Nina Dean has arrived at her early thirties as a successful food writer with loving friends and family, plus a new home and neighbourhood. When she meets Max, a beguiling romantic hero who tells her on date one that he's going to marry her, it feels like all is going to plan.
A new relationship couldn't have come at a better time - her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone's moving to the suburbs. There's no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who's caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.
Dolly Alderton's debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.
Review: Oh I loved this book right from the word go. I loved the double meaning of the title and I really felt like I could relate to Nina and her struggles in life in general and in particular in the online dating world.
This book highlights the importance of having a support network around you. Whether that group is made up of family, or chose family or even a combination of both having someone you can call when a date goes badly, having someone there to be your plus one at a disastrous hen do or having someone there when you have to be there for your family is so important.
Nina also really makes me very very happy that I am not currently involved in the world on online dating. Her dating life is seriously complex and it takes her and her friends to decipher what the hell they should do next after a move has been made. It made me exhausted just reading about it and also reminded me of how infuriating it is to be ghosted in any way shape or form.
This book also touches on the issues of dementia and Alzheimers in a loved on. I think this writer did and incredible job of building that into Nina's story and this gives us the other side of ghosts, when a loved one's memories and your shared history becomes a ghosts. It comes and goes and you never know when you're going to see their true self from one minute to the next. This is an incredibly painful experience and reading about it through Nina and her life was so easy to relate to and I think Dolly Alderton really does highlight the helplessness one feels in that situation.
Aside from the pain in the book and the drama there is also a whole lot of heart and humour. I loved the shared jokes that Nina has with her friends. A particularly hilarious scene for me was where Nina is at a hen do and references the fact that fizz is only called fizz in a room full of women who secretly hate each other. I need that on a travel champagne flute now! I love the way Dolly Alderton has with words. Her writing is truly inspiring and this novel really does have it all!
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