I struggled with this if I'm honest but I think it's because the characters are pretty unlikeable. I hadn't read vanity fair but I don't think you need to, to enjoy this book.

Thank you for giving me the chance for an advance copy in return for my honest review.

This is a reimagining of the classic story Vanity Fair and I think the author does an excellent job of putting a modern twist on it with fact and fiction weaving throughout the story.
The main character of Becky Sharp is an intriguing one she is determined to make her own way in life and by any means she can both forthright and lacking any morals at times she for me was an enigma.. I wanted to like her more but I really didn’t . I did find the first part of the book a little slow and with many different characters to keep abreast of I did find myself getting distracted at times but overall I liked the book.
So for me a three + star read and will look forward to more books by Sarah May.
My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan, Picador for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was an intriguing read, covering the story of Becky and her rise (and fall).

I didn’t really like any of the characters, but don’t let that put you off, as I don’t think you are supposed to! I did admire the central character’s tenacity, she knows what she wants and won’t let anything stop her,

Overall the book made me feel uneasy, it covers the British press and lengths they will go to for a story, which certainly reflects the news of the 80s.

Overall an interesting read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows our main character Becky as she works her way to success as a newspaper editor through the 90s. She is tough and ruthlessly ambitious and not particularly likeable which I think makes an interesting character development.
I initially found the beginning of the book a bit slow to get into and wasn’t particularly gripped but felt more connected to the story as it developed and was keen to see how it all unravelled.

Becky Sharp is determined to succeed and will lie and cheat to get what she wants. Her mother works as a cleaner at a private school so when Becky goes for her first job she claims to have attended that school. For a while she works as a nanny for the editor of a national newspaper and through that manages to get a job there and eventually to marry into the newspaper owning family, While editor at the Mercury she is involved in some high profile cases very reminiscent of real ones in the nineties and noughties.

It's many years since I read Vanity Fair on which this novel is very loosely based but from memory, it seems that this Becky Sharp is just as ambitious as the original. I enjoyed this a lot. Thought it ended a little abruptly but maybe we're going to get a sequel? I hope so, I'd enjoy reading more about Becky even though she is a bit of a monster. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I enjoyed this book, it did follow (roughly) the lines of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, with the same names for similar characters, but there was something missing and I felt confused by the end. I couldn't put my finger on it, but realised eventually that every character was strangely lacking in emotion. I didn't get any feeling of love or hate from Becky. Does she go through her life as dissociated as she seems to me? Likewise with George and Rawdon, two characters who should be chock full of emotion, but were strangely static.
Well, it didn't spoil the book exactly, but it could have been better I think. Still, I recommend it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5131447986

The plot of this novel is a mash up between a modern retelling of Rebecca Sharp's rise and fall in Vanity Fair and the real life story of Rebekah Brooks's rise and fall as editor of the Sun. It's cleverly done, a real page turner and the main character and narrator, Becky, is very well drawn. It will also have a massive nostalgia factor for anyone who, like me, grew up in the nineties. On the downside, it felt a little rushed in places and, aside from Becky, none of the other characters - of which there are many - is particularly fleshed out. Somewhere between three and four stars for me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.

This is billed as a modern take on 'Vanity Fair', which if I'm honest, I don't think is necessary. This almost spoiled my reading as I was already aware of the plot trajectory.

Luckily, the book is so good this didn't matter. Becky is the titular character who wants to work for the Mercury Newspaper. The book is told in a dual timeline. Becky in the 90's as she pursues her machiavellian desire to reach the top, and Becky as a child and the events that have shaped her. Cleverly woven into the story is the real life tabloid hacking scandal, which added real nuance to the story. All of London media life is on display as the story progresses - the glitz and glamour and the underlying seediness. It's a dog eat dog world, and the frenetic energy of this setting creates a tense atmosphere that really enhanced my reading.

Becky herself is an amazing character; driven, determined, hard as nails and yet strangely fragile. I couldn't help but admire her as she succeeds in a mans world and share her pain as occasional glimpses are provided in to what this costs her.

It's a great book, and one that left me with a lot of thoughts that I keep coming back to, weeks after turning the last page.

I would like to thank the publishers and NetGalley for the advance copy in return for an honest review.

"Becky" is an amazing and engrossing modern-day re-telling of "Vanity Fair". The Becky Sharp of this novel lives on her wits but in a very different way to her namesake. There are many references to half remembered news items which help to define the dates of various events in the book.

Many of the characters are complex and take a while to understand, but this helps to draw the reader in. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

3.5/5

Becky's story tells of her advance through the ranks of a sordid tabloid paper and the scandal she's embroiled in towards the end of it. Told in both  flashbacks from her youth and the chronological tale of her progressing career, it's a book that makes me think of blockbusters of old a la Jackie Collins, without the cringy sex scenes 😂

It's sold as a retelling of Vanity Fair in modern form, but it's really a mirror of the journalist Rebecca Brooks career. Remember her? Perhaps not but SPOILER ALERT the detail of the awful things she did throughout her career are almost identical to those of Becky Sharp.  

It goes without saying that Becky is not very nice. I had no sympathy for her at all and she annoyed me a lot, which makes it a difficult read as she's the narrator. It's a clever idea and well written, but the irritation I felt for the lead meant that I huffed and puffed through it.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan & Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3.0/5

When an author decides that they are going to write a retelling of a classic piece of literature they run a significant risk of condemning themselves to being on a hiding to nothing: If they don't make a great job of it they will be vilified for demeaning and sullying the the good name of the original work. On the other hand, if they produce something of any quality, then it will only be due to the fact that they stole somebody else's original idea. Nonetheless, in "Becky" Sarah May has taken it upon herself to pen a modern day reworking of William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair".

Apart from the handicap that I have already mentioned, reimagining such a well-loved novel brings with it other hazards too. Aside from having been read and studied by countless people since it was first published in 1847-48, "Vanity Fair" has also been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations. When the source material is so well-known there is the inherent danger that the new version will come with its own in-built spoilers, which is not idea. There is also the risk that, in trying to make it relevant and accessible to a contemporary audience, it can actually become more of a dumbing down, rather than a retelling.

So, how did Sarah May fare with this ominous sounding task? Well, I would have to sit on the fence to an extent and say that I have mixed feelings. In the early sections, the writing is fluent and engaging, but matters become a touch stymied in the central body of the story. The previous fluency is regained later in the piece and there are a number of elements that are appealingly dramatic. Throughout the novel there are number of switches in time frame, as Becky's thoughts drift back to her earlier life. These sections are simply dropped into the narrative without being signposted as flashbacks, so the effect can be a little disconcerting at times, until you register the switch that has taken place. Although the author has chosen to retain the names of all the main characters from Thackeray's original, the storyline is quite different. Yes, it follows a similar rags to riches to rags trajectory and it also highlights similar (mostly unpleasant) aspects of human nature and society as a whole, but it isn't simply an updating of Thackeray's work. Sarah May includes plotlines that draw on real events from the nineties and the noughties, which are well-handled and will strike a chord with anyone who lived through those decades.

On the whole, this is not merely a latter day facsimile of the original "Vanity Fair" and there is more than enough to make this a worthwhile read in its own right. I would question whether Sarah may really needed to label this so overtly as a reworking of the Thackeray classic. Personally, I think it would have been better served by being positioned as its own entity that simply shares similar structural DNA with "Vanity Fair".

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for supplying an ARC in return for an honest review.

Becky is a modern retelling/reimagining of Vanity Fair - which I haven’t read! - telling the story of Rebecca Sharp and her rise through the ranks of the London press.
Starting as an au-pair for the CEO of the newspaper group, Becky manipulates her way to the top, stepping on friends, lovers and colleagues to get there.
I really enjoyed the story, although I think have chapters from alternating characters could have worked well - Becky is just so toxic she’s exhausting!
I would recommend this to fans of Gossip Girl - it’s the same kind of high-society back stabbing!
I received a free ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Becky is a modern retelling of Vanity Fair set in the tabloid heyday. Arguably the story leans just as heavily on the Rebekah Brooks scandal; the opening disclaimer that 'any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental' has never felt quite so ironic.

In many ways these two sources of inspiration are a match made in heaven, but it also means that as a reader, you know pretty much exactly what's going to happen from page one. Not only is Becky deliberately dislikeable, she's dislikeable in all the ways you expect, which takes some of the joy out of it. Sure, there's satisfaction in watching all the pieces of the story slot together, but for a novel all about scandal it lacks the capacity to shock.

I enjoyed this read in parts, but feel it didn’t quite live up to its potential and it ultimately left me feeling a little dissatisfied. What I did enjoy was the rags to riches tale, the newsroom setting, and the phone hacking saga, which brought memories of the News of the World scandal flooding back, so close was it to a retelling of that debacle. I didn’t really get to know any of the characters and would have liked to understand them more. Having said this, I suspect many will really enjoy this book as it’s a quick read, well-written and packed with the whole gamut of characters, from decent to dastardly.

This clever, sharp take on Thackeray's classic was absolutely unputdownable. May has managed to take two Becky/Rebeccas, one real and one fictional, living two centuries apart, and combine them in seamlessly in a book which is so well plotted away it feels like a masterclass in writing fiction.

Becky is clever, talented and ambitious, but born to a single mother in the seventies she's an outsider. She's poor, she lacks social capital, a good education and she knows it. So when at eighteen she takes a job as nanny for a media mogul she will do anything she can to get noticed and get on,not caring who she needs to tread on to get to the top. But no matter how high she climbs her childhood is waiting to entrap her and bring her back down.

A newspaper editor who has the rich and powerful at her beck and call who finds herself the scapegoat when the world turns on the tabloids, the parallels with Rebecca Brooks are clear, but this isn't a fictionalised autobiography but rather a fiction layering one story onto another, asking questions about ambition, societal expectations, privilege just as the original did.

Hugely enjoyable and assured. Highly recommended.

This is an intriguing idea for a book and it is delivered in a way that makes you want to read to the end. Most readers will sympathise with Rebecca (Becky mostly) because of her determination to emerge out of a debilitating childhood with a damaged single mother. Whatever it takes, she is determined to reach the top of her chosen career. After a well written period as a nanny, she joins the Mercury newspaper, determined to end up as its editor. In the course of achieving her goal, she sacrifices family relationships and friendships. Her career in that industry is an excise for the author to take us few the major events of her decades. That gives the book an exciting touch. This is a clever take on a fascinating time. I recommend it..

A modern take on <i>Vanity Fair</i> which only made me wish I’d had more recent memories of Thackeray’s novel. I last enjoyed that one ten years ago; possibly time for a refresh.

Becky Sharp is an ambitious young journalist, one who will draw the line at very little. Constantly searching for the next big story, and prepared to behave in abhorrent ways to get it, she is incredibly unlikeable. And yet, May allows us into her mind so although I was unable to like her, I was able to understand her to a degree.

We travel through Becky’s life, navigating her pitfalls, celebrating her success, experiencing karma unmercifully chasing her. At the end of the novel, we’re forced to ask ourselves whether it was all worth it. Do the sacrifices we make, the people we hurt, the morals we shirk, allow us a better life? Quite often it doesn’t seem so.

Most interesting of all is the way in which May weaves real life events into the narrative. We’re familiar with the morally objectionable behaviours of journalists in the 90s and 00s, and May shows us these starkly, from Princess Diana to the News of the World phone hacking scandal. Whilst neither of these events help us warm to Becky, it’s fascinating to understand them from the inside of a newspaper office.

I did feel the narrative was jarring in places, and there were a number of characters I was engaged with who weren’t given as much attention or fleshing out as I would have liked. Becky’s only focus, however, is Becky, so this light touch of other characters seemed a bit fitting.

An interesting read, and engaging dip into the world of newspapers, ambition, and the consequences of self-interest and lack of remorse. I’m looking forward to seeing what May does next.

This was a very long, strange story based on two newspapers and the people who work there. Some of it is based on fact when some Royal family were having their phones tapped and the rumours surrounding Princess Diana. It was a interesting story with rather an abrupt conclusion.

A retelling of Vanity Fair puts Becky Sharp into 1990s Britain, where she's prepared to sacrifice friendship and love for her ambition to reach the top in the newspaper world. The author has been very clever in using the characters of Vanity Fairy, from Becky to Amelia to George to the Crawleys in this story, giving them credible roles in a modern world while keeping them true to their original characters. She has'also given Becky her own first-person voice, which makes her a more rounded and sympathetic character than Thackeray's original Becky. Not only an orphan, she's had a very dysfunctional childhood which colours her attitude to people and life. Her consequent vulnerability helps the reader empathise with her more, even though she betrays friends and lovers.
Despite the fact the political and social background is a thinly disguised real-life 1990s UK, I didn't get any feeling of satire from this. I'd also have liked some humour.
But I loved the plot and really enjoyed meeting the re-imagined characters of the original, and seeing them through Becky's eyes,

This story will resonate with many as the actions of newspaper editor's comes under the spotlight.
How do we reinvent ourselves to different people and circumstances in our lives ? We are never fully truthfully and place ourselves in the best light.