Oh this book! My emotions have been through the mill and I’m left bereft and missing Amalia and Alex now the book is finished. From the first page I felt engaged with the characters and by the end they were my great friends. We follow Amalia on her studies in Oxford and embark on her new friendship with Alex. Their friendship is immediately deep and intense and there is a spark of desire to confuse the usually straight Amalia. This is lovely book about friendship, relationships and exploring sexuality.

Is it possible to enjoy a love story when you know it will end in the kind of heartache that slices time? I think so.
Do beauty and honesty have to be mutually exclusive? This question Indiyah Schneider has answered with this extraordinary coming-of-age tale which makes sweet music of love, queerness and university life, while not shying away from the inherent awkwardness in the experience of discovering who you are.

Amalia is a student of Music at Oxford originally from Australia, and this novel follows her exploring what it means to be queer, an artist, Jewish, a woman in a wonderfully creative format. The way it’s written, in quasi-interview form, in the structure of the famous ‘36 Questions that Lead to Love’ New York Times article is ingenious. Schneider’s voice is witty, gorgeously fluid and brutally honest, and the main characters so fully formed that it seems like they naturally forge a space for themselves on the page.

I suppose this is the one flaw I found. Although this novel is about a pair of binary star protagonists; the approach, the collision, the after, it does seem to push everything else aside. This, however, is not in a way that ultimately detracts from the story. Minor characters and settings are perhaps not as fully fleshed out as they could be, but it does help to emphasise the somewhat claustrophobic effect of the central character’s relationship during their darker points which I much enjoyed.

I found myself taking a ridiculously long time to read this book. It wasn’t like it was hard work, far from it. I found myself savouring each chapter, sometimes reading them more than once, committing lines to memory. First, you were music; now, you’re a part of me.

I give my five star ratings to those books that linger. When a day, week or even month later I find myself thinking about it. When something happens in my life that a book so eloquently describes that I find a quote floats first into my mind before my own thoughts. This was certainly one of those. I want to buy a copy so that I can keep it for when I have one of these moments and I can just flick to the page that captures just how I feel. I’ve just finished, but I want to read it again. Is it possible to enjoy a novel when you know it will end with the kind of heartache that slices time? Yes, I think so.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 stars

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for sending me an ARC. This was an honest review.

A story about two female students who meet at university and fall in love.
I struggled with this book, unfortunately I could not relate to the characters or the story.
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

"28 Questions" reads like non-fiction but isn't. The premise is based on a questionnaire designed to make two strangers fall in love. Indyana Schneider draws heavily on cultural references from the worlds of music and literature. Themes include growing up, female desire, friendship and family. I particularly enjoyed the idea that families develop their own language, and the chords that Amalia composed to represent different types of love.

Right from the start of this book we know that it’s about a love story which ends in heartbreak, so this knowledge colours everything, but the relationship we read about is really absorbing and sweet and intense and interesting. Set to begin with in modern day Oxford, Amalia and Alex meet and become really great friends. Then this deepens into something more. I found both characters to be really interesting but particularly Amalia, our protagonist. She is really full of personality which made her really interesting to read about: she is very musical (which I am not) and wants to be an Opera Singer, and there were all kinds of interesting facts about music, and parallels between music and love, with Amalia questioning and answering things through her experience with music, using music to explain her experiences or helping her to process. I loved the ending.

My thanks to #NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Amelia and Alex have a unique friendship, based on mutual interests (and interest!), music, conversation and philosophy.
Amelia's character is a questioner which is both a great way to tell a story but also a great tool for introducing some thought provoking concepts without feeling like the author is shoehorning them into the narrative!
I started off the book fairly annoyed with the way the dialogue was written (in script form) but actually after he first couple of chapters it drops out of consciousness and doesn't interrupt the flow of the read at all.

Overall a great book about a relationship flourishing and faltering in and out of love,

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This is a great read and i would recommend you read this! This was a really fun read which I read so so quickly. I was kindly gifted an e-book in return a honest review.

Very engaging read. It was an uniquely written book with some sensual writing in places exploring the idea of love and what it is. The dialogue was written as if it was a script which I'm aware some people may enjoy. To be honest I wasn't sure at first and I think it probably would have been as good without it being written in this style.

Amalia is studying opera singing at Oxford looking forward to what the future holds. She has no idea what her journey will be and makes friends with Alex, an older student, and enjoys her company as well as growing her love of music. It is a story of love, friendship and life and the risks we take. I love the fact that it is set in different cities.
Here is the synopsis from the author as they always put it better...

The synopsis:
When first-year music student Amalia stumbles into her Oxford college bar, she has no idea that everything is about to change. Seated across from her is Alex, a velvety-voiced fellow Australian with eyes the colour of her native sky. They strike up a friendship that is immediate - its intensity both thrilling and terrifying.

As the days and weeks go by, they spend more and more time together: philosophising, hypothesising, questioning everything. There is nothing they cannot talk about, except the one thing that matters most. Dare they risk a romantic entanglement if it threatens this most perfect of friendships?

Set across four years and five cities, and suffused with music, literature, art, dance, sex, and the exquisite pain and pleasure of first love, 28 Questions is a passionate and unforgettable first novel about love in all its guises, growing up, and figuring out who you are along the way.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

Amalia starts her time at Oxford University full of anticipation for her future. She has no idea of the journey that, first friendship and then love, will take her on. We see how her love of music and opera drives her creativity and shapes her. She discovers a friendship that offers her the same in spades. This story is told firmly on the side of taking risks in love and life, because the experience and the learning are always worth it.

Extremely profound and heartfelt, this novel felt totally unique, but completely absorbing and even comforting at the same time. Let finding an old friend.

A beautiful coming of age story following girls in love through their individual, and mutual, growth and heartache.

One of my favourite things was how Amalia questioned so much. For example: How do you describe the differences between friendly and sexual love? I hadn’t realised how complex that area is until she compared it to coffee. How can we order so many different coffee varieties on a menu yet we have only one word for love?

The entire book is full of wonderful character-challenging questions (hence the title!), in fact it took me longer to read it than usual because I started asking my friends some of the same questions.

I got Call Me By Your Name vibes with how beautifully sexuality was explored by 20-somethings Amalia and Alex. The metaphors are delicious, I made so many highlights. The heavy dialogue reminded me of Before Sunrise, and the deep table conversations about philosophy made the characters feel much older than early 20s. Though I suppose they are Oxford students!

A really nice fast-paced and emotional story which opens your mind and your heart.

Favourite quote:

“Something happened to me then. Yes, I’d probably been falling in love with her, slowly, for a long time, but, in that moment, I think I landed. Can most people recall the moment they went from falling to landing in love?”

28 Questions will be published on 20th January 2022, thank you to NetGalley for the arc.

This book gave me all the feels, it was beautifully heart wrenching in parts uplifting in others. I enjoyed the settings of the story and the fact it was set in several different cities over several years. A good read.

This is basically a love story between two women who meet in their first year at Oxford University. It is very passionate and there is a lot of angst. The dialogue is written in play script style. Does this mean the characters are acting a part? They have some very high minded discussions and there is a lot of soul searching. Do people really feel/talk like this? Even Oxford graduates? I am not at all musical so the notation and opera scenes meant nothing to me. For all their cleverness, when they graduate they seem to work in very mundane jobs. I did not enjoy this book and could not relate to it at all.

28 Questions is a novel about what makes relationships, as two women meet as students, fall deep into friendship and then in love. Amalia moves from Australia to Oxford to start as a first year music student and is still dealing with the culture shock and the work when she meets Alex, another Australian in her third year. They quickly become best friends, asking each other questions and learning more and more about each other, but Amalia starts to realise they're both maybe feeling the pull of attraction. A romantic relationship might be perfect, or it might change things forever.

Spanning across four years, three at Oxford and then one once Amalia has graduated, 28 Questions uses the idea of it taking 28 questions to fall in love to structure the book, with each chapter named after a question that will occur. The premise sounds a bit like a romcom, and I did see it being marketed as a 'queer When Harry Met Sally' (a film the book references a few times, around ideas of friendship and sex), but it is less of a romcom than a coming of age type book set at university, exploring love, sex, and relationships as well as music and art and what is highbrow or not. One book it actually reminded me of in some ways is The Lessons by Naomi Alderman (which is funny because characters talk about Alderman's Disobedience in the novel), as it has a similar sense of complicated love story entwined in Oxford, though 28 Questions is much more focused on the love aspect than the 'can Oxford students function as humans' part.

All of the dialogue in the book is written as if a script, with name tags for who is speaking, and though it's an unusual conceit, I didn't find it hard to get into, but I imagine it'll put some people off. There's also a lot of classical music and opera throughout, which I don't know much about, but I enjoyed the vibe and some of the discussions about music, and thoughts about creating things and enjoying art more generally. There's a lot of Oxford detail in this, which I appreciated, and it depicts the insular, pressure cooker feeling well, though I expected more follow through around this later in the book, as it felt like there were things Alex was hiding.

The relationship between Amalia and Alex shows the complexity of feelings, and also how something that sounds good on paper might not work out when people's actual tendencies and emotions come into play. I liked some of the conversations and the way intensity was shown, and how Amalia expected certain conversations to go, or expected certain types of combative discussion due to being at university. The book captures very well some of the experiences of university and trying to find out who you are whilst also feeling pressure to do well and seem clever, but also how this bleeds into relationships and where lines might be between finding and losing yourself in them.

I really enjoyed 28 Questions, particularly through some of the ideas it explores and the fact it depicted a university experience similar to my own, though I did keep expecting there to be slightly more drama or things later revealed in the plot. I also liked the fact it takes the Oxford student obsession/love story plot and tells it with two women, both quite similar rather than a typical class or other divide, and there's some good lingering tension between them. If you like university-set stories about messy love and friendship, then this one is worth a read.

This has a distinct Sally Rooney feel about it with our clever, articulate twenty-something protagonists. It's frustrating, though, that so much of this is written as a play script with just speech. There's also a lot of rather pretentious conversation as everyone is constantly quoting Nietzsche, Mozart, philosophy and so on, which is not always convincing in first year undergrads (even if they are at Oxford, natch!). All the same, this is just the sort of casual and entertaining book that I love reading on the commute.

Wow. What an engaging read.

Amalia is studying opera singing at Oxford when she becomes captivated by an older student, Alex. The story explores the boundaries between platonic and romantic love. Exploring the 28 questions to make someone fall in love is an interesting concept.

I thought the addition of small melodies and chords which depicted types of love was a unique idea.

There was some lovely sensual writing which really brought the book to life.

My only criticism was the format of the dialogue. It is written as though it were a script. I think the reader would have been able to follow the conversations without the names preceding dialogue.

I felt completely invested in the unfolding love story between Alex and Amalia. It would be great to see this adapted for screen.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.