"What July Knew" by Emily Koch deserves so much more than the maximum 5 stars I can give it. This book could be so easily dismissed based on the cover, as some flippant light-hearted read. Don't literally read a book by its cover as this book is just amazing. Emily Koch writes with a real ease about a subject which is really difficult to read and discuss: domestic violence. It has an innocence in narrative very similar to Joanna Cannon books where the subject just creeps up on you. I'd highly recommend this to anyone I see as this an accessible book about a difficult subject.

What a fabulous read that was! It’s Summer of 1995 and 10 year old July Hooper lives with her father Mick, stepmother Shell and stepsister, Sylvie. Though she loves her father she knows he doesn’t love her and he only hits her to “Teach Her a Lesson” because she deserves to be punished. Be aware there is child and spousal abuse in this book but it isn’t gratuitous and is an important part of the storyline. This was an ‘I don’t want to put this down’ book, brilliantly written with some great characters I was quickly engrossed and read it over a late evening and morning.

Briefly, July has a list. A secret list about the things she knows about her mother, Maggie. Number 2: she died after being hit by a car when July was small. She can’t mention it to her father as he forbids all mention of Maggie. But when her teacher asks the class to do a project about a family member, and suggests that July write about her mother, July tries to find out more. Why will no one talk about Maggie?

This is a bit outside my normal genre of reads but my goodness I’m glad I read this. July is a wonderful character who, despite everything she has to face at home, is a kind and generous child. Whereas Mick is just evil, I could feel his nastiness just dripping from the page and my heart went out to July, Shell and Sylvie; I can’t even imagine what it must be like to live with someone like this who portrays themselves as a kind family man to the world but behind closed doors…. This was a gripping and compelling read and I’m definitely going to be reading this author again.

What July knew is a heartbreaking but also wonderful tale.

I loved July and the narration she gave to this book. She is such a special character.

The topics within this book are heart breaking, domestic abuse, lost parents, unknown heritage, loneliness etc. Yet there were also themes of love, hope, redemption and friendship that provided much needed balance.

I loved the 90s setting and remembering pogs!

July is a 10 year old girl who is desperate to learn more about her mother, all she knows is that she died when July was 2. Yet she has no gravestone in the cemetery…

A wonderful, heartbreaking tale about love, heritage, friendship and bravery.

July Hooper knows very little about her mother. She died when July was little, she was hit by a car..............or........was she?
July and her new family and never ever allowed to talk about her mother.

July begins to look into her mother and her life before July was born.
Will the truths she uncovers help or upset her?

I really enjoyed reading this book, it pulls you in with both the story and the fantastic descriptive writing.
July is a great character, she'll remind you of your ten-year old self or a friend you had at that time. She is navigating both the usual childhood dramas and the very adult issues of living with a volatile person, trying to keep them happy and juggling fear of them with an absolute need to be loved by them. The telling of this part of the story is done incredibly well - living in a situation that looks very different from the outside, the keeping of family secrets and the very real fear of very real consequences. It also highlights what can happen if adults underestimate a child's ability to dig for, and handle, the truth.
The experiences of a child growing up with a parent who has passed away are shared in such a lovely way, the image of each of the tiny things July knows about her mum as different coloured ribbons is very effective, it absolutely shows how important and valuable each morsel of information is to her.
Running through the story are some deft mis-directions and twists that keep you turning pages and changing what you thought you knew many times. A great read

I genuinely think this will be my favourite book of the year. I LOVED July and her discoveries. It was absolutely brilliant and I’ll recommend it to everyone I see ever.

July knows 18 things about her dead mother, and wishes to learn more.
However, her mother seems to be a bit on an enigma, and no one in her circle is willing to tell July about her. They all say that she doesn't want to know the truth as it will hurt her.
She is always asking questions, which are not welcomed by her family, especially her dad Mick, who has a vicious streak. Will she find out about the crash that killed her mother, and why will no one talk about her?
These questions are foremost in July's mind and she starts to uncover the truth bit by bit.
A great read, well written and covers topics that tend to be ignored like domestic violence and abuse.
Ultimately, this is a book about a 10 year old's love for the mother she can barely remember, and her quest to be closer to her by learning more about her.

July collects facts about her dead mother like a magpie but with a father so unwilling to talk about her it’s an uphill struggle. That is until July turns ten and takes on a school project about her mum and new facts come to light.

What July Knew is such a well worked, well paced story that definitely kept me guessing just what had happened to Julys mother.

July is a great character. Tenacious, brave and kind and you are really rooting for her the whole way.

I found her relationship with her dad Mick so sad to read in places. Mick is physically abusive to her and her step mother Shell and the way that July comes to view this as what she deserves is heartbreaking. So as well as wanting her to find out the truth about her mother, I was also very much hoping that the family could escape Mick.

I really liked the relationships in this book too. I enjoyed watching the development of the bond between July and her step sister Sylvie in particular.

I thought it was also a really good portrayal of how a community can so easily be complicit when it comes to ignoring abuse. Also the impact of rumours and the damage they can cause particularly when it leads to vigilante justice

I loved the 90’s nostalgia - teletext, ying and yang necklaces and pogs - you could almost smell the white musk. Take me back!

Thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be recommending it to all.

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Vintage for the advance copy

Honestly, this book is super emotional. I really really felt for July and her struggles to find out more about what happened to her Mum. This book continually kept me guessing and I came up with many theories throughout, all of which were wrong but I certainly wasn’t disappointed by the outcome.

Read in just over one sitting. Dark with an undercurrent of DV and abuse, this is not a book for the faint hearted although its not overly graphic, just hinted at. I adored July, with her complex relationships and love-hate relationship with her stepsister. Having lost her mother at an early age, this book focuses on a single summer but dips in and out with other periods. I raced through it and loved it, despite an unsettling feeling as i read it. Well worth a read, can’t stop thinking about July and other kids like her with difficult home lives.

What July Knew Emily Koch
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Wow, just wow, totally blown away by this book. I started it yesterday and was up until 4.30am reading it, woke up at 9 this morning and finished it - the last 4% on my phone as my Kindle rudely ran out of battery!

I can 100% hand on heart say that this is in my top 5 books of all time, I'm so, so glad I came across it and was intrigued by the title and synopsis. I've already pre-ordered a signed physical copy on release, to reread and annotate.

The story is mainly set in the UK in 90s (a few letters peppered throughout from the 2000s) so lots of nostalgia and details that were very familiar.

The story is about a girl called July who has just turned 10, and given a project over the summer holidays to write about a family member she doesn't know well, her first thought is of her mum who died when July was two. But finding out any information about her is tricky as it's a subject that upsets her Dad and Grandmother and others seem reluctant to talk about - or confused by her questions.

Over the summer, July has to find out what she can without upsetting anyone or knowing who to trust.

The writing is exceptional, domestic and child abuse are central themes and they are written in a way that isn't gratuitous, that will make you catch your breath and feel genuine fear of the abuser and nervous about what the other characters say that could send him over the edge. There really is a sense of tension that you can imagine is felt within the house throughout the book.

There is beautiful writing, the times when July lies and her reasons for lying are heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. The relationships of characters with July throughout the book (grandmother Yaya, stepmother Shell and stepsister Sylvie), and how they change with revelations are one of the reasons I will read it again, and how reading it with that knowledge will change the book.

I worry I have made this book sound bleak, but it really is a beautiful, uplifting story of a girl trying to figure out who she is. I cannot recommend this book enough.

I found this book confusing. The switching narrative made it hard for me to follow. I only managed to read a third of the book.

I didn’t like this story at first, it made me feel very uncomfortable which is surely a testament to the quality of the story-telling. As July works to discover what her mother was really like, the extent of the cover-up is slowly revealed. The behaviour of her father and July’s continual seeking of his approval is extremely well described, to the extent it made me almost give up.
I’m glad I decided to stick with it.

July Hooper only knows 18 things about her Mum. She keeps them all written down in a list so she never forgets them, hidden along with her big list of questions - questions she's not sure she'll ever get an answer to because her Father won't let her talk about Mum or else he'll get angry, and that's never good for July.

She knows Mum died in a car accident. She knows her face was covered in freckles. She knows she liked diet coke. She used to dance on the table when she was happy. She used to live on Almond Drive and could make her own clothes.

But then, on Julys tenth birthday, she receives a note from a stranger, slipped into her bag and it changes everything. All she thought she knew about her Mum, her life and her death, could all be wrong. As the summer holiday starts and finds herself being given a homework project to research a relative, she takes it as a sign she has to investigate. Armed with just her own curiosity, she sets about finding out why her family have been lying to her and finding the people and places that could hold the truth. But once she finds out, nothing will be the same again.

"Nobody ever talked about Maggie Hoopers life, or the awful way it had ended. But this rare ribbon could not woven back into the secrets, re-threaded into silences, or even fixed into place with an embroidery of deceits."

It's hard to write a story from the perspective of a ten-year old girl that an adult audience can connect with, but this is so well done. July didn't end up falling victim to the bad writing that leaves a child being written as an adult or completely infantizing her. Instead we get a character who is undeniably real and reminds any reader of what being a child was like, trying to understand a world you don't really know and work out what your place in it is.

July was precocious, curious, and confused. She didn't understand how badly she was being treated or lied to, but she knew something was wrong. Reading this as an adult who has children in my life, this destroyed me, it was so painful to watch on and see the damage when July couldn't see it herself. The story reads almost like a thriller in places, all the clues falling into place as July solves the mystery that's been hanging over her since she was a baby. The development of her character even in the short time we know is is astounding - and we get to know the supporting cast from the good to bad. At times, it felt like the adults in this story were taken from a different story and larger than life, which felt jarring at first but then when you consider you're looking at this from the perspective of a child it actually makes perfect sense.

The story had a strange cerebral atmosphere, with a suffocating air (and not just because of the visceral hot summer heat) that lasted through every page. While this is a difficult read, with a lot of hard topics to read, it's all handled sensitively and thoughtfully with lots of care and authenticity. It makes a searing statement about the many faces of abuse and the signs that often remain hidden until it's too late.

A beautifully tender story about identity and family, invoking not only a vivid nostalgia for our formative years but a reflection about how our early moments shaped the person we are now.

What a truly Powerful &moving story.
We often hear about acts of Domestic Abuse ,how one member of a relationship wants to completely mould & sculpt the other into their version of how that person should behave ,dress etc & with no freedom to be themselves ,to punish them if & when they do try ,& to manipulate that person into thinking they deserve all the violence be it physical or mental , that it's their mistakes that cause it. I think that this is a Book that should be read by every Teenager in School so as to highlight one of the worst sides of humanity .#NetGalley, #GoodReads,#FB,#Instagram, #Amazon.co.uk, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/358a5cecda71b11036ec19d9f7bf5c96d13e2c55" width="80" height="80" alt="100 Book Reviews" title="100 Book Reviews"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/ef856e6ce35e6d2d729539aa1808a5fb4326a415" width="80" height="80" alt="Reviews Published" title="Reviews Published"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/aa60c7e77cc330186f26ea1f647542df8af8326a" width="80" height="80" alt="Professional Reader" title="Professional Reader"/>.

Approaching the end of the year and trying to read as many books as I can over the Christmas limbo whilst time allows and this included an advanced readers copy of Emily Koch's upcoming title, 'What July Knew'.

July Hooper is 10 years old and knows her mother died when she was young but, as her Dad doesn't really speak about her any more, she knows little more about her mum, in fact, only 18 things on a list she has put together over the years. She knows she had freckles, she knows her mum used to like dancing on the kitchen table, and she knows she died in a car crash. On her tenth birthday something changes and July becomes aware that not all may be as it seems when it comes to her mum, something is being hidden from her and she sets out on a mission to figure out what it is and why secrets are being kept...

Firstly, written from the point of view of a 10 year old is interesting and the outlook of the world from this young perspective gives way to a connection with the character in a very unique way, having the knowledge as an adult as to some of what July is experiencing but the awareness of how this may not be interpreted the same way to a child. The subject of domestic violence is of course a difficult one but is very cleverly tackled in a sensitive but hard-hitting way, keeping the story unravelling at a good pace, keeping you wanting to know what happens next at every twist and turn. A very powerful story.

Set in 1995, the year July (the name sounds like the month because July was born in July) is given a project by her teacher - to undertake some research about somebody. For July the most logical person to research is her mother, about whom no-one will speak and relating to whom she knows a mere handful of facts. But July knows that she shouldn't research her mother ... that her dad will have to teach her a lesson if she does.
This was a compelling read ... I really did want to know what actually happened to July's mother and felt propelled along by the narrative. I did not want to put the book down. But at the same time I have admit that some may not like the very real and disturbing account of what it is like for a 10-year-old girl to live in a house beset by domestic abuse and where it is only possible to survive by watching every word and deed
I'd definitely recommend it though and I am grateful to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review What July Knew

I enjoyed reading this book, although difficult to read at times, for me it was written very well. I liked the way the main character didn’t give up, although being only ten she could very easily have done to keep the peace. She kept going until the truth was revealed, no matter what. I read this quickly and it keep my attention all the way through.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel for an honest review. It is set to be published in February 2023.

"What July Knew" by Emily Koch has a super-interesting premise, but then the book doesn't properly do justice to it.
Aside from the protagonist's, the other characters' motivations are so far-fetched and convoluted as to make little sense. Furthermore, except for July herself, everyone else constantly behaves in ways in which no sane person would ever behave, and this doesn't make for a compelling read, but rather a frustrating one. How can I as a reader get invested in a story where the main character is the only one who behaves like a credible person, and everyone else just keeps doing the most outrageous, unrealistic things, for no other reason than plot progression, as far as I can tell?
The author's note at the end of the book seems to suggest that the whole novel was conceived as a sort of "morality tale" about the safeguarding of children - and specifically as a warning to adults against turning a blind eye to signs of abuse in children - and I do agree that it's important to raise awareness of such a serious issue, but I would have appreciated it if the story hadn't hit me over the head with the idea quite so much. I mean, the whole plot relies on literally all of the characters (except for July) making the worst possible choice at every single turn, and if anybody at all had at any point acted the way a reasonable person would, there would be no story. How can I relate to that?

I found it moving and intriguing from the start. I immediately warmed to July and was eager to find out the shocking truth. July was brave and big hearted, determined to find out more about her mother, despite her fathers concerns. It’s a running mystery throughout the book and I didn’t work it out until quite close to the end. The writing was captivating, and for me, I couldn’t put it down. The characters were complex and perfectly developed. The dynamics in the family between Sylvia, Shell, July and Mick were tense and really well written. Never mind the fact that it’s set during a heatwave….at times the characters lies and actions got my blood boiling 😡 The book explores family secrets, domestic abuse, growing up and living with grief. Omg, the 90s references were epic too! 🤣 There were twists I didn’t see coming and i was with July every step of the way. The ending….🥹🤫 This is a very powerful and emotional read which I thoroughly enjoyed. I highly recommend this coming of age, slow burn mystery.