5 completely different characters, all with their own problems join a pub quiz league. This is the story of that quiz team. The Red Hot Quizzy Peppers and how the team members lives change during the first year. An easy book, perfect for holiday reading.

Five people get together to form a quiz team, following an online ad. They are all lonely people, hoping to make friends. Initially they were all hard to warm to, but gradually you get to hoping that they will find what they are looking for, and their lives will turn around. By the end of the book you are willing them on in the quiz league.

Who knew an advert for a quiz team would bring such a disparate group of characters together. Meet the Red Hot Quizzy Peppers:

Donna wants to be the love 'em and leave 'em no string girl, even with her family. Harry, who has just lost his job, his fiancée and is afraid of disappointing his ever unapproving mother. Luke and Jaime who came from the Cumbrian countryside and are coming to regret it as the London life puts a strain on their long-term relationship. Bryony the teenaged bride who became a mother of 2 and feels that life is passing her by.

From disastrous beginnings this group began to take the league by storm. As they progress in the league, we learn more about what has brought them together including overbearing parents, feeling unfulfilled and various mental health struggles, the biggest being general loneliness in a city of over 10 million people.

A heartfelt, witty and engaging story. I really enjoyed the quiz question headers at the start of the chapters. The changing POV kept the story fresh and really allowed you to see what motivates each of our MC's. I must admit Luke was the hardest character for me to like - he just always came across as such a negative but narcissistic nellie!

The romance is off page and the most you see is some kissing, so maybe not for those who want intense romance

I found this book really difficult to get into, it is very slow and didn’t really hold my interest.
I love a good pub quiz, which was what attracted me to the book. However I didn’t warm to any of the characters, none of them was likeable. I couldn’t really connect to them, as a result, and found it hard to care what happened to them.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy of this book.

tbh not really for me, really dull & slow. I couldn’t get myself to like the characters either!! thought I would enjoy but I think it was too focused on the quiz aspect (sorry!!!) and switched between characters stories too much so it was a bit jarring

I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher in return for an honest review. This review is based entirely on my own thoughts and feelings.

Overall rating : 4*
Writing skill : 4*
Plot: 3*
Pace: 3*
Characters: 5*

I seem to have a thing recently for books involving puzzles, and quizzes, and trivia, and I am here for it! How fun.
This books outstanding factor is the characters, and how well developed they are. There isn’t a lot of plot but how the characters evolve and grow was simply fantastic and they will all stay with me for a long time.
I love how each chapter starts with a quiz question, with the answer being the theme of that chapter, brilliant.
Fans of contemporary romance, with a subtle villain and some very funny scenarios, well, you’re going to love this!

Lauren Farnsworth is a new author for me and I have enjoyed my first read. Lovely to have a book with a different subject (quiz league) and I was hooked from the first chapter.

Another excellent debut!

Placing an advert for others to join her in making up a team for a pub quiz, Donna hopes someone will turn up. Come the night, she is much relieved to find threeothers - plus one - are there. Harry, heartbroken and desperate to get out of his silent flat, Jaime, new to London who brings along her reluctant boyfriend, wants to make friends and feel settled in the capital and Bryony, mum of two who is trying to remember the promise of her younger self. As the weeks pass and they begin to get to know each other, there is a definite friendship vibe ...

This is an amazing novel for a debut! I loved the question at the beginning of each chapter and know that I wasn't the only reader whose heart swelled when they could answer it correctly! With a great cast of characters and some true-to=life situations, this one pulled me in from the start. And the name of the quiz team? Nothing short of brilliant! A delightfully entertaining read and another new author to keep an eye on. Thoroughly enjoyable, well-written and one I'm happy to recommend. 4.5*

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley; this is - as always - my honest, original and unbiased review.

I have been writing and hosting quizzes for numerous charities over the last 35 years and during the pandemic embarked on a series of on line writing courses with a view to writing my own books. My first outline of a book was believe it or not based on a very competitive quiz league and one of the key players was kidnapped before the final and at the start of each chapter was a quiz question😀 Otherwise the plans for my book differ greatly from this debut novel from Lauren Farnsworth. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and how the characters developed. I wonder what book two will be hopefully not something else I have outlined. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to ARC this book.

Bryony, Harry, Jaime and Luke all have different reasons for joining Donna's quiz team. It turns out that no matter how messy their private lives are, they are god quizzers. That is un their private lives start swallowing them up. will their individual crises stop them winning the quiz team league? Will their differences get resolved and they all live happily ever after? A nice gentle read.

Several lost souls in South London gather for a quiz league, Donna, the instigator, seeming breezy and confident and in charge. Of course they are all messes really in difficult situations but their friendships help them to work things out. I didn't particularly like any of the characters apart from Bryony and most of the attention was on 20- or 30-somethings. A nice go at a community novel with a good premise to base it around.

I was really looking forward to this book, I liked the concept of advertising for a quiz team, for the most part it kept my interest but I did get a bit confused about 50% through, it seemed to loose its way a bit and I wasnt sure which character was talking, this may have been due to it being an early copy and not quite set right.

Overall I liked the way the characters intertwined, they seemed to have a good relationship, not what you would call a "page turner" but I did want to see how it ended.

I have mixed feeling about The Lonely Heart's Quiz League. Lets start with the good:
The Good
I really liked the premis:, a group of lonely 20 and 30-somethings answer an advert to join a pub quiz team, and as they get to know each other their secrets are revealed.
I liked that each chapter started with a general knowlege question and answer in the style of a pub quiz, my favourite of which was was:
Question: what is the section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened?
Answer: Epilogue
It was an easy read, with the story moving around the perspectives of the 4 main characters which I enjoyed.
The Bad
Ok, so the reveiw so far is going well. However, the problem was that I just didn't like any of the characters. I just couldn't get on board with enough of their redeeming qualities to make me like them or connect with them. Now, mental illness does come into it, so I won't give away any spoilers, but I might be being unfair to some, but not all, characters.
The conclusion
The book was ok, an easy read but it's probably fairly forgettable, 3/5 for me.
With thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

a fun read about unlikely friendships when 5 strangers meet up at the pub for quiz nights.
it was well written and you really felt you got to know the characters
a great story

Thank you to the publisher, the author, Lauren Farnsworth and Netgalley for a free ebook copy of this novel in exchange for a review.
This novel follows four people in their 20s and 30s who meet to take part in a pub quiz, and has a warm, interesting feel to it. We have Bryony, a woman who had a child at 17 and is married to a brusque man called Glen who doesn’t quite appreciate her, a chap called Harry who is lost after being made redundant and breaking up with his girlfriend, Jaime who’s moved down from Keswick with her useless boyfriend, Luke – who is also in the quiz team and lastly, Donna, a wild cyclone of a woman who starts the quiz team in the first place. It is from these people’s viewpoints that we are told the story.
And it is a gentle story, fairly slow paced, exploring their changing relationships and the crises they face over the year that they take part in the London Pub Quiz League. We watch their triumphs in the league and their failures in life. This is not challenging fair – perfect for a beach read – but enjoyable and entertaining.
I must say, for most of the story I felt it was a little dull. The characters are ok, but nothing out of the ordinary and there is very little in terms of romance – and that is why I chose this book. In fact, the title was totally misleading and that was disappointing. When I was reading it, it was easy and light but there was nothing that drove me to pick it up and it took me a long time to read, simply because I could find other things to do that seemed more interesting! I did enjoy it by the end and started to get involved with the characters a bit.
One other thing that annoyed me a little was the lack of understanding of money. One character gets herself into debt but that is all sorted by the end of the book, but the fact that this is London and that two are unemployed – one as a housewife and one because he’s lost his job seemed remarkably unbelievable. Isn’t London the most expensive place to live in the world? Certainly in the UK! Who could live in London in a house they owned when only one income was coming in and that was as a landscape gardener? Who can live in their own flat when they haven’t got a job? These things really damaged the relatability of the story to me.
Overall, it was enjoyable and I loved all the quiz questions – and I think if you’re that way inclined and like trivia you’ll probably find that bit amusing. But I also think there are a lot more interesting and gripping books out there.

The lonely hearts quiz league, follows a group of strangers who come together for a pub quiz and in turn become a group of friends. They work towards a chance to compete for £10,000 in a pub quiz tournament.

I thought the book covered lots of the challenges that many of us face in our adult lives - between mental health, job loss, breakups and family pressures.
I liked how we had everyone’s POV , it let you feel like you were really getting to know each character individually.
The book does jump frequently between different POV’s so you need to be properly paying attention.
I loved all the quiz questions at the start of each chapter!!
Thanks to Lauren Farnsworth, Headline and NetGalley for an eARC copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a surprise in the best way. I went into it expecting a light fun story about people finding help with a bunch of new friends at a quiz league - it is definitely that, but it's so much deeper too. I didn't expect to feel so emotionally invested in what was happening to all the characters, but they were all so engaging. It has such a great ensemble cast that allowed Lauren to show the different struggles that people go through in their lives, and how support can come from places you really don't expect it to. Everyone was broken or hurting and, as a collective, they were able to help each other whilst getting helped themselves.
The main thread of the story - the quiz league they enter as a newly formed team who don't know each other - is the light and fun bit. It 's a great set-up with built in tension and pace. The descriptions of a pub quiz atmosphere and the teams who take it all very seriously were spot on and made me have a wry chuckle to myself many times. The team names were on the nail too!
Mental health features prominently in this book and is handled with lots of care but gives an unflinching insight into what it's like not just for the person but for those around them too.
The character whose story I enjoyed the most was Bryony. In a way it felt like hers had the most peril and her feelings had the most likelihood to have long-ranging repercussions if she acted on them.
A great read all round, with enough individuality to make it stand out.

Four strangers who have nothing in common apart from their desire to meet people get together to form a pub quiz team. The quiz league is the element of the book that links all the characters together and I really liked the quiz questions that began each chapter. We see each of the characters in their daily lives and realise how important this weekly night out is to them. The difficulty of meeting people outside of your job in London (or any big city) is clearly set out here.
Each of the four, Donna, Harry, Jaime and Bryony are very different but they are all lonely and find their lives difficult. As they get to know one another, they begin to find things in common and form friendships. I usually love this type of story where strangers are brought together but I found this one quite difficult to get into. I think my main problem is that I found all of the characters to be fairly unsympathetic especially Donna. Her complete lack of empathy for anyone around her made her very hard to like.
I found the first two thirds of the book to be a bit of a slog to read and I didn’t feel as though I really cared about any of them.
Then in the last third of the book, things really started to happen in their lives and suddenly I found that I did care. One of Donna’s chapters towards the end actually brought a tear to my eye which I certainly did not expect.
Despite finding the book quite hard to read for a lot of it, the final part made it all worthwhile. I am very glad that I read it and am grateful to Net Galley and the publishers for providing this ARC.

An advert for people to join a pub quiz team leads five strangers bonding together.
Couple Luke and Gemma, housewife Bryony, Harry unemployed and still emotionally hung up on his ex. Donna the instigator of the group.
All come with issues and life experience. Can they come together to form an effective team?
Follow the ups and downs as they meet up each week.

The Lonely Hearts Quiz League is a good ‘feel a bit better’ book about the loneliness of young people. I didn’t really feel much for any of the characters, they were all likely versions of loneliness in the city, all were not living near family or long standing friends and this is a scenario echoed in every large city. We all need a ‘family’ or tribe to belong to and these people find a group of more or less like minded individuals each with their own unhappiness to deal with, and help each other. I didn’t dislike the story but really didn’t find it to be memorable.
Thank you Netgalley for ARC in exchange for honest review.