Read June 28, 2020 – June 29, 2020
I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review and was very excited. I hadn’t heard of the author previously, though now that I look I am learning that she is a distant relative of Jane Austen – HOW EXCITING! I mean… I will take that information with a grain of salt because with a general search there isn’t much information that comes up. That Jane Austen stuff is according to GoodReads so let’s just take it for what it is – PROBABLY BUT MAYBE NOT factual. This book will be available on August 7th…
What is it about?
The title doesn’t give much away, though it really does relate to the core of the novel. This book is about a woman, Hannah, who is married with three school-aged children. She teaches English at a secondary school and, in an effort to find herself, has published an erotic fiction novel under a pseudonym. She is wary about her children finding out and goes through great lengths to protect her privacy in an effort to protect her children’s perception of her. How embarrassing would it be for them if they knew their mom wrote porn?!
The publishing company for Hannah’s erotic novel isn’t keen on the idea of maintaining anonymity and desperately wants her to do some promoting events but Hannah wants her identity to remain unknown. When she gets put up to speak at a panel at the next Sex Convention in London, she has to decide how important the success of her book is to her – does she participate? Can she promote the book in some other way? The book was just a side project and she isn’t sure how much she wants to be associated with the world of sex. Her family needs the money so she’s gonna have to buck up and figure it out.
What does it have?
- Mom Life
- Real World Sexuality
- Marriage Stagnancy
- Finding Yourself
This book is light-hearted and funny, with a punch of real talk. Hannah is narrating the novel and says, “…I think that this might be the biggest secret of all. We’re all faking it and we’re all quietly scared that everyone else has got it all figured out. Maybe if we stopped bullshitting about this stuff then we’d all be a bit more relaxed…”(Faking It). I mean… how true is that on so many levels? Half the time I feel like what I see, at least on the Internet…television…etc etc, is all just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It has to be ok to not be ok; ok to not know the answers to everything; ok to have stretch marks and cellulite and poor fashion sense and struggle to remember which way is east or west. Hannah reminds us that we need to be honest – all of us – in order to normalize imperfection.
Is it worth reading?
I think so… I enjoyed it! I would have enjoyed it more if I could relate to the mothering aspect of it, as a great deal of the novel deals with parent-child relationships and the nest starting to empty. I found it to be an easy read with enough humor to keep me going. If I had to give it a star rating, it would be a 3.7ish and round up to a 4 because there’s no such thing as a .7 of a star! Star ratings are kind of arbitrary though – wtf is 3 or 4 anyway? LOL
Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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Nicolena Reads 