Independent.
Adrift.
Anxious.
Loyal.
Kind.
She knows her own mind.
And it’s ok that she’s still figuring it all out, navigating her world without a compass. But life comes with expectations, there are choices to be made and – sometimes – stereotypes to fulfil. So when her best friends’ lives branch away towards marriage and motherhood, leaving the path they’ve always followed together, she starts to question her choices – because life according to Olive looks a little bit different.
Moving, memorable and a mirror for anyone at a crossroads, OLIVE has a little bit of all of us. Told with great warmth and nostalgia, this is a modern tale about the obstacle course of adulthood, milestone decisions and the ‘taboo’ about choosing not to have children.
Review: I was sucked into this book right from the very first page because I loved getting to met Olive and I really identified with her as a character. There were some moments in this book I identified with because I am almost the same age as Olive so I am in the same life stages as her and there were some parts I identified with because they were just so wonderfully British. It really made me miss London and the tube but I still 100% recommend this book.
Olive is not perfect, parts of her personality may comes across to readers as immature, but I liked that we got to see her warts and all. We can all be a bit immature in our own heads when we're scrolling through Instagram and we get that FOMO or just really really want whats that other person has and with Olive we get to feel those thoughts alongside her. I was a little jealous of her, I have to say because she has this amazing career and gets to travel with it. She is just great.
The other thing that really drew me to Olive and her story is that she is at a very similar life stage to me. She has 3 friends from university who are all very different, they love one another and their bond is strong enough to hold them together event though they live very different lives. Cec is just about to give birth, Bea has 3 children, the husband and the house in Surrey and Isla is desperately trying to start a family. I loved the addition of Isla as a character because she brings up the rarely written about issues of endometriosis. She has suffered with endometriosis her whole life and we get to see through her how it affects her life, emotionally and physically and how it affects her relationships with friends and partners.
In this novel we get to explore what happens to a friendship group when people really are moving in different directions, this was so painfully real for me in so many ways, We also get to experience the pros and cons of living alone, the very real pain of FOMO and also what it is like trying to make new friends as an adult. This book made me laugh, it made me cry and I just connected with Olive on a whole other level I didn't think possible. I really loved this book, it is timely and it is real but it is also thoroughly entertaining and I really recommend picking it up now.
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