I just didn't get this book, or empathise with the main character at all.. Maybe I'm too old to appreciate this stroppy, hormonal teenager and her reluctance to accept her pregnancy and wonderful boyfriend. Nothing seems to happen apart from her crush on an older woman.

Pizza Girl is not the type of book I'd ordinarily go for, but Jean Kyoung Frazier is a beautiful, beautiful writer and I was hooked on this story from start to finish. It's bleak and touching, prosaic and relatable, with a tone that's not unlike Sally Rooney. Would definitely recommend to fans of Normal People and Conversations with Friends.

The storyline was a bit weird for my liking. Not believable. Would have liked to know know about Jane’s mum and boyfriend

18 pregnant and working as a pizza delivery person. Fixated on an married mother. Not what I expected. Very much an American tale. Not my cup of tea but that is why there are so many books and genres to read. Well written and will appeal to a younger audience than myself.

There's an interesting thread in female-authored contemporary fiction which is challenging complacency and stability narratives and that's where I'd place this: it's a little like Halle Butler's 'The New Me' without such a strong women-at-work aesthetic. Frazier's protagonist confronts a different taboo: pregnancy, and the fact that she's just not sure she wants it.

With issues of millenial malaise, wanting and yet being suffocated by love, obsession and fantasy, dealing with grief, and tackling the disappointments of the 'American Dream', there are lots of themes thrown into the mix and they don't all have space to breathe. Brevity might not be doing this book favours however welcome it is to find a pared back writing style that isn't bloated with filler.

JKF mixes up the surreal with melancholy and a dark humour - this feels like a debut but definitely an author to watch.

The pages in this story seemed to fly by. 'Pizza girl's is a pregnant teenager who's struggling to know what she wants in life, coping with loss and feeling muddled.
I got a little annoyed with her wandering mind, but I think that it also accurately depicts her state of mind.

'Pizza girl' is a confused eighteen year old pregnant girl. She's having a baby with her teenage sweetheart and isn't excited about it and is grieving the loss of her father. Having dropped out of school, she's working in a pizza restaurant and has to make a special delivery one day to a mother in her late 30's. Fondly named 'pizza girl' by her, she becomes infatuated with the older woman. This is a really interesting relationship told from a unique perspective. I found it to be quite a quick read and thoroughly enjoyable.

I flew through this story of a young lady pregnant straight out of school and muddling through her job as a pizza delivery person. The book really reminded me of the Catcher in the Rye with her apathetic feeling towards life and her pregnancy,  her destructive behaviour and sense of feeling trapped in particular. It is however a really interesting read around obsession, and I was very sucked in with what would happen to Pizza Girl. I would recommend this book. Thank you to Net Galley and HQ Publishing for the free advance e-book copy of the title.

Pizza Girl is an 18-year-old Korean-American whose job it is to deliver pizzas, and she is also pregnant. On her rounds, she meets Jenny; Pizza Girl becomes obsessed with her.
Many issues are incorporated in this story, adolescent pregnancy, bereavement, grief, relationships and denial.
A thought-provoking read, well written and although quite short, it holds your attention while you follow the captivating life of 'The Pizza Girl'. A great debut novel.
I want to thank NetGalley, HQ and the author Jean Kyoung Fraizer for a pre-publication copy to review.

This is a short story of only 200 pages long , tells the story of Pizza girl who 18 pregnant and gets an obsession with one of her customers Jenny .

I enjoyed this book I just wished the it was a longer book. I would recommend this book.

With thanks to Netgalley & HQ publishers for the copy in exchange for this review.

This little character driven book packed in so much and I have lots of feelings. The book follows an unnamed protagonist, a worker at a pizza delivery place who happens to be accidentally pregnant right out of high school. She is lost, doesn't really have any long-term goals, and is indifferent about being pregnant. Then a woman, Jenny, starts calling. She asks for pepperoni and pickles pizza, and our protagonist takes pity on her and buys the pickles to make it with herself.

Pizza Girl and Jenny start hanging out more. Jenny seems lonely, struggling to look after her 8 year old son Adam while her husband is working long days. The book really dives into the struggles of motherhood, into the fears of mothers, the dread of knowing that your children will face all sorts of challenges and difficulties in life, just like you did.

Pizza Girl develops an obsession with Jenny, to the detriment of her relationship with her boyfriend Billy, who has given up college to be a father. Her Dad was an alcoholic and she worries she'll end up the same way.

This book made me feel so much. It's really sad with subtle uplifting sections. So many interesting character dynamics including Pizza Girl and her own mother, Billy and her mother, and of course, Jenny. Overall, an interesting and fast read.

I enjoyed this book but I felt that there should have been so much to it, I felt this book gave us what should have been the first 15% of a story rather than the whole story.
Our main character is 18 or so and is pregnant and quite frankly she's disinterested in her pregnancy and her life, she has a wonderful boyfriend but she just can't seem to talk to him and she has a caring mother. She is also grieving her father, even if he wasn't really a great father. Her fixation on a customer who calls and asks for a specific pizza and then also invites her to a mother and baby group is interesting to read about, but her fixation and obsession and the final scene it leads to felt to sped up and I feel, lacked the action, I was looking for. However, I do think it was true to the character.
I love that our character was of mixed ethnicity but I would have liked so much more about the impact of that, she touches on it briefly with her mother and how she quickly assimilated to being American but I wanted to know more about how this affected the two. Regardless this isn't a terrible book, I just wish there was more of it, it definitely felt incomplete.

Jane is young. She has just finished high school. She works in a pizza restaurant. She is pregnant. That is about as much as you can say about Jane on the surface. We don’t begin to understand her or her motivation in life until she gets a random pizza request from a lonely woman called Jenny. It is then that her world goes a little off kilter.

Pizza Girl, for me, was essentially the story of being a little bit lost. Jane seems lost on a strangely pre-determined path that Jane couldn’t seem to get off. Jane doesn’t seem to be comfortable with her pregnancy or her relationship with the baby’s father. Nor does she seem happy to believe that this is it, her life. When she meets Jenny it is almost like Jane finally finds someone to be a beacon of adulthood and what it is all about – not a perfect version of adulthood but with Jane being young and impressionable it seems better than what she has.

I will say that Pizza Girl is a very quirky and unique novel. It is not one that intends to make the reader feel comfortable. It skirts the edge of unusual indie read with no real resolution. However, it does leave you feeling strangely optimistic.

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier is available from 06th September 2020.

For more information regarding Jean Kyoung Frazier (@gojeanfraziergo) please visit www.gojeanfraziergo.com.

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

“The queer slacker pizza delivery novel we’ve been waiting for”, as one blog described it, perfectly. A gorgeous short and bittersweet debut novel, narrated in the first person by the disconnected, soon-to-be teenage mother pizza girl of the title, with classic teenage ennui. She becomes smitten with a customer, an older married woman, and things go from just-about-keeping-it-together to pretty messy.

Along with a uniquely memorable main character, there’s real emotional complexity lurking beneath the deceptively zippy narrative - loss and need drive her increasingly erratic actions, along with conflicted feelings around identity and belonging, all subtly brought into play as dark undercurrents. The banality of pizza girl’s life contrasts with the surreal imaginings and flights of fantasy that are her inner world, while in uncomfortably believable denial about the reality of her baby. You veer between wanting to wrap your arms around her, and wanting to give her a good shake.

The author has a lovely skilful touch with imagery: pizza girl’s glimpses into lives of others, always outside looking in, waiting on doorsteps, pizza box in hand; the home of her beloved with the immaculate front entrance concealing domestic chaos beyond; flicking tv channels with her iPod on, disconnected as ever; drunk in the cocoon of in her (useless, dead) dad’s shed, or driving aimlessly around LA in his old car at night, life passing her by. She picks out sensory details perfectly - the object of the obsession’s buoyant ponytail, her worn shirt, greasy food - and her eye for detail and ear for dialogue are just superb.

There’s so much to unpack from this small but perfectly formed novel, and I could go on - a lot. Jean Kyoung Frazier writes with perfect control and confidence, and has every reason to be confident; she’s seriously gifted. Suffice to say, 'Pizza girl' is a gem: buy it, and tell your friends.

I have found this novel very honest and pure. It is the modern representation emotional struggles at it’s best.

This is the story of a young 18-year-old girl who works in a pizza shop, who’s pregnant, who lives with her boyfriend and her mum and who is unhappy, suffocating and a little dysfunctional.

I enjoy how Jean Kyoung Frazier writes about how the protagonist feels in the moment, however twisted and dark her thoughts can be, they are so real and raw. The story covered many topics such as fragility, mental health, depression, anger, the power of desire and idealisation, alcoholism , loss, grief, and so much more.

I do understand that this novel isn’t for everybody, some might say it lacks ambition, there isn’t really a story and it is true, but it so much more than that. If you can’t relate to that story or the way she thinks, I think it even more beneficial for you to read it because I do believe that it will expand your mind . It is a realistic depiction of the millennial and newer generations mindset, the constant emotional struggles with identity, sexuality, expectations and trauma.

I think this is a brilliant debut. Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and the author for letting me read an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

A new addition to my list of recommendations when customers tell me they want "something unexpected" !!

I loved this book, it made me feel nostalgic for my own mess of a self at 18. Someone so young and "shapeless", fairly indistinguishable from my peers at that age but still feeling like I was under-performing compared to everyone else.

This was weird and wacky but with surprising level of depth and a lot of heart. Pizza Girl will absolutely go down a treat with fans of Eleanor Oliphant or The Convenience Store Woman.

This is about a damaged young girl who is grieving for her alcoholic father and pregnant by her boyfriend, who is standing by her, as is her mother. Despite the support she is confused and unhappy and drinks a lot. She has quit her education and works in a pizza takeaway. She starts delivering to Jenny, whose young son likes pickles on his pizza. She develops a crush on Jenny, who is twice her age and happily married. Nothing very much happens in this novel and there is no revelatory ending.

I really struggled writing this review.
Firstly it’s hard to give a synopsis of the story without giving too much away, secondly it was so hard to get in to and thirdly it covers mental health and I think that’s hard to write about in a fictional novel - I’m not sure the author was able to do it justice.
Not sure what else to say other than I found it hard going and wondering what the hype was all about

Thank you to the Author, Publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

At first I found it quite difficult to read, it just felt a little disjointed but after a few chapters I was engrossed, reading the book in one day! Once ‘Pizza Girl’ meets customer Jenny that’s when the story gets interesting. At times it was so weird, the feelings ‘Pizza Girl’ was having and the thoughts she had but I think that helped me really get into the dysfunctional mind of this girl. It made me connect to her and you could really appreciate just how lost she felt.

It’s hard to go into too much detail without giving too much away. But overall I enjoyed it, it wasn’t my usual read but I’m glad I took the plunge and gave it a go. Even if it did leave me feeling exhausted after reading it!

Thanks to @netgalley and @harpercollinsuk for letting me read Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier in advance. It was described as a most anticipated book by some big publications and - despite seeing literally nothing about it on Instagram until that point - I have seen one person describing it as incredibly hyped, so I thought I would join in.

The pizza girl of this book is a mixed-race, Los Angeles-dwelling, pregnant eighteen year old girl. This is quite a hard book to describe beyond that - it was a little too weird for my tastes, full of impulses and desires that I didn't quite understand. Aside from the weirdness (which I don't normally enjoy in books anyway), I feel like there were things I wanted from this book and didn't get: more LA, more backstory, more depiction of her relationship with her boyfriend Billy. On the whole, I enjoyed this quirky, intelligent read - I wasn't always impressed with the writing, but the world inhabited by the pizza girl was certainly one that I wanted to read about, and the author has a talent for creating some of the most memorable opening lines of chapters I've read. There's plenty of interesting observations and characterisations here - like her convincing portrayal of various mental health problems - but I'd agree with other readers that Pizza Girl felt like a snapshot of a bigger story, one that I would have been more intrigued to delve into. 3 🌟