Thanks to NetGalley who gave me this book to read and review.
I found myself zoning out with listening to this book. I found the storyline on discovering her Hungarian heritage didn’t feel very well flushed out and the characters didn’t have much depth. The mother daughter relationship started out interesting but devolved as the book went along. Overall it had some funny bits but I also found it quite cringe. It’s the kind of book I would download on libby when I had nothing to listen to.

Always live something a little different. This book was a great get away from the pretty mediocre books I’d listened to the week prior. I really enjoyed the premise and character development. I hope the author writes more similar books and I thought the narrator was well matched with the storyline

This book is based on the stories of a mother and her daughter, the latter from a boarding school and the former from West London with Hungarian family. It's very funny in parts, with a fantastic narrator of the audiobook.

I absolutely devoured this book and could not put it down. The dual POV from mother and daughter, who were both dealing with issues and stresses without the other one realising, were balanced perfectly. The themes were serious but were discussed through a witty bunch of characters and I appreciated that. This one gave me lots to think about in terms of loyalty to home place, loyalty to family, and loyalty to yourself. I would highly recommend this to anybody looking for unconventional family dynamics, strained and hard relationships, and feelings of losing yourself only to be brought back by loved ones.

As a two-person story, I must say I was more interested in teenager Marina than mother Laura. Both stories explore the idea of women who don't quite fit in.

Marina has left Ealing School for Girls to pursue her A-Levels at a co-educational boarding school, Combe Abbey, but quickly realises she has made a mistake. In love with another student, she determinedly keeps up with her science studies, despite an affinity for history. She also becomes entangled with a student in the year below, Guy Viney, whose father Alexander turns out to be a historian she very much admires.

Meanwhile her mother Laura, beholden to her vanished husband's elderly relatives for taking them both in, misses her daughter dreadfully and drifts through work, an affair, and a lot of thinking. I didn't find her story particularly interesting. I found Marina quite a well-written teenager though, very much the obsessive and passionate girl whose longings are clouding her judgement.

To be honest, I wasn't enamoured on the whole. I listened to this as an audiobook and could have stopped several times through lack of interest but kept going. I didn't find the family history particularly interesting either, Laura's obsession with her 17-year-old daughter a little overdone, the story with the Vineys didn't grab me either.

I read this because it made the longlists for both the Women's Prize and the Man Booker, but it wasn't for me. Fairly forgettable, and I'm disappointed because I'd expected more.