This is an intense book.  It's got some pretty heavy subject matter included in it.  Take for instance the fact that one day Abi's brother Robert leaves their house and never returns.  Recently he had been diagnosed with MS.  Perhaps this was part of the motivation for him leaving.  But it is sad.

Around this time Abi starts receiving excerpts of a guidebook.

Twenty years later she is invited to attend a course as are others who also received the excerpts as teenagers.  The book then flits back between the present and the past, which I found a bit distracting at times.

There are quite a few passages that I found rather moving.  Plus I always like reading books that are set in Sydney (given this is the city where I grew up).

We get more back story of Abi's life including her meeting Finn and then them getting married and eventually moving to Montreal, where things unravel.

The story then settles into the present day where Abi runs a cafe and looks after her son Oscar.

I'm glad I persisted in finishing the book.  It's packed full of interesting passages and I did enjoy reading it.

Not for me - fragmented, short chapters jumping back and forth, disjointed and disconcerting. I did persevere out of curiosity,

When I read the summary if the book, it sounded really good. I started it and got about a quarter of the way through but I just didn’t like it. I hate to give up on books but I just really struggled to get stuck in to it.
Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book. Just a shame it wasn’t for me.

This is an unusual book – hard to get into but ultimately worth the challenge. Abi is offered and all expenses paid trip to discover who has been sending the copies of a self-help manual which she has received throughout her life.
This is connected to the disappearance of her brother, who was diagnosed with Ms as a teenager, the collapse of her marriage and the relationship with her son, who was born after a one-night stand.
There are some wonderful characterisations – Abi in particular is a character who will stay with you. Her intense love for her child and the difficulties of being a single mum are probably the best thing about the book. The magical realism bits and the many tangential stories do make the book hard going. The desire to know what happened to Robert kept me going – just.
Certainly an interesting read.

This is a very unusual book. It focuses on Abi, who has randomly receives pages from a self guide at random points throughout her life. I like how the book handled different issues such as loss, marriage breakdown etc. However, I found the whole concept was just a little bit too quirky for me. A good read, just not my favourite.

A truly beautiful book that I really enjoyed. I felt this book as well as read it. Family, love, loss, grief, friendships, the unknown. This book has everything and more.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest and unbiased opinion.

I could not decide what I thought of this book as I was reading it but by the end I was loving it. This novel is full of wry humour and quirky truths. It centres on Abi and her search for meaning after the disappearance of her brother, the failure of her marriage and the arrival of her son. Since being a teenager she has received chapters of The Guidebook. As an adult she attends a retreat to learn the truth about this guide and mets an eclectic group of fellow Guidebook readers. They impact on her journey of discovery leading to her life being fundamentally changed.

This is an unusual novel - one which I would recommend. Heartwarming and amusing.

This book is a bit unusual. Since she was 15, Abigail gets sent chapters of a self help book in random order. It includes things to do and various things to think about. In addition her brother, Robert, disappeared about the same time and the book follows Abigail dealing with this. Sounded promising. I was intrigued.
I waited for the story to take off but gave up about half way - something that I hate to do.
Thanks #Netgalley and #Gravityisthething for the ARC for an honest review.

This book just wasn’t for me. I struggled to get into it. Quirky but maybe slightly to slow for me.

This book soared and dipped in a similar way to the lessons Wilbur taught in flight school. It started off strongly, and parts peppered throughout were brilliantly innovative, but there was a lot of wishy washy speculative chat, which isn’t my favourite. Lots of hypothesising and meditative thoughts. The realism was great, but the other parts weren’t for me.

This novel is so bizarre but in a really good way. It’s heartwarming, heartbreaking, funny, poignant, sad. It will make you feel all sorts of emotions.

Abigail is a 35 year old single mother of one. A day before her 16 birthday her brother goes missing and she receives a mysterious envelope in the post. Inside is an extract of a self-help manual called The Guidebook. These extracts continue to arrive for the next 20 years. Their musings weave into Abigail’s life and she can’t help but associate The Guidebook’s arrival with her brother’s disappearance so when she is offered an all expenses paid weekend away to find out the truth about The Guidebook she jumps at the chance - hoping to find the answers to all her life’s questions. What she finds isn’t what she expected and the adventures don’t stop there ...

This is wonderfully written and I loved all the characters. I NEEDED to find out the answers just like Abigail and thoroughly enjoyed following her journey. I highly recommend this if your looking for an easy to read story that will take you on an emotional rollercoaster, leaving you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

This story revolves around Abigail and the disappearance of her brother when she was sixteen years old. Now a mother herself, she is trying to piece together the meaning of The Guidebook, and how it may relate to her brother and what happened to him all those years ago.
The narrative did not flow for me, it was disjointed and made little sense at times.
I am becoming a bit weary of the theme of a ‘disappeared’ loved one in so many works of fiction. It needs to be an outstanding story to maintain the interest of the reader. Unfortunately this did not do that for me, and I found myself skipping pages until I gave up in the end. Sadly this book was not for me.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy of this title.

I couldn't finish this book, which is very rare. I just didn't care what the "Guidebook" was about or what breakfast someone had or what colour they were wearing that day. It seemed navel gazing to me. I just couldn't connect with the main character and as the "story" was told from her point of view this was disastrous for me. The premise seemed good. Abigail's brother went missing when she was a cteen and around the same time she started receiving a yearly notification from the mysterious "Guidebook" . The story follows Abi as she finally gets a notifcation to tell her to travel to a centre to meet all the other receivers of the "Guidebook" but her "navel gazing" and the constant stream of her thoughts and questions about the minutiae of everything made it difficult for me to connect with her tale. Not for me.

A great book, beautifully written and I was completely absorbed by the characters. Fantastic read and I'd highly recommend it.

3.5 stars
Maybe an unpopular opinion but this book could have been more interesting and better.
The beginning is engaging, the story itself calls your attention but along the way, I got lost because I was waiting for a real story, a twist or something and I didn’t get anything.
I liked the characterisation of people and places, very well done and I loved how the heroine it’s seeing and living her life with easiness and it’s curious about everything. The way she thinks she can have sex with any new man she meets and her child concerns as being a single mother.

I am really at a loss as to what to write about this book. I quite liked it at the start but then I found myself skipping pages.. I did continue to the end but it really wasn’t my cup of tea.

A bit bonkers but a lovely read.

As a child, I constantly dreamt I could fly so I was intrigued with how this book would end.

A really refreshing read which had me wanting more.

Thank you to Atlantic books for a review copy.

A great opening - a missing brother, a weekend away to meet the people behind 'The Guidebook'. However, despite three attempts, I just couldn't get into this story - the descriptions of people and places are beautifully written but I kept waiting for a story.

I know other people have loved it, so I will try again in a year or too.

Reading Gravity is the Thing is quite an experience. Definitely the most quirkiest book I’ve read yet, at times verging on completely bonkers, this is Abigail Sorensen’s story about love, life, happiness and the universe.
This is the kind of book I could only read in small doses as it is quite disjointed (author’s intention). Some parts are much easier to read than others but if you can persevere, this author has some very profound messages to convey. I did like Abi’s character, she has a dry wit and her relationship with her very cute four year old Oscar is extremely well observed and often very funny. But she is clearly a lost soul as she recounts her life story which has been governed by the disappearance of her brother Robert, on the cusp of her sixteenth birthday and her reliance on ‘The Guidebook’, a self help manual that arrived in the post at the same time and has been arriving ever since.
She’s been invited to attend a weekend retreat to discover ‘the truth’ behind this guidebook and she’s intrigued enough to go, since the Guidebook has been her one constant throughout the years.
Often hilarious, at times rather irritating, there are some wonderful characters in this book especially Wilbur, the man running the seminar and son of the Guidebook’s authors. What follows is quite bizarre and I still can’t make up my mind whether I loved this book or hated it!! Some parts reminded me of books like Richard Bach’s Jonathon Livingstone Seagull, where beneath the strangeness there are important life lessons to be learned. The flight seminars that Wilbur holds make fantastic reading as we learn more about the individuals who have been ‘chosen’ to learn the truth and learn how to fly. There are some great one liners in this section and the group dynamic is perfect.
There’s much sadness in this novel as Abi has always blamed herself for Robert’s disappearance. Loss figures heavily in Abi’s life, with her marriage ending in divorce. How to let go of the past I think is vital for her sanity and I do appreciate the messages the author is trying to convey.
Gravity is the Thing definitely makes for thought provoking reading but maybe will only appeal to a niche market. On reflection I feel this is the kind of book that maybe deserves a second reading as it’s complex and multi layered. I can imagine re reading this and gleaning further insight into the age old questions on the secret of happiness and meaning of life. This is a novel that will stay in my mind, pondering these big questions so for that alone the author has achieved her aim. I’m a big fan of reading outside your comfort zone so I’m very appreciative of the opportunity to read an ARC thanks to the publisher and Netgalley.

A beautiful, quirky, delight of a book. Abi’s search for her brother, for love and for the truth about flying is absolutely charming.