Sophie White has done it again! A tale of three Dublin gals with very different lives intertwined, looking at what really happens when your best friends change which planet they live on compared to your lifestyle, the heartbreak that is friendship breakups, the goings on of WhatsApp Groups and night out invites, as well as some very sensitively written mental health issues. I found myself relating to each of the three protagonists in some way, and while not all the characters are likeable 100% of the time, that’s absolutely what makes them true to the page. I laughed and cried and couldn’t put it down.

Sophie White literally cannot write a bad book! I loved my hot friend, I found it relatable, heartwarming and seriously funny.

I thought the plot around Claire and mental illness was really well written.
And while being very funny in parts, the book also showed the realities of living with a mental illness. It also highlighted the sheer headfuckery that can be female friendships and the impact they have.
Sophie definitely has a particular talent for writing characters that get under your skin. (I still haven't recovered from Where I end) Amanda in particular really grated on me I fell in love with Abi's housemates and their tribute band, Slip'not 😂 and being a pretty big Slipknot fan, I really enjoyed this reference 🤣I thought all the different personalities worked really well throughout the book and the interlinking stories kept me turning the pages. Overall, A brilliant book and potentially Sophie's best yet ✨️

What a book! I have found a new author this I will be reading all her back catalogue before moving on to any of my current tbr pile that’s for sure,

I really enjoy and admire Sophie White’s work and her essay-style memoir Corpsing is truly unforgettable. However, I really struggled with reading My Hot Friend at the beginning and came close to giving up on it about a third through. It is the story of three women: Lexi (a successful podcaster), Joanne (a new mum) and Claire (a nanny with mental health issues) who are all struggling within their close friendships as they navigate changes in their lives. I just felt that the situations they were in at the beginning felt very contrived and it felt very predictable where the various storylines were headed. However, once the girls all meet and become a part of each other’s lives, the story starts to feel more authentic and I found it more enjoyable to read. Sophie White writes brilliantly about mental health and the final third of the book is a great read - it is at times upsetting and disturbing but it is also full of genuine warmth and humour.

Okay, listen up folks, I'm here to spill the tea on My Hot Friend by Sophie White. Let me start by saying this book is nothing like her previous book Where I End. I mean, it's not even in the same genre. If Where I End was a horror story about being bound by the blood knot of family, My Hot Friend is more like a rom-com - a buddy-com? - about being bound by the platonic friend zone.

“Why are all the sad songs and sad movies about couples breaking up? Friendship breakups were far more painful and complex.”

The book follows three women - Lexi the co-host of a podcast with her ride-or-die bestie, which is just about to go stratospheric, but can their friendship survive success? Joanne a new mum and the first of her friends to have a baby, but her pals keep forgetting that she's no longer available for tequila-fuelled nights out, and Claire is the nanny who's Whatsapp chat with her old school friends is ominously quiet these days, which can only mean one thing - a side group without her.

This is not the kind of book I would normally pick up, but after how wowed I was by Where I End I was excited to read more of White's work. At first, I struggled to get into it, but then, bam! Sophie White hits you with some blunt and real emotions that make you sit up and take notice and you can see the author's funny and devastating style shining through.

These women are at a point where the friendships that defined their youth are now fraught with difficulties such as distance, busy schedules, changing priorities and toxicity. How are they to navigate the relationships that have been so important to them for so long and how it is possible to move on.

There are lulls in the story, and frank discussions of mental health, but there are still moments that had me laughing out (Joanne especially) and ones that had me reflecting on my own friendships.

Thank you to Hachette Ireland for the ARC via @netgalley. This book is published 4th May for those who want a funny and blunt portrayal of navigating friendship and more in your thirties.

I thought this might have been quite a fun 'fluffy' novel and didn't expect to fall quite so hard for it! There are a few plotlines that do all tie together. Lexi and Amanda are childhood friends who co-host a podcast where Amanda's brashness tends to get them in trouble with their fanbase. Claire's best friend has announced her engagement and Claire is disappointed to find out that she's not been asked to be a bridesmaid. Determined to make new friends, she meets Joanne, a new mother, while pretending the child she nannys is her own. It's brilliant the way the stories are weaved together and I actually found it quite an emotional read. It looks at the type of mental health that isn't easily treated with a walk, a bath or a meme. It's gripping, funny and one of my top picks of the year for sure.

Oh this was simply superb! A wonderfully astute book about female friendship and the sometimes toxic nature of it. Add a sprinkling of well observed observations of living your life through an insta lens and the notoriety of being a fax celeb, as well as the pressure it puts on your mental health....oh I just gobbled it up! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lexi is shooting into stardom — her Podcast Your Hot Friends with her bestie is a hit, and her life is champagne and cocaine. But now she’s not sure if people actually like her, or who she presents as.

Claire is struggling with life since the incident last year left her in a psychiatric ward — and even more so now that she’s realised her messages to her friends group chat are going unanswered.

Joanne didn’t want everything to change once she’d had a baby, but they have. She doesn’t want to be the party girl she was, but now she’s just a mum and girlfriend and completely alone.

Three women, three very different lives, three people who just want friendship and love — but when they come together they’ll find that maybe they’ve got more in common than they think.

"Why are all the sad songs and sad movies about couples breaking up? Friendship breakups were far more painful and complex."

Funny, fierce and feisty — this unputdownable adventure is a whip-smart and brutally authentic look into the complexity of female friendships, and the pressures of growing into a woman in a world that never considers them good enough for their double standards.

Every character has something deeply relatable and charming about them; all of them are dazzling but far from perfect in the best of ways. They’re flawed, troubled, insecure, hurt, angry — I felt so much of my own rage and frustration at the world reflected back at me through them. Each of them have distinct voices, personalities that grow and evolve over the pages, and their own growth is what drives the story forward as we spend time getting into their lives and the little moments that the outside world doesn’t see. It’s slow moving, but leisurely and never loses its entertaining pace — watching relationships grow and break in real time, and of course some increasingly absurd adventures and antics that made my face ache from smiling.

Every relationship is complex and dynamic, showing the confusing and frustrating sides of friendships that can happen when people change or get lost. It shows how natural and crucial some friendships can be — but also how toxic. As someone who’s had to break up with friends before and whose had them just fizzle away — this hit me right in the gut.

Oh, and of course the star of the show was really Scout, the adorable teacup puppy turned honorary member of a slipknot tribute band.

It was authentically real and heartbreakingly heavy at times, but so full of light and love — a witty, relevant story that feels like a cathartic late night talk with your hot friend.

A great book about female friendships.
Really enjoyed it & will recommend it to others.
Thanks for the opportunity to read and review it.

Sophie White has a loyal fan in me and so I was mega-excited for her latest contemporary fiction outing, the hilariously titled "My Hot Friend". Like her last contemporary novel, The Snag List, it's a deep dive into the inner lives of millenial women: this time, White takes a look at what it means to try and build and maintain friendships when 30 is rapidly approaching and people's lives are undergoing profound change. Throw in some razor-sharp commentary on influencing, the world of work, and mental health, and the result is a sparky, funny, clever and at times heart-wrenching book that I struggled to put down.

Like The Snag List, we have 3 narrators: Claire is a childminder who feels iced out by her pals in the WhatsApp, Joanne is a new mum whose friends have no idea what it's like to be in her position. And Lexi - well, Lexi is living the dream, hosting a podcast with her childhood bestie that's riding high at the top of the charts. Isn't she? All 3 women are feeling discintinctly off-kilter in their lives, and most importantly, like their friends have abandoned them.

All 3 are completely loveable and once I got my head around whos-who (character names in chapter headings wouldn't go amiss!!) I couldn't get enough of these girlies. Their stories come together in unexpected ways - sometimes very funny, sometimes very sad - and their friendship grows slowly over the course of the book. As the novel builds to its climax, the reader feels like they know these women, and we're rooting for them so hard. White is a gifted writer of well-rounded characters who feel deeply real, and the heroines of My Hot Friend are no exception.

I also loved the novel's excellent, biting satire of the podcast/influencing world; several lines in Lexi's chapters made me laugh out loud - shout out to trepanning, 2023's hottest new beauty treatment. The satire is less subtle than in The Snag List but it's stronger for it, and makes for a funnier, sharper read.

Finally, the meat of the book: the sections that brought My Hot Friend from a 4 to a 5 star read for me. Claire is perhaps the most relatable narrator for a reader without kids and struggling with friendships as they get older (it me).
As the chapters unfold we learn more about Claire's mental health and her bipolar diagnosis. Bipolar is an illness that's still shrouded in stigma and My Hot Friend does a fantastic job of blasting through that stigma to bring us to the heart of the illness: a young woman, struggling profoundly. I am no mental health expert but I found the discussion of Claire's bipolar to be raw, real and urgent - especially when I learned that White has the same condition. Her depcition of a manic episode is genuinely frightening to read, as is its aftermath, and there is more than a brief reminder of White's darker writing in the latter chapters. It's really dark especially for this kind of novel but it's desperately important and I can't applaud the novel enough for taking these brave steps.

Overall, My Hot Friend might just be Sophie White's best yet. It takes in so much more than I am describing here but manages to seamlessly weave everything together. A fantastic contemporary read.

I love a novel especially that focuses on female friendship. It’s such a complicated messy thing, but something that no matter what generation it spans will always be a topic of intense conversation. I can’t wait to follow the journeys of Claire, Joanne, and Lexi and the different periods of life each are in. I know readers will as well! Will be sharing more thoughts soon! Very attractive cover as well.