This book offers a fresh take on contemporary romance, though it’s more than just a typical love story. Beneath its chick-lit exterior lies a sharp exploration of relationships, marriage, and infidelity. While the writing is smooth and Emily feels authentic, the other characters, especially Elliott and Alathea, seem underdeveloped. The plot, though engaging at first, loses momentum towards the end and becomes somewhat convoluted.

It’s a unique read that defies easy classification, so if you’re drawn to complex, unconventional takes on romance, it might be worth checking out. Thanks to NetGalley and 4th Estate for the ARC.

I must firstly apologise for the amount of time it has taken me to provide a review of this book, my health was rather bad for quite some time, something that had me in hospital on numerous occasions and simply didnt leave me with the time I once had to do what I love most.

Unfortunately that does mean I have missed the archive date for many of these books, so It would feel unjust throwing any review together without being able to pay attention to each novel properly.

However, I am now back to reading as before and look forward to sharing my honest reviews as always going forward. I thank you f0r the patience and understanding throughout x

Interesting book overall but I struggled in parts. The community piece was well built and I felt like I was right there in the setting. Nice read.

A smart and entertaining novel that will appeal to fans of literary fiction and satire. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a witty and thought-provoking read.

mily and Stephen move to a new house in a strangely exclusive development. A sort of Stepford place where you have to be a certain kind of family to fit in. Emily struggles to manage her two small boys and Stephen seems a bit distant, so meeting Alathea and Elliott seems like a godsend. Emily starts to spend a lot of time with the couple, especially Elliott. He seems to offer something new, and they get drawn into the collective mania that happens during a mad affair. The book takes a creepy turn, and led me to count my own blessings and not to look for happiness elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I did not finish this book. I could not connect with any of the characters and found myself not wanting to read on. Thank you for the opportunity to read.

A good read. Not my cup of tea but it absolutely had its merits. There was great potential and I'm sure it will find its public.

'The Answer to Everything' presents the relationships between two families with young children who live opposite each other on an eco-housing development, in particular teacher Emily's growing entanglement with art historian Elliott, and also with Elliott's wife Alathea, a psychotherapist. Much of Emily and Elliott's communication is via WhatsApp, and the novel explores the intensity of digital communication, how a friendship can spill over into an affair as Emily reflects that she has exchanged more words with Elliott than anyone else in her life.

At times I found this a frustrating book - the main characters like to talk, and they talk a lot. The dialogue and messages felt very believable, and are often very clever and witty (a hilarious - and erotically charged - conversation about pen-chewing which really initiates Emily and Elliott's liaison is a particular highlight) but for most of the novel I found it difficult to really care about any of the main characters. as they all seem to fall back into an archness and irony as their default mode, making it hard to get beneath the surface. It's a fairly long novel and there are some strands which feel less necessary than others (including the whole setting of the eco-commune), while the pages and pages of WhatsApp messages begin to feel rather self-indulgent and tedious - perhaps this was intentional?

That said, I finished the novel quite quickly as it was never less than readable and often very entertaining, and I did find the ending both clever and moving. I also liked Luke Kennard's unusually sensitive and sympathetic presentation of religious faith and the challenges of adhering to it, including a brilliant scene where Emily goes for confession with her Orthodox priest. So I felt more kindly disposed towards the novel by the end, and I'm glad I read it overall. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a digital copy to review.

Emily and Stephen move to a new house in a strangely exclusive development. A sort of Stepford place where you have to be a certain kind of family to fit in. Emily struggles to manage her two small boys and Stephen seems a bit distant, so meeting Alathea and Elliott seems like a godsend. Emily starts to spend a lot of time with the couple, especially Elliott. He seems to offer something new, and they get drawn into the collective mania that happens during a mad affair. The book takes a creepy turn, and led me to count my own blessings and not to look for happiness elsewhere.

2.5 rounded up

I'm struggling to know where to start when reviewing this book. Is it a contemporary romance? Sort of but also not really in the way you might expect. Despite the chick-lit-esque cover (which is actually part of what attracted me to it and perhaps gave me slightly the wrong expectations) this is an often intelligent examination of contemporary romantic relationships, marriage and infidelity. But there's also had a feeling I had as a reader of being constantly discomfited while reading which I suspect was intentional on the part of the author, like there was something more sinister going on behind the scenes of what - at face value - could have been purely the story of the relationship between two couples living on the same estate.

Perhaps I'll focus on the positives first: the writing was good in that unobtrusive way that you don't particularly notice it (I mean this as a compliment!) and that Emily was a very real character to me. Unfortunately Elliott in particular and Alathea to a lesser extent felt less fleshed-out and the novel lost its impetus for this reader in the latter sections, with the plot feeling a bit strung out in parts like there was too much going on.

Unhelpfully I'm not sure who I'd recommend this to as it really does defy categorisation, and I'd suggest reading some more favourable reviews if any of this sounds like your cup of tea.

I really didn’t like anyone in this book and it really didn’t make me laugh. Having said that, it is slick, well-written and keeps reading, just not altogether enjoyable.

I do not read a lot of contemporary realist fiction, but I make an exception for Luke Kennard because he always manages to make an unthrilling premise (young mother has an ill-advised affair with her apparently dashing neighbour) into something more sinister, fun and off-kilter than anyone else. I raced through The Answer to Everything and had a brilliant time with it, but I particularly enjoyed the light focus on Emily's religious faith and practice. Religious characters are so incredibly rare in modern contemporary fiction and I thought it was handled with tact and nuance.

I loved this book! It's funny, really well-written and paints a painfully realistic picture of relationships and marriages. We follow two couples, both appear happy(ish) on the outside but their relationships have their challenges. As the couples are neighbours and have children the same ages they become good friends. However Emily (from couple 1) and Eliott (from couple 2) become a bit too close and we see their relationship develop through their secret Whatsapp chats.

None of the characters are particularly likeable but they're all interesting and funny in their own ways. Some of the Whatsapp chats between Emily and Eliott were stupid and mundane... and that's what made it so good! The chats were hilariously realistic and reminded me of the early stages of my relationships where you just talk crap for the sake of being able to speak to each other.

On a more serious note, there's a lot more to this than text chats (it's mostly NOT text chats!) and the intensity of this burgeoning, illicit relationship jumped off the page. And although it's of course wrong, you can almost understand why and how it's happening. It feels like a guide on what NOT to do and how to not accidentally (but also on purpose) fall in love with your neighbour and end up having an emotional affair.

Highly recommend! This was so good and juicy. I need more!

Very clever writing that made me laugh out loud whilst also moving me deeply. I'd highly recommend this book to family and friends.

I have mixed feelings indeed about The Answer to Everything. There’s a lot that’s very good about this book, but oh so much to dislike in the characters, that it taints the reading of the book. Overall though, it’s a fine novel and a good read.

The story revolves around two couples living in a tarted-up 1990s housing estate. First thing I liked was the vividness of the setting. I did not know that it’s a thing now for developers to revisit the cheap, poorly constructed housing estates built 30-some years ago and try to salvage them with a modern makeover. I don’t even know if it actually happens, but it rings very true.

It’s a totally apt setting for the story, which is all about subterfuge: putting on a good façade while underneath there’s crap going on. Really, 5 stars for how well this setting works in the story.

The Answer to Everything is extremely well written. The author is also a poet, and it shows. No, not because it is ‘poetic’ in the sense that that term is often used, meaning elaborate or ‘flowery’ but rather because the language is sparse and beautifully controlled. It is actually quite prosaic, mostly, which adds to the sense of ordinary domesticity.

The story unfolds slowly, step by step, largely told through WhatsApp text messages between Emily and Elliott. The increasingly intense messages (which are extremely convincing and believable) are offset against the daily domesticity and ordinariness of their ‘real’ life. On the surface, it’s quite a simple story of two people unexpectedly falling deeply in love with each other. But again, there are layers: what they are expressing in their text messages, and what they are actually doing. For some time, they don’t even talk about their text exchanges when they are together, as though not talking about it will keep it all in the realm of fantasy.

Such layers are a theme throughout the book: too many spoilers involved to go into them all!

In this respect, The Answer to Everything is extremely clever and skillful. Definitely we’re in 5-star territory.

Where it loses a star or two is in some of the things various characters do, that stretch credibility. In particular the odd relationship between Elliott and his wife doesn’t ring true (for me anyway). It works as a plot device as the that it is, but is not totally successful in other ways. It’s not about whether I think ‘someone like that would do something like that’ and more that, in several instances, with several of the characters, the author didn’t manage to convince me, to suspend my disbelief. The character didn’t come to life in a believable way.

I did feel very judgmental about the main characters, not just Emily and Elliott but their respective spouses Steven and Alathea too. And — to the author’s credit or not — I’m not really sure if the author deliberately manipulated that reaction from me or if that was just me. Certainly, Emily expresses doubts and guilt, acknowledging that what she is doing is wrong and that she is bringing unhappiness down on herself through her own sinful actions, but I think that’s more because she’s religious, and I don’t think this harsh judgment is necessarily supposed to apply to the other characters. Should I instead have felt some empathy for them in their ‘predicament’? Hmmm, interesting; I’m scratching my head on that one.

And that makes me think that this would be a terrific book for a book club. Could lead to some very interesting discussions about fidelity, monogamy and middle class values. About eco-friendly housing estates. And about what is, really, the answer to everything?

My thanks to Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this book. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.

I absolutely loved this book, some of the observations are so razor sharp you wince at their acuteness. Emily and her husband have moved into their new house, in a community that seems perfect from its marketing brochures. Emily's life is perfect on the surface, with 2 children and a nice husband( who doesn't seem to speak to her much, though). Her life seems to get more interesting, and more complicated, when she makes friends with the neighbours, a similarly yuppie couple with 2 children, Elliott and Alathea. Emily seems to have found a soulmate in Elliott- or is that merely the lure and ease of texting, where that semblance of anonymity makes it much easier to be vocal about your thoughts, than you would be in a face to face meeting? Emily's constant exhaustion and her attempts to have a life, and a personality to herself ,apart from that of mother, are captured very well.
The book's an excellently observed skewering of upper middle class life, and modern day parenting, and marriage. What elevates this over a regular midlife crisis dreary cheating exploration, is Kennard's control over his characters. They're all vividly written, and behave in completely relatable ways even when they're being insufferable, and none of them are shallow stereotypes at all, when this so easily could have been. The semblance of emotional closeness that texting offers is explored really well- it's superficial, and so easy, which paradoxically can delude you into thinking you're actually bonding with someone when it's probably no more than a convenient outlet. And most probably, the person at the other end is not irreplaceable. I loved the text messages sections of the book- the interlocutors aren't mentioned but their personalities are so clear you're never in doubt of who's saying what. Much like the way Evelyn Waugh writes his back and forth conversations. Like Waugh, Kennard too uses Emily's faith to explore notions of duty, love and morality, and try to figure out the answer to everything. Faith can't give you easy answers though, and neither does Kennard. The resolutions for all the characters are absolutely excellent and perfectly written. Hugely enjoyed this book

Emily should be happy. She has a nice husband, even if they rarely speak to each other, two little boys she loves (even if a full night’s sleep is a distant memory) – and now, a brand-new house but still she aches for something more.

Enter Alathea and Elliott, their new neighbours, and also parents of two young boys. Alathea is intimidatingly confident and beautiful, but also disarmingly open and friendly. And Elliott … Elliott is intriguing. Dishevelled, talented, charming and a little lost, he seems as fascinated by Emily as she is by him, and soon their friendship has reached an intensity neither of them seem able to control.

This book is well-written but I really struggled to connect to any of the characters. I found the book got off to a slow start, but had twists at the end that I could not see coming.

Good read.

An intriguing look at the human cost of emotional affairs, though it hits a lot of familiar beats. Nothing more than a diversion.

I have admired Luke Kennard since I saw him perform at Latitude festival in 2016. I was really intrigued to read a novel from him and thoroughly enjoyed it. He has such a beautiful writing style, I did find it initially hard to get in to but once I got in with the flow of the book I loved it. Incredibly compelling!

"The Answer to Everything" is a very modern form of literary fiction: a sort of 2021 Iain McEwan/Nick Hornby mashup. It's very self-aware, very clever, and very astute - an interesting book with a lot to offer.