Review by Booklist Review
Grace Adams used to be amazing. She was an award-winning polyglot who once saved a surfer from drowning. Now, though, she's separated from her husband, Ben, and is suffering a complete communication breakdown with her teenage daughter, Lotte. Stuck in a traffic jam on the way to pick up a cake for Lotte's birthday party (a party Grace isn't actually invited to), Grace snaps and abandons her car in the middle of the road. The narrative alternates between present-day Grace, walking across a heat wave struck North London to retrieve the cake and repair her relationship with Lotte; Grace four months earlier, when Lotte's bad behavior comes to a head; and the beginnings of her relationship with Ben. Eventually, the three time lines converge at Lotte's birthday party, and readers learn the heartbreaking family tragedy behind Grace's distress. Several big surprises are beautifully revealed, leaving readers breathless. Equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching, Littlewood's affecting debut will have readers nodding in recognition of Grace's desperation as she struggles to repair her relationship with Lotte and regain a sense of self. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a compelling hook, comparisons to Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and a large print run, expect lots of reader interest.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Littlewood debuts with an uneven perimenopause drama centered on the tempestuous relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Grace is 45 and recently separated from her husband, Ben. Once a gifted translator whose skills made her famous on television (the press called her a "ravishing redhead" and a "cunning linguist"), Grace feels adrift in her life, with diminishing professional prospects and a body that feels like it's "drying up from the inside out." She can't believe her daughter, 15-year-old Lotte, has grown from being the baby on her hip to a distant teenager and something of a TikTok sensation. When Grace finds a sexually suggestive note in the pocket of Lotte's blazer, her anxiety skyrockets. Then Grace learns her daughter has been skipping school. As Lotte pulls further away, Grace goes increasingly off-kilter, embarking on a frenzied, disastrous quest to bring Lotte a birthday cake. The novel employs a nonlinear timeline, with some chapters taking place in the early aughts, when Grace and Ben first met at a polyglot competition. Though the plot can feel undercooked, Littlewood easily captures the grief Grace feels at nearing the end of her reproductive years, and the mother-daughter relationship is similarly well drawn. It's a mixed bag, but Littlewood, like her protagonist, consistently finds the right words. (Sep.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Tales of extraordinary women abound, but the title character of Littlewood's first novel is a seemingly relatable everywoman. The timeline bounces around between Grace's 20s, 30s, and 40s, and the story begins as she spends the day trying to deliver a birthday cake to Lotte, her estranged 16-year-old daughter. She abandons her car in gridlock and starts hoofing it, setting off on a deeply personal pilgrimage. Her journey takes her from the bakery where she ordered the overpriced cake to an incident with the police and other assorted encounters. Grace is obviously troubled, and her journey to her daughter is also one of insight into her own life. Perimenopause rears its head, divorce seems imminent, and unemployment contributes to what appears to be Grace's break with reality, but it is all underscored by the worst tragedy a parent can face. Although the story seems inconsistent at times, it only enhances the surreality that is Grace's life. Despite this, readers will root for her. VERDICT An utterly charming debut, sure to appeal to those who loved Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine or Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.--Stacy Alesi
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman walks across London to deliver a birthday cake for her 16-year-old daughter, reliving the joys and tragedies of the previous decades. Grace Adams is in her mid-40s, late 20s, and mid-30s in this layered novel exploring her past and present relationships with her husband, Ben, and daughter, Lotte. In the present, Grace is trekking across London on a scorching hot day, having abandoned her car to gridlock, refusing to give up on a plan to see a daughter who doesn't want to see her. Simultaneously, we see the Grace of four months ago, a harried, perimenopausal woman convinced she has ruined everything, and the Grace of the earlier 2000s, an award-winning linguist who's landed a lucrative TV gig and has no intention of having children but who becomes a stay-at-home mother in crisis. Ben is a man who has filed for divorce, a harried husband grappling with being a dad to an 8-year-old daughter whose mother has disappeared, and a young Ph.D. student desperate to spend more time with an amazing woman he has just met. Lotte is a 15-turning-16-year-old child-woman doing poorly in school, finding social media fame, and challenging the establishment; a young child who adores her mother; and a growing, not-yet-born baby. The relationships between each pair and among all of them together are complex and layered, and Littlewood confronts the effects that aging and trauma, stress, poor decisions, and memories of overheard and unspoken conversations can have on a person's sense of self and their relationships. The result is simultaneously frank, nuanced, and evocative. A gripping story of joy, grief, stress, worry, love at first sight, parenting, and trauma. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
