A baby shower that culminates in a wildfire. Who, or what, is responsible? Will one of the women attending the baby shower be charged with arson?
From start to finish this was one of those books that felt divisive. You’ll fall into the camp of one of the women, but it’s so hard to say which one.
Lauren, Sheffield, Nicki and Charlotte have been friends since university. They’ve shared so many moments but as they move into their thirties it’s the issue of motherhood that proves to be a tricky one for them to navigate. Nicki is about to give birth and her over-achiever friend Charlotte - though desperate for a baby of her own - is organising it. Everything is mapped out with military precision and each of the women has their own reason for dreading the event.
The actual party felt like it dragged rather. There’s only so much joy to be had out of reading about the countless animal-festooned baby outfits someone can open. Far more fun was reading about the background of the assembled party guests and trying to work out which of them might have been responsible for the awful outcome of the party.
Perpetuating the motherhood myth may well be the way life continues. When it goes wrong or when you acknowledge many of the awful moments involved, nobody in their right mind would sign up for it. There were more than one or two knowing nods as I read about Lauren’s experience, and it really did make me laugh out loud at some moments.
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review this before publication.

Friendship groups are complicated and beautiful and chaotic and this book covers so many aspects of the inner politics within them, the jealousy, the secrets, the misunderstandings and the threads of love that bind them all together.
Though set at a baby shower, and certainly covering many graphic realities of pregnancy, birthing and newborn sleep deprivation, it is ultimately more than just about motherhood. I thought the characters were really well written, often to the point where you love to hate them at times, and I could certainly relate to the traumas Lauren suffered with feeling so alien in the depths of postnatal depression and utter exhaustion. The "who done it" aspect of the plot was intriguing and I particularly enjoyed the police interview snippets each chapter featured.
A gritty and superb read

Compellingly written contemporary thriller/drama that will ring true with readers who like Sally Rooney. The narrative pace is good, and Bourne knows how to keep the reader hooked. An easy and satisfying read. Recommended.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars (just) This book started well but lost its way a bit at the baby shower. It was hard to like any of the characters and the men in this book were totally useless or annoying.

Aside from that (!) it was overall enjoyable to read. I liked the different pov chapters especially Charlotte and Lauren. I thought the author did a fantastic job of describing how Lauren felt and maybe this made the book resonate with me more as I have 100% been in her shoes.

The last chapter seemed implausible given what happened at the end of the shower but it did round things off well

Every time Holly Bourne writes a book, it's her best one yet. So Thrilled For You is an addictive novel about the friendship of four women and how the topic of motherhood impacts them all individually and as a unit. Highly relatable, hugely important and executed to perfection. I am surprised no one has beaten Bourne to writing this much-needed novel and I cannot wait to see what she does next.

This book blew my mind, it's utterly fantastic! A raw and brutally honest depiction of female friendships and motherhood. And what an opener! A pinatta of a vulva on fire 🔥 🫣

I devoured it from start to finish. This was my first foray into Holly Bournes writing and I'm super excited to read through her back catalogue. The story is told through the pov of each friend. I really enjoyed this and the inner monologue of each friend. I thought the topics particularly post natal depression and infertility were excellently written. There was plenty of drama but the important topics weren't over dramatised. I found them to be real and relatable. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book!

Huge thank you for the opportunity to read and review!

So Thrilled For You follows a group of friends and focuses on their experiences of motherhood. The central event bringing the friends together is Nicki's baby shower organised within an inch of its life by the earnest and well-meaning Charlotte. But out in the countryside during a particularly hot summer, a gender reveal pyrotechnic device (meant to be an exciting surprise for Nicki) causes a fire and the destruction of Nicki's parents' dream home.

Alongside some hilarious and heart-breaking insights on motherhood, post-partum depression, and infertility there is also a whodunnit as each of the women is interviewed by police to find out how the fire started and whether it was truly an accident.

I rarely laugh out loud when reading but I genuinely laughed and nearly cried as I recognised myself in Lauren and Steffi being someone who was convinced she would be child free only to have a child and suffer post-partum depression. Bourne captured how I felt both pre and post baby expertly to the point, I had to question whether she had somehow managed to hack my mind and steal my thoughts straight out!

This book is so relatable, it's funny too but importantly (for me at least) it is also incredibly well written and well observed. I read this ARC right at the end of 2024 and it is without question my favourite read of 2024. I can't wait for more people to discover this book in 2025.

Thank you so much to the publisher for sending me an ARC for free for the purposes of review.

Oh wow, I did not see that coming! I didn't even consider it an option!
This book is a bit of a wake up call for anyone wanting to be a mother, but it's so important. It made me realise just how important it is for us all to be a little more honest and accepting of the reality of motherhood and childbirth. Yes, the truth is terrifying, but I'd rather be prepared than stuck struggling to survive whilst I try to uphold this 'cool mum' persona as one of the characters puts it. It's so easy to look on social media with only the highest of the highs (that's if they aren't fabricated) and make that your goal. This book shows the importance of not doing that. It was raw, funny, emotional and the end was such a shock that I've been telling everyone about it since I finished. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

So Thrilled For You is the new novel from Holly Bourne. I actually think this is the first of hers that I’ve read and boy did I pick a good one to start with!
Part-whodunnit, part-juicy-page-turner, I think this is going to be incredibly popular.

Four best friends since University; Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte, and Steffi, have defied the odds and remained close pals into their thirties. Relationships, jobs, family issues; they’ve been there for each other through it all, and now it’s time for babies.

Lauren has just had her son, and is desperately struggling with motherhood. Charlotte is dealing with infertility, Steffi is very happily child-free, and Nicki is having a bandaid baby with her husband.

Nicki’s baby shower brings the foursome together on the hottest weekend of the year; a heatwave in the UK. Tensions rise in the group, and somehow, a fire breaks out, causing catastrophic damage. The police think it was arson. They’re all suspects; each woman was at complete breaking point, but who did it?

I FLEW through this; it’s unputdownable.
The layout of the book is clever; flashbacks to the baby shower, and further back in time again to give us context for the resentments the friends are brewing, and then forward to the four women being questioned individually in the police station. Several timelines don’t always work well but it does here.

A huge element of this book is a focus on the realities of motherhood; I think if you’re still dealing with trauma related to childbirth, you may find this a hard read. I definitely felt my heartbeat quicken, especially during Lauren’s sections. Equally, if you’re living with infertility this may be a difficult read for you too.

Bourne has managed to write a contemporary drama that’s both highly entertaining and simultaneously highlights serious issues affecting women everywhere.
She developed these characters so well that I felt I knew them and could empathise with their various perspectives, even if they were a bit unhinged at times!

I highly recommend this one!

Available to buy on the 16th of January.
With many thanks @hodderbooks for my early copy. All opinions are my own, as always.

You know that a dreadful fire has happened – but not how it started or what the outcome is – and the story unfolds flicking between police interviews, flashbacks to the party, the back stories of the key characters and social media posts.

Each of the four main characters – friends since Uni – have a different relationship with motherhood. I have to say that each of these are written BRILLIANTLY and you can really understand their viewpoints. I might be a mother of four myself, but I completely respect women who are childfree by choice, and can understand that for some people the journey to motherhood is incredibly difficult – and I remember the early days of being a parent which is so very, very hard.

The ways each of the individual woman’s personal journeys intertwine is incredibly cleverly written – and there continue to be surprises throughout the book. I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going on – and the style of writing really keeps the momentum going. The description of the stiflingly hot weather – particularly in the glass box of Nicki’s parents’ grand designs house – is so well written.

Some of the characters are more likeable than others, and as you understand the history you realise why some of the foursome are closer than others, and why some now don’t actually like each other at all. The way everything ties up at the end is clever – and not completely predictable, which is always the sign of a good book.

The opening line, ‘The flames take the vulva pinata immediately’, had me hooked from the outset. Set over a single day in a beautiful glass house in the English countryside, on one of the hottest days of the year, Nicki is celebrating her babyshower with her closest, yet slightly estranged, girlfriends when a fire breaks out, destroying 35 acres of land. We spend the rest of the novel being invited into the minds of each character as the events leading up to the fire unfold.

Holly Bourne’s novel is fast-paced, witty and completely compelling as she presents both the dark and light sides of female friendship and explores how female friendships inevitable change in the face of marriage and motherhood. The triumph of Bourne's novel lies in its relatability and the comfort this brings readers to know that although changes are scary, they’re normal and ultimately inevitable. Through all of the chaos and drama that unfolds, Bourne demonstrates that although girl friendships get a bad wrap, true female friendships are powerful, malleable and unbreakable.

Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university. Now in their thirties, life is pulling them in different directions - but when Charlotte organises the baby shower of hell for pregnant Nicki, the girls are reunited.

This was a heavy one and I expect nothing less from Holly Bourne. She writes life so well and encapsulates exactly how it feels. I myself have never been pregnant or a mother or anything of the kind but yet I still felt all that these women were going through and understood it so well as though I'd experienced it firsthand. Holly Bourne has a special knack for doing that and that is why I continue to read her books, YA or Adult.

I rated this 4 stars!

The baby shower didn’t go up in smoke, but started an inferno.

Mixing gripping narration with social media snippets and interview transcripts, it has all the makings of a thrilling crime story with the emotional devastation of a drama. Holly's recent move into adult fiction has been an absolute slam-dunk in my opinion, with her latest work offering a darkly relatable story that looks under the pristine Instagram representations of womanhood and motherhood to explore the devastating, depressing and difficult inner lives of modern women.

Each character was so perfectly imperfect Steffi making waves in publishing, Lauren adjusting to motherhood and Charlotte obsessively organising the perfect baby shower for Nicki .. and of course Nicki- getting ready for the perfect baby shower. And then Phoebe who they haven’t spoken to in years since the incident. They’re complicated, sometimes downright malicious and unlikeable. but such strong characters who I couldn't help but see parts of myself in.

It had the most perfectly written fear and tension in the most subtle ways, the whole thing mostly taking place in one quiet afternoon with a suffocating heat and slowly ramping up the intensity. Underneath the absolutely brilliant crime plot was a searing statement about womanhood and motherhood, the hatred of mothers and child-free women alike, and a compelling look at how friendships change, evolve and grow over the years. Feminist fiction at it's finest, with a killer crime twist.

These books are my therapy — they’re so healing, validating, and simply stunning pieces of writing.

So Thrilled For You is the perfect title for this novel that explores the many facets and expectations of motherhood. Author Holly Bourne – recently a mother herself as she mentions in the acknowledgments – gives us a group of four friends and through them, the different layers and experiences of motherhood.

Charlotte, Nicki, Steffi and Lauren meet and university and become tight friends. So Thrilled For You is set years later, when they’re in their early 30s and all in different stages of motherhood. The action in the novel takes place at a baby shower, Nicki’s, in fact, as she is heavily pregnant.

The baby shower is thrown for Nicki by Charlotte, who herself is working through infertility issues and attended by Lauren, who brings her baby Woody and Steffi, who very much wants to remain child-free. Each woman represents a different viewpoint of motherhood, the feelings of each are wonderfully detailed and you get a true sense of each perspective.

There are also interspersed chapters of the women being interviewed by the police about the possible arson at the baby shower, which gives So Thrilled For You a secondary crime plot too and really helps drive the pace. Ultimately, this is a fantastic look at how friendships have to adapt as women get older and their priorities change. I’ve always really enjoyed Holly Bourne’s writing style, she is effortlessly insightful and funny and always seems to write what I’m thinking. A great read to kick off the year with!

A really insightful story or motherhood and female friendships. Charlotte, Steffi, Nicki and Lauren are friends from university - the closest of friends then, but life has taken them in different directions since. They meet again at Nicki's babyshower - and all 4 are at very different stages of motherhood. Lauren is struggling to adapt to her life as a mother, Nicki and her husband Matt should be celebrating the upcoming birth of their child but their marriage is crumbling underneath, Charlotte has been through several rounds of fertility treatment to try and have a baby, and Steffi the career woman, who the others resent for her views on motherhood.
So, the tensions between the 4 are simmering underneath, and what better than a steaming hot day to raise tensions to the max and blow apart the years of friendship preceeding this day.
Thrown in to the mix is a police investigation into suspected arson on the day - where the setting off of the baby reveal grenade goes horribly wrong and a fire breaks out. I am not sure the novel needed this thread, and the investigation and conclusion of this actually took away from my enjoyment of the rest of the novel.
But the main thrust of the novel was good - and really opens up the conversation about motherhood and how friendships navigate the issue.

Nicki, Steffi, Charlotte and Lauren have been best friends since University. When Charlotte organises a baby shower for heavily pregnant Nicki, none of them really want to go.

It is one of the hottest summers on record, and they are now in the middle of a sweltering heatwave. Nicki just wants to cool down, and really doesn't want the fuss. In fact. she'd just like to be left alone in peace to mentally prepare herself for the road ahead.

Steffi as much as she loves her friends, has somewhere far more important to be. In fact her career (and business) depends on her being contactable that day. Oh, and she doesn't want Kids. A source of tension between the friends as they try but fail to understand each others viewpoints.

Lauren just wants to sleep, and maybe a baby sitter. A new Mother herself, with a baby that won't sleep and a severe bout of post natal depression and trauma from a complicated birth (that isn't diagnosed until the end of the novel). She is exhausted in every sense of the word.

All Charlotte wants is for the baby shower to go off with a hitch. Which it will, because Charlotte is a meticulous planner. Who is also desperate to be a Mother herself. She plans the day down to the last second, because that's just who she is, but also to distract herself.

She knows that the day is going to be amazing, and talked about for ever. Because as well as a baby shower, the day also has a surprise in store for Nicki, courtesy of Charlotte, and Nicki's husband Matt.

A gender reveal..

Towards the end of the day, when the games have been played, the cupcakes have been devoured and everyone is tired and happy, a gender reveal firework will be set off, with the aim of surprising and delighting.

What could possibly go wrong?

‘So Thrilled For You’ by Holly Bourne is a sharp, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming novel about four women in their early thirties, whose reunion at a baby shower unravels in the midst of a scorching heatwave. Nicki, eight months pregnant, is the center of attention, but the real story lies in the emotional turmoil of her three friends: Steffi, Lauren, and Charlotte. The novel alternates between flashbacks and a police interview, building a gripping tension as the story reveals the complexities of friendship, motherhood, and personal expectations.

The four women - who met at university - are no longer as close as they once were, each now in a different phase of life. Steffi is childfree-by-choice and dedicated to her career, yet feels increasingly alienated as her friends embrace motherhood. Lauren, a new mother, is struggling with the harsh realities of parenthood and feeling isolated from her old life. Charlotte, desperate for a child, is facing the emotional toll of failed IVF attempts, clinging to the hope that manifestation will lead her to motherhood.

Their gathering, meant to celebrate Nicki’s impending arrival, quickly becomes charged with unresolved tensions. The sweltering heat only heightens the sense of discomfort, and as the day unfolds, each woman’s insecurities and frustrations come to the forefront. But when the baby shower is destroyed by a fire — set deliberately — the atmosphere shifts from uncomfortable to downright dangerous, and the narrative is thrust into a tense investigation.

Told through multiple perspectives, the novel uses the structure of police interviews to unravel the mystery of who started the fire. This structure, reminiscent of ‘Big Little Lies’, builds a mounting sense of suspense as each woman’s backstory is revealed through flashbacks. These shifting viewpoints give us insight into the fragile dynamics of their friendship, and as the investigation progresses, suspicions mount, complicating the women’s already strained relationships. The carefully curated facades they’ve built over the years are shattered, revealing deeper truths about the personal pain, jealousy, and unspoken resentments that have been festering underneath their bond.

What makes this novel stand out is its raw portrayal of the realities of motherhood and womanhood. Bourne doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges these women face. Motherhood isn’t depicted as an idyllic, fulfilling journey, but rather a messy, overwhelming, and often isolating experience — especially for those like Lauren, who struggles with the gap between expectation and reality. For Charlotte, the agony of infertility and the pressure of constant disappointment is explored with sensitivity and depth. And for Steffi, the decision to remain childfree is juxtaposed with feelings of alienation, both from society’s expectations and from her friends, who seem to be on entirely different life paths.

While each character is flawed, their struggles feel deeply relatable. Bourne excels at capturing the complexity of female friendships — how love and loyalty can coexist with rivalry and resentment. There’s a palpable sense of these women being both supportive and deeply envious of one another, caught between their shared history and the new lives they’re living. This emotional depth makes it easy to sympathise with all of them, even when their actions seem misguided.

That said, the ending of ‘So Thrilled For You’ might be a bit of a stretch for some readers. The resolution, while satisfying in its own way, feels a little too neat for the complexity of the issues explored. Some might feel that the characters’ final interactions don’t fully reflect the weight of their past mistakes. However, this doesn't take away from the overall impact of the novel.

In summary, ‘So Thrilled For You’ is a gripping and thought-provoking exploration of friendship, motherhood, and the painful realities of adulthood. With its compelling narrative, relatable characters, and emotional depth, it’s a novel that will resonate with anyone who has ever navigated the difficult waters of growing up and growing apart.

A really good read. The story is is set during a baby shower where four friends are all having different experiences related to children and relationship and focuses on the way they cope with their difficulties.Its a great insight into how women cope either having trouble conceiving or the trials of motherhood but can it bring the friends together again especially as an unforseen accident is waiting to happen and who will be found responsible. It's a real page Turneri loved it

It took me a while to get into this book, but by the end I enjoyed it. The characters are all really well written and you really get a sense of them. The dynamics between them all was interesting and the way all aspects of motherhood and how it is perceived and how it feels was really interesting. Overall I would recommend.

This is a compelling and surprisingly gripping story about four university friends, a decade or so down the line, coming together again for a baby shower organised by Charlotte, who is battling with her own fertility problems, for Nicky, only a few weeks away from giving birth. The event is taking place at Nicky’s parents’ house, a modern grand design-type glass house in the countryside on the hottest day of the year. The other two members of the friendship group are Lauren, a new mum with a demanding nine-month old son, and Steffi, single and childless and on the brink of success with her new publishing venture. The characterisations are sharply and sometimes painfully observed - I would challenge most readers not to identify with at least one of the four friends’ experiences, if not more. The intensely and unironically planned details of the baby shower - the ice breakers, games, food and peony wall (for photos) are hilarious, but underpinning it all is a warm story of friendship.

With thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book as an advance copy.