I loved this one! It was emotional, gripping and nostalgic and I loved the use of the Yorkshire/Doncaster accent throughout, it helped to become immersed more. It did take me a while to get used to this style and parts I felt a bit lost but overall I enjoyed!

Loved this coming-of-age story set in Doncaster (Donny) and written in Northern dialect. It even took me a while to get into it and I‘m from the North of England!

Kel, Shaz and Rach grow up in the 1990s in that typical friendship love-triangle when there‘s 3 of you. The changes in timeline and POV tell the story of the girls‘ growing up and apart but will a long-held secret destroy the friendship for good?

I‘ve only been to Donny once (apart from passing through on the train as per the blurb!), on a works night out with a colleague who was from there. It must have been 1993/4 and we actually went to Karisma nightclub, featured in the book. 🤪 I yelped when I read it!

I’ve never read a book written in my own accent before, and I probably never will again. That’s only one of the reasons that I was drawn to We Pretty Pieces of Flesh: this somewhat experimental novel focuses on three girls from Doncaster, the next town up from where I grew up (and still live).

It’s a bit jarring to read something written how you talk, and even though it’s in *my* accent I still had to take my time with it, make sure I was taking every word in, mouthing them out as I read through. It took me probably twice as long as it would normally, but it was worth every minute. I’ve loved this.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh tells the story of Rach, Kel and Shaz, following them from their first day of secondary school up to being in their 30s. It’s non-linear, jumping between moments of their lives, going between the past and present, and even switching between perspectives. Some sections are written in first person, some in third — even some using second person ‘you’, which I loved.

While it’s sometimes meandering — there’s no great plot to unfurl — every beat of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh had me hooked. It’s a dissection of class, of growing up in a working-class town, of girlhood, of becoming a woman, of achieving your dreams (or never having any dreams in the first place). Each of the three girls here is very real, brought to life in great detail, and they all offer a contrast from each other. It’s easy to imagine that Colwill has based them on people she knew growing up, coming from Doncaster herself.

Rach and Kel have known each other since they were babies (‘babbies’), while Shaz met them both on the first day of secondary school. She’s from a rougher part of town than Rach and Kel, and while the three of them have shared experiences, there’s still a class divide between them. Rach makes her way to Uni to become a teacher, Kel ends up living in the USA, while Shaz stays in Doncaster, drifting from one dead-end-job to another, barely making ends meet.

Much of the book focuses on the girls’ time at school, though, and it’s a shockingly realistic lens of life as a teenage girl. There’s talk of getting your first period, of wanting to feel special in front of ‘the lads’, of wanting attention, of not wanting attention, the desire to just ‘fit in’ and neither be an outcast or the centre of attention. Colwill has nailed what it feels like to be a teenage girl. It’s raw, it’s real, and every page of this hit me right in the gut.

It’s sometimes difficult to read; the picture it paints of growing up in South Yorkshire is sometimes a little too on-the-nose. There are some tough sections to get through including mentions of SA, but even just the grittiness of working-class life, the mentions of ‘zombies’ on the streets of Doncaster, drug and alcohol use, the reliance on it, the struggling to make ends meet — it all hits home. Shaz, Kel and Rach might not be real, but there are people out there just like them. Their words, thoughts and feelings are about as real as you can get, and this is a novel that’s going to stick with me for a long time.

This was a beautiful read — so original, and gritty, and in a way nostalgic. I loved that it was set in Doncaster and its surroundings for the most part, it’s an area that is too often neglected in literature despite how important Northern voices are to building a picture of the UK as a whole.
Colwill Brown’s depiction of girlhood in all its messiness is so atmospheric, and the central trio of Rach, Kel, and Shaz really wormed their way into my heart. Without spoiling anything, you get a great sense of why each girl is the way she is, and though they each have unsavoury moments, I felt like I really knew and understood them.
TLDR, this is a powerhouse of a debut novel.

We Pretty Pueces of Flesh is an engrossing story of friendship and growing up in Northern England in the late 90s.

Written in Yorkshire dialect, I found this a little hard to digest at first, but once I got used to the colloquial language and into the flow of the novel, this was actually a really absorbing method of delivering the story. Jumping back and forth in time and between perspectives, Brown tells the intricate stories of these characters and their friendships in a way that makes the reader truly care for them.

The story touches on some dark themes including a violent sexual assault, and explores the effects of the trauma and how it radiates throughout a victim's life and relationships, even years into the future.

An entirely brilliant novel from start to finish, I highly recommend!

As someone born and raised in the next town over from Doncaster, this really hit home. Fantastic work, and I’ll definitely be hunting for a print copy when it’s released! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I'm gonna revisit this book when my South Yorkshire dialect is better (perhaps, i was too confident) because I love it!

First, a warning: this book is not a book, it is a TIME PORTAL. Like Rach, Kel and Shaz, the teenage protagonists of Colwill Brown's We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, I started secondary school in 1998, needing, like them, 'to learn sharpish how to survive secondary school w'out gerrin their heads kicked in... She's alreyt, her. Not up hersen, not a clever clogs, not a geek or a buff or a sweatie or a posh cow or a frigid bitch'. I went to school nowhere near Doncaster, where this novel is set and in whose dialect it is written, and their specific language is not mine (we'd have talked about 'trevs' and 'keeners'), but the rhythm of it is exactly the same. Brown absolutely nails the experience of being a teenage girl in Britain in the late 90s and early 00s - and, as it turns out, that experience had a lot in common even if you were a middle-class girl growing up in Wiltshire rather than a working-class girl growing up in 'Donny'. This book fiercely shows that, especially when you're about twelve to fourteen, age can override other kinds of difference. I've never read anything that talks so vividly about the sad slow dances at the end of discos, the junky funfair rides (they call it The Cage, we just called it the cages), the judgy encounters with your Head of Year, especially if you were seen as 'too good' for the girls you were hanging around with, the songs (WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT), the hair-gelled fringes, sneaking into Titanic aged eleven. I stood on the sidelines when others experimented with alcohol and sex, but this was still the world I lived in during my early teens; a completely different world from the world I live in today. If I went back there, I would no longer know how to survive.

Brown gives us three fantastic, completely real characters. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is written as a series of linked short stories, some in second person, some in third, some in first, switching between the points of view of its three protagonists and going back and forth in time, so we get to know all of them very well. Brown refuses to let us make comfortable assumptions, playing with our allegiances and loyalties. At the start of the novel, it feels like Rach is on the edge of the group. From a posher end of town, she's uncomfortable because she feels lads never go for her, and she's trying hard to keep up her easy friendship with Shaz and Kel, but it's just not working. 'Shaz called [her dad] "mi fatha", wi two short a sounds like "apple", and by us first half-term so did Kel... I wanted to say "mi fatha" an' all, but I knew... somehow wi'out asking that I weren't allowed.' (I loved Brown's attention to the nuances of dialect, and how the girls don't all just talk the same). But what Rach doesn't know is that Shaz, the bolshiest of them, is sometimes jealous of her: 'Shaz wished she'd worn trackies [to the ice-skating rink] like Rach. Wished she had Rach's confidence'. It's the love, tension and scraps between Rach and Shaz that drive this book, but Kel too, sweet and compliant, has her moments of feeling like the odd one out - and she's the one who tries to travel furthest away from Donny, ending up in Boston (the US version, not the Lincolnshire one) as an adult.

If there was one more thing I wanted from this brilliant novel, it was a sense of how Rach, Shaz and Kel fit into the ecosystem of their school. As they recognise, they're a bit of an odd lot. Shaz could easily have hung out with the hardest girls at the comp I went to, whereas Rach and Kel are stereotyped as 'nicer'. They feel strangely isolated from the complicated networks that would've been swirling around them, except for their occasional hook-ups with lads. There's a few token references to other subcultures, such as goths, but this felt a little lazy to me given the sharpness and sheer intelligence of Brown's writing. I wanted to get more of a sense of how they were placed socially and how far they got on with others outside their group. Nevertheless, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is an unforgettable novel, and I loved how Brown explored the thorny ties between the trio, how old bitternesses reoccur and twist back through the history of their friendship, but how she also decides that no, they are going to keep on being important to each other. You know, I think this might be even better than Eliza Clark's Penance. 4.5 stars.

SYNOPSIS
It’s early noughties Yorkshire, three Donny lassies – Kel, Rach and Shaz – live in the former mining town of Doncaster, where the word aspiration has more to do with how many cigs they can smoke before school rather than career prospects. They want to be known as shaggers but not slag it about, they practice drinking until they can hold their own like one of the lads, and proof of friendship is trips made in solidarity to the Family Planning Clinic on a 'Satdi'.

Following an enforced hospital internment one of the girls returns to find the others have boyfriends and have moved on with a new social circle. Insecurities arise, accusations of attention seeking behaviour; boys coming between bezzies, and their once indestructible bond begins to breakdown as they struggle to deal with the toxic side of female friendship. Now in their twenties, one seemingly has the perfect life, one moves overseas, and the other harbours a devastating secret that could destroy the future happiness of another. Perhaps their estrangement is for the best. But then something happens and ‘Feminen’ the girl band are forced back together, but which one will be dropping the mic at the end of the night.

MY THOUGHTS
The book is written entirely in South Yorkshire dialect and I can’t lie it was heavy going. Without doubt this will be divisive amongst readers but this book would not have the same impact without it. I could practically taste the Yorkshire Tea! I love coming-of-age stories and this is one of the best I have ever read about girlhood. This felt frighteningly and fulfilingly familiar. I loved the characters of Kel, Rach and Shaz, okay maybe not so much Rach, but I understood why she was essential to making the dynamic of the three work. I rarely say this about a character, but I would walk through fire for Shaz - I adored her.

This was an incredible debut, an absolute gut punch, I am certain any girl who grew up in and around the nineties and noughties in the UK will recognise themselves somewhere in this book and these characters. Its beautifully eccentric, and full of gorgeous nostalgia, and Colwill Brown honours the local history, people and places with this outstanding debut.

Thank you to the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read an advance copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for my honest thoughts. I gave this a perfect score, and welcome it to my roman empire.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh was such a treat. I honestly can’t believe that this one is a debut novel, the writing is exquisite. Helped on my the fact my family is from Doncaster so the accent didn’t feel like too much of a barrier.

In the book, we follow Rach, Shaz and Kel as they navigate growing up in South Yorkshire and how that shapes the lives that they live. Doncaster as a setting felt like a character in this book, like it pervaded all of their lives in ways specific to that setting. I really connected with these descriptions, they all felt so visceral and true to the place I know. I loved on one of the opening pages, the descriptions of Doncaster as a place people only go through, seen as a scummy city that you wouldn’t want to step foot in if you had the choice. This was then contrasted with the unveiling of the lives of people who live there, the history and everything else that people don’t see, their vision clouded by the labels that are generally placed on Donny.

I loved following the friends through the trial and tribulations of their lives from the first year of ‘comp’ through to their thirties. We are invited into small snippets of their stories but each perfectly captures how the three girls feel about the world they live in and the impact this has on their hopes, dreams and the decisions that they make. I also really appreciated the shift in person narrative to signify the change in character perspective. This was subtle yet so effective.

Their friendship was flawed, complicated, all consuming. This book was saturated with the harrowing truths that come with growing up a girl, told perfectly by the author.

I cannot get Rach, Kel and (especially) Shaz out of my mind. I don’t want to read anything else because I don’t want to leave them behind. I so desperately want to stay in their world and in this beauuutiful writing. Book hangover incoming…

My only gripe would be that sometimes between chapters it took me a bit of time to shift between settings, perspective and time frame due to it not being linear. This took me out of the story a little and made it quite easy to put down in transition moments. But other than that, this was everything I needed it to be.

Please look into the trigger warnings for this one as there are lots including eating disorders, rape & addiction.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the e-ARC.

So this book is written entirely in a Northern dialect and follows the story of 3 teenage girls growing up in Doncaster during the 90s. This is such a raw and honest reflection of what growing up before the rise of social media and modern life felt like and in many ways I felt I could honestly connect to these 3 characters.

I will say that the entire story being written in this dialect threw me a little and for that reason it did take me a while to get into it, but once I got used to that I flew through it and I genuinely loved it! To be able to connect to the characters in so many ways allowed me to feel immersed and I felt a true sense of nostalgia.

Following these girls through their teenage years, how they all were interconnected to one another but as they grew up life experiences forced them almost to drift apart and lead different lives whilst also being connected in other ways brought true emotion to the storyline and I felt like this was a great reflection of what it feels like to grow up. This was a beautiful read in so many ways I could write an essay!

Thank you to Random House UK, Vintage & NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

A heartbreaking and yet funny book. I came to love the characters and would highly recommend this. A great coming-of-age story.

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh. I’m a sucker for fiction set in the North of England, and this book is joining the ranks of Jessica Andrews and Eliza Clark who are shining a light on the brutal, gritty aliveness of teenage girls in the north of England. This book broke my heart into a million pieces. It’s so fucking hard being a teenage girl, and at the same time absolutely euphoric. Brown perfectly captures the feeling of a night spent with your mates that feels like it’ll never end, never be anything but that summer night. I might not have had the same (drunken) experiences of Shaz, Rach and Kel, but that didn’t stop me connecting deeply with them. They are genuinely some of the best characters I’ve come across recently.

A lot of tough subjects are tackled in this book such as rape, sexual assault, chronic illness, so take care of yourself when reading. It does a brilliant job of portraying post-Brexit Britain (when the girls are now adults), especially in rundown towns and cities where pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is literally impossible.

It’s written throughout in Doncaster slang, which might be difficult for some readers to get to grips with at first, but just let the rhythm of it carry you away.

Just a gorgeous, heartbreaking coming-of-age novel about friendship and growing up in a world determined to keep young northern lasses beat down. One of my favourite books I’ve read in a while.

Powerful coming-of-age story and exploration of female friendship. Reading a few others that felt similar in this dark tone, and with very specific settings, it didn't quite work as well. Yet it still felt unique and painted a picture of this area.

A coming-of-age debut from the perspectives of best mates Rachel, Shaz and Kel growing up in their beloved Donny (Doncaster) from the 1990s until the aftermath of the Brexit referendum.

The novel is told entirely in Yorkshire vernacular; I can understand if someone is unfamiliar with this particular dialect that it may be difficult to get into this one, but I would say definitely persevere! I found the style to be refreshing (similarly to Duck Feet by Ely Percy which is told in Scottish dialect), as it made the overall reading experience feel more authentic.

This is an unrelenting, gritty read and doesn’t romanticise the teenage experience; covering a whole host of topics such as sexual assault, eating disorders and teenage pregnancy.

Growing up in the North West of England, in a similar time as the girls, made this a very nostalgic read for me but it was also a stark reminder how bloody awful being a teenager could be.

This debut novel follows three adolescent girls coming of age in a gritty post-industrial Yorkshire town in the ‘90s.

This isn't the usual kind of book I would review here but I’m so glad I did. I’ve never seen so much of my own childhood reflected in a book before. I was highlighting passages left, right and centre because so much rang true. The girls in the book start secondary school in ‘98, while I was just a year behind and 50 miles up the M62.

𝘞𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘗𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘩 is written entirely in Donny (that's Doncaster, South Yorkshire) vernacular and it was a joy to see words like 𝘴𝘰𝘻𝘻𝘢𝘳𝘥 and 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘨𝘨𝘺 𝘣𝘢𝘨 in print. At times, it made the novel feel a little long, but I also didn’t want it to end.

Get ready to meet bezzies Rach, Kel and Shaz, as the novel shifts between their perspectives, from childhood into their thirties. You’ll follow them through under-18s club nights, trying to get into Gatecrasher, how to survive big school and blend in, threats of being banged out, comparing relationships and what's expected of them and when, pints of Diesel, trips to family planning, the pill and its effects on their bodies – this is such an accurate depiction of life in the North as a teenage girl in the ‘90s.

Raw, funny and heartbreakingly real. If you grew up in the North in the ‘90s, I’d be shocked if you don’t see either yourself or the lasses and lads from school in it.

Thank you Vintage Books for the ARC.

This was an enjoyable debut novel which felt very nostalgic at points. I felt myself relating to the girls in this book and the struggles they faced growing up. Although heartbreaking at points, the book feels very real and it gave me anxiety to ever have a daughter lol. But, I also loved how messy and carefree the characters came across, they’re real teenagers trying to navigate the world of growing up whilst not having the support system that is needed. I feel like the author perfectly portrayed the intensity and complications of young female friendships.

One thing I did struggle with was the dialect, I found myself having to re-read quite a few sections to try and understand. But, if you like messy characters and dark themes I think this will be up your street! Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Colwill Brown's "We Pretty Pieces of Fresh" is a gorgeous and hilarious look at a group of Yorkshire girls. We follow them and their stories as they mature into womanhood. The novel is written in the Yorkshire dialect which only adds authenticity to the story, and makes us connect to the girls (Rach, Shaz, and Kel) even more. Brown does such an expert job of bringing us back to 2000's Doncaster. There's an empathy in Brown's writing that is often absent when writers look back at teenagers. She does not belittle or mythologise them. She seeks to understand and explore where they were at that time in their lives. As a result, the reader grows to care about them because we know we are in such good hands with Brown as our guide. This novel is highly recommended.

Wow this book was such a whirlwind. I'll start off by saying in the beginning the book being written entirely in this Doncaster dialect was REALLY off putting, and it took me so long and so many attempts to get into it.
That said, I'm so glad I persevered. This book is a gorgeous rendition of girlhood that I found so deeply relatable (especially considering I grew up on a northern council estate myself) The characters were so unbelievably well done and distinct. I loved how this book touched on other topics too such as chronic illness/fatigue, it really made me feel seen. Overall this was an absolute pleasure of a book, with its real northern grit, and I'll be happy to see the world love it as much as I did.

This is not just a novel, not just a story. This is a wild ride back through your own past if you're the right audience. This is 330-and-some pages of unlocking old memories and opening old wounds. If you were a young girl headed for teenagerdom in the late 1990s, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh will punch you in the gut, smack you in the face and kiss you right on the lips. It is an incredible - and painful, at times - walk down memory lane and it'll leave you feeling all the emotions you went through in your formative years, wondering what kind of magic Colwill Brown's found to encapsulate it all. Her personal experience as an elder millennial from Doncaster who became sick due to a viral infection in early adulthood can only go so far in finding a way to write these three characters so perfectly. There is some serious literary craft at work here.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh tells the tale of three Doncaster "bezzies" from age 11 until into their thirties, sometime after the Brexit vote. The focus is on their school years, ending at about age 16. Those five intense years of trying to be an adult, specifically a woman, a foreign entity nobody ever explains well enough - if at all - how to be. The second half of the novel gives room to more reflection and distance from the adult point of view, still weaving in and out of those harsh and unbridled teen years but adding the weight of the cumulative effect of consequences and of trauma (including rape and disordered eating, trigger warning). Absent fathers, class division, binge drinking, trying to shed childhood too quickly and too early, wanting to be desired at any cost by boys to prove your worth, scabs and blood, love and jealousy, and all the other raw things that make up the lawless years of growing up constitut the thematic fabric of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh.
Brown uses the three different narrative voices to carve out both the effects of passing time and different characters' perspectives (Kel, the peacekeeper of the trio, often stuck between the two bolder and often quarrelling friends, is treated with the third voice narrative, for example) and displays in these choices her talent. This is no debut of a novice. This is the first published novel of someone who's done a lot of writing, accumulated a lot of knowledge of the literary art.

As raw and deeply moving as We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is, it isn't intended for all. Like a niche perfume with a particular scent profile, this will be appreciated by those who find some recognition in the female trio's tumultuous upbringing, either having been one of them or having witnessed from the periphery such girls and having been at the very least fascinated with some aspects of their lives. The other layer of difficulty is the language used, particularly in the first half of the novel where it is particularly prominent in the teenage girls' loud and unfiltered mouths. Brown chose to write her novel in the Yorkshire dialect for added realism. I applaud and support this choice though must admit that as a non-native English speaker, the used vernacular made it a significantly harder book to read. I spent paragraphs, pages reading out loud to myself, whispering out the phonetic spelling to grasp exactly what was being said in the first half. By the second half, I had grown used to most of the vernacular, fortunately. I was spellbound by the too familiar story and refused to give up on this in the first pages due to the language barrier. I'm so glad I didn't. The reward of getting to enjoy the full ride was more than worth it. I thus feel the need to caution my fellow non-native English readers who have not lived in Northern England that my average reading speed was probably three times slower for We Pretty Pieces of Flesh. This may be crucial information in selecting this as your next read. I went back and forth between the 4 and 5-star rating because of the dialect, mostly, but decided that one cannot and should not punish an author for making the right linguistic choice although it may be determining criteria for some readers.

"We couldn't have been more than eleven when we realised it weren't alreyt to have girl bodies. We couldn't tell you how we knew this, all we can remember is that we wa itchy and restless in us girl skins. We needed woman bodies, bleeding bodies, and we needed them fast."

* Many thanks to NetGalley & Random House UK, Vintage for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. *