The chaotic and provocative nature of this love affair (romance is far too saccharine a word to describe their relationship) is something i would have 1000% adored when i was younger and enamoured with the toxic.

This book while well written and compelling is not to my own personal taste. I would recommend it to anyone that still enjoys the exploration of toxic relationships that keep you on the edge of your seat.

I started reading Acts of Desperation in 2021, but I quickly realised that I was not in the correct headspace for reading about toxic relationships, obsession, mental illness, self harm, and eating disorders.

So, I put it down. I picked it up again 2022, but I still wasn't in the headspace to read it. Yet, something made me keep it on my to-read list instead of giving up on it completely.

When I read and loved Nolan's second novel Ordinary Human Failings last year, I knew I wanted to return to Acts of Desperation. While they are tonally quite different stories, I am glad I gave Acts of Desperation another try. I listened to it on audio via Borrowbox a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed spending time in our unnamed protagonist's head. Not that it was a fun place to be, exactly.

Our protagonist falls hard for Ciaran, an older man who at first seems like a bit of dick but turns out to be much worse than that. But our narrator knows that if she just works harder at shaping her life around their relationship he will love her in the way she needs to be loved. And it is a deeply visceral need to be loved that she has, along with an ever-present self-destructive streak. The story is told across two timelines, the protagonist's present day of 2019 and the early/mid 2010s.

Look, I literally lost of my goddamn mind more than once during my 20s so I get the, to put it politely, *messiness* of it all but there were so many times when I muttered to some variation of 'are you sure you want to do that?!' while our narrator made another not so great life choice. Acts of Desperation is an intense and unflinching portrayal of obsessive love, toxic relationships, and the effects of mental illness.

"Acts of Desperation" by Megan Nolan is a raw and unflinching exploration of toxic relationships and the impact of obsessive love. Nolan's narrative delves into the tumultuous dynamics between the protagonist and her partner, exposing the destructive nature of desire and dependence. The prose is intense and introspective, providing a visceral look into the complexities of human emotions. While the story can be emotionally challenging, it offers a poignant reflection on the consequences of unhealthy attachments and the pursuit of identity within a toxic relationship.

Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan is a searing novel about love, addiction, and self-destruction. The book is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who is deeply in love with a man named Ciaran. Ciaran is a charismatic and destructive force in the narrator's life, and he quickly becomes her addiction.

The relationship between the narrator and Ciaran is toxic and abusive. Ciaran is manipulative, controlling, and emotionally abusive. He gaslights the narrator and makes her feel worthless. The narrator, in turn, becomes increasingly dependent on him and willing to do anything to please him.

Acts of Desperation is a difficult book to read, but it is also a necessary one. It is a powerful and unflinching look at the dark side of love and addiction. It is a book that will stay with you long after you finish it.

Ascerbic, sharp and unpredictable - but also predictable in a way - Acts of Desperation is a very millennial book. I really enjoyed it. Some parts of the narrative seemed slightly confusing, the way the chronology flowed, but the writing and characterisation was ace.

Description of a toxic relationship with echos of the other Irish book, The Quiet whispers never stop, this has beautiful prose although not always easy to read given the reality being portrayed.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I raced through this book, it was gripping, dark and toxic. I found the protagonists decisions and actions, and self-destructive nature quite hard to read at some points, but Megan Nolan is undoubtedly a brilliant writer and i'm interested to see where she goes next. It reminded me a little of Girl Parts.

A difficult and complicated read. Although the writing was good, I could not engage with the characters or the narrative.

Thank you to NetGalley and publishers for this ARC

Beautifully beguiling, Nolan has the ability to elicit a powerful emotional response from her readers.

A beautiful and beguiling book. I have been a fan of Nolan's journalism for some time and this novel did not disappoint. May be triggering or a little too relatable for anyone who has been in a toxic relationship.

The story of an obsession with love and self-hate.
A readable book with unlikeable characters about what seems like an addiction to self destruction and toxic love.
I am not sure I enjoyed this book. There were too many passages that sound patronising and egotistic.
I couldn't connect with the main character and her outlooks and actions infuriated me more often than not.
There is little progression or conclusion to this book, and the story is basically an account of years of fumbling through the MC's personal issues.
Redeeming features? It got my blood boiling with fury. So, it certainly elicited an emotional response.
But I wouldn't recommend it unless somebody is actively looking for reads about such topics as self-loathing, low self esteem, and codependency.

I found this really uncomfortable to read, but that wasn’t because it wasn’t good. Megan Nolan’s debut novel tells the story of a nameless protagonist living in Dublin who falls in love with a just objectively awful man called Ciaran. All of her friends think he’s terrible, and she kind of knows it too. But this only exacerbates the insular world which she creates for herself; she avoids her friends, not wanting to hear their opinions or allow them to see how badly he treats her. She makes her life narrow and bland, so that Ciaran comes to be the only flavour in her soup of existence. After a while, she seems to forget that there is anything to life but this bitter taste, and her desperation to keep him around is matched only by the reader’s desperate willing for her to admit that this man is not good for her.

The narrator talks about how she replaced religion with love at an early age. She substitutes the demanding and punitive Irish Catholicism of her forefathers for a sense of love which is equally critical and oppressive. Nolan’s protagonist seems determined to see herself simultaneously both as victim and as self-destroyer; sinner and sinned-against. She hates her drinking and drug-taking but she continues to do it. She sleeps with men she doesn’t like and who make her feel bad about herself. She cuts herself and dwells on her unhealthy relationships with food and her bouts of anorexia. It is a mixing of opposing religious ideals; the euphoria of hedonistic Dionysianism with the castigating condemnation of Western Catholicism, and the protagonist enters wholeheartedly into both elements of the dichotomy. She cannot measure up to both and seems almost to relish her failure. She wants to be disgusted by herself, or perhaps, it is that she has realised that feeling disgusted with herself is inevitable, and so she may as well try to want it.

And so she seeks out a man who is also disgusted by her; who also believes that she is not good enough. Continuing the religious theme, the protaganist makes a god out of Ciaran; fixating on his beauty, his mind, his superiority, calling hm “the first man I worshipped. His body would become a site of prayer for me”. He could be the perfect man, the fairytale prince, but this is not that kind of love story. Ultimately, the narrator’s compulsive fixations with this man seem more about her own self-obsession than real love. She lets him determine her sense of self, and when it inevitable all falls apart, she is left with the terrifying task of re-crafting an identity from the wreckage.

Acts Of Desperation By Megan Nolan is without doubt one of the best novel of 2021. I could write all the superlatives around, but the fact is, if you have not read this novel, you need to stop what you are doing now, even if it means reading this review and go and buy yourself a copy.

The intensity between Ciaran and our nameless narrator in this novel is frightening. There is an intimacy, a love and hate that balances itself finely throughout and is very easy to buy into. Scenes such as touching foreheads are written with such ferocity the tension leaps of the page and this happens from the first to the last page.

Megan Nolan is rightly being talked about all over the place. It was on The Observers debut novelists list for this year, and there is no doubt we will be hearing lots more of Megan Nolan in the coming years

This is certainly a very distinctive, unique new voice in modern literature. I was pretty quickly hooked, and felt it was a very accurate, very moving illustration of youthful infatuation and abuse. Very honest, searing, brutal.

This was an absolutely obsessive read. The self-destructive ways of a young woman in love, not seeing a way out of a relationship that's clearly not good for her. I don't think I've read a book (let alone a debut novel!) about addictiveness before that was so convincing, so blatantly honest and unashamed. Megan Nolan has written a testament to bad relationships, and she goes beyond the romantic ones, and also looks at relations with parents, substance abuse, and the female body image.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I found this book very interesting for the way it deals with a toxic relationship from both sides - Ciaran is obviously a manipulative and abusive person but the narrator is also not without blame for what happens to their relationship (though as the physically weaker party, ultimately she is less culpable). The fact that we never learn the narrator's name speaks to her feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness, and her awareness of the toxic nature of the relationship and her own mental health issues makes this novel particularly powerful as it demonstrates the all-encompassing nature of these kinds of relationships and just how difficult it is to break that cycle. The prose is lyrical and compelling, and even though the plot is not completely linear you never lose your place in the story. Nolan is definitely one to watch.

I thought this was a very good book. To say, enjoyable wouldn't be quite right as there is fairly unrelenting misery throughout, but at least some of it will resonate with the majority of young women navigating their way through relationships. The story is told by a young woman in her early 20's (we never learn her name). The narrative is a bit disjointed, like snippets from a diary or vignettes so you feel along with the narrator a sense of fragmentation but it can sometimes be problematic as the reader has no sense of the time period which has passed or what has happened between progressions. We follow the narrator through her early to mid twenties and the scenes from this life are interspersed with thoughts about herself and what happened with hindsight at the age of 29 and living in Greece rather than Dublin..

The narrator is living In Dublin having moved from a more rural area, she's an dyed in the wool self sabotager: in education (uni drop in out), in career (callling in sick or being late for her dull desk job), is unhappily promiscuous, is an alcoholic, bulimic, self harmer and is a poor friend ("steals" boyfriends). She spys Ciaran (a tall, handsome, golden haired Irish/Danish guy) at a gallery event and becomes over invested in their relationship. She thinks, like many young women of my experience do, that if she can make him love her then life will be okay, she'll be rescued and her life will have meaning. However, Ciaran is cold and controlling. He's tight with money, won't have any truck with her friends, is workshy, arrogant and only seeks his own pleasure in bed. He is also secretive and our narrator is driven to playing detective, discovering that Ciaran has a Danish ex girlfriend who he is still very much in contact. He tells our narrator when confronted that he will always love his ex (even though she cheated). Our narrator plays the "pick me dance" and thinks she is victorious when Ciaran gives her a gift with a note inside saying he loves her when she is setting off home to visit family at Christmas, only for him to then immediately ghost her, She goes to greater lengths of abasement to gain him. However, once they are living together she starts to enact small acts of rebellion - Ciaran says she can only drink once a week and no more than one bottle of wine. So. she starts to buy two bottles drinking one before he arrives home on a Friday and disposing of it. The sex she once found so explosive she now avoids and finds numbing. Things spiral and she returns to old habits as she sabotages the relationship and herself.

There are many really well observed insights but the protagonist has an everything plus the kitchen sink shoppping list of addictions and self harming behaviours which I felt was a bit overkill. There is also no exploration of why she has become so self sabotaging. Her parents divorced when she was young but she seems to have a good relationship with them both. She never seems to try to seek help or insight, all she would have to do would be to Google some of Ciaran's controlling behaviours and edicts and a plethora of helpful articles and forum posts would pop up which she could read at leisure during her underemployed job explaining how his behaviour is emotionally abusive. Her "reflective" thoughts later in Greece are amorphous and don't really add much. She claims she is "no longer a girl" and that the men in the bar in Greece where she drinks no longer hit on her, but she's only 29 hardly an aged hag. She also claims that there were more good times than bad with Ciaran but the scenes protrayed don't convey that sense at all. So, much to admire and like, some paragrghs stopped me in their tracks but not a whole success. An interesting writer to watch.

I couldn't get into this. I found it to be deeply depressing and while I can cope with that (for instance I loved A Little Life), the unlikable nature of the protagonist, the lack of a name to call her and the entitlement and privilege of the concept was just not enjoyable. I don't think the book sets out to be an enjoyable one regardless and there's certainly some beautiful writing here, but it fell flat for me because it had nothing new to observe or teach.

An introspective deconstruction of a toxic relationship between the narrator and Ciaran, a cold and manipulative man. The plot is slow at times, but the novel's strength is its striking articulation of emotional abuse, self-loathing, and desire (both romantic and creative).

Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan

I wasn’t expecting to love this book as much as I did! (Mainly because I’m in my 50s with a 27 year old daughter)
Acts of Desperation is an authentic, dark & intense story about a toxic relationship that manages to move along at a compelling, page-turning pace while simultaneously being (hate to use this phrase but it fits, so...) deep & meaningful. With her stunning prose & her brave & honest writing, Megan Nolan is clearly a hugely talented author with the potential (in my humble opinion) to become one of the best contemporary writers of her time.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and to Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read and review this book.