I was really excited to get my hands on this novel, the premise is fantastic and I've been meaning to read Holly Bourne's work for a while.

So Thrilled For You follows four friends attending a baby shower. Its clear the group have unresolved tensions arising from them being at different stages of their lives and not communicating at all. These conflicts are common for women in late 20s/30s and the dynamics are an interesting topic to explore.

Where So Thrilled For You fell flat for me was that the characters were one dimensional and didn't feel 'real'. The story felt quite obvious too. That said, it was an easy read that I'm sure will find its audience.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an eARC.

Having delved into many of Holly Bourne’s works aimed at young adults, I was eagerly anticipating her latest release, which caters to a more mature audience. I’m delighted to say that ‘Thrilled for You’ was entertaining, addictive and absorbing!

The novel intricately weaves a rich tapestry of themes including friendship, love, parenthood, loss, and grief. Each element is thoughtfully portrayed, providing a deeply resonant experience. At the core of the story is a diverse group of women, each contributing their unique perspectives and experiences that feel both authentic and relatable. Readers will find fragments of their own lives reflected in these characters, which enhances the emotional engagement throughout the narrative. The inclusion of literary references enriches the text, adding an extra layer of depth that literature lovers will appreciate.

The storytelling is masterfully executed through multiple points of view. This style, combined with a dual timeline that incorporates a live criminal investigation, propels the narrative forward and keeps readers on the edge of their seats. The back-and-forth chronology invites us to piece together the puzzle alongside the characters, resulting in an emotional rollercoaster that is both compelling and gripping.

Given its vivid characters and dramatic arcs, I can easily envision this novel translating beautifully to the screen. Additionally, the book concludes with thought-provoking discussion questions that would be fantastic for book clubs, fostering meaningful conversations and insights among readers.

However, I must admit that the conclusion left me feeling somewhat deflated, though I recognize this may simply stem from my personal preferences regarding resolutions. Despite this minor letdown, it certainly hasn’t dissuaded me from seeking out more of Holly Bourne’s works in the future. Her ability to explore complex emotions and diverse experiences will undoubtedly keep me coming back for more.

A really good book.
First book I have read by Holly Bourne & will certainly read more!
Thanks for the opportunity to read & review it.

This books was so beyond what I thought. A friendship and meet up for a birth shower? Perhaps a few domestic drama genre themes? Yes I suppose so. But it was so much more. I've recently learnt a whole lot more about motherhood or lack of it. About being a mum and not. And this book has it all about grief and loss and trying to be who you dreamt of but things not turning out that way. All things mother and woman and friendship. And this book has it all. And more. And it's so honest and so raw.
It's got all the thing I wanted from the blurb still though. A different set of characters with flaws who I can relate and emphasise with every step of the way. And could see how these friends were dealing with so much in their own lives. To bring all that together and put your own sh* aside can sometimes be hard. There is compromise jn relationships. Sometimes your needed more than you need people. But... the scales can quickly swing the other way..and that is friendship,love,support. Real.
This book showed all this.

The Little Women have been friends since they met at university. By each other’s sides through thick and thin but now life seems to be testing their friendship. Now they are preparing for Nicki’s baby shower which will bring them back together. Except they are all preoccupied with their own lives, and maybe the baby shower will show them just how far apart they have grown?
Nicki is due to give birth - husband Matt is helping her best friend give her the baby shower of dreams, but Nicki is hot, she is huge and she is scared of what’s to come.
Charlotte is dealing with her own fertility journey and wants to give Nicki all the things she could possibly dream of.
Steffi doesn’t want children and is on the cusp of a career breakthrough.
Lauren has a nine month old baby - but is a baby shower the best place for honest stories of childbirth and the reality of sleep deprivation?

I don’t think this book was what I was expecting but I found myself so immersed in the characters and their lives - I found myself able to understand and empathise each of them. Which is really rare. I liked them all for their own personalities. It’s nostalgic, relatable, funny & very sad.
This book also features one of the most honest and raw depictions of childbirth, birth trauma and new motherhood I’ve ever read. All the bits we aren’t supposed to talk about, the things that you don’t read about in a novel. I found it quite emotional to read having gone through something similar.

A really great book.

Thanks to my teenage daughter, I had already read and enjoyed a few of Holly's YA books. This book, written for adults, is in a different league though. It recounts the story of a baby shower that goes very wrong. Told alternately through the perspectives of the four main characters, I loved the way it was possible to simultaneously empathise with and dislike each of them. I had the most empathy for Lauren and thought her character was very relatable. There is so much unspoken truth about motherhood in this book, things that most mothers do not dare to say out loud, but need to be said.
Dark, gripping and so well written, this is an astoundingly brilliant read.
With grateful thanks to Hodder & Stoughton, Holly Bourne and NetGalley for my advance copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a brilliant read, I could not put it down!

The story centers around a group of women in their 30s who have been friends since University. They are getting together for a baby shower that ends in disaster. The story flicks between each friend and also delves into there past.

I really resonated with the characters, being a similar age and currently experiencing one of the characters issues. I enjoyed this one a lot.

Skimmed the last third of this… just wanted it to end.
It’s well written and intriguing but it’s mostly women being horrible. To each other. About each other. To their partners.

Yes, it makes some important points, most notably that having a baby is hard and post-natal depression is a serious matter. That being pregnant can be hard. That not being able to get pregnant is hard. That not wanting to be pregnant can be hard. But basically most of that is hard because these women judge each other and are horrid to each other.

I only persevered to see what happened.

Holly Bourne has a knack for creating instantly believable characters and I was able to keep each of the women straight in my head immediately, no small feat when reading an ensemble story like this one. There's a streak of humour through the book and I loved the twist however I felt the overall story was a little light to be considered truly crime fiction.

Holly Bourne's latest novel, So Thrilled for You is a great thriller to kick off 2025.

Centred around a baby shower set during a suffocating heatwave, four friends who met at university are coming together but not everything seems to be as you would expect. Cupcakes and presents are the last things on anyones minds.

From the start we know that there's a fire at the baby shower with the fantastic first line, 'The flames take the vulva pinata immediately,' and from there the reader delves into the lives of each of the four friends - Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi from the present and the past when they were at university. This intense, thrilling novel not only looks at the secrets we hide to appear perfect but also looks at motherhood and complex friendships from all angles.

Holly Bourne peels back the layers that make each of the friends to show the reader that what we see on the surface, and how they are viewed by their friends is definitely not how their lives are.

Twists and turns are aplenty, and I had a few late nights as I could not put down the book!

A great read, and thank you Netgalley for the ebook version of this book!

I wasn’t sure what I would make of this book as I am totally the wrong age group for it. However, I could not put it down. There is a “who done it” side to it with questions from the police but the book is mainly about the relationship between the “little women” who have been friends since college. Their characters are very well depicted. The story takes place at a very much “over the top” baby shower during a heatwave. It is so easy to give spoilers to this story including commenting on the note at the end of the book from the author and so I will just say thank you Netgalley for giving me the chance to read and review this book.

I don’t think I was expecting what I ended up reading. This was a very raw and deep look into motherhood and the choices each of the characters made in regards to it. Very well written and a heart-felt read

There were so many relatable moments here but also moments that shocked and surprised me, very compelling read overall.

This book was a very raw read exploring the differing perspectives and experiences of women around having and wearing children. Cleverly written, it is centred around a friendship group, The Little Women and significant, confronting events at Nicki's baby shower. Thanks to netgalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Although this was a harrowing read, I think it’s such a needed one. Holly Bourne ruthlessly and beautifully describes what it means to be a woman - whether a mother or not - in a patriarchal society that cages us all. A must read.

This book truly packed a punch. I love how the story began with us getting to know each of the character's and their perspectives really added to my developing opinions of them all. I found the premise to me quite unique and I didn't really know what to expect, but the narrative felt more than just finding out what happened, but watching the journeys experienced by each of the characters.

Bourne's writing style is super descriptive, and she excellently tells a story. This book was packed full of explanations, situations and experiences that made me warm to some characters and repel away from others.

I want to leave all else as a surprise but it was a great read.

This is an in-depth story told by four female friends from university, who are reuniting to celebrate Nicki’s baby shower. An exaggerated reflection of professional career women in their thirties – Nicki, heavily pregnant, is sweltering in the heat wave, with Charlotte avidly organising the most extravagant baby shower. Lauren struggling with her baby’s demands and lack of sleep. Only Steffi seems to have got her act together, with her flourishing literart business on the verge of success. Though she feels judged by the others for wanting to remain childless.

Though slow at first, the book slightly gathers pace as the friends’ stories unfold. Character driven, the women are well described, with all their complexities brought alive by expert descriptions and dialogue.

The story is about friendships and how they evolve through different stages. Although well written, I felt that some impact was lost as each of the friends go into great detail and depth about their problems and issues in separate chapters. The alternating going backwards and forwards resulting in a slower paced story.

Absolutely brilliant! I loved So Thrilled For You from beginning to end (I genuinely did 'Enjoy Every Moment'). A searing, honest portrayal of some of the many different aspects of motherhood. Every character was superbly developed, with their own fears, dreams and singular worldview, which often lead to them misinterpreting the actions of the other women. While I was drawn to some characters more than others, I enjoyed all four of the viewpoints, empathising with different aspects of their lives. The threads of the story came together in a dramatic and satisfying conclusion. I will be recommending this to everyone I know.

I enjoy a lot of books, but contemporary novels about female friendship have been giving me hours of reading pleasure over the last few years. This new book from Holly Bourne follows four university friends - now in their 30s and pulling in different directions - and the new tensions and old resentments that bubble to the surface at a baby shower in the sweltering July heat.

The really interesting thing about this book is that in the same vein as Big Little Lies, it plays out like a thriller. It kicks offs as a transcript from a police interview, which are then interspersed throughout the narrative. They help build the full story, which moves from past to present, stretching back as far as university when the women met, to present day after a fire breaks out at the baby shower. A fire the police think is arson.

The characters are really well-drawn. Nicki is expecting her first baby and, at the baby shower, navigates tension with an old work colleague. Lauren has a nine-month-old, and is finding motherhood much harder than she expected (or believed from social media), Her birth experience has also left her with PTSD. Steffi is happily child-free, but is dealing with judgement from her friends, who talk about her behind her back. She has just opened her own publishing company, and her latest debut discovery is garnering interest from a Reese Witherspoon-like powerhouse. And, finally, Charlotte, the baby shower's host, has been struggling with fertility issues and yearns to have the family she's dreamed about. Any one of these women had the potential to boil over and start the fire...at least, that's what the police think.

It makes absolute sense that the author is a new mother. With respect and empathy, she very accurately describes the fear, anxiety and self-doubt that comes with the role. There is really specific, minute detail on things like pregnancy, breastfeeding, recovery from birth, navigating altered relationships with your partner, and body issues, and it's so authentic and true-to-life, that parts of it made me sweat! But the book is also balanced with humour and heartache, as well as with an interesting discussion of the toxic positivity that exists around new motherhood, and the way society can gaslight new mothers.

So Thrilled for You is so compelling; an utterly engaging page-turner I found hard to put down. My only complaint is the tightly-wrapped and neat bow put on the story at the end. I think I'd be one to hold a grudge!

When I picked up So Thrilled For You, I was expecting drama, laughs, and maybe a touch of tension—but Holly Bourne delivered so much more. This book is a whip-smart exploration of female friendship, jealousy, societal expectations, and the unspoken pressures women face. It’s equal parts darkly funny and gut-wrenchingly relatable. And it all builds to an explosive and unexpected climax (literally).

What I loved most was how Bourne masterfully captures the messy complexity of friendship. These characters are flawed and self-absorbed, yet painfully real. One minute, I was nodding along with their struggles, the next I was rolling my eyes and sneering at their actions. But that’s what makes them so human—they’re walking contradictions, just like the rest of us.

The climax took me by surprise and the book left me thinking about the ways we perform friendship and the silent judgments we pass on each other. And while the baby shower from hell is the dramatic centrepiece, the real heart of the book lies in the raw honesty of its characters and their relationships.

If you love a story that’s unafraid to delve into the darker, unspoken sides of life and friendship while still delivering plenty of humour, this one’s for you.