Going back to my Kindle for a bit to read some of my latest advanced readers copies as getting a little behind (oops) so next on the list sees 'Amazing Grace Adams' by Fran Littlewood.

'Amazing Grace Adams' sees us join Grace in the middle of a crisis and, on the way to collecting her daughter's 16th birthday cake she finally snaps, life has just got too much. Stuck in traffic, she just decides to abandon her car and walk to the cake shop. She is determined to get her life back on track, she needs to fix what has drive her family apart and remind everyone just how amazing she is...

This book is written in a style where we are taken from present day life back to flashbacks of Grace's life and how the events of the past have shaped the current situation. It is very cleverly written and it does keep you guessing as to what secrets will be uncovered, all whilst highlighting the importance of just how strong woman can be to survive some of the worst things in life. It can be quite heavy at times and I did find it hard to connect with Grace as a character at certain points of the story due to the backwards and forwards style of story-telling.

It does however cover many female related issues such as wayward teenagers, relationship breakdowns, menopause and everything that life can throw at you and will have you in tears one minute and laughing and smiling the next.

3.5

This was a very touching story. I loved Grace the main character. The story was really endearing and heart breaking in parts. It’s definitely worth a read.

Oh wow. Well this book certainly lives up to the title because it is an amazing story and I loved every page. It’s funny, at times intense and you never know which way it’s going to go next, or more to the point what Grace is going to do next. In fact, What Grace Did Next might have been a good title. Grace will make you laugh, sometimes she’ll shock you (but in a good way) which will make you cheer her on and shout ‘you go girl’. I loved one of the earlier scenes at the chemist’s. I won’t go into detail but I thought it typical and Grace’s response – brilliant! As you move on through the book, at times it can be incredibly moving, so a complete roller coaster of emotions all the way through.

I enjoyed the way the story flits back and forth in time. It starts off on the day Grace sets out to pick up a birthday cake she ordered for her daughters 16th birthday which she intends to deliver to her party and very much hopes her now estranged daughter Lotte will see her. Sometimes the story will go back one month to events that lead up to where Grace is now. Other times it will take us back years, to how she met her husband and to other events in Grace’s life. Slowly, slowly the story unravels to reveal the traumatic events that have happened over the years and culminates in the most moving, but quite exhilarating grand finale.

The book covers many family life situations, some of which, if not all, will have touched many readers lives. Living with troublesome teenagers, facing divorce, going through the menopause, basically just trying to keep your head above water with everything life throws at us. It is told with humour, insight but above all there are some incredibly moving, emotional scenes too.

Just, what a book! I loved every page of it and wonder what this author could possibly come up with next to beat this one.

**To be posted to my blog close to publication date (eek, can't wait to share this book)**

It takes three timelines to tell the story of Grace Adams:
Now
Four months ago
Early 2000s

I found this to be a clever device, as keeps you wondering what can have happened for Grace’s life to have changed so dramatically from where things were back when Grace and her husband Ben first met to how they are in the present, when Grace is estranged from both her husband and their daughter.

I like to like the main characters in the books I read and I liked all of them here: Grace, her husband Ben and daughter Lotte, and I was very concerned for each of them, but especially for Grace’s mental state. Although I sometimes found her infuriating and wanted to shake some sense into her, I also felt a huge amount of sympathy and the shake should have turned into a big hug every time!

Grace Adams is having a BAD day. We follow Grace as she desperately tries to make her daughter’s birthday special after a bubbling over of family tensions have seen her family torn apart. Grace’s struggle with her hormones as she approaches menopause made for quite raw reading which was terrifying in its realness. Sometimes I find timeline hopping frustrating but I really enjoyed this book, thanks NetGalley!

On the other side of the Atlantic, we have writer Anne Tyler who beautifully depicts women at their midlife points who make deliberately instant but far-reaching decisions, and on this side of the Atlantic, we now have writer Fran Littlewood. In Amazing Grace Adams, we meet forty-something North Londoner Grace who is set on mending the fractured relationship with her estranged former husband Ben and teenage daughter Lotte. Grace’s mundane, innocent attempt to deliver a birthday cake to Lotte, who no longer lives with her, turns into an unforgettable snapshot in time when she suddenly exhibits all the signs of a momentous nervous breakdown, with melancholy, grief, self-loathing and introspection combining to demonstrate what a complex, fragile and sensitive character Grace is. Set over just one day in North London, this novel empathetically digs deeper in its exploration of these themes that have allowed a typical, fairly privileged family to become so fractured. Highly recommended! I wish to thank NetGalley and the publishers for the free-of-charge ARC they provided me with that enabled this honest and unbiased review.

Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood

Grace is estranged from her husband Ben and daughter Lotte. On the hottest day of the year she is on her way to collect her daughter's 16th birthday cake and deliver it to her party, hoping that this will be a gesture that mends their fractured relationship. When she gets stuck in traffic she abandons her car and starts to walk. The story of the rest of the day is interspersed with Grace's past, from first meeting Ben to the present day.

I absolutely loved this book - I cheered Grace on all the way! It's so refreshing to see a woman of this age as the main character in a book, and the book is packed with lots of very relatable details. Equally, I thought the character of teenager Lotte was totally authentic too. A fantastic debut and I can't wait to see what the author writes next. Very highly recommended!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

This should have been a book I loved but it just didn’t do the trick for me, maybe my fault. I got frustrated with Grace’s behaviour in the present day and found the time lines confusing. I didn’t know enough about Grace’s life to feel sympathy until it was a bit too late. It was all more understandable by the end and it was a good ending but just didn’t do the whole thing for me.

Told over the course of one incredibly stressful day, with plenty of flashbacks to explain how she ended up in this situation, this book follows the frazzled Grace Adams on an ill-fated journey to deliver a birthday cake to her estranged daughter. It's frustrating, but it's meant to be - we're with Grace as she tries to make her way across London, and everything goes wrong. The descriptions of hot flushes and blisters and surges of irritation are brilliantly captured and so it's not exactly relaxing to read, but it is effective. As the story progresses, we begin to learn about how Grace ended up in this situation, The characters are complex and sometimes their motivations can be a little muddled, but that in itself is very realistic. I think this book will really capture people's attention.

I felt this book confused me at the start.
I didn't warm to Grace the main character until much later on in the book. It was then I realised why she acted the way she did.
Some of the timelines had me confused. But in the end, it came together, and I realised it contained quite a few serious matters that were maybe just not highlighted enough
They. did make me understand about Grace, though I didn't see her as amazing.
This was not my favourite book of the year but an okay read.

I was really looking forward to reading this book but found the whole process quite stressful to be honest. The book flips between when Grace Adams met Ben, her daughter Lottie's father, and the present where Grace has discovered the secret life her daughter is leading. It has to be said that Grace has found out more about her daughter's life by reading her diary and reading messages and posts on her phone. Lottie has been truanting from school and after falling out big time with Grace, she has moved in with her Dad. In the present, Grace is very stressed as she's trying to get across London with a birthday cake for Lottie's sixteenth birthday. The book alternates between chapters describing how Grace and Ben met, their subsequent romance and the present where the tension and stress just palpates off the page. I couldn't find sympathy for any of the main three characters. I really did find reading this book stressful too and two thirds through just wanted them to get on with everything, if that makes sense. So I cannot really say that I 'enjoyed' reading this book but I am grateful to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review it.

I really enjoyed this book. 40 something Grace Adams is not having a great time. Her husband is divorcing her and her 16 year old daughter doesn't want to live with her anymore. Plus she is struggling with menopausal symptoms and it later transpires that the family have been through a tragedy. One day she leaves her car in the middle of a traffic jam and walks across London to deliver a birthday cake to her daughter, determined to try and put things right. This is a lovely story and Grace is a very sympathetic character. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
Copied to Goodreads.

One hot summer day, stuck in traffic on her way to pick up the cake for her daughter's sixteenth birthday party, Grace Adams snaps.

She doesn't scream or break something or cry or curl into a ball. She simply abandons her car in traffic and walks away.

But not from her life - towards it. To the daughter who won't live with her anymore and has banned her from the party. To the husband divorcing her. Towards the terrible thing that has blown their family apart . . .

Today she'll show her daughter that no matter how far we fall we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams was amazing. Her husband and daughter once thought so. They and the world might have forgotten. But Grace is about to remind them ...

Amazing Grace Adams tells the story of a life, a marriage, a family, set against a single north-London day. A rollercoaster ride of redemption and discovery, it's a powerful celebration of womanhood.

This debut novel is as believable and amazing as the ballsy Grace Adams herself.
What starts as a love story turned into an emotional rollercoaster, tugging at my heart strings until I sobbed.. The story of young love, marriage, relationships, grief, motherhood and menopause, all of which I found completely relatable, draws the reader into the mind of Grace Adams, I was willing her to win at life, hoping for a happy ending and cheering her on right to the end.
I couldn’t put this book down, I was hooked from the beginning to the end!

A look into the frazzled life of Grace Adams, her relationship with her husband Ben and their daughter, Lotte. The book flits around in terms of time line, between the present day and various times in the past when key events in Grace’s life occur. The story was easy to follow and as you read more, more was discovered about past history between Grace and Ben, giving a meaningful understanding to what she was going through today. An enjoyable read,

Thanks to #netgalley and the publishers for an advance copy of this book #amazinggraceadams

I saw the summary for this and just knew that it was going to be something I had to read, and I was right.

It seems that I have a knack for picking books that hit close to home for whatever reason and one was no different. As I am writing this I am mopping up the tears having devoured the book in a few hours while the washing was spinning in the machine and the neighbour was mowing his lawn.

The timeline of the story is difficult to explain. It jumps between the decades. The present day, the events that lead up to the present day, 2 months ago, three months ago, 16 years ago. The days when she could have been someone, the day she discovered she was going to become a mother. From the days before she met her husband to the day he was no longer her husband. And running through it all is this feeling that something else has happened. And then we find out about Bea. The little girl who never made it past childhood, the girl whose death is at the core of all of this. Her death is the reason why her daughter Lotte is no longer speaking to her, playing around with older men. It’s also the reason, truly, why her husband left her. It’s the reason for Grace’s depression, her determination, her self-hatred.

One line in all of this is what started my tears: “I know you feel like no one sees you,” the woman says, and her breath is sweet, like lilac. “I’m here telling you, I see you.”

Everyone, at some point in their life, feels invisible, and right now that’s where Grace is. Hearing this from someone soothing her blistered and bloodied feet, a total stranger, is enough!

I loved this book, though I would recommend that you wait until you are less tearful, and less emotional to read it because I cried for the full second half of the book. It’s emotionally draining but beautifully written and I will definitely be telling my fellow readers about Amazing Grace Adams.

I have to say that this was not my favourite book I have read on Netgalley. The writing was good but just not my kind of book

I was disappointed with this book and gave up before the end. Grace was not a likeable character, I found her extremely annoying. Why hadn’t she communicated better with her husband? The action is mainly based on one day, with alternating chapters into the past. The present day was frustrating: I can’t bear to be late and Grace was getting later and later for her daughter’s birthday party with the irrational decisions she was making. Ultimately, not a book for me but other readers may enjoy it.

This is a heart-warming novel about life as a perimenopausal woman, recently separated from her husband (who she still loves), trying to bring her teenage daughter up whilst keeping her safe from the bewildering world of social media (think TikTok, Insta and DMs). It's hugely funny in places and poignant in others, I definitely cried at times too.
The main character, Grace is truly amazing and we learn all the ways in which this is true throughout the novel. An enjoyable read and one that you can learn from.

**Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read an advanced e-copy of this book. All opinions are my own **

A great book about the lives of a couple and their daughter. Grace us having proble.ms with her teenage daughter. Gradually you find out what these are and what has happened in their lives together. Now menopausal, the relationship with her daughter, husband and work life seems to be unravelling
A thiughtful read, emotions are dealt with sensitively . I enjoyed the read and although the book was quite long, read it quickly .
Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review