This is a delightfully offbeat entertaining, witty, and humorous New Zealand debut fiction by Rebecca K. Reilly, a multigenerational Maori-Russian-Catalonian family you cannot help but adore, a captivating drama that revolves around queer siblings who share a Auckland flat, Greta Vladisavljevic, a post-graduate literature student, and her older brother, Valdin, a former astrophysicist. There is a strong sense of location as we become immersed in their lives as they negotiate their way through their challenging personal lives and the glory of the chaotic, messy, strange, romantic, and emotional family members pasts and presents, where being queer is accepted as normal.

Valdin is still in love with his ex, Xabi, who left the country as he was making Valdin too sad, and Greta's self esteem is rock bottom as she becomes all too aware her love is unrequited and that she is being exploited by tutor Holly. OCD afflicted, Valdin with issues when it comes to expressing himself, changes career in response, finding surprising success as a media star, hosting a travel show going to different places, and even when there is an 'incident', it does nothing but bring a bigger international stage that takes him to Argentina. Greta flounders as tries to date men, but could a Scottish research scientist from Edinburgh turn her life around and bring her happiness? There are family dinner theatrics, anguish, joy and more as we encounter the likes of Cosmo, Caspar, Tang, Elizabeth, Linsh, and we become acquainted with the details of family interactions and relationships.

There is a serious core to the storytelling from Reilly, as secrets and glimpses of painful and unknown family history are uncovered, illness, the harshness of life as a refugee, the trauma of colonialism, the impact of racism, and mental health issues. The distinct characters have been lovingly created and developed, snagging my interest immediately. There is oodles of charisma and charm in this well written debut, and the comic humour chimed perfectly for me, I could not get enough of this, as can be noted with my disappointment when the book came to an end! A must read that I recommend highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Greta and Valdin is a warm and humorous portrait of the lives of siblings G and V as they navigate the treacherous minefield of growing up and falling in love. The character development is beautiful, and I truly felt like this brilliant and attractive pair were ready to waltz off the page any moment. Whilst touching on serious topics of mental health, sexuality, family and responsibility, the novel remains light in tone and enjoyable. We follow ex-physicist V's travels around the globe as he pines over his lost love. Greta remains more home-bound, working her way through heartbreak, finding love and wishing for her brother to come home to her.
Though I kind of wanted a little bit more tension and climax from this novel, it was a really easy and enjoyable read, very upbeat and cosy. A lovely, heart-warming novel.

Smart and funny, this is an excellent debut that I very much enjoyed. No plot, just vibes, which is my favourite kind of writing at the moment, and feels very “in” right now, with novelists such as Sally Rooney and Coco Mellors dominating the charts.

Thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book ahead of its release!

I really enjoyed Greta and Valdin, it's a funny and emotional look at sibling relationships, family relationships, friendships, sexuality, and love. The two characters of Greta and Valdin are well written and developed, and I enjoyed their different personalities and hearing their perspectives on things. I will say however, for me, the book was much stronger in the beginning than towards the end. I felt like the story started to drift a little after the first few chapters. But it was still an enjoyable read overall.

I wasn't expecting too much from this novel for some reason, but I was pleasantly surprised. Reilly navigates queerness and identity and its intricacies in a way that was so captivating and the characters of Greta and Valdin were so relatable and REAL. I loved it so much

There’s a lot to love in this debut novel. There's so much love and caring between the characters, and they’re all very smart quick witted, fun, weird and original. Sometimes all the fun and quirkiness became a bit too much though and I think Reilly wanted to deal with too many themes at the same time. Still, I would definitely be interested in reading a next novel.
Thank you Penguin and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

Excited for this one after all the hype from Australia and NZ! Loved the Fleabag-esque humour, and exploring the siblings' relationship. Great first read in 2024.

Couldn’t get into this one as much as I tried. The writing style was out of my comfort zone and I struggled to really get into the plot. Might be because I couldn’t relate with the

Lots to like but the unrelenting fleabag-esque type of humor wore me down (especially when it lessened the emotional impact of certain scenes/dynamics). At first, I liked the novel's chaotic energy and the quirky almost Wes Anderson-esque characters, but, as I read on I found that many scenes just try too hard and for too long to be funny, in a way that didn't quite succeed. While the author does manage to strike a balance between Greta and Valdin's perspectives, their internal monologues at times were too similar ( from them having similar experiences and worries to their vocabulary and thought process) in a way that now and again made it tricky to distinguish whose head we were currently into. I never quite warmed up to Greta, probably because she struck me as the type of messy young woman type of character popularized by Fleabag. While I understand that some people use humor as a shield, a defence mechanism, whatever, she just does it so much that any potentially emotional or vulnerable scenes starring her end up highlighting how quirky she is.
I was interested in reading more about the various family dynamics, especially given how chaotic and absurd each family member is, but the narrative seems to speed through most of these types of family scenes in favor of more wacky asides and anecdotes featuring our oddball protagonists. the ending struck me as a bit twee, which was disappointing given the novel's initially wry tone.
Still, I would definitely read more from this author and I wouldn't dissuade others from giving this novel a go as it is a delightfully queer and zany read.
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Greta and Valdin are Russian-Māori siblings sharing a flat in Auckland, struggling with their careers, relationships, and mental health, as well as their ridiculous yet lovable extended family. Both are desperately in love with people they can't have: Greta with Holly, a fellow grad student, and Valdin with Xabi, an ex who moved halfway across the world to get some space.

We follow their escapades over about 6-9 months as well as getting to know their family, which is one of those families you so desperately want to be apart of. However, our protagonist siblings start to discover just how little they know about their family and its history.

There isn't a singular strong plotline, instead we follow vignetes of our characters with multiple subplots leading up to a lovely final 10%.

I absolutely adored this book. It's laugh-out-loud funny but also so heartfelt and I loved seeing the growth of these characters. It has sit-com energy at times, particularly in the scenes with multiple characters and family drama. I also loved how Aotearoa it is, with constant mentions of localised culture, struggles and features, as well as it having queerness right at the forefront.

Valdin is grappling with lingering feelings for his ex-boyfriend, Xabi, who left the country believing he was causing Valdin sadness. On the other hand, Greta finds herself in a one-sided love affair with Holly, a fellow English tutor who seems to view her primarily as administrative support. However, there may be hope on the horizon.

Valdin is gradually realizing that he might not be as unlovable as he once thought, and Greta is coming to understand that her value extends far beyond the administrative tasks she handles. As they navigate the complexities of queerness, multiracial identity, and the challenges of unreciprocated love, the Vladisavljevic family steps in to offer support.

This Maori-Russian-Catalonian family, as passionate and loving as they are eccentric and over-emotional, helps the siblings navigate the intricacies of their relationships, where love interests tend to either leave the country or fail to reciprocate. Together, they confront the nuances of identity and love in a story that explores themes of self-discovery and the power of familial bonds.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Review contains mild spoilers.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and whilst I did enjoy it I also can’t help but feel it fell a little short of the hype for me. The novel starts off really strong, alternating between Greta and Valdin’s POVs, both of which are funny, witty and full of almost painfully relatable insights into the millennial experience - I felt like I was highlighting quotes on every other page for the first quarter or so of the book. It’s also great to see a novel so unabashedly set in Aotearoa. At some point, though, the novel lost me a little. There’s a quite large ensemble cast, largely comprised of G&V’s quirky, Wes Anderson-esque family, but no one really feels distinct, as almost everyone speaks in the same snarky, intelligent, pop-culture reference-y tone as both Greta and Valdin. This same-voice-ness might be less of an issue if the book weren’t so dialogue heavy. I wondered at one point if the novel had originally been conceived as a screenplay, as many, many scenes consist of characters having a conversation and telling us about things that just happened or happened a little while ago - again, in very sharp, funny dialogue, which Reilly has a real ear for - but this did get a touch repetitive, and exposition-y, and I could have (at risk of sounding cliché) used more ‘showing’. At a certain point things feel like they get just a little too easy for our protagonists, and the novel therefore becomes a little less interesting. Conflicts that are introduced at the beginning (V’s OCD, G’s comphet) feel like they’re just dropped, which is a real shame as they were incredibly interesting topics to touch on, and both of their romantic struggles clear up with ease. The novel also, at one point, introduces a personal bugbear of mine where it tries to convince us a character is ‘poor’ without showing how this affects their life at all - at one point Greta has $7 in her bank account and is subsisting on reduced price sushi (which is admittedly very funny) but never really seems too stressed about it, as she can always just ask her parents for money, and then uses her remaining $7 to buy ingredients to make a cake (in what is actually a very touching scene, which was only slightly marred by my annoyance re: the money thing). This struggle for money rarely comes up before, or after, (bar some off the cuff commentary about the lack of funding for postgrad degrees) - it lasts maybe half a chapter. It seems to be a trend with contemporary novels trying to depict characters both struggling with finances and living an aesthetic middle class lifestyle. This dichotomy could be really interesting if it was played with fully, but it never really is. This is a largely plotless novel, comprising mostly of little vignettes (I’m a big fan of a ‘plotless’ novel, so I enjoyed this), up until maybe the last third when some quite large plot points are introduced then hastily resolved (or left frustratingly loose), and honestly I’d have preferred these ‘plotless’ insights into V & G’s everyday lives more. There’s a confusing adultery plotline introduced and I was never quite clear on what the resolution of that was, and then we rush at breakneck speed to a conclusion that, again, feels just that bit too easy and therefore unsatisfying, but skim over the interesting bits. We get random POV swaps towards the end into the perspective of side characters that, honestly, felt like they detracted more than added (particularly the absolutely heinous attempt at rendering a Scottish character's speech that honestly… borders on offensive. The less said about that the better - though how a UK editor didn’t rectify this I’ll never know) and I found myself wishing we’d stuck with G&V the whole way through - they were great characters, and I liked living in their world. There was a super interesting scene with G&V’s nephew’s worries about OCD, which is touched upon briefly then dropped, as is Ells potential non-binary-ness, Valdin feeling exploited by and quitting his job, his past ill-health and selective mutism, Xabi's past ill-health too, Casper visiting his estranged grandmother - all really interesting topics that we just skim over. Towards the end it felt a touch as if thoughts was being thrown at the wall, and seeing what stuck, and it just felt... rushed. Perhaps a sequel is in order? All that being said this review reads perhaps a tad harshly, as I did largely enjoy this novel. Reilly is a skilled and confident author with a real knack for balancing humour and depth, and I’d certainly pick up anything else she writes - particularly in this world. This debut was just a little more flawed than I expected from the reception; I do seem to be against the grain with this one though - maybe it was just me.

Really great book, I had know idea what to expect but it was a real mix of well developed complex characters and an interesting story line, I enjoyed watching the character growth and seeing Greta & Valdin navigate their way through life!
My only critique would be that there were a lot of characters and I sometimes got a tad confused!
But other than that very enjoyable with some funny one liners!

Greta and Valdin are brother and sister. He's 29, she's 24 and they share an apartment in downtown Auckland. They are both gay and when the book opens, both are desperately in love with people they can't have. Their father is Russian, their mother is Māori, they think that names like Fereshteh are simple but Elliott is too hard to remember and they have a large extended family with lots of complicated connections in it (eg Valdin's ex is his father's brother's husband's brother). Much like Still Life, you fall in love with the lot of them and want to be part of their set.

There isn't a great deal of plot in this book and what there is only emerges towards the end. The central theme is Greta and Valdin's search for love, but it's more of a sitcom than a drama where the joy lies in the humour along the way and it sneaks up on you how much you've come to care about these people. The large cast of characters sometimes gets confusing (there are probably a couple too many - I'm not sure that Genevieve and Cosmo added a lot), but the descriptions of Auckland sing and it all feels gorgeously real. I'm so glad I read this.

I wish I had more of Greta, Valdin and all of the beautiful characters to enjoy. This book was so funny and painful too, in parts. On more than one occasion I desperately wished I had someone else reading alongside me so we could discuss this book. Really wonderful and nuanced and I will be keeping my eyes peeled for whatever Rebecca K Reilly writes next!

Had me totally addicted , and I just sat for hours turning the pages, as there was no way I could put it down until the very end… thrilling read, this book is an absolute must-read , it’s just too good to miss

"Greta and Valdin" by Rebecca K Reilly is a charming story of friendship between a girl and her dragon. Reilly's storytelling is heartwarming, filled with enchanting adventures and lessons in loyalty.

I really enjoyed this, and Rebecca K Reilly will now definitely be on my 'to read' list. Funny and heartbreaking, Greta and Valdin is most definitely worth the read.

I requested this book without knowing anything about it, I’d just seen people raving about it online. I was so glad I did, because I absolutely loved it. It’s charming, sweet, very funny, with characters you come to love, root for, and miss once the book is over.

I didn’t want this book to end! Rebecca K Reilly has created such a great set of characters - Greta and Valdin of course, our queer sibling protagonists, struggling with love and life in Auckland and most definitely not fitting in - but also their extended Māori Russian Catalan family. There are interesting things about culture, academia, race, growing up, love and family. It’s funny, original, very contemporary and I can’t wait to read what this author writes next.