The final line of the blurb is what sold this for me for requesting Alter Ego.

"This is a story for anyone who has struggled to accept who they are or to love themselves".

While I'm not disabled like Hattie, I have struggled to love myself and fit in more than once in my life and while I can see how some people dislike her as a character I relate to her in more ways than I expected to. I too have found myself lost and wanting to start again, I was rooting for Hattie to succeed the entire way through reading this, so much so that I read it in one sitting. I'm excited to see what's next from Helen Heckety.

"Sometimes you just need to get a little lost before you find your way back again.."

Thank you Dialogue Books, Renegade Books + NetGalley for the opportunity to read this before it publishes on 18th July 2024!

Hattie moves to a remote 'hut' in the countryside to get away from her old life and try to start a new life where no one knows anything about her and her disability. She also tries to keep contact with her 'friends' , making up stories about where she is living and working so as not to make them suspicious about what she's really up to - which is trying to get away from everything including them.
I really enjoyed this book which i found funny and heartbreaking at times.
I loved the whole aspect of her trying to find people she could connect with and found it heartbreaking the reasons why she couldn't connect with her childhood friend, even though, deep down, that's what she really wanted.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys an uplifting page turner.

Hattie is a disabled woman in her late 20s. She lives with her best friend Ella but has decided to move to Wales and try and start a new life where nobody knows she's disabled. This involves a lot of lying to her friends and family and a monumental struggle to try and hide the difficulties she has at her new job. I really don't think I've read anything quite like this book and I quite literally couldn't put it down. It's a brilliant perspective and should be read by everyone, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Reading this novel was an incredibly powerful and moving experience, as it cut through to the heart of what it means to be a young woman with a hidden disability, and to feel understood and heard. It’s also brilliantly funny and poetic, a novel as entertaining as it is important.

Being chronically ill for over nineteen years I was happily surprised to find this book with a disabled main character. As a fan of diversity, this shouldn't be uncommon. Why is it there is no room for all sorts of minorities or out of the ordinary (for want of a better way to express this) characters even in this day and age when it comes to every day life in most books? It doesn't have to be a theme, but surely there are more flavors of the human kind that can be mentioned.

So yeah, I highlighted a lot, many things were recognizable. However, Alter Ego wasn't for me as I didn't like Hattie. Sure, I can understand where she is coming from, but deceiving her friends, being unkind to the porter, saying weird things about the bartender to save her own situation... I gave up at 23%.

I won't be sharing my opinion on this book, because I think it is too much an important theme and I do not want to discourage people from reading it. Wishing the author all the best of luck, seriously. Life is hard enough as it is, we are living in a deafening and demanding world that is difficult enough for those who don't have to deal with a troublesome health on top of it. Hang in there :)

As someone dealing with health issues…I am beyond excited to share my thoughts on this book. I can relate so much to its content and message and I will be sharing a full review and thoughts very soon.