Unfortunately this book just wasn't for me. I'm sure others would love it, but I couldn't connect with the main character - in fact she just annoyed me, and I struggled to finish the book. I hoped I would enjoy it towards the end but I just didn't.

Grace is stressed, incredibly stressed. Her marriage is over and her daughter doesn't want anything to do with her and has gone to live with Grace's ex husband. Grace is also harbouring a guilt so huge it consumes her. When she isn't invited to her daughter's 16th birthday she decides to go anyway and take her a stunning cake to prove her love for her daughter. Unfortunately things don't go smoothly. To start with she gets into a massive traffic jam, and decodes to abandon the car in the middle of the road and walk!

This story was too far fetched for me, and the characters were not likeable, but I'm sure others would love it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5144801968

This book kept me so engaged, it captured me straight away and kept me intrigued and curious for more throughout. Once I started reading, I didn’t want to stop. I loved the writing style and the way it guided me into and through Amazing Grace Adams world. I could feel the intensity of emotions pulsing through Grace and taking me along for the journey, pulling such concern and empathy from me.

It touches on a variety of intense life experiences that can catapult a person into an explosion of hitting rock bottom before one can rise up and heal from the traumas. The description of emotions and the way it portrays the flashback that takes Grace out of where she is in certain moments, was well written and expressed exactly how it can feel and how the mind can shift one moment to the next.

This book is so beautifully written. Whilst dealing with difficult situations it carries you away, into a world where you can only feel heartfelt compassion.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and all responsible for allowing me to read this book.

Not the book for me unfortunately. I really struggled to get into it and didn’t help by the timeline jumping all over the place just as you were getting into it.

I really enjoyed this book - it's well written, amusing in places and very true to life without being about the mundane. Grace is highly educated and highly gifted in lots of ways but things have gone wrong somewhere and the book moves between different times to let us see gradually what has happened while we get to know Grace better. There are twists in the story but they aren't the obvious 'reveals' that you sometimes get and although there are clues about the story behind the story, they aren't obvious but once you get to the end you see the whole picture and it makes sense. I enjoyed Grace's love of language and words and I ended up very fond of her as well. I could have read more about them all actually, which is unusual for me. It was good to read a book which wasn't afraid to use big words sometimes and wasn't patronising to the reader about spelling everything out in detail - you are given some credit for some intelligence to work out what is happening. I would read something by Fran Littlewood again and I don't say that lightly!

Wow! I want to shout out to everyone how truly amazing Grace Adams is!
Reading this brilliant debut book, I felt like I was living and breathing alongside Grace, so powerful was the characterisation. Grace speaks for and to all the peri menopausal and menopausal out there as we follow her journey through London on the hottest day of the year. As Grace decides to confront life head on that morning, abandoning her car to go and collect her daughter’s cake, we embark on her journey and also enter into the story of her life. Grace takes us back to various different times and very gradually peels back the layers of her life and reveals her story. At times hilarious, often utterly heartbreaking, Grace’s story is one of love, motherhood and family, loss and grief; a story that will touch so many hearts; a story that will stay with you long after the final page. Everyone is going to be talking about the Amazing Grace Adams in 2023! And I can’t wait to read more by Fran Littlewood.
With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for a review.

Grace Adams is having a bad day. She is stuck in traffic on the way to see her daughter on her 16th birthday. Abruptly she abandons the car and decides to walk to the bakery to collect the very expensive cake she has ordered for Lotte. It's a warm day and she is hot and bothered and comes across various obstacles on her way. On her journey the reader is taken back in time to various points in her life, all of which have made her the person she is at this moment in time.. As you get to know more about Grace and her past, the more you find yourself rooting for her.
I enjoyed this and really wanted things to work out for her.

Why has menopause become the new big thing? I was so bored by this book and felt no sympathy for the main character.

Sadly this one was not for me I really wanted it to be. I found it to be a slow, long drawn out read. In my opinion, I think the main reason it didn't work for me is because the author tried to tackle far too many sensitive themes and not in any great detail therefore did not do any of them well. It was incredibly melodramatic throughout with an unlikeable protagonist in Grace Adams and her teenage daughter Lotte.

The story opens with Grace at breaking point, she is stuck in traffic and snaps abandoning her car and decides to walk all the way to her daughters 16th birthday party. The one she is not invited to via the bakers to collect a special birthday cake.Told in present day with flashbacks to storytell how the events of Grace's past have effected her and bringing it around to her present day situation.

I guess the author was trying to explore the importance of womanhood and all the nuances around being a strong woman.
The book does require a content warning as there are an extensive list of the themes covered in this book. I am plot spoiling by sharing them all yet at the same time giving trigger warnings for those that need them. Something that I usually choose not to do in a review however to further expand on the main reason I have given for the book not working out for me. It is necessary to make my point: grief, child death, infidelity, perimenopause, depression, parenting and family disfunction, troubled adolescence, non consensual sex, sexual assault and divorce.

I'm sure I've probably missed off a few more themes covered! There was that much going on. No joke.

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for my acr in return for my honest review.

This book is quite an emotional rollercoaster of a book. I definitely believe there are women out there that will find parts of this story totally relatable. Not always an easy read with certain subject matter, but certainly worth a read.

The story follows a day in the life of Grace Adams. All she is trying to do is get a birthday cake to her 16 year old daughter Lotte, but life has a way of throwing curve ball after curve ball at Grace - will she get the cake to her daughter, and can she make things right?

The book has multiple flashback timelines, we see Grace meeting Lotte's father and then have various points through their lives explained. The author shows how Grace has got to the point she is at, and effectively explains multiple relationships.

I'm not sure the book was really for me. I found Grace tragic and I just wanted someone to appreciate that she needed help - something no character seemed willing to see or offer. I can see that the author was trying to explain Grace's problems in one way, but it just felt as if she'd been left desperate.

One of my favourite books of 2022 - an honest, heartwrenching, powerful novel about a woman whose life feels like it's falling apart.

The story centres on Grace, a 45 year old woman struggling to deal with recent developments in her marriage and with her daughter, Lotte. I won't give too much away about the plot but Grace has reached breaking point, and we follow her on one hectic day as everything hits her all at once. But we also jump backwards in time to various points in Grace's history as she meets her husband Ben, has her daughter and deals with some truly horrible experiences.

I'm making it all sound like doom and gloom, but this story is weaved through with humour too. I loved Grace and was rooting for her so much throughout this novel. It's been a while since a character has resounded with me so thoroughly as Grace did - and I found myself laughing and crying like a baby at different points.

A lot of this novel is about everyday life and its difficulties, which I really liked, as well as the way expectations, guilt, and womanhood can chip away at us. It's a compelling read which I hugely enjoyed. Fran Littlewood does a great job of conveying the frustration and sheer worry that daughter Lotte's behaviour is causing Grace, and the importance of communication when things go wrong. There's plenty of drama in this book but, somehow, it never felt over the top or ridiculous - the writing, characterisation and emotion of this book worked in perfect harmony to create a captivating read.

This is a book which will touch the raw nerve of any premenopausal or menopausal woman. The real-as-life story of Grace and how her life slowly unravels, overwhelms and almost finishes her off. It is brilliantly constructed, and even more horrifyingly brilliantly plausible. Grace’s feeling of overwhelm, powerlessness and despair are palpable. When she climbs out of her car, walks away and abandons it in the middle of a traffic jam, I almost applauded. She could take no more.
Grace’s frustration will resonate with many.
I very much enjoyed this book, there were some very sad moments which made me gasp with empathy. Grace has been through a lot.
An easy five stars

Thanks to #NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book ahead of publication in exchange for an honest review

Things are not so amazing for Grace Adams right now. She's jobless, loveless and hopeless. Her husband is divorcing her, her sixteen year old daughter wants nothing to do with her, her sister won't stop calling and her day just keeps getting worse.

And now she's had it. She's done. When she abandons her car in the gridlocked traffic that was trapping her, it looks like the start of a breakdown - but it's something else entirely. She's not breaking down, she's breaking out and she's going to get back everything she's lost.

She's going to get to her daughters sixteenth birthday. She's going to fix her marriage with Ben and be a better partner. She's going to finally face all the warnings that have been screaming at her all these years, trying to tell her that she's losing control of her life.

Because Grace Adams was amazing. And she will be again. She's reached rock bottom, and there's nowhere else to go but up.

"After the before and Before the after is a diabolical no mans land."

Grace Adams was quite simply a joy to behold. And much like the old song, she once was lost but she's ready to find herself again. She was painfully human - she made awful mistakes, took people for granted, lost her temper - she was living like a background character as her life fell apart around her. But underneath all the flaws was a woman full of heart, so genuine I couldn't help but root for her. She was a truly authentic portrayal of someone lost in their life and didn't know until it was too late; didn't see her daughter struggling or her husband drifting away, who is struggling under the pressure of being a woman in a mans world but is desperate to be better.

Fran Littlewood has a way of evoking deep emotional responses; the way she can draw out such intense discomfort and frustration is evident from the first few lines as she draws the reader into a unbearably hot and sticky day stuck in endless traffic, with all these little details that just add something so visceral to an otherwise normal scene.

Told between the present day, the months leading up and decades in the past when she first met Ben, we slowly peel away the layers of Graces life to understand who she is and all the little moments that created who she is now. The time jumps around erratically at first but gets easier to follow as the story moves forward and we get to spend a little bit more time in each moment. Our main storyline carefully sets out the events of one fateful day - the day Grace Adams changes her life and takes the first step towards it.

Despite the main storyline just being a single day it's a manic, absurd and larger-than-life day - it isn't just a journey towards a birthday party, it's a journey to fight for her life and for herself. It's somehow both down-to-earth and over-the-top all at once, with moments of quiet contemplation and soap opera worthy drama. At times, it almost felt a bit 'too much' - but life is so messy and complicated at times that this is a lot more relatable than it first seems on the surface.

I usually don't like a cliche, but this is the kind of book that really does tear you down and builds you back up again - packed full of tender emotion, witty observations about the absurdity of life and a lot of heart.

Compelling. Uncomfortable. Un-putdownable.

Grace's story is often a hard read but I couldn't stop turning the pages.

Highly recommend.

Honestly, it's taken me a week to write this review because I just loved it.

Grace Adams is having a bad day. Its her daughters 16th birthday and everything is falling down around her. But instead of running away from it, she decides today is the day she's going to tackle her life and its problems head on; even if that means confronting a painful part of her past that she's tried for so long to acknowledge.

An amazingly relatable family drama, full of heart, humour and all the feels.

This one is a must read!

This novel was a difficult and uncomfortable read. Set on one day of a woman's life with details of her life in the months and years before threaded.through the narrative. The novel was not for me and I struggled to finish it.

Well, that was a very BAD day!

Grace Adams, one time Polyglot of the Year, TV personality and all round badass has sunk about as far as a person can sink. She has hit rock bottom, she’s facing the peri menopause, a divorce, personal tragedy and the dramas of her teenage daughter.

The span of the book is one day in the life of…, but during that day, where Grace is walking across London (after abandoning her car in a traffic jam) to deliver her teenage daughter a birthday cake, we move through various time periods in order to understand how Grace has got to the stage she is at.

To be honest, this book was a very uncomfortable read for me, I know I’m in the minority but the whole way through I kept thinking OMG this woman needs help and by the end of the book this feeling hadn’t changed. I didn’t feel that she was moving ‘towards’ her life as the book description tells us, I felt she was screaming out to be heard and the outer carnage she was creating on her journey was reflective of the inner carnage she was experiencing. And none of that was really resolved but was all ok by the end of the book, well life doesn’t work like that. I think the author made the mistake of trying to cover too much, too many themes and it all got too frenetic.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

It’s possibly way too early to start picking candidates for favourite books of 2023 - I’m still deliberating over 2022 - but I think this book is certainly going to be in contention. Grace is one of those characters that you fantasise about having cocktails with and you already know you’d have the best time. Grace is stuck in traffic, it’s a boiling hot day and she’s melting. All she wants to do is get to the bakery and pick up the cake for her daughter’s birthday. This is one hell of a birthday cake, not only is it a Love Island cake; it has to say that Grace cares, that she’s sorry, that will show Lotte she loves her and hasn’t given up on their relationship. It’s shaping up to be the day from hell and as Grace sits in a tin can on boiling hot tarmac, something snaps. She decides to get out of the car and walk, leaving her vehicle stranded and pissing off everyone now blocked by a car parked in the middle of a busy road. So, despite the fact her trainers aren’t broken in, she sets off walking towards the bakery and a reunion with Lotte. There are just a few obstacles in the way, but Grace can see the cake and Lotte’s face when she opens the box. As she walks she recounts everything that has happened to bring her to where she is now.

When we first meet Grace she’s living alone, estranged from husband Ben and even from her teenage daughter Lotte. She’s peri-menopausal, wearing trainers her daughter thinks she shouldn’t be wearing at her age and she’s had enough. There’s that sense of the Michael Douglas film Falling Down except when the meltdown comes all she has is a water pistol filled with river water, an embarrassingly tiny Love Island cake and a blister on her heel. Then in flashbacks we can follow Grace all the way back to the start, to when she and Ben met at a competition for polyglots. We also get Ben’s point of view here too, so we see her through his eyes and fall in love with her too. He describes her as looking like Julianne Moore, her hair in a messy up do with the odd pencils tucked in. She suggests that, should she win the prize of a luxury hotel break in Cornwall, they should go together. It’s a crazy suggestion, but deep down, he really wants to go with this incredible woman. Once there, the first thing she does is dive into the sea to save a drowning woman. Ben has never met anyone so free and fearless. Yet on their return four months pass before Grace tracks him down and they meet at the Russian Tea Room. There Grace tells him that he’s going to be a father, he doesn’t have to be in, but can they come to an agreement? Of course Ben is in, he was never out. There love story is touching and yet honest at the same time, it’s not all schmaltzy romance - for example after coming together in Cornwall, Grace’s bed is full of sand. It’s so sad to contrast these early months with the distance between them now, what could possibly have brought them to this place.

I eagerly read about Grace and Lotte’s relationship because I’m a stepmum to a 13 and 17 year old girl. I thought this was beautifully observed, with all the ups and downs of two women at either end of a battle with their hormones. There’s that underlying sadness, a sort of grief for the child who called out for her Mum, who let Mum play Sutherland her hair and would lie in an entwined heap on the sofa watching films. Grace aches to touch her daughter in the same way she did when she was a toddler, but now Lotte watches TV in her bedroom and shrugs off cuddles and intimacy of the physical or emotional life. Pulling away is the normal process of growing up and reminds me of the ABBA song ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’. In the film Mamma Mia, Meryl Streep plays Donna as she helps her daughter get ready for her wedding. In the cinema with my Mum I could see she was emotional and now with my own stepdaughters I can understand it. I just get used to them being a certain age and they’ve grown, with one going to university next year I’m going to be so proud of her, but I’m going to miss her terribly. There’s also a terrible fear, as Grace sees her daughter’s behaviour at school deteriorate and her truant days start to add up, she’s desperate to find out what’s wrong, but Lotte won’t talk. She’s torn between Lotte’s privacy and the need to find the problem and help her daughter, but some mistakes have to be made in order to learn. Grace might have to sit by and watch this mistake unfold and simply be there when it goes wrong. No doubt, she thinks, Grace is involved with a boy and it will pass, but the reality is so much worse.

The truth when it comes is devastating, but feels weirdly like something you’ve known all along. Those interspersed chapters from happier times are a countdown to this moment, a before and after that runs like a fault line through everything that’s happened since. As Grace closes in on Lotte’s party, sweaty, dirty and brandishing her tiny squashed cake, it doesn’t seem enough to overturn everything that’s happened, but of course it isn’t about the cake. This is about everything Grace has done to be here, including the illegal bits. In a day that’s highlighted to Grace how much she has changed, physically and emotionally, her determination to get to Lotte has shown those who love her best that she is still the same kick-ass woman who threw caution to the wind and waded into the sea to save a man she didn’t know from drowning. I found myself hoping that this tiny glimpse of how amazing Grace Adams is, might just save everything.

Thankyou for giving me the chance to read in advance. Funny and compelling and read it in one! Highly recommend this author

I absolutely ADORED this! This is such a moving and funny novel, and one that if you are a crier, you will definitely cry to! Grace's life is full of problems which you being to feel attached to and you find yourself following Grace's journey with lots of emotion.

Grace Adams is truly amazing, and I will be highly recommending to all on my social channels. Thank you!