What a delight of a book The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne is. It took me on a nostalgic trip back to the 70s and 80s and introduced me to the wonderful world of Eadie, a character who I promise you will take to your heart as you follow her from childhood to grown woman.

We first meet Eadie as a six year old, growing up next to a cemetry with somewhat eccentric parents. At primary school she is picked on until she finds her tribe - and together with best friends Celeste and Josh she navigates growing up until they all head off to university. For Eadie it is Manchester - it is the late 1980s, the rave scene is taking off and the Hacienda is the place to be. It is a far cry from the town Eadie grew up in but she falls in love with the city and the freedom it offers her - until one night her past collides with her present with ramifications that will have a long-term impact.

The story of Eadie’s school and university life is interspersed with Eadie in 1999 as she and her husband take a road trip to a funeral - whilst we are kept in the dark about the details, we are given a glimpse into what is clearly a struggling marriage and a time of reflection for Eadie.

As someone who is almost exactly the same age as Eadie, this was a wonderful trip down memory lane with so many references that felt familiar. Who else thought Viennetta was the ultimate sophisticated dessert when they were a child? And the edginess of late 1980s Manchester shines in glorious technicolour.

But what makes this book so special is North’s ability to bring the characters to life - Eadie feels very real at every stage of her life and she is surrounded by a wonderful cast of supporting characters, all of whom have their own story to tell.

This is simply a glorious story about growing up, finding oneself and how we are all impacted by our past as we navigate lifes ups and downs. It’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s moving - it is just a gorgeous book that I utterly adored!

I've loved everyone of Freya North's books, right from the early days (hello Sally, Cat and Polly!) so I had high hopes for this. And once again absolutely no disappointment here - I think I'm a little bit in love with Eadie right now to be honest! Such a beautifully nostalgic read, full of heart and courage, stunning.

Freya North's "The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne" is a touching and emotionally resonant novel that delves into themes of family, loss, and self-discovery. The story follows Eadie Browne, a woman who is forced to confront her past and the unresolved issues that have shaped her life. After the death of a loved one, Eadie embarks on a journey to tie up loose ends and find closure, both for herself and for those around her.

North’s writing is warm and engaging, with a strong emphasis on character development and emotional depth. The novel likely weaves together Eadie's personal journey with the relationships that define her, exploring how our past can influence our present and how we can find healing through facing what we've left unfinished.

"The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne" is perfect for readers who enjoy contemporary women's fiction that offers both heart and substance. It's a novel that encourages introspection and celebrates the power of coming to terms with one's past in order to move forward. Freya North's ability to craft relatable, multi-dimensional characters ensures that this story resonates with anyone who has ever felt the weight of unresolved issues and the need to find peace.

Eadie grows up in an eccentric household near a cemetery, finding solace with imaginary friends and support from her pals Celeste and Josh. When she moves to Manchester in the '80s for college, she dives into the city's vibrant Rave scene, embracing newfound freedom and ignoring consequences. As she nears thirty in the new millennium, her life takes unexpected turns, including revisiting her past for a funeral. North's is one of my all time favourite authors, she never disappoints.

I was excited to receive an advanced copy of this new novel by Freya North in an exchange for an honest review. I have read all of her previous novels and enjoyed them and this did not disappoint.
It’s a coming of age story set in 1980’s Manchester, a time that I was especially interested in reading about especially as I come from that area.
Loved the descriptions of early days at the Hacienda and the experience of being an undergraduate at Manchester University.also the house share.
It felt a bit different than the author’s previous books, but in a good way. I loved the nostalgia and also the way that she wrote about difficult issues such as childhood bullying and drug taking.

I'm not sure if it was my state of mind or the book itself, but I struggled a bit with this one. I eventually finished it and the end was much better than the start but I just found the first half to be quite slow. The end was good.

This book is different from the other books that I have read by this Author. It is well written though, and I really enjoyed reading it.
You can't help but feel empathy for Eadie Brown, the school girl. She is bullied for being different. As someone who didn't fit in at school, I could really relate to her.
Once Eadie goes to University, she seems to find her place and loves to go clubbing. This is where the similarities between her and I ended, but I still enjoyed reading about the Early clubbing scenes of the 90s.
The book is mainly set in the past, but the narrative is also set in the present, where Eadie is on her way somewhere with an unnamed person. It was much later in the book when you found out where she was going and with whom. It was a very unexpected twist.
This book definitely made me think, and stayed with me for a while after I finished reading it.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC.

Be transported back to the 1980's and feel nostalgic for how things were, especially if you were young and full of energy and zest for life. Eadie Browne is such a character. She arrives in Manchester, a far cry from what she was used to, but ready to embrace all that the city has to offer. It's also a signalling of being able to leave her childhood behind her, when she was bullied and hung out at a cemetery by her house and talked to the dead.

In Manchester, she embraces her freedom and the rave scenes. I was too young to go to any, but was very aware and decided it wasn't my scene, but it was Eadie's. She's swept along in a world of counterculture and drugs, E (ecstasy) was rather prevalent. She also has another problem, her past, unwittingly catches up with her and follows her, with quite a gripping twist.

The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne is moving in how it shows her present and past. It's an emotional an engaging read. In some ways, it is also a love letter to youth that holds some wisdom

This was my first time reading a book from the author but I am delighted to say I thoroughly enjoyed the story and I look forward to reading more books from the writer in the future

The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne by Freya North is a fascinating read. Eadie Browne is an odd child, living with her unusual parent, living in a strange house beside a cemetery. Bullied at school but protected by her two best friends, and her imaginary friends that inhabit the cemetery.
Eadie arrives as a student in the late 1980’s where she confronts a busy, gritty, Victorian metropolis a far cry from the very quiet small Garden City she left behind. She is living in Manchester at the time of the Hacienda nightclub with its later links to ecstasy and the thriving drug culture and thrives in the totally different student world opened up to her.
Then in the time of the new Millennium beckons, Eadie is turning 30 and is married. She and her husband then end up returning to her home for a funeral. Eadie then takes the time of the journey to look back at her youth and then her present.
As someone who was born in Manchester, close to the area that Eadie lived as a student, and then as an adult lived close to the area Eadie and her husband walked I found it quite fascinating reading someone else’s perspective of areas where I used to live.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Highly recommended

I’ve loved all of Freya North’s novel and so was very excited to read the Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne. The author charts Eadie’s life from her upbringing in a Garden City in the South East to her student years in Manchester. This narrative is interspersed with a journey Eadie makes with her husband to a funeral, almost a decade later when she’s 30.
As someone who is the same age as Eadie, studied history at the University of Manchester in the late 80s, lived off Hathersage road and went to the Hacienda every Thursday night many of the details of life as a student in Manchester were very familiar to me. I loved the description of Eadie’s first weeks in halls, the longing to start a new life and make friends alongside the anxiety of making friends and wondering if you’ve made the right decision leaving home and all that is familiar. I love how Eadie grows in confidence when she finds her group of friends and how things change with her best friends from home. I felt so emotional reading the novel and being transported back 36 years and felt that the author really captured the strength and vulnerability of being a young woman.
A moving and nostalgic read.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Eadie lives an unusual life in her garden city home, situated next to a cemetery. Far from being macabre and frightening, the dead are often this lonely little girl’s best friends. They provide her with somewhere to go and talk, without censorship or interruption. Her Mum and Dad work jobs outside the home, one in the day and one at night, but the rest of their time is spent at their desks in the family living room each completely engrossed in their writing work. She is an outsider at school, without friends and a target for kids like Patrick Semple. Patrick is relentless in his bullying of Eadie and it takes her a long time to find her little tribe. Her friend Josh lives with his grandfather who has a convenience shop and also a concentration camp survivor. She also makes friends with Celeste, who’s lived in France and her mother, Sandrine, who is an alcoholic. These are her first friends her own age, as up until now she’s mainly hung out with Michael, an elderly man who tidies the cemetery and Ross who plays the bagpipes at funerals. Eadie is feeling so settled with her life, but these three young friends will come to a point of huge change. All three will be going to different universities and while Eadie likes to think nothing will change, distance does have an effect on relationships and the whirlwind of Fresher’s Week will immerse them in their new lives. Will they still have time for each other? More importantly, will Eadie be able to leave the difficulties of her childhood behind her and make a life in Manchester?

Freya North beautifully inhabits the world of a young child and the fears and preoccupations that are their daily lives. It immediately swept me back to my own childhood and moments when I was afraid or felt like I didn’t belong. In my first year of primary school at age 5 we lived so rurally I had to get on a public service bus and remember when to get off and how much to pay the driver. It left me anxious about public transport ever since. I was also bullied, being poor but having a place at the local grammar school wasn’t easy and I never had the right clothes. My family also went to an evangelical church which made me different and restricted my social life. I really identified with Eadie, for feeling that her background was less than perfect. I felt Eadie’s pain. As children, if people tell us we’re odd or wrong in some way we internalise that feeling and assume they’re right. Eadie’s parents are not neglectful, but they are a very definite twosome, seemingly unaware that their only daughter is achingly lonely and suffering from immensely low self-esteem. As adults we can step back and see that her bully is probably suffering too, but children don’t realise this. As the group of friends grow towards leaving school, the changes are not easy for Eadie to cope with. What will happen to their trio as they all go their separate ways? While Josh and Celeste are excited about what’s coming, Eadie is anxious. What will Manchester hold? Will she be accepted?

I love the North West of England, my family are originally from Liverpool but my best friend is a Mancunian and we’ve spent an enormous amount of time there over the years, mainly seeing gigs from Manchester bands like Elbow. However, I grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s and I was an indie kid. I started with The Smiths and Morrissey through to the Madchester scene and although I was too young for the halcyon days of the Hacienda I did love New Order with a passion and Bizarre Love Triangle is one of my favourite ever tracks. I felt immediately transported back to the reign of Tony Wilson, when New Order would have been in residence and the club was heaving. North captures perfectly the heady days of the summer of love - the advent of Acid House and Ecstasy. Here, having made friends, Eadie finds her place of worship. She loves ‘the Hac’. She can be found on the dance floor in just a sports bra and shorts combo, able to dance all night with a raging thirst from E and a feeling of well-being to the whole world. This is before and the terrible deaths that occurred. Eadie and her friends rent a house on Hathersage Road, across the road from the amazing Baths with its art nouveau interiors. This is her home now. In fact she becomes so comfortable in her life here that she stops going home, she stops writing to friends and lives completely in the moment. It’s when things start to change that Eadie begins to struggle. Housemates have plans for their second year, placements abroad, moving back into halls and Eadie starts to fall apart. An unexpected face from the past comes back to haunt her too. After a warning from the barman at the local pub where she works, that the Hacienda is being run by drug gangs and that means violence. Eadie goes to the club alone and queues outside, only to be abducted and thrown into the back of a van. She doesn’t recognise the Manchester accent and is terrified, even though they say they’re not going to hurt her. This is an unexpected blast from the past and although he keeps his promise, it’s the catalyst for a breakdown. Eadie finds herself unable to complete work and even starts to question whether to stay at university. With her housemates making different plans for next year, Eadie can feel the foundations of her life shaking.

Freya North captures perfectly how secrets and traumatic experiences can follow you through life. If left unaddressed, your life can be like a wall with a fault in it’s foundations. It can only be fixed by removing the upper layers until you reach and remedy the original fault. Eadie has covered hers over with many different layers: her friendships with the residents of the cemetery; alcohol and E; the Hacienda and acid house. I felt something with Eadie’s story, because of my own recent experiences. We can go through so much difficulty and pain in life that we feel far removed from those friends we’ve had in the past, but often they’re still there, just waiting for a sign that they can help or support us. I loved her relationship with Kip, which isn’t perfect but all the more real for those imperfections. His love is shown in actions rather than words and is stretched to it’s limits at times. Eadie is one of those people who takes a long time to work out who she is and what she wants to do in life, that is until she takes care of her unfinished business and then she flies.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book but I totally fell in love with it, and with everyone in it. It made me laugh at times, but was also beautifully poignant. A wonderful book.

I really enjoy Freya North’s books. ,this one drew me in Eadie Brownes character kept me involved emotionally moved.My one suggestion keep a big box of tissues near you ,you’ll need it.#netgalley #wellbeck

I have read several of this authors books in the past but found this one very different to those.
As interesting as it was to read about Eadie and her life, I found it quite a slow story to read and not as enjoyable to those I have read before.

Oh Eadie! My dear girl and new book best friend!

Thanks Welbeck Publishing UK, Mountain Leopard Press and Netgalley for the ARC!

Synopsis -

Eadie Browne is an unusual girl living with her ‘indoor’ parents in a small town called Parkwin. Bullied at school, she finds her safety net in the form of her best friends Celeste and Josh. She also has some best mates who are lying underground next door. But it is when she moves to Manchester for college in the late 1980s that she finally finds her freedom, getting swept up in the city’s dazzling night life, raving parties and finds her ‘tribe’. In the present, Eadie is now 30 and her married life is in trouble and now has to confront an ‘unfinished business’ from her past back in her hometown.

Review -

How is it possible not to love this kind, caring, ‘oddbod’ girl, who has her favorite past time in a cemetery next door, making conversations and forming serious friendships with those who are laid to an eternal rest?

The story of Eadie is one that is told in the form of a retrospection, a journey into the past as Eadie looks back, while undertaking the most challenging journey to Manchester to deal with a funeral. Whose funeral is it? What is Eadie trying to do?

These are the questions that propel us forward with this beautiful book. Freya’s writing is simply spellbinding – full of richness tinged with nuance, softness and delicacy, as she develops Eadie’s character from a timid, bullied little girl, forming life-long friendships with Josh & Celeste, into a boisterous teenager thriving in her new found life in Manchester.

I was pleasantly surprised at how Eadie’s young adult life transformed - partying away late into the night, reveling in ‘ecstasy’, finding her people, struggling with her course work, self-doubt and fear of her future, while she slowly drifts apart from her old friends and falls out of touch with her roots.

The vibrant scene of Manchester in the late 80s is captured so vividly and from the author’s note, we know it comes from her personal experience, cherished memories and nostalgia.

Eadie’s impossible quest helps her unpack her past and get a sense of closure. I was so glad she was able to make amends, reconnect with her beloved hometown and rediscover her love for her ‘centrist’ family – all with the support of her true love and husband Kip. She definitely struck gold with this gem of a man!

What completely floored me was the price she was willing to pay for this mission. I didn’t know whether to hug this girl for her foolhardiness and innocence or to reprimand her for risking so much.

Finally, I couldn’t help but cry with joy at how it all came together in the end. Eadie’s story filled my heart with a blissful elation, contentment and adoration.

Freya has delivered an unforgettable coming of age story about self-discovery, and transformation, friendships and family with a loveable, eccentric and quirky character who will stay with me for a long time.

Do yourself a favor and read this book!

Enjoyed this one. Only my second book by North. After really enjoying Little Wing I didn’t know what to expect next. This book was well written, sensitive and full of nostalgia.
Eadie a great lead character. You get to see her grow up before your eyes. Tragic yet beautiful.

North you’ve excelled yourself

The story of Eadie as she grows up through childhood, teenage years and onwards. It skips around a bit and feels a bit unbalanced at times. I got the sentiment but for me it was a bit slow and plodding. Not quite what I was expecting and not my type of book.

As intricately layered as a meticulously crafted mille-feuille, this enchanting coming-of-age narrative captivates with its eloquence, insight, and unforgettable protagonist. It unfolds as a story of maturation, of discovering one's identity; a tale of friendship, family, and the essence of belonging. While a familiar theme in literature, Freya North infuses it with a rare and poignant resonance.

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.

We follow Eadie through the ups and downs of childhood and adolescence as she grows up in an unremarkable town, before spreading her wings and moving to Manchester for university.

This book had such a great sense of time as we journey with her through the innocence of primary school, the intensity of teenage friendships and the freedom of university. Every stage was brilliantly written and although a decade ahead of my own experiences still gave me a great feeling of nostalgia.