If I have to be nitpicky, I would have preferred the book without the 'whodunit' element, as for me the reveal was underwhelming

Ever since I heard Holly Bourne is coming out with a new book based on female friendships in their 30s and motherhood I knew I had to preorder it asap. Then I was SOOOO happy when I got accepted for review. This book opened my eyes - it's unflinching, honest and raw. While I didn't enjoy this as much as her other recent books (Girlfriends, You could be so pretty), she remains such an autobuy author for me. 3.5 stars

This new novel from Holly Bourne is about the relationships of a group of women who have been friends for a long time and their relationships with motherhood. One of the women is having a baby shower, another has recently given birth, one is child-free and one is desperately trying to conceive. The narrative switches between the women and their opinions on each others choices and gives an insight into how nobody really knows what is going on with other women. This is really relatable book no matter where you're at with fertility and the choice to have children. Would definitely recommend!

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for this advance reader copy!

From the very first page of this book, I was gripped. Holly Bourne is entirely unflinching and immediately sets the tone, no cushioning needed. She has perfectly distilled the modern woman’s voice. She uses it to weave a story that is a perfect balance of relatable mundanity with a really honest outlook on how complex it is to grow older around the people you love.

Firstly a massive thank you for my access to review , I own all of hollys books and love her work .
This was no exception!
With the focus and themes being on an older group of friends and the struggles life is throwing at them .
I raced through this only stopping due to that thing called sleep and life.
As a mum and a woman in her 40s this hit different in contrast to her other books .i had pnd with both of my children but in different ways and it was refreshing to read about the thought processes in her mind.
It’s a genre bending ,addictive , thought provoking and moral questioning story .
It highlights how even those who look to have it all have struggles .
Absolutely loved it and know this is going to be huge maybe even attract a new audience .
It fully emerges you into the pages and there’s some tense moments where you can’t quite believe what is happening !
I wish holly every success with this book .
Easy 5 stars all round !!

The focus is on four university friends and their different stages of motherhood (childless by choice/struggling to conceive/heavily pregnant/baby under one).

It's a sharp and witty account of a baby shower told from the POV of the four women. There's a blistering heatwave and we know from the start rhat the party is going to end in a catastrophic fire.

Part satire of motherhood and part blistering account of the agonies and ecstasies f having children. It's a fun read and well written account.

Thank you so much for letting me read So Thrilled For You. I absolutely adored this amazing book from the fantastic Holly Bourne
What could go wrong at a baby shower.
With 4 bestfriends from uni, all in slightly different phases of their lives. Lauren has baby woody, who she is struggling with getting the right sleep pattern. Nicki who's heavily pregnant at her baby shower. Charlotte's dream has always been to become a mum, but has struggled. Then there's Steffi, she's just launched her own business.
A lot of pressure all around, we get to see all the angles how wrong it can all go when they don't communicate

Holly Bourne’s *So Thrilled for You* is a powerful exploration of the shifting dynamics of female friendships in your 30s, where life choices around motherhood, relationships, and identity can drive friends apart or deepen bonds. Set during a heatwave at a baby shower gone hilariously wrong, the story captures the frustrations women face with societal expectations and personal biases. Bourne’s characters are messy, human, and raw, making every perspective feel genuine and eye-opening. True to her style, this book balances humor and hard truths, leaving readers with both laughs and deeper reflections.
Thank you to the publisher & netgalley for the arc!

I flew through this book, completely gripped. I found it quite hard to read where some of Laura’s story mirrored my own experience, but I’m glad someone is writing about birth trauma and the often dehumanising experiences of early motherhood.

In her first novel for adults, How Do You Like Me Now? Holly Bourne's snarky-but-sweet heroine Tori Bailey throws a baby shower. Expecting an afternoon of fun, gin and cake, she ends up with her cream carpets being trashed by toddlers while her old friends make passive-aggressive remarks at her while ticking every possible box of heteronormativity.

Here, Bourne takes four women - Charlotte, who in her smallness, primness and difficulty conceiving, resembles her SATC namesake; Nicki, the woman whose baby shower it is and whose identity is in flux; Steffi, a child-free publishing supremo who can't get a man to commit; and Lauren, frumpy mum of a one-year-old who's slowly going under after a traumatic labour and too many sleepless nights.

Throw in some memories of university 'cheese nights' and lots of miscommunication between the girls, plus a peony wall and a vulva pinata, on the hottest day of the year, and sparks are going to fly!

There were a couple of odd moments - I didn't get why Charlotte would invite the one guest that Nicki doesn't want to see, Nicki felt the least relatable of the characters, and I didn't get why she remained jealous of Steffi when any spark between Steffi and her husband was in the past. I was torn between identifying most with Lauren and Steffi, who seemed like real people, and the book feels like a bit of a love letter to publishing women Kimberly Atkins and Madeleine Milburn, who I'm sure have helped make this bravura book what it is.

Absolutely brilliant, loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

Perceptive Delve.,
With a dark edge, a perceptive delve into the lives of four women and the expectations of mothers and motherhood and of female friendships and bonds. Whilst the mystery element is certainly here, it does feel secondary to the main emotional thematics. Well plotted and compelling and populated with a credible cast of characters.

A very honest depiction of life with a young baby after a difficult birth and the choices and heartache that the thirty something women face. The fire was sort of secondary although symbolic in this feisty, fun, scary account of female friendship.

Holly Bourne has a real knack of getting the reader completely absorbed in her characters and situation and the book flows along easily. Having said that (and bearing in mind that I'm probably not the target audience) I found most of the characters really irritating. I'd like to think that women have moved on from the 'perfect mother' trope but Lauren is constantly comparing herself with other mothers and finding herself wanting. The endless whining about exhaustion becomes exhausting in itself! Charlotte is completely OTT and Nicki is totally self-absorbed. The only one I could relate to was Steffi. As this is supposed to be a story about friendship it didn't resonate with me at all. If they were such good friends why didn't any of them try to help Lauren who was obviously struggling? The fire is an unnecessary part of the story but I suppose it gives the women a reason to start pulling together.

A good read but nowhere near the standard of 'You could be so pretty' which was stunning.

On a scorching summer day, four university friends are brought back together for a combination baby shower/gender reveal that goes disastrously wrong. Each of the four women have made different choices and are facing different struggles from Charlotte's challenges conceiving, to Steffi feeling judged for her choice to remain child-free. Holly Bourne's depiction of Lauren and the difficulties that this character faced with her traumatic childbirth experience and the struggles of being a new mother really stood out. It felt very honest and brave. By contrast I felt that I connected with Nicki the least. Her story revolves around her challenges with her identity and what she wanted out of life because it was impossible for her to get everything. However, it felt a bit rushed and perhaps her story needed more time, and Steffi could have benefitted from some more plot time as well. The theme of it being impossible to have it all comes up repeatedly, as whatever choice women make apparently society will only judge them.

The mystery of who started the fire was really only a small part of the book, it was much more about the women's different choices and their relationships with each other. The police interviews helped to break up the format and keep the pace of the book fast, but really near the end of the book I could believe that any of the four main characters would have done it. Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the advance copy.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book early!
I was a huge fan of Holly Bourne’s YA work as a teenager, so I was very excited to experience her adult fiction for the first time. It’s a testament to her writing that I was so hooked on the story and the main relationships as a young adult who has nothing in common with most of the characters. The differing representations of motherhood and adulthood were very interesting, and I found the way the female friendships were presented very true to life. I really liked the way it all wrapped up, and where the characters ended. Holly Bourne has such a unique writing voice and a very specific style of humour which is what made me fall in love with her writing as a teenager - it was nice to read this and still recognise her voice. I really enjoyed this and I think anyone could find something to take from it!

Holly Bourne is an automatic read author for me. I love how she weaves contemporary stories about women with really hard topics, without it ever feeling heavy. I was beyond thrilled to receive my first ever arc of one of Holly’s books.

So thrilled for you, was the most honest and insightful look into being a women in your 30s I have ever read. Being a women in your 30s, with other female friends can be the most difficult time to hold a friendship group together and to be a friend. Everyone’s lives can look so dramatically different. Are you trying to have children, already have children, don’t want children? Your life choices and choices in partners can completely dictate and change your relationship with your best friends and no one ever truly prepares you for that. Or for what others are going through. I truly believe every women should read this book to help not only understand themselves and how they view their friends but also how your friends could view you. We are all full of our own biases to a situation and what struck me the most about this book was how it’s all a matter of perspective.

I always leave a Holly Bourne book having enjoyed it and also having learnt something. It’s like subtle therapy with a side of cocktails. Once again reminding me why she is my automatic buy author. Immense thank you to netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for approving me for an e-arc, it was an honour to read and review this book

Holly Bourne is a genius and this book is perfection. I stayed up wayyyyy too late to finish this proof, which was unwise, as I am deep in the trenches of new parenthood, which is explored so viscerally in this novel. I loved every part of this - all the beautifully nuanced and flawed narrators, the police interviews inserted between chapters, the dissection and excavation of long-term female friendships and all the feelings they stir up, the knife-sharp depiction of envy and jealousy that we all experience but never talk about, and the devastation brought about by infertility and PND. Hard recommend.

If you are looking for a fascinating mystery with a group of female suspects, look no further! An excellent and suspenseful story.

This was an incredibly perceptive read about four very different women and the paths their lives have taken, it has a mystery element running through it but that’s more background noise in comparison. Set during a very tight timeframe which is the day of Nicki’s baby shower but also looking back on some elements of their past this features heavily pregnant Nicki who is only having the baby shower at the insistence of Charlotte who arranged all of it, exhausted new mum Lauren and child free by choice Steffi. I found Charlotte quite a difficult character especially with her fixation on throwing the perfect baby shower which was more of a displacement activity to ignore her issues regarding her fertility problems and to prove she’s totally ok about Nicky’s pregnancy. Nicki has some interesting backstory but despite this being her baby shower I don’t think I really got to know her, Steffi offered a good juxtaposition but this focuses more on her work than her. The main character in this for me was undoubtedly Lauren who I just felt such emotion for as such a horrific birth as she experienced would cause such problems for any new mother and then the issues with her son sleeping just felled her but what stood out was how much she loved her son and would actually do anything for him. The combination of each of these women’s issues made for a tense read as they gradually crack under different pressures which put all their friendships to the test. The mystery element helps weave it all together somewhat but the culprit was extremely unexpected but added an interesting element to the women’s friendship.