An easy, quick, enjoyable read with astute observations about friendship and growing up. A perfect holiday read.

>Lucy Vine take a bow, this is your BEST book yet and I am so excited to see what’s coming next! How will any written review do this one justice? I have adored this one and devoured the entire book in just one sitting.
Why do women cry in loos? My theory is that it’s because we are needed by so many people. Our parents, our children, our partners, our siblings, our bosses, our co-workers, our pets, our friends, every fucker you ever met needs something from you.
This first few lines has really sat with me and pulled me into the pages. I’ve read this book at a time where I have been feeling particularly drained in trying to make everyone around me happy so this book for me has been a perfect read for my current mood. I have loved the dual perspective in this book, I have really felt as though I have been able to get to know these characters. Vine has made them extremely realistic and written in a way that I have felt as though I have been there with them.
There have been some flashbacks in this one for me, songs that have been mentioned have transported me back and I completely admit to blasting them while writing this review.
Vine has explored the way our friends can shape us and the shapes of friendship within this one. I have loved it and it has been a book that I have found completely impossible to put down.
I have read all of Vine’s previous novels and this is my favourite. There has been moments I have laughed out loud and I can literally say nothing negative about this one.
A definite five star read that I highly recommend.

Really enjoyed this! Lucy Vine’s characters are always completely believable and I will ALWAYS be a sucker for the ‘one day a year’ way of telling a story.

I am really sorry to say I disliked this book.
The first few chapters were promising and I enjoyed the flash back to early noughties culture. I read until 25% and had the strong urge to stop reading because Natalie is just so irritating and spineless as a character.

In my notes I put “ So far Natalie is needy, cringy and whiny. If she is like this as in the modern day chapters, I will give up. It’s not endearing at all“.

I skipped to the last 25% of the book to see if Natalie’s character had undergone any development with age and experience only to find she was the exact same and moaning to Zoe about how many likes on Facebook her post about a significant life event got.

The humour wasn’t there for me. I liked Zoe’s character but all in all there wasn’t enough for me to continue reading.

Thank you to the author, Netgalley and Orion publishing for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest opinion.

Book Review - Bad Choices

Two friends. Two decades
One big mistake...

Nat and Zoe have always shared everything.

Hopeless crushes, emergency tampons, messy sex stories, work triumphs, those days where you can’t stop crying in the loos, those days when you can’t stop dancing on the bar. They even share the same birthday, FFS. The struggle is real, but they’ll always have each other.

Except best friends forever is a hard promise to keep...

Enjoyable and funny story about a strong female friendship across the years. Relatable and full of emotion this book makes you realise how important good girl friendships actually are and how much we should treasure them.

Written from both Natalie and Zoe’s POV across the years it was great to see both sides of the friendship and what they were thinking as they experience life happenings, relationships and trauma in their lives. Throughout the book there were lots of nostalgic references that made me chuckle and think ‘gosh remember that’. The story starts in early 2000 and goes right through to present day and even mentions Covid which is the first book I have read to do this. Doesn’t it make it real!

Lucy Vine writes really well and this is a past paced novel that flows easily. Quite unlike her previous novels it took me a little while to make the switch in my head from what I was expecting. But it’s a funny, good book with moments of heartbreak that keep it real.

Thanks to Lucy Vine, NetGalley and Orion Publishing for my gifted copy.

A very funny book about female friendship. We live the ups and downs of life with Zoe and Nat who meet in the toilets at school, where they are both crying. The book then goes through their lives based around their birthdays (on the same day) An enjoyable read covering their next two decades and how life treats them. It's real life - happy, sad and an excellent story of female friendship.

I adore Lucy Vine’s ability to capture female friendships, relationships and the internal voice every woman has and then bring it to life on a page.
We meet Nat and Zoe, both having a good cry on the loo. It’s their 14th birthday and we tag along to see where the next two decades takes them.
It’s relatable, hilarious, heartbreaking and such a brilliant representation of female friendship.

LOVED THIS!!!!

Meeting two friends, Natalie and Zoe, on pretty much the same day each year - their shared birthday - and following how their relationship ebbs and flows as they reach adulthood, Bad Choices has definite One Day vibes. Thankfully, the outcome is not quite as devastating as in Nicholls’ novel, although there are moments of deep emotion. The friends are positioned as Zoe being the cool, confident one while Natalie lacks awareness of how great she is, and I found Natalie’s lack of self-confidence quite grating at times, particularly her constant remarks about her weight. Nevertheless, it was nice to read a piece of contemporary women’s fiction that wasn’t really at all a romance, but was instead the story of true love between friends.

What a glorious story of female friendship - I loved it.

Natalie and Zoe first become friends when they are hiding out crying in the school toilets one day - they realise they share a birthday, and so much more besides. They decide to share their celebrations, and the book follows them through the years, through school, university, jobs and first loves, switching between the two viewpoints and giving the reader little insights into thoughts that the other friend might not know, It moves from 2004 to the present day, encompassing world changes, new technologies and even Covid along the way.

Emotionally packed and very funny, Bad Choices rang so many bells for me with my friendships across the years and certainly makes me appreciate my brilliant friends too!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read it

I enjoyed this so much! It’s so lovely to read a book that revolves around female friendships rather than the sole focus on romance.
I really like both Natalie and Zoe, yes they are both very flawed, yes they both make mistakes but we all do, they are so real, which was so refreshing to read. We follow Natalie and Zoe from their first meeting in the school loos on their 14th birthday and up to the present day. Each chapter is the next year, on their birthday again. I understand the concept and why it was written this way, but it did make the story a little stilted as we had to try and catch up what was happening in their lives over the year, but it was still easy to follow. There are so many topics covered from more serious things like body image, mental health, abusive relationships, abortion and infertility but also the everyday things that most people go through, like awkward sex stories, jealousy and when you start your period.
Overall, this is a wonderful, refreshing read. I stayed up until 1am last night as I was desperate to finish it, I couldn’t put it out.

I really really love Lucy Vine's books. Each one so far has perfectly rendered the existence of a 21st Century twenty-something living in London. 'Hot Mess' captured singledom, 'What Fresh Hell' depicted how every weekend gets taken over by a wedding and 'Are We Nearly There Yet?' showed travel & self-discovery. Now, with 'Bad Choices' we're onto friendship. Structured in a One Day -esque style, following two best friends on their shared birthday across twenty-odd years, we alternate between both Zoe and Natalie as they ride out all manner of trials and tribulations. Why this book, and Vine's others novels, are so brilliant is because they're so normal and believable - there's no fantasy when it comes to the portrayals of young adulthood. She paints it all with realism, unafraid to show the bleak and scary bits as well as the fun and joy. You can also rely on her novels to have no quick-fixes, never does a male hero come sweeping to fix things for the female protagonist - these women fix themselves with the support of each other.
In all honesty, I think that's why Lucy Vine's books are some of the finest on the market today - they're some of the few books to accurately show that the truest, deepest and most impactful love stories can come in a platonic package.

Two Friends. Two Decades. One Big Mistake.

This book captured the highs and lows of being a millennial and growing up. The confusions around sexuality, the invention of social media and various fads (I did feel at certain points that people/gadgets/phrases were shoehorned in just to have a place in time). I felt the characters Nat and Zoe we're likeable and annoying in equal measure throughout.

It took a while for me get into this book, but I enjoyed it towards the end.

A fun tale of friendship between Natalie and Zoe, who meet in the toilets at school aged 14. Some laugh-out-loud moments, alongside real poignancy as the two girls negotiate their difficult teens and twenties. Current events including Brexit and the pandemic, as well as the birth of social media were woven into the narrative. A fun read which by the end really had me rooting for Nat and Zoe's evolving friendship.
The fan fiction extract at the end was a touch of genius! Great book.

Raw, real and with some true laugh out loud moments. I won't deny at times I got confused with who was who but I adore Lucy Vine's writing and just how perceptive she is. Lucy Vine has thrown so much in here, because of course growing up is full of well, everything. Every emotion laid bare, many issues (some requiring trigger warnings) but ultimately this is a story of friendship and if it can transcend everything that is being thrown at it. This novel is not like her previous ones so be prepared :)

This was a strange one for me because it's a good book but didn't quite land with me. I'm surprised by that because it had all the makings of something I should enjoy. Nat and Zoe have been best friends since they met crying in two side-by-side bathroom cubicles as teenagers.

From there, we follow their lives together through all the trials and tribulations that comes with your teens and twenties – finding your feet, relationships, sexuality, body confidence, motherhood, and so much more. It's also the first book I've read where the pandemic features as we hit the year 2020 and that was interesting to think about, whether the over the years books of the future will include it or gloss over it.

The view we get of that is well done. It tells us a lot about the lurking insecurities and bravado we can put on during these years, even with the people that are closest to use. How much we have to deal with over a short few years as we try to get to grips with being out in the world. How sometimes that growth can be in different directions to the people youn love the most.

Somehow for me though, the characters just weren't people I could warm to. I found a lot more to like in Zoe but Nat often frustrated me to no end. While I recognise that this was the journey she was on and the growing up she had to do, that frustration took me out of the book pretty often.

That said, I thought the pacing was fantastic and the path it took through their lives made perfect sense for their characters. It threw up enough obstacles to keep you interested but not so much that it was unrealistic. I'd recommend it to many of my friends in their 20s because I think a lot of them will find something they relate to in this.

It was a pleasure to read an easy book and it was a fun read. Loved the fact it was honest and and every chapter has something different.

Review: Bad Choices by Lucy Vine

Firstly, thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Two Friends. Two Decades. One Big Mistake.

The book is bloody hilarious. Books never make me audibly giggle but this one did. Constantly.

The raw reality of growing up in all of its confusion and ugliness is captured perfectly in these pages. I found the timeline of dropping in on the girls one a year a really engaging way of seeing their lives and the author was so effective at communicating the passage of time through her phrasing matching the way we all spoke during that year. At times I got a little confused about which girl was which but their personalities are so well defined, it didn’t take long to catch my overworked brain up!

I really enjoyed this book and the way it made me feel like Zoe and Nat’s third friend.

Bad Choices is hilarious. Lucy isn't afraid to tell us how it really is and that's why every chapter resonates. Astute and honest observations celebrate both the strength and fragility of female friendships and the trials of growing up as a female. Very funny and tender.

4.5/5

I loved this book. Loved it!

Lucy writes about female friendships so honestly and in such a relatable way. I loved reading about Natalie and Zoe and thought that writing the book in their alternate POVs was great. I felt a part of their friendship and didn’t want to leave once I’d finished.

I loved that the book took place over 20 years, each chapter taking place around the same time each year on their friendship anniversary.

The book explores the complexities of our teenage years, high school, leaving school and coming of age and self and what it means to be an adult, life choices and how they lead us in different paths. I think this is very much a love story about those once in a lifetime special friendships.

The 00’s nostalgia was honestly brilliant and I laughed out loud at loads of the references.

I would read this if you love contemporary fiction about friendship, family, life and love. Great for fans of Lia Louis, Talia Hibbert, Mhairi MacFarlane and Lindsey Kelk.

RIP Little Chef.

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Content warnings:
Bullying, parental estrangement, fat shaming, homophobia, adultery, COVID-19, death, funerals, miscarriage, pregnancy termination, emotional abuse and manipulation.

This book came at a perfect time for me. Faced with another 9 weeks of lockdown and loads of rain I badly needed cheering up and a distraction. This book did just that. I loved it. I loved Natalie and Zoe and the story of their friendship. I am the same age as them and related to so much of what the characters experienced, from chappy jobs to horrible boyfriends. Most of all it celebrates friendship and how important our best friends are to us. Thanks so much for letting me read this beautiful funny and gorgeous book.