I am sorry, but I don't think I am the target audience for this book, although I love literally fiction and coming-of-age stories.

What I liked:

- The text is simple and understandable

- It's very Sally Rooney-ish, so it will receive praise in similar fan communities

- I kinda understand the background of the heroine and why she is like this, but the author should have said more about it

What I didn't like:

- The heroine is privileged and extremely pretentious. She is that person who thinks it's all about her when a girlfriend of hers talks about her sexuality. Also, she is unemotional and flat, so in my opinion badly written

- The novel is unengaging. I didn't notice the inner conflict or culmination, and I have no idea what the author wanted to say with this story. I was very bored and thought about DNFing because it felt like a waste of time

- It's repetitive. Too many similar sex scenes, without any characters or relationship development

- The love relationship is also flat, as the heroes are emotionally unavailable and I couldn't care for them less.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the free arc.

What a Time to Be Alive is a quiet, introspective novel that captures the intensity of first love, heartbreak, and the struggle to define oneself. Jenny Mustard’s writing is simple yet effective, with moments of sharp insight into identity and belonging. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but there’s beauty in its simplicity, and I found several passages deeply relatable. A thoughtful, understated read.

What A Time To Be Alive follows Sickan who is starting university at Stockholm University. She is twenty-one, friendless and unprepared for intimacy. Sickan meets her first friends but also Abbe who wants her. He could be the one to build a relationship.

To be completely honest, this was not for me. I found the writing style to be quite remote and this just wasn’t to my taste. The actual story just didn’t draw me in and I just wasn’t in to this. I think people who enjoy sad girl literary fiction novels could enjoy this. It was okay.

Beautiful take on young womanhood and all that it entails. I think many women both younger and older will relate and reminisce about this very special poignant time in a women’s life.

Sickan has moved to Stockholm to get away from her school bullies and slightly odd academic parents. She wants to reinvent herself. Initially she tries to do this by fitting in but finds it hard.
When she meets a friend she starts to come out of herself and be a little more real.
I found it was a good exploration of how it feels to not fit in and be desperate to be 'normal'
Not much happens really in terms of plot, it's more about the person.

Siv has academic but neglectful parents and had a difficult childhood. She moves to Stockholm to go to university, becomes Sikkan and restarts her life. She meets Hannah who accepts her as she is, and helps her. This is the story of her time at university, and all her new experiences, and how she learns to negotiate life and other people better.
There are chapters which go back to Siv's childhood experiences, these become more painful to read, and I almost gave up with the book after the last one. This is a big contrast to the joyfulness in the chapters about her life in Stockholm.
I enjoyed the writing style, and the character of Sikkan.

I adored this. I love the backdrop of Stockholm, I think most of these contemporary / millennial / coming of age stories I have read have been based in the UK so it gave a fresh take to the overall story. I loved Sickan, even though she was hopeless and would probably drive me insane if I knew her in real life.

A first person descriptive narrative of a student's life & emotions.
Sadly the writing style was too basic, seemed to be trying to reach Cusk's but didn't get there for me.

I remember my critical view of Jenny Mustard's debut novel, "Okay Days", despite of which I decided to give her second novel a try. And I'm truly glad I did as it was so much more enjoyable.

"What a Time to Be Alive" is an interesting literary exploration of feeling out of place, in one's family or even friendship. The protagonist, Sickan, comes from a decent-on-paper family with a lot of emotional disengagement that seemingly shaped her to disconnect from her feelings and be hyperindependent. Lacking in social skills, she finds herself in many problematic situations and relationships that don't serve her, trying to fit in. Considering the character's background and age, Sickan's actions feel believable and probable. It's one of those novels that if it were a film, you only needed a different music to perceive it as thriller. On the superficial level the events seem quite mundane, typical to one's experience of very early adulthood. But there are bitter and tragic undertones, mostly presented as the protagonist's memories, that make "What a Time to Be Alive" feel quite heavy.

What A Time To Be Alive is a witty and poignant distillation of how it feels to work out who you are when you've left home for the first time.

Sickan grows up in a small town and starting university in Stockholm is a big change for her.
Her new life is what we follow through her own narrative.
I found this to be authentic, contemporary, relevant and relatable.
Mustard’s craft and Sickan’s voice were interesting.
Had this been shorter, I would have enjoyed it slightly more, marvelling at its compactness and quality and substance.

Sican has changed her name from Siv hoping to reinvent herself after moving to Stockholm but eighteen months into her course, she’s still friendless and living in spartan student accommodation, constantly anxious that her peers are laughing at her. She's a child of benign neglect, loved by parents too caught up in their work to pay their daughter the attention needed to raise a child or to notice the bullying she’s subjected to by her schoolmates. With her cultivated slovenliness, Hanna's a very different sort of misfi,t seemingly impervious to what others think of her. An odd sort of friendship begins between these two until eventually Hanna invites Sican to share the palatial, fin de siècle apartment she's inherited. When Sican meets Abbe, she begins a relationship which pushes Hanna to the fringes of her life. Over the year or so the novel spans, Sican learns how to be a lover and a friend, taking steps into an adult life that might be different from the one she'd thought she’d have.
Mustard uses the same understated, gently witty style that worked so well in her debut, Okay Days, conveying Sican’s painful awareness of her social ineptitude with a tenderness that made me want to cheer her small triumphs and ache for her setbacks. The end is brilliantly done, neatly swerving cliché and illustrating how far Sican has come. A quietly accomplished novel: I’m looking forward to Mustard’s third outing.