Piper Nuelle

I found this book in my local TK MAXX store in their book section for only £3.99. The front cover caught my attention with the three gorgeous ladies walking along, clearly having partied hard with the smoking broken car next to them. It had the tag line of ‘You don’t need to grow up to glow up’.

The main character is Ava, a woman who has hit rock bottom and become a newly single parent. She broke up with her husband due to her own issues of trust and is feeling the pressure to provide a good home for her daughter and trying to change to win back the heart of her ex-husband. The story also flits between two other main characters, Grace who is Ava’s twin sister although they are not identical. And Rebeka their best friend from school.

Although Ava is the main character and she is in the first person point of view, you do see and hear from the other two with their own sections and parts in chapters so you can see into their lives but they are written in third person.

Grace being Ava’s sister feels a little lost and ghosted by her sister due to her own husband being best friends with Ava’s ex-husband. But although Grace seemingly has the best life with being a house wife and living the life of luxury she also has her own issues bubbling under the surface. Rebeka also has things going on with an office romance and wanting to make things official but the reality is the boss will never do that.

Due to the girls lives seemingly falling apart they decide to have a ‘hot girl summer’ with them claiming back their lives and being there for one another. But things don’t always go to plan for the girls and they find their hot girl summer turns into a summer of stress, heartbreak and eventually finding out some truths hidden by lies.

At first I didn’t get on with this book. I found the characters to be a little too loud. And although the author gave them believable personalities, the use of the ‘C’ word on most pages became a bit much. I would have preferred it in a way to have it suggested they liked to use certain swear words a lot and use it sometimes, but it was used so freely it became a bit much.

Now I’m no prude, I do use that word sometimes, usually at idiot drivers on the road… but to have it used to describe people in not an angered way but just to almost be descriptive like ‘Oh yeah, so and so over there’ but in the book it’s more like ‘Oh yeah he’s alright the c**t’ type of scenario… I personally just found it a bit much, but someone else may not find it to be so much and be able to look past it from the outset.

But…

Once I got past that and the story evolved I actually found myself enjoying the book and finding that I couldn’t put it down. The characters grew and evolved and it was really great to see. It was also refreshing that they weren’t perfect women too, with flaws, stretch marks and giving up their dreams for someone else which is more common for woman than you think and is very relatable.

Some of the plots I did end up figuring out and I guessed some of the background characters motives. But it still made for an enjoyable read.

I ended up really enjoying this book and would recommend it. It may take a little bit to get used to the authors writing style but once you do it is a good book and I wouldn’t mind reading another one with these characters.

Overall a hard book to get into, but well worth persevering with.

Xo Piper xo