A Love Story for Bewildered Girls: 'Utterly gorgeous' Pandora Sykes

I didn’t particularly enjoy this book due to the storyline and the writing. I found the characters weird/self absorbed and all of them really quite old fashioned in some way or the other, like they’d been taken out of an Austen novel and made gay and bi and put into modern-day Leeds. Another issue I had is that they calling anxiety/depression 'the fear', I don’t get why so many authors struggle to use these words! Eventually, they just started calling it depression, so maybe the term the ‘the fear’ was to show how in denial Violet was (then again I’m just speculating). I really didn't see the friendship between Annie and Violet at all. BUT I did enjoy the approach to sexuality hence why this is getting some points. I have never read a chick lit book with Lesbian and Bisexual characters, especially without it being the forefront of someone's personality.Overall, I do like the intention with this book, it was nice to read about people who weren’t straight for once, truly. I don’t want to be overly harsh just I feel like this book could have been so much more than it was.

I picked this up after hearing it recommended on the High Low podcast. It's so different from anything I've ever read. The characters are all so well written and the story is thoroughly uplifting. I laughed so much but there's a tragic side to it too. It's definitely a book that I'm sure I'll read again in the future, just wonderful!

Thoroughly enjoyed meeting all the characters in this book. Brilliant goodies who I rooted for all along even if they did make some silly mistakes. And the baddies didn't win. Also loved the guy from the corner shop and I want his number.

This book was not what I expected. Judging from the title and the jolly colours and design of the cover, I was expecting a wholesome and entertaining lesbian romance. However, this most certainly was not that.It is a story about 3 women who through one way or another find themselves in increasingly difficult relationships. The three MCs, Grace, Annie and Violet, fall in love, are in seventh heaven for a very brief time, and then quickly become disillusioned with their partners/love interests and the book turns into a rather critical analysis of relationships, in the course of which the main characters learn a lot about self-worth and how to (re-)take control of their own lives.Because it was not at all what I expected when I bought it, I struggled with the first half of this book and frankly didn't enjoy it a lot. In the beginning, I found most of the MCs rather silly. They did grow on me eventually, however, and the more I read, the more I could relate to them so that by the ending I even liked them quite a lot.However, the thing that kept nagging me throughout the entire book was the writing style: I found the general focus of the novel very one-dimensional and the execution both inconsistent and oftentimes volatile, as if the author repeatedly lost the golden thread. This ties in closely with my impression of the writing itself, which to me felt almost crude, not quite refined and often not coherent enough to make for a impactful story.I very much likeed the LGBT representation, though. This was really nicely done, and I hope to see more from the author in the future.

Absorbing, real, charming characters. Life and relationships intermingling in a truthful and real manner - gripping, fun and enjoyable read.