Beautifully written. Stunning storytelling and exquisite use of humour and relatability. I have since purchased a physical copy of this book and had gifted to friends.

The download date was unfortunately missed, I would be happy to re-review if it became available again. I have awarded stars for the book cover and description as they both appeal to me. I would be more than happy to re-read and review if a download becomes available. If you would like me to re-review please feel free to contact me at thesecretbookreview@gmail.com or via social media The_secret_bookreview (Instagram) or Secret_bookblog (Twitter). Thank you.

As someone who is queer, northern, grew up poor and has had mental health issues, the idea of this book sounded super relatable to me, and it was. Soph was so endearing and vulnerable throughout that this book resonated with me so much.

It was a great mix of comedy and confronting very serious topics such as grief and trauma. I laughed, I cried, I needed a cuddle. My very brief review/first thoughts of this was 'tfw you relate too much to someone who you've never met or interacted with in your life' which I think sums it all up. It almost felt like an echo of my lived experiences and I felt every word that was on the page. It was just an incredibly powerful read to me.

This book means so much to me and I've recommended it to friends who I also think would relate to it.

No Worries if Not: A Funny(ish) Story of Growing Up Working Class and Queer is the first book from comedy writer Soph Galustian, a memoir infused with poetry and reflections on how her identity as a gay woman who grew up on a Manchester council estate has affected how she moves through the world.

I had mixed feelings about this book. The musings on millennial adolescence were nothing Dolly Alderton hasn't written about better; likewise Caitlin Moran and weathering society's beauty standards for women. Also, Galustian's more light-hearted poems - of which there are many - all felt rather trite, contrived and amateurish.

However, when Galustian gets serious and speaks candidly about the shame of being poor in secondary school (whilst also being fiercely proud of her background and community), the pain of navigating her first - secret - relationship with a girl and the subsequent heartbreak and, most of all, the sudden, devastating loss of her teenage nephew, to whom she was incredibly close, in 2018. Her raw, vulnerable honesty is really touching and powerful, and her more sombre poems are notably better crafted and more thought-provoking.

Lastly, No Worries if Not provides a glimpse into the world of the 'superfan' - Galustian spent years obsessed with Cheryl Cole - which was unexpected but surprisingly fascinating!

Thank you to NetGalley and Octopus Publishing for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thoroughly gripped by this memoir, it was a compelling story of an equally compelling person. An important addition from a working class queer young woman.

This was a great and relatable read for me! Very poignant and true to lots of parts of my life, definitely recommended.

It's hard to give a rating when a book is so personal and when emotions, in places, are so raw - and especially when my reactions varied throughout the reading experience. I wasn't sure about the first two-thirds of the book - although very funny, and I liked the mixed approach of poetry, prose and pages for writing your own thoughts - it occasionally felt quite surface-level and didn't necessarily give much new insight into being young, queer and working class in Manchester. However, when Galustian begins to talk about grief, No Worries If Not is incredibly moving and real. The more mundane beginnings of the book really heightened these emotions through the contrast - and recreated the sudden change in Galustian's own life. Although not always ground-breaking, the latter parts of this book will stay with me for a long time.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

No Worries If Not is a memoir about growing up working class and queer, dealing with grief, and finding space for love and being yourself. Galustian combines the memoir with poetry, playlists, and novelty wordsearches in a distinctive conversational style whilst discussing her childhood, teenage years, and then becoming an adult, exploring mental health and losing family members, trying to make it as an actor and comedy writer from a working class background, and the trauma of growing up queer in 2000s secondary school.

I hadn't heard of Galustian before reading this book, so I didn't know where it was going to go in terms of her career (and didn't realise it would have poems in it too). I liked the way it painted a vivid picture of growing up in the 2000s and 2010s, with the 2000s secondary school stuff feeling particularly real to me as someone only a few years older, and the inclusion of a QR code to access a playlist of all the songs gathered together in lists in the book was a nice tough, meaning you can listen along whilst reading. The style of having a memoir with the author's poetry at relevant moments was nice, though some of the poems and the quirky drawing-style wordsearch bits weren't always my thing.

This is a hard-hitting yet fun coming of age book with plenty of relatable stuff (as someone who used to be an usher at a similar London theatre it was quite weird to have that be a relatable part) and a comedic tone.