I struggled with this book. I'm not actually familiar with the book it is a remake of so read this in it's own right. The problem was that I found it a little disjointed, there were huge time lapses where something huge had happened, but we weren't necessarily told about it. I was very close to giving up part way through. I found the characters really unlikeable and as a result lacked any kind of emotion for the things that happened to them.

Becky we are told is a modern retelling of the book William Thackerey’s ‘Vanity Fair’.
Becky is a book that follows the life of a young girl, from her not so good upbringing to her struggle to get to the top in newspaper editing and letting nothing and anyone stand in her way. It follows her rises and falls of her life and the lies that are told and the damage done by them.
This book is a different genre to what I usually read and I did enjoy it. The book was fast paced but did jump around with the timelines quite a lot that was sometimes confusing. I haven’t read the original “Vanity Fair” so don’t know how alike or different it is. It had an engaging story but I didn’t like Becky even though I think I should have done through her childhood but knowing what kind of a woman she was it fell flat. A proper rags to riches tale.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Pan Macmillan, Picador for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

This isn’t my usual kind of read but I enjoyed it for a change. I found it just a little too long and found my interest waning at times. I prefer fast paced books.

This is a modern day retelling of Vanity Fair, set around the nineties, as we follow Becky on her journey from nothing to get to the top in her job.

The characters were not very likely and difficult to warm to.
Well written book with great potential but does jump around at times.

Many thanks to netgalley, the publishers and the author for an arc.

Becky by Sarah May is a supposed retelling of Vanity Fair by William Thackeray. I couldn't tell you if it is or if it isn't, having never read it. So I didn't go into reading this book with any expectations.

I enjoyed the story of Becky, a ruthlessly ambitious woman trying to escape her past and make her way to the top in the newspaper business. This won't be for everyone, as Becky is not a likeable character, but I found the story compelling, wondering just how long Becky could carry on this way before her actions lead to her downfall.

I also enjoyed the historical perspectives shown as we jump through time by showing different newspaper stories. Some reviewers found it challenging to know where they were time-wise as it's not always terribly clear. However, being an older reader, I remembered some of these historic moments and newspaper stories and was able to orientate myself that way most of the time.

This is an interesting read, written against the backdrop of the 1990s and shows how far someone will go to make what they perceive to be a better life for themselves. It also made me want to read Vanity Fair to make comparisons.

I felt like this book had a lot of potential, but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me. An (attempted) modern retelling of Rebecca Sharp with the real-life story of Rebekah Brooks' rise and fall as editor of the Sun. Unfortunately, I think the links to Vanity Fair are always going to have this book compared to Thackeray and I think readers might be disappointed at how this stands up.

This one was not for me at all Im afraid. I have not read Vanity Fair but I had watched the TV series so I was vaguely familiar with the story. Although it is a clever way to do an reimagining , it just didnt work for me I'm afraid.

‘Becky Sharp is determined. Determined to get away from the dead-end town where she grew up, determined to make a place for herself in high society and determined to reach the top of the career ladder. And she doesn't care how many lives she ruins in the process.’

I read this at the beginning of January just before it was released (thanks @netgalley).

I’d seen quite a few mixed reviews and fair warnings surrounding this book as it covers a fair few triggering subjects such as substance abuse and assault.

The book is a modern take on the story of Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and is set in the 1990’s.

As someone who admittedly hasn’t read the original, I went in relatively open-mindedly and wanted to see the main character Becky do well for herself. However, the story takes a series of ‘crooked’ turns and soon seems to blend with the true story of Rebekah Brooks, which made for an incredibly tense and stressful read.

If you’re looking for something set in the real world and are ready for an intense read, I’d recommend this book to you, however it wasn’t my cup of tea at all!

A rags to riches and back again, a novel following Vanity fair in story apparently according to the author, A daughter born to the cleaner of a private girls school, who uses her knowledge of the school to embellish her CV to get into “society”. Nannying for a rich and powerful newspaper family, then ending up as the editor in charge, having married into the family and had a daughter. Sadly she uses unethical means to find out details of stories published in the newspaper, So her amazing career comes falling down as her husband leaves her due to her all consuming career choices.

While the author drew inspiration for the main character from Thackeray's Becky Sharp, this novel is very different from the 19th century masterpiece and, I'm afraid to say, not for me. The description of Becky's meteoric rise in her career and society took up the first half of the novel and, unfortunately, very little of my attention as I didn't find the characters engaging. I understand that a lot more happens in the second half as Becky and her journalist colleagues scrupulously attempt to garner media scoops but, as much as I tried, I could not convince myself to carry on reading. Sorry...

I must confess that I haven’t actually read Vanity Fair (yet!) it’s a book that I’ve always intended to read but I haven’t quite achieved it yet, so I am interested to see reviews from people who are more familiar with the original story.

Becky focuses on the take of Becky Sharp, a girl who’s a bit of a grifter, aiming high beyond her humble background, inventing her own history to fit in where she wants to go. It follows her career ascendancy, rising to the dizzy heights of newspaper editorship before her eventual fall from grace.

I found this a bit hard to get on with to honest. The story is quite disjointed, almost told in snapshots, with big time jumps in between sections, which does move the story along, but I feel that you almost miss getting to know the characters as a result, and miss what would generally be important milestones in the lives of characters. Becky is a generally unlikeable character, which I don’t have a problem with, but I struggled to engage with any of the characters or the story due to its disjointed nature, and felt that I was forcing myself through it as a result.

I will give the book a three because I am willing to accept that I am probably missing a lot of context and would most likely have enjoyed it more if I had previously read Vanity Fair, but regardless of that, I feel that the book should be able to stand on its own apart from the source material. I would have probably dropped a point otherwise.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I quite like these modern retellings of the classics, however, I am not sure it works as well here - and mainly because the Becky in this book actually had a standalone story as interesting as the original Becky Sharp. So I am not sure that pinning this tale (based on the real Rebekah Brooks?) to the skeleton of Vanity Fair serves it that well.

Honestly I would have preferred a fictional tale about the rise and fall of Brooks, because it was quite breathtaking and insightful, and the exciting burgeoning roots of that were really held back by trying to keep to the VF narrative.

The interior monologue of Becky as excellent here, I really got her character and motive and the backstory worked well, but as I say it all fell down trying to shoehorn what was quite an expansive and exciting modern story into the classic book which narrowed it down too much for me.

An absolutely mesmerizing Book on so many different levels , from characters trying to move out of low society to better their lives or so they think but it isn't always the case , plus the best & worst of Journalism & Politics .This is not a Book you can easily put down otherwise you may find it hard to readjust & settle once more to all of the stories complexities .#NetGalley, #GoodReads, #FB, #Amazon.co.uk, #Instagram, #<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/aa60c7e77cc330186f26ea1f647542df8af8326a" width="80" height="80" alt="Professional Reader" title="Professional Reader"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/ef856e6ce35e6d2d729539aa1808a5fb4326a415" width="80" height="80" alt="Reviews Published" title="Reviews Published"/>.

This is said to be a modern take on Vanity Fair,but the only things that I could see in common with the original are the names of some of the characters and the fact that the modern Rebecca Sharp,like her namesake,is also selfish and ruthlessly ambitious .
It’s set in the cutthroat world of tabloid newspapers,where Rebecca is the editor of the Mercury who will go to any lengths to get a scoop.The book jumps back and forth in time,to explain why she is so ruthless and self serving,but she’s such an unpleasant character,as are almost all the other characters in the book,that by the end of the book I had no sympathy for her and didn’t much care what happened to her.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review which reflects my own opinion.

Reading this book I felt that "something" was about to happen.......it never did, for me. Wasn't what I expected and the story fell flat,in my opinion. Idea was great but lacked execution of any plot. Not one of my best read books, sorry.
Many thanx to NetGalley, the author and publishers for allowing me to the opportunity to read and review this book

This is a book that delves into the dark world of journalism in the 1990's - and beyond - through the character of Becky.

It shows her rise from being nanny to an editors' children, to her getting exclusives about the Princess and her lover, and the lack of morals that abounds in the world of a journalist! It really does ring way too true on media scandals over the years, and it's a story loosely based on a very well known journalist who created scandals of her own.

I enjoyed seeing Becky as she was younger, going after what she wanted despite having a very rough start to life. But writing was her saviour and she was always good at watching other, being observant and being very imaginative! Very helpful in media land!!

As we watch over her career and her private life, we see the obsessive nature she develops about wanting to break stories, no matter the human cost, and it really does leave a bad taste in the mouth about this kind of journalist who we, sadly, see too much of in the media nowadays.

Easy to read, fast paced and unlikeable characters make for a very interesting story!

Actual rating: 3.5 stars.

I was interested in reading Becky because it is a modern retelling of the English classic Vanity Fair. However, I must admit it's been years since I've read that book, so my memory of it isn't super clear. I probably would have appreciated the retelling aspect more if I'd read the original more recently. That being said, I enjoyed how some aspects of the original were translated in modern day. The character of Becky as an ambitious, cunning journalist worked really well. And I loved the little "cameo" of Thackeray at the end! It was such a fun idea.

As for the story itself, the structure didn't fully work for me. The story alternated between the present, which covered several years of Becky's life, with the past. Sometimes the story would jump suddenly from present to past, even mid-scene, and it was a little confusing for me. Also, I personally was more interested in the present, so I got a little bored when a good scene was interrupted by another scene from Becky's past.
I also think the story was a little too long. On the whole, it was a good story, but it could have been shorter. It also got really grim as it went on, and by the end I was happy to finish it. Don't get me wrong, it worked with the general tone of the story, and it made sense: it just wasn't very enjoyable to read.

As for the character of Becky, I thought she was a complex and intriguing character. She was ruthless in getting what she wanted, but I couldn't help rooting for her. Like the original, she wasn't likeable, but her resilience and determination were admirable. I often didn't agree with her actions, but I always understood her reasonings. Seeing her downfall was tragic, and I often got frustrated with her, but at the same time her behaviour was understandable. Her complex personality was by far my favourite aspect of the novel.

This book had great potential but I didn't really like it or the character's. It was heard to get into and I found it hard to finish.

Becky we are told is a modern retelling of the book William Thackerey’s ‘Vanity Fair’.
Becky is a book that follows the life of a young girl, from her not so good upbringing to her struggle to get to the top in newspaper editing and letting nothing and anyone stand in her way. It follows her rises and falls of her life and the lies that are told and the damage done by them.
This book is a different genre to what I usually read and I did enjoy it. The book was fast paced but did jump around with the timelines quite a lot that was sometimes confusing. I haven’t read the original “Vanity Fair” so don’t know how alike or different it is. It had an engaging story but I didn’t like Becky even though I think I should have done through her childhood but knowing what kind of a woman she was it fell flat. A proper rags to riches tale.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Pan Macmillan, Picador for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

Wickedly clever and waspishly funny, I loved this character - it was mean, riotously fast paced, and joyfully constructed. Excellent.

Unfortunately I felt very meh about this book. None of the characters were engaging, even the ones you were meant to dislike. The story didn’t really go anywhere and it certainly wasn’t one scandal to the next. Just not for me I’m afraid.