DNF at 22%.

I liked the idea behind it. I have no desire to have children and I related a lot to Emma’s questions over whether she wants to have children or not, many over whether she’ll regret it and what it means for her now all her friends are becoming parents. I’ve always wanted to read more about women choosing not to have kids and how she’s strong in her opinion, but there wasn’t much else to the story that kept me engaged. I might try again one day, but I don’t know when that will be.

I thank NetGalley and Harper Collins for providing me an ARC copy of this novel that I freely chose to review.
Not a huge fan of the subject matter but read it as I could sense it was going to be a huge in store it.
Really enjoyed the narrative and the themes of friendship, loneliness. Beautiful cover, very easy to read, light hearted and humorous in places, would highly recommend as a holiday read.

This is a great story to take you out of the perspective of your own world and try to identify with other women's experiences of transitioning from carefree 20-somethings into women who are expected to have it together and don't always succeed in conforming to the world's expectations of this.

I enjoyed the characters in this book.

Thank you for allowing me to review this book.

Refreshing, modern, likeable characters, thought provoking and well written. Really enjoyed this book!

Olive is 33. She is part of a quartet of very close friends who have known each other since school and university. Her closest friend Bel has three children, another has just had her first and the third friend is desperate for a child but is suffering infertility problems. On top of that Olive has just split with her long-term boyfriend because he wants children and she has finally admitted to herself and her friends that she never will.

Throughout the book each of the friends comes to examine their choices and reflect on what it means to be a mother, or not. However, deep it isn’t. I wanted to love the book as I was looking forward to reading a refreshing story about a woman who doesn’t want kids and doesn’t bow to society’s expectations to reproduce and live a conventional family life. However, I found Olive and her friends two-dimensional and irritating in the extreme and overall the book felt shallow with stilted writing and unnatural dialogue. To be fair it’s probably aimed at women a lot younger than me, but that doesn’t mean to say that that generation doesn’t deserve good writing (see Louise O'Neill). However, I’ve given it three stars rather than two because the idea of a protagonist who doesn’t follow the traditional path which is set out for young women, even today, is very positive and refreshing.

Reading Olive was like a breath of fresh air. Without the cliche's in some books, I can't think of a novel that honestly portrays honestly, a woman freely choosing not to have children. Its an increasingly familiar discussion in society now, where women want to have careers and explore other opportunities in life besides becoming a mother.

Although for me personally I want to have children, I felt that Gannon handles the complexities, worries, frustrations and uncertainties of it all brilliantly. I think Olive for many women will be such a comfort, and for myself I felt the connection Olive had of feeling 'behind' with life's plan compared to her peers, and I think mentally this is a huge issue with young women today alongside the use of social media.
This isn't the only avenue that Gannon touches on in this novel. She also covers the one friend who is struggling to conceive through IVF, then another who is struggling to balance children and her marriage, and lastly another who navigates through pregnancy, birth and then her new life with a baby. All of the characters' struggles are prominent and addressed delicately by the author. The friendhship between the women are the core of this novel which was, again comforting to see because there always seems to be love interests in books like these and not enough girl power!

To conclude, Olive is our friend who supports the decisions we make for ourselves and will be our biggest fan for making ourselves happy and not everyone else. This is a book you recommend to your girlfriends, and I'll certainly be doing the same!

This is one of those books that kept popping up in my timeline – recommended by bloggers, instagrammers and tweeters I follow. I was interested in the blurb:

“OLIVE is many things.

Independent.
Adrift.
Anxious.
Loyal.
Kind.
Knows her own mind.

It’s ok that she’s still figuring it all out, navigating her world without a compass. But life comes with expectations, there are choices to be made, boxes to tick and – sometimes – stereotypes to fulfil. And when her best friends’ lives start to branch away towards marriage and motherhood, leaving the path they’ve always followed together, Olive starts to question her choices – because life according to Olive looks a little bit different.

Moving, memorable and a mirror for every woman at a crossroads, OLIVE has a little bit of all of us. Told with great warmth and nostalgia, this is a modern tale about the obstacle course of adulthood, milestone decisions and the ‘taboo’ about choosing not to have children.”

This sounds like just my thing, a voice for her generation and covering a topic which resonates with me – I’m 37 and don’t have children, although I am fortunate to have lots of nieces and nephews as well a surrogate nieces and nephews. I’m sorry to say, as I do appreciate how much blood, sweat and tears go into the publication of anything – I really disliked it. I hated Olive and her voice, she is breathtakingly selfish and self centred and then constantly wonders why her friends are not replying instantly to her WhatsApp messages. This review is going to contain spoilers, so I can talk a bit about specifics. Don’t read on if you do want to read this without knowing some of the details and plot points.

 A problematic or unreliable narrator is nothing new, of course, and they can often make for interesting narratives – a redemptive character arc, the shape of someone based on the people around them, a bit of a detective story as you try to work out what’s really going on. “Gone Girl”, by Gillian Flynn, for example. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. Olive learns nothing new in the course of the 4oo pages. Literally nothing, and her bad behaviour is validated by her friends and family, even to the point where her new boyfriend applauds her independence to the point of selfishness.

 Her inner monologue, as we never hear from anyone else, is of a pretty dreadful human being. She moans when her friends are late but continually mooches around and turns up 15 minutes late to all of her meetings – including boasting that she’s so good at her job and so senior that she can turn up when she wants and no-one will challenge her.

She lies, too, telling people she’s busy with work when she really wants to run a bath and relax. Nothing wrong at all with relaxing, and taking time for yourself – but I believe that you should be honest and tell your friends and boyfriends what you’re doing, or at least recognise that it’s a bit crap of you to lie outright.

She also pats herself on the back when she reaches out a tiny pinky finger to help her supposed best friends. One of them is going through post natal depression, one has three kids and a cheating husband and the other is just enduring her third round of IVF and is desperate for children. At one point, this friend has an argument with her partner and comes to stay with Olive. Olive promptly claims triumph for being a great friend, then leaves her to go to an improv class, followed by beers with the class. She then has a tantrum when her friend suggests they eat dinner together, telling her she needs to work and basically, that’s her too bad if she can’t handle that. At one point she wonders where her elderly next door neighbour is as her lights are off at night, very unusual for her. She shrugs, goes to bed and then when she wakes up in the morning she decides to go and knock on her door – but makes sure she washes her face and gets properly dressed first. Her neighbour turns out to be dead in the hallway, having been found by the postman that morning. Seriously. She then goes to the funeral and wears what sounds like casual clothes because they're the only black clothes she had clean. Despite being an editor for a magazine. Sure. 

It isn’t just Olive’s jaw dropping narcissism that made this unlikeable for me to read, but also the lack of any other characters’ perspectives. She is front and centre, and I think it would have been great to hear from other people in her life. What does her boyfriend of nine years really think about what happened – did they break up simply because he wanted kids and she didn’t? How about her sister, who dips in and out but doesn’t seem to hold any sort of view, really, apart from to tell Olive how she should work for charity because it’s so rewarding.

Additionally, there were some wince-inducing.. mistakes, I guess, which I would have thought would have been picked up by an editorial read. A couple of times she orders a ‘small beer’ in pubs. What’s a small beer? I have drunk beer in pubs for 20 years and have never ordered a small beer. If I had, I would have been laughed at by the person behind the bar. Some of the timelines were strange too – she has an appointment at 9am and then goes to get a gin immediately afterwards, encouraged by her gay BF from work. With the rest of the book, getting a gin on a work day and on what would have been about 11.30am at the latest, would have received some attention, but this passed without her comment. There’s another section where she talks about it being light and warm in the evenings because the clocks have just gone back, mid summer. Er. Clocks go back in October. Head scratching.

I know, none of this sounds particularly important or life changing, but for me they really bounced me out of the story.

Lastly, there were no distinct voices. I struggled to remember who was talking most of the time – Cec, Iz or Bea, as they are all so interchangeable. I also struggled with the timeline, partly as a result of the lack of unambiguous dialogue – it jumped about without seeming to really settle on what it was trying to say or highlight.

Phew. I did like some aspects - a couple of Instagram accounts I follow were referenced, like Accidentally Wes Anderson. I also liked the premise that there is room for women who choose to not have children – unfortunately in this instance, it comes across as the only space available and everyone else is wrong.

I do think it’s important to write honest reviews, and I hope that’s come through with this one. Thank you as always to Netgalley and HarperCollins for the digital ARC!

Olive is a 33-year-old successful and ambitious woman. As the years pass her by, she realizes everyone around her is drastically changing. Her group of friends (since she's known since school) settled down and, like everyone in their age group, look forward to becoming mothers. But Olive can't seem to have the same maternal urges as her friends. She's broken up with her boyfriend of almost a decade because of this. Olive starts to question her life choices and explore what her future should look like.

My top three thoughts on 'Olive':
1. This is such an excellent, thought-provoking book that looks at topics that affect women—the whole choice of motherhood feminism, friendship, fertility, infertility, post-partum depression, and acceptance.
2. I can see myself quickly becoming friends with Olive. She's such a real and likable character who's always there for her friends. Like anyone, she has a few flaws like being a little judgmental and self-centered, but she's also kind, supportive, at considerate most of the time.
3. I related to many points in this book either because they applied to me or how they affected women in my life. The pressures that society and women themselves put on paths females should follow it resonated with me. I've always questioned, defied, or argued with a lot of these expectations. I appreciate all the different voices and perspectives Emma Gannon brings into this novel and highly recommend that this book be read!

I really loved this book. I found it extremely relatable and well-observed. I felt connection and sympathy with all the characters at some point in the story and enjoyed the fresh perspective on choosing to be child-free that is rarely heard about it.

I thank NetGalley and Harper Collins for providing me an ARC copy of this novel that I freely chose to review.
I’ll try to be brief, as I think my review won’t be very relevant to a lot of people, because I am not a big reader of chick-lit, and I have no previous knowledge of the author, who is better known for her work as a podcaster, writer and editor in magazines, and non-fiction. I am sure both, fans of this genre and of the author, will enjoy the novel.
This is a novel that reminded me of Sex and the City (there are four female friends whose lives have taken different directions but remain close) although set in London and more modest (and they are not as obsessed with shopping), and Bridget Jones’s Diary (yes, the London setting works well, and the many disasters the main character gets involved in also resonate). We have the four friends, who’ve known each other since they were children and shared an apartment in London while at university. We have a writer, writing for an online magazine (like the author of the book), a lawyer, an artist, and a therapist. The main events of the book take place at a particular point in their lives, and it is told, in the first person, through Olive’s (Olivia but she hates her name and most people call her Ol) point of view. Olive is at a point of crisis, as her long-term relationship (nine years) with Jacob has come to an end. He wanted to have children and she didn’t, and that became a deal breaker in the end. Olive is not the only one going through a crisis, and the rest of the women in the book are too. These crises centre on the issue of having or not having children (mostly) and how that can change a woman’s life. One of the friends is about to have a baby; one already has three kids and her relationship is not quite as good as it seems; one is desperately trying to get pregnant (on her second round of IVF), and then there is Olive. The story moves chronologically forward, but there are also interspersed fragments of the past (the year is clearly indicated) that help give us some background into the friends’ experiences together and how things have changed with time and their altered circumstances.
What I liked about the book: I enjoyed the London references (not long descriptions but rather a feel for the locations and the atmosphere), the British-speech (specially the colloquialisms), the quotes from random women on the issue of being child-free at the end of each chapter, and some of the side characters (Olive’s old neighbour, Olive’s sister, and Colin, a work colleague, were among my favourites). I also enjoyed the insights into the workings of an online magazine (it’s evident the author knows what she is writing about), and some of the interactions between the friends (although for me, those set early on in their relationship and the ones where Olive is with only one of her friends worked better than the big events or the four women’s reunions). I also liked the final section of the book, around the last 10%, when Olive seems to finally grow up and gain some true insight into her situation and understanding of others’ circumstances, and is no longer so self-absorbed.
What I disliked about the book: I am not sure how much I liked any of the main characters. I didn’t dislike them either, and I sympathised with some of them (especially Isla, although I can’t say I’ve ever felt like her), but they were as expected. Nothing particularly original, distinctive, or diverse about them. Upper to middle middle-class women, with no particular financial difficulties, fairly successful in their careers, whose only issues seemed to be their preoccupation with having children or not (and their relationship with their partners, but to a far lesser extent) and the fact that their friendship seemed to be deteriorating due to other aspects of their lives. I am not saying this is not important, but… I was intrigued by the main the topic, which is something not often discussed, but I am not sure the humorous tone of the book served it well. I felt at times frustrated by how slowly time seemed to move (Olive is set to attend a club meeting for child-free women early on in the novel, and it seems to take forever for that day to arrive), and I realised that it was in part because of the inserts of past episodes, and in part because the central character has not changed at all in her outlook or behaviour through the years. As I have said, this changes towards the end of the book, and I felt that made the book feel more realistic and interesting, but it was a bit too little too late for me.
In sum, this is a light read about a serious topic that is not usually discussed in this genre. I recommend it to lovers of chick-lit, especially if they enjoy a London setting, and to readers who follow the author. Although the final message is a positive one, I think women struggling with the issue of childbearing might find some of the content upsetting and they should approach it with some caution.

The story of Olive and her choice to remain childfree was interesting in terms of how society and friends/family just expect women to have children.

What I liked about the story was that her long-term relationship ended because of their differing view points on whether to have children or not. Her maturity on ending it and even not getting back together with him when he said he could forgo the children was good to read for a change.

The parts of the story I struggled with was with her friendship group, They were 4 friends from school/university that were meant to be very close. Each of them were struggling in their own way, a mother of 3, IVF/fertility struggle, PND and relationship breakup. It felt like every base needed to be covered and none were really covered all that well. It seemed like every argument/falling out was brushed over in the making up parts. I was hoping that some of the friendships would have faded away as that does tend to happen when your paths are going in different directions and to be honest it did seem like Olive was holding on to something that wasn't there anymore.

Overall I enjoyed this book, it was easy to read and had an interesting storyline.

Great story and a really interesting perspective on a woman's struggle with whether or not to have children. The characters were well written and I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

Olive, Bea, Isla and Cecily have been friends since school but now, as they reach their mid thirties, their lives are moving in different directions - having children or not, relationship issues. Can their friendship survive?

I didn’t enjoy Olive as much as I’d hoped. The four main characters all came across as quite self-centred and not easy to like. The dialogue at times was stilted and unnatural, and somehow the story just didn’t flow through the pages. I don’t know whether anything like the ‘Child-Free By Choice’ club actually exists, but it just didn’t ring true here in the story.

Sorry, I really wanted to like Olive, but I couldn’t. It’s just not for me.

Olive - Emma Gannon - 3.5 Stars

Olive focuses on Olive, a 33 year old journalist who writes for a feminist magazine and has decided she doesn't want children. The book explores friendship, womanhood, mental health, being child-free by choice, motherhood and relationships. It's very femimist and very relatable. The four main women are nuanced, complex and realistic in their dramas, emotions and range of life complexities. They are not always necessarily likeable or rationale but they offer real insight into the trials and tribulations of women going through various problems in their life.

Initially I really struggled with this book and I think it was because of the emotions and thoughts around the idea of being a child free woman as I think it's an emotionally complex area. I do think it's really fantastic that Emma Gannon wrote this book on a subject that's so often see as taboo. It's also a really affirming book for women who have that viewpoint or for women who haven't yet decided. And I think the way Gannon handled the subject was with real care and sensitivity to the range of viewpoints on the subject.

I also really came to love Emma Gannon's subtle focus on mental health and how she showcased the grass is not always greener on the other side. She did this by exploring how friendships can splinter apart at times and our own insecurities can fuel the gaps that come between friends. This is as we consider our friends more accomplished, more put together or further along in their lives. We too often compare ourselves to others when what we see on the surface is not necessarily what is happening in people's everyday lives. I loved the focus on female friendship in this book and although it was pretty tumultuous at times, the strength that came through across the book and the realness really sold me.

I didn't expect to enjoy this one as much as I did by the end. The second half was definitely stronger, and I did feel that in places some of the dialogue and relationships felt a bit rushed. Overall though I enjoyed this really feminist debut.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the arc.

I really enjoyed this book, and literally flew through it one night in bed. Once I started it I could not put it down, and I didn't. I blame Olive for the bags under my eyes at work the next morning. I have no self control when it comes to putting a good book down. I feel like Olive was all of my favourite book characters rolled into one. Part of this book felt so familiar at times but not in a bad way. Very nostalgic and I definitely felt the love. I feel like I could really resonate with the plot line of being expected to have children once you get to a certain age or point in your relationship and the stigma attached to those people that don't actually want to take that path in life. This is what made me love the book more, for a newly married female this was very relatable and I felt my eyes rolling at certain points in the book as I had experienced the exact same thing. Whilst I did feel for Isla so much, she also did irritate me at times, I just wanted to scream at her. I refrained from full dislike of her character because I don't know what its like to desperately want children and not be able to have them. But at times I did find that she make me angry. I would recommend this book and I would absolutely love to read more from this author.

I was sucked into this book right from the very first page because I loved getting to met Olive and I really identified with her as a character. There were some moments in this book I identified with because I am almost the same age as Olive so I am in the same life stages as her and there were some parts I identified with because they were just so wonderfully British. It really made me miss London and the tube but I still 100% recommend this book.



Olive is not perfect, parts of her personality may comes across to readers as immature, but I liked that we got to see her warts and all. We can all be a bit immature in our own heads when we're scrolling through Instagram and we get that FOMO or just really really want whats that other person has and with Olive we get to feel those thoughts alongside her. I was a little jealous of her, I have to say because she has this amazing career and gets to travel with it. She is just great.



The other thing that really drew me to Olive and her story is that she is at a very similar life stage to me. She has 3 friends from university who are all very different, they love one another and their bond is strong enough to hold them together event though they live very different lives. Cec is just about to give birth, Bea has 3 children, the husband and the house in Surrey and Isla is desperately trying to start a family. I loved the addition of Isla as a character because she brings up the rarely written about issues of endometriosis. She has suffered with endometriosis her whole life and we get to see through her how it affects her life, emotionally and physically and how it affects her relationships with friends and partners.



In this novel we get to explore what happens to a friendship group when people really are moving in different directions, this was so painfully real for me in so many ways, We also get to experience the pros and cons of living alone, the very real pain of FOMO and also what it is like trying to make new friends as an adult. This book made me laugh, it made me cry and I just connected with Olive on a whole other level I didn't think possible. I really loved this book, it is timely and it is real but it is also thoroughly entertaining and I really recommend picking it up now.

Olive thinks that her life if going in the right direction. She has great friends, a loving boyfriend, a job she loves and a home that she feels safe and secure in.

However she is starting to get doubts about her path in life, her friends are getting married, having babies / trying for babies. Her boyfriend is ready to move onto the next phase of their lives into parenthood but there is one issue, Olive doesn't feel maternal at all., she doesn't want to have children.

Being in my late 20s I am at the stage of life where Olive is, friends getting married and having babies all around me. Although my ideas and views of parenthood are different to Olive's I still felt that this debut novel by Emma Gannon carries a very powerful message. Not only should we be more open to the fact that women becoming a mother might not be a path in which they want to go down, and that motherhood in general is not a straight forward path.

We are all guilty of being selfish and feeling that our own issues are more important than that of our close friends and family. Olive finds out the hard way that keeping issues bottled up to try and be selfless to our best friends might not always be the best and that sooner or later things will bubble up to the surface and it might not be in a dignified way.

This is a happy go lucky story with a happy ending which might not be everyones cup of tea but I would recommend my girlfriends to read this. Everyone needs to be reminded that motherhood has so many different roads which we can go down.

I’ve been following Emma Gannon’s advice on how to carve out a life and career for yourself online for a while, so I was delighted to learn that she’d written a novel. I was even happier to discover that it centred around a thirty-something woman at a big crossroads and feeling weird about her choices.

Olive is adamant that she doesn’t want children. Sadly, this certainty leads to the end of her nine year relationship with Jacob, who she loves dearly. Her best friends Bea, Cecily and Isla all seem to be moving on and getting their lives together. Bea is a proud mum of three, Cecily is heavily pregnant and Isla is about to embark on yet another round of IVF in a desperate attempt to finally become a mother. So how can Olive possibly fit into this suddenly baby-obsessed world?

Olive’s biggest fear is losing her friends to motherhood. I think this is something that so many child-free women fear, especially when their first friend has a baby and suddenly their whole life changes. This is a recurring theme in the novel and it’s part of what drives a lot of Olive’s erratic behaviour. Her fear of loneliness is so strong and it made my heart swell for her.

Another very common habit of women who haven’t gone down the family route is an uncontrollable need to compensate for it, whenever they’re asked. Olive bumps into an old teacher and automatically fabricates a husband and daughter because she feels it’s the right answer. Even in 2020, a husband and kids are society’s measure of a woman’s success and we always automatically revert to that life, when we want to seem to have our life together.

There is also a lot of ‘uncovering’ of real mothers’ ‘secrets’. There are a lot of unspoken rules about being a parent and a lot of them involve not being totally honest about true feelings. Every parent, particularly every mother, wants to be seen as a superhero and to say or do anything that suggests that they slip from that crazy standard would be scandalous. I loved how there was so much commentary on this bizarre aspect of the world of parenting and I suspect that many mothers reading it will breathe a sigh of relief that they’re not alone.

Olive’s friendship with her elderly next door neighbour Dorothy is beautiful and if you were under any impression that Olive is a heartless, selfish bitch, her interactions with Dorothy will blow that out of the water. I know that she sees a future version of herself in Dorothy and there is such a genuine tenderness and connection between the two of them.

One thing I loved about this novel is that it includes women of all ages and their multitude of struggles and chosen life paths. From the women at the Child-Free By Choice meetings to Dorothy to teenage girls, it really feels like everyone is acknowledged and so is their pain. Gannon did so well at depicting how the world views and treats women in general, so every female will find themselves within these pages.

As you might expect, Olive is a true celebration of women and the magic of being female. It reinforces the idea that Olive knows what she wants in life and that her desire to remain child-free isn’t a phase. It lends support to women knowing their own minds and having the full ability to choose their own life path and make their own adult decisions. It puts paid to anyone who believes that a woman who says she doesn’t want children will ‘definitely change their mind’ or ‘regret it’.

Olive is an incredibly thoughtful, sensitive novel with a heroine who I know will speak to the hearts of so many women. In some ways, Olive reminded me of Eleanor Oliphant, in that she definitely has the same ability to resonate long-term in the minds of her readers. The end of each chapter is rounded off by a quote from a real woman who has chosen to be child-free and these little snippets add even more validity to Olive’s story. The book deals with topics that are so prevalent in the minds of women of childbearing age but that aren’t often discussed so explicitly. Olive seeks to give voice to these women who the world persistently misjudges and belittles and it does it perfectly.

Olive is a successful 30-something who works as a journalist. She’s grown up with a close-knit foursome of friends (perhaps unbelievably they’ve known each other through childhood and even went to the same University!) Their friendship has weathered the storms of their 20s but now one has 3 children, another is just about to give birth, the third is struggling desperately to conceive and Olive doesn’t want children.

I don’t know that not wanting children is something that life needs to focus on- but given the amount of media coverage it’s getting lately it’s either something that people do or something society wants to believe we’ll do!

This book was well written- Gannon is clearly skilled- although the parts with a lot of dialogue felt slightly stilted in later scenes, but I found it frustrating (although I liked the main character). I couldn’t believe that after 20+ years of friendship, Olives friends wouldn’t notice she wasn’t herself after a life changing event, I also found the way that they were a foursome but all then had “best friends” artificial, and I’m bored with books where women have a small group of friends and one is a writer, another a lawyer (always in the big city, always ‘high powered’) and theirs an arty one thrown in for good measure. They also invariably live in London and cite the same landmarks! In particular I read Expectation (by Anna Hope) and it was so similar in parts I found myself thinking I was re-reading sections- right down to the format (flipping back and forth between the present and years gone by).

Saying that, I commented the above to my book club but then suggested that they read Olive over Expectation (more likeable characters and better writing)! There were key points which were very true to life for childless women. I would have liked more sub-plots to add some depth.

3 stars because I didn’t hate it, and I’d recommend for an easy holiday read but it’s very samey.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

⁣⁣This is Emma Gannons debut ‘fictional’ novel and what a great one it is!

As soon as I read the bio for this book (in the comments), I was intrigued and drawn in by the premise of this story! ⁣⁣
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As a woman myself, now in her early fourties who has chosen not to have children, I love that Emma has taken this taboo subject and has not been afraid to fully address it in this fictional narrative. It is so refreshing to see and I’m so happy that it has been fully explored and not just ‘glossed over’. ⁣⁣
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This book was just so relatable for me and resonated on so many levels. ⁣⁣

Now, I am slightly older than Olives character and no longer quite at that crossroads of life where I am trying to make sense of my thoughts, feelings and life choices. But, I was Olive 10-15 years ago, which is why this book was so personal for me and it validated so many of the feelings and experiences I have had over the years regarding being ‘Child Free by Choice’.⁣
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There were so many other layers to this book, with Olives best friends all having various different ‘motherhood’ issues and I loved how Emma addressed these and explored the effects it can have on even the closest of friendships! ⁣ ⁣⁣
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Overall a very enjoyable, thought provoking read, tackling one of life’s most important choices. ⁣⁣
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I would be really interested to know how those of you who have children, interpret and feel about this book?⁣
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There are so many things that we can all learn and take from this book, no matter what our ‘child choice’ is! ⁣⁣
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Finally thanks to @netgalley and @harpercollinsuk for my advance reader copy in exchange for a review.