Wet Paint is a novel about a twentysomething woman trying not to think about the death of her best friend whilst things unravel around her. Eve lives in London in a flat share with a couple and waits tables after having not finished her art history degree after the death of her best friend, Grace. She thinks she's successfully avoiding the past, but when she loses her job and has to move out of the flat, she starts to lose a handle on things. Taking up life modelling for art classes and also babysitting for a rich woman going through a breakup, Eve tries to find control as the traumatic memories of Grace's death come back to her.

Told from Eve's perspective and exploring a lot of her actions and thoughts, Wet Paint is a fairly predictable exploration of a character avoiding trauma and guilt with misguided coping mechanisms and some questionable choices. I liked the complexity of Eve's character, with her unspoken need to steal from people and unaddressed issues from being brought up by her alcoholic dad and not feeling like she had the same experiences as other people, and her obsession with a painting that she and Grace loved is a good detail, becoming a focus point for her thinking she has a handle on things. The mid-text flashbacks to her time at Oxford with Grace work fine, though I didn't feel like I actually saw enough of their friendship, which is in some ways the very heart of the novel.

The life modelling and babysitting elements of the narrative worked as you might predict, showing different elements of Eve's spiralling, though I felt like a lot of the parts of the book, like these and some of the supporting characters, didn't really go anywhere, and the ending was all a bit too fine, though I did appreciate that unlike some of the other books in this kind of genre, there was a focus on actually getting therapy. Near the end there is also quite a graphic depiction of suicide which I think readers should be aware of.

Overall, I found Wet Paint similar to other books in the vaguely-Sally-Rooney-esque genre, but a bit too predictable and not quite going to things enough (which is typically an issue I find with other of these books too). I liked that Eve is at times unlikeable, but wanted to know more about her and Grace, especially by the end. Probably one for people who really like the twentysomething millennial fails to deal with mental health sub-genre.

Absolutely breathtaking! I couldn't put this book down. The construction is flawless, the characters larger than life, the extent of research nothing less than utterly impressive.

Very much a mixed bag for me.
At times I warmed to Eve so much,how relatable she was ,likeable and vulnerable.
Other times,I just didn't like her.
For me,the pacing of the book was too slow,I felt as if it was pages and pages and we hadn't moved onwards at all.
Then something surprising... then pages and pages again of not much.
This is how real life is,I hope for a bit more speed in the books I read

'Wet Paint' gives an honest portrayal of the effect of grief on a young woman, the protagonist Eve. I would be excited to read what Chloe Ashby publishes next.

I would recommend this book to those who enjoy Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh and Jo Hamya.