I read this in two sittings and was super happy to put everything on hold to finish it. My complaint is it's too short. More, please. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this.

Pizza Girl is an interesting book - it's not my usual genre and initially, I found it quite difficult to get into - the text seemed disjointed and I wasn't quite sure what was going on with the characters. It's not until later in the novel that we actually find out the main characters name and how and why her boyfriend Billy calls Pizza Girls Mom-Mom.
The plot picks up pace towards the latter part of the novel and it becomes easier to read and digest.

Any comparison with Sally Rooney's phenomenally successful 'Normal People' is likely to grab would-be readers' attention - it certainly did mine. 'Pizza Girl' is original, heartfelt, funny, serious, tragic... I could continue. Essentially, it is in a league of its own and even though I love 'Normal People' and Rooney's spare writing style, I think 'Pizza Girl' is quite different.

Pizza Girl is the narrator - and it isn't until much later in the novel that readers find out her name: Jane. She lives with her mum, a Korean immigrant, and her boyfriend, Billy, in their Los Angeles home. She works at Eddie's, a pizza parlour, and in some ways, her life is drifting away from her. That's when she meets Jenny Hauser, a customer who is new to the area (from Nebraska) who is desperate for a pickle-topped pizza for her awkward son, Adam. Pizza Girl agrees to deliver and this begins the chain of events in the novel.

Jane's father died - he was an alcoholic. Billy's parents were killed in a car accident in Costa Rica. And to top it all, Pizza Girl is pregnant. The couple are still in their teens and very much devoted to each other. What I really loved was the way Billy is portrayed as a kind, sensitive young man - not the typical 'I've got her pregnant now I will head off'. He cares about Jane and wants her to be happy. Even though she does reciprocate, it is the arrival of Jenny Hauser that sends events askew.

Jane and Jenny strike up a relationship - quite intimate at times - and this leads to Jenny leaving Adam in Jane's care for the evening. Evidently, both women are on the edge of suffering with mental anxiety and the writer deals with this in a sensitive and thoughtful way. When Jenny tells Jane that she is moving to Bakersfield with Adam and her husband (who is very distant in the novel), Jane goes off the rails - her obsession and lifeline has come to a head.

'Pizza Girl' deals with mental illness, relationships and life's minutiae in meticulous ways. I empathised so much with Billy - who doesn't have an easy ride - but towards the end, he manages to get his life back on track, as done Jane, to an extent. I feel sure that this novel will do brilliantly when it is published. It certainly deserves to be a big hit.

I raced through Pizza Girl, pulled along by the writing (which flows like you're sitting and having a chat with a(n admittedly very young) friend) and the quiet tension. Simmering underneath the seeming mundanity of the protagonist's day-to-day life, dark undertones bubble just below the surface throughout and deepen as the book goes on. I found myself quite anxious at points as to where the story was going.
Alongside the conversational tone, there are plenty of beautiful turns of phrase - I highlighted so many sections. It may be a cliche to say it, but in this case it's a true one - this book made me laugh and cry.
Everything about Pizza Girl felt new and fresh, and I'm very keen to see what Jean Kyoung Frazier writes next!

I’m not really sure what I made of this book, to be honest. It’s a lot deeper and darker than I had anticipated - but it’s also very well written and some of passages really made me think.

I found it quite difficult to get in to, but by the end I was quite gripped. I think I found it hard to relate to the nameless protagonist.

A bit of a mixed bag for me, but that may have been because I hadn’t expected the darker tone.

I’m really grateful for the review copy. Thank you.

A fantastic, thought-provoking read! Whilst I wish it had been longer, with the characters more developed, it still drew me in. An exploration of unresolved feelings and apathy towards your life and an obsession with something external to you, in order to make sense of your life. Very insightful.

A very short book with a very frustrating main character! My feelings towards her fluctuated from sheer frustration to sympathy - and I think the fact the author managed to make me feel this way is testament to her good writing.
There is something a little sad and hopeless about the story - you can't really see a way out for the protagonist who doesn't really see a future for herself. But the story does feel fresh and honest, and I would definitely read more from this author.

A short but punchy read, Pizza Girl was witty, dark and different. Following the story of a pregnant teen who is struggling with a mixture of grief, acceptance and finding her true self. I found it interesting to see her mental health changing as her obsession with new customer Jenny progresses. This was very well written, easy to see the almost delusional thoughts becoming stronger and stronger leading to climatic scenes towards the end of the book. As flawed as Jane (Pizza Girl) is it hard not to like her ,she does a lot wrong in the story yet you definitely feel left wanting to fight her corner. The slight dark humour adds another aspect to the book and takes the edge off the hard hitting topics. A great little read.

A raw, at some times bleak, portrayal of a young mother to be working as a pizza girl, this book explores coming of age in a way rarely seen. The author does a good job of exploring the grief her character is suffering, and manages to make her relatable despite the choices she makes throughout the novel. A great read,

The unnamed protagonist in Pizza Girl is an 18 year old Korean-American working delivering pizzas. Having graduated high school with little direction she finds herself pregnant and aimless, until one day she meets a customer, a middle aged woman called Jenny who has a young son who requests pickles on his pizza. "Pizza girl" delivers Jenny's pizza and becomes more and more obsessed with her, gradually ingratiating herself into her life to the detriment of her other relationships with her mother and boyfriend. Pizza girl's father also recently passed away, and she is struggling to process this loss, yet to those around her she seems apathetic to her life and situation - her boyfriend is looking at applying to college while she is struggling to hold down her minimum wage job which she only got through the help of a friend.

Despite the heavy themes I found this to be a hopeful - if offbeat - coming of age story. Yes, Pizza girl turns to drink whilst pregnant whilst grieving her father's death (he was an alcoholic and they had a fraught relationship) but the novel shows the importance of love, family and friendship in a realistic and non cliched way. I found the dialogue to be incredibly - sometimes a bit too - true to life, messy and un-sugar coated in a way authors often fail to achieve. Recommended!

Pizza Girl is the story of a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with a woman she delivers pizzas to. The protagonist is eighteen, lives with her mother and overly doting boyfriend, and works delivering pizzas whilst avoiding thinking about the future, whether that's her baby or what she's going to do beyond each day. When Jenny, a mother whose son demands pickle-covered pizzas, orders from the pizza shop, the protagonist becomes obsessed with delivering their weekly pizza and seeing Jenny, but this doesn't bring her stability either.

This book has a similar feel to other modern novels with a young, lost protagonist who makes questionable choices and obsesses over a particular thing or person. In Pizza Girl, this is used to look at young pregnancy, grief, and living in denial of your worries and future, and it makes for a gripping novel that has a sense of drifting through just as the main character drifts through her life. You have to watch as she cuts everyone out of her life and feelings, falls down the rabbit hole of obsession with a married woman who is constantly moving house, and thinks about the death of her father and the bad side of him. Not a huge amount happens, but that's the point in many ways, and it feels like a well-crafted narrative.

Unexpectedly moving, Pizza Girl will appeal to fans of books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation where you watch a flawed protagonist deal (or fail to deal) with their life, but with an underlying look at the problems they face.

You get to see a lot of things when being a pizza girl. You see some of the best and the worst parts of the human race in all in one shift. In the case of Pizza Girl, it seems like everyone's life is perfect except for her own. This is where Jenny Hauser comes into the picture, the customer who becomes more of an unhealthy obsession which occupies most of her thoughts.

This book can be described as being more of a creative piece, which is almost like a chameleon in the sense of the ever-changing thoughts of the main character and what society can perceive of us. If you like a story which is happy and jolly, this is not for you. There were times when the main character was simply cringe-worthy. The best way to describe it is when you watch a film and a character makes a bad decision and all that happens is an awkward silence from all the other characters in the room. However, its that moment that even though it is so bad to watch, you still have the feeling that you have to watch it, even though you are gritting your teeth the whole way through.

Would I say that Pizza Girl is a good character? Probably not. Then again we are so used to having character development in a good light that we tend to forget that not all character development can be seen to be good. In 'Pizza Girl' we find the main character making many decisions which can be seen as being a no no. This can show some of the mental health aspects that there are to being in a situation that the main character is in. Not everyone can handle it. But it just made me feel like I wanted to shake her and tell her to wake up and smell the coffee. How can anyone be truly that bad at life? One minute she decides to do something good and the next she forgets and does the bad thing instead.

I'm not quite sure what the big deal is about this book. Maybe because it is more abstract that the usual book? Or it highlights many issues that some people deal with in life? That we are all on the hamster wheel and we just don't know how to get off? That really we are all just a number and not an individual? Well, whatever the true meaning of this book is, I really hope that there is someone out there who is able to understand it better than I do. Until then, I have given it a two star.

3.5 - This was a really quick and easy read which I finished in one sitting. I liked the authors writing style and the book is from our main characters point of view. I love stories with questionable characters but there really weren’t many likeable characters in this except for maybe the boyfriend Billy. It was only just over 200 pages so we only really scratched the surface but was an enjoyable fast paced book.

Thank you to NetGalley and HQ for an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier is a fresh, tender, raw, honest and relatable novel about a young woman dealing with grief and with her feelings of overwhelming ambivalence about impending motherhood and what her future might look like.

I'm not sure where to even start when describing Pizza Girl as I think it's best to go into this one knowing absolutely nothing. This follows an eighteen-year-old pregnant girl who works at a pizza place and forms a connection with a customer who orders pickles on her pizza every Wednesday.

This is a short, slice-of-life book where we as readers follow 'pizza girl' as she is all-consumed by this customer. Normally I would say that it wasn't as enjoyable because it was too short and there wasn't enough development in the plot and characters. However, I think this book was written perfectly and does exactly what it intends to do. The writing is clever and the plot is original. In such a short period of time, you feel emotionally connected to our protagonist and understand all of the things she is feeling towards her boyfriend, her mother, the customer and the lost of her father. And yet we root for her even when she makes the wrong choices.

You don't find out the protagonists name until the last few pages and yet I was still satisfied with the ending of this unique, thought-provoking book.

Sayaka Murata meets Ottessa Moshfegh in this freewheeling and darkly funny debut novel. Jean Kyoung Frazier's deadpan wit and playful cynicism give a subversive edge to what could otherwise seem a simple coming-of-age tale.

Pizza Girl is uncompromising in its portrayal of love, obsession, addiction, and depression. Our narrator and protagonist is a Korean-American pizza delivery girl who lives in suburban Los Angeles. She's eighteen years old, pregnant, and feels increasingly detached from her supportive mother and affable boyfriend. Unlike them, our narrator cannot reconcile herself with her pregnancy, and tries to avoid thinking about her future. As her alienation grows, she retreats further into herself and spends her waking hours in a state of millennial ennui.

Her unfulfilling existence is interrupted by Jenny, a stay-at-home mother in her late thirties who orders pickled covered pizzas for her son. Our protagonist becomes enthralled by Jenny, perceiving her as both glamorous and deeply human. Pizza girl's desire for Jenny is all-consuming, and soon our narrator, under the illusion that Jenny too feels their 'connection', is hurtling down a path of self-destruction. Her reckless and erratic behaviour will unsettle both the reader and her loved ones. Yet, even at her lowest Frazier's narrator is never repelling. Her delusions, her anxieties, her world-weariness are rendered with clarity and empathy.

She feels simultaneously unseen and suffocated by the people in her life. While readers understand, to a certain extent, that her sluggish attitude and cruel words are borne out of painful frustration. Her unspoken misgivings (about who is she and what kind of future awaits her, about having a child and being a mother), her unease and guilt, her fear of resembling her now deceased alcoholic father, make her all the more desperate for a way out of her life. Unlike others Jenny seems unafraid to show her vulnerabilities, and there is a strange kinship between these two women.

While the world Frazier depicts seems at times incredibly pessimistic, the narrator's unerring, wry, and compelling voice never succumbs to her bleak circumstances.
Frazier's prose has this lively quality to it, one that makes Pizza Girl into an incredibly absorbing read. The feverish latter part of the story, in which others call into question our protagonist's state of mind, brought to mind Caroline O'Donoghue's novels (in particular Promising Young Women). Let it be said that things get confusing (and somewhat horrifying).

Frazier's mumblecore-esque dialogues demonstrate her attentive ear for language. Speaking of language, I particularly liked pizza girl's assessment of ready replies like 'I'm okay' or 'I'm fine'.

Pizza girl's disconnect—from others, reality, and herself—is vibrantly rendered. Her troubled relationship with her dysfunctional father hit particularly hard as I found her conflicting thoughts towards him (and the idea of resembling him) to echo my own experiences.

Similarly to Hilary Leichter and Hiromi Kawakami Frazier's surrealism is rooted in everyday life. Funny, moving, and unapologetic, Pizza Girl is a great debut novel. The narrator's fuck-ups will undoubtedly make you uncomfortable, but much of her harmful behaviour stems from self-loathing and it also points to other people's hypocritical attitudes towards those who are deemed 'troubled'.