REVIEW: So Thrilled For You by Holly Bourne

Blurb:

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.
Under a sweltering hot summer day, tensions rise - and by the end of the evening, nothing will ever be the same. Someone started a fire at the house - and everyone's a suspect...

Is it Steffi, happily child-free but feeling judged by her friends? Is it Charlotte, desperate to conceive and jealous of those who have? Is it Lauren, who is finding motherhood far, far worse than she imagined? Or is it Nicki herself, who never wanted a baby shower anyway?

Review:

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 out from January 16th with Hodder & Stoughton. I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for a review.
This title contains subjects that may be triggering including fertility, pregnancy and miscarriage.

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