so much more than a classic movie. If I enjoyed it, I think anyone would and can recommend it very warmly.

(My thanks to HQ publishers for an ARC via Netgalley.)