I really enjoyed this book because I am also "good with numbers" and sometimes not so great with people. This book gives those of us hope! I enjoyed the characters, setting, and the plot. Looking forward to reading another book by this author!

The main character Germaine, is billed as quirky and probably somewhere on the spectrum. Given that I have really enjoyed books like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, The Rosie Project, and The Kiss Quotient, I thought I’d enjoy the book more than I actually did. But neither the plot nor the other characters really grabbed my attention, and it took me a while to really figure out what was going on. Unfortunately I just didn’t enjoy reading this book as much as I had hoped.

I was given an advance copy of this book by Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Nice characters. A good flow. A good quick read. A book club comparison to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

The Helpline will have you laughing out loud at times and that is a good thing. It feels good to laugh and smile while reading. The characters and storyline will leave you satisfied.

I recall the description of this book saying something about the main character befriending an older woman who she "meets" on the Senior Citizen Helpline. That was enough for me to want to read this book. I will read books about that type of friendship all day, no matter how cheesy. However, that was just a teensy bit of this plot and the rest of the plot was SO. TEDIOUS. Germaine is likely somewhere on the autism spectrum. Another one of these types of books where someone on the spectrum handles things awkwardly and mucks things up. I've read this type of book before (Rosie Project, Bride Test,). Its really only "funny" for so long before it becomes painful to read about. So Germaine gets herself all mixed up in the Mayor's shady business and has to find a way to fix it. Awkwardness and an abundance of minor characters with no real depth ensue. The dialogue is extremely difficult to follow. The ending is predictable. This is not the story I was hoping for.

Thank you to Katherine Collette, Artia and Netgalley for giving me this book for my honest review.

What a quirky and amazing book The Helpline was. I really enjoyed reading it and loved Germaine. No lie I adored Germaine, she was so funny and I literally was laughing throughout this book! But with saying that this book also got me at my heart as well. There were a few times I completely tested up.

I highly recommend The Helpline by Katherine Collette and look forward to read more from her!

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4.5, as I make a beeline for this Helpline!

You don’t need to call the help line to pick your next book—this quirky, witty debut by an Australian writer is a feel-good summer read. Seriously, this one is a keeper. If you liked Eleanor Oliphant or The Rosie Project, I’m pretty sure you’ll go nuts over this one. Like the main characters in those books, the star here is a person who seems to be on the autism spectrum (Asperger’s, I’m guessing).

The quirk factor is high. Germaine is awkward and weird. She’s a math whiz and a Sudoku champ whose preoccupation with numbers gets her in trouble. She wants to figure out the probability of everything. Even though she acts like a robot, her emotions, of course, do pop up, and usually she doesn’t know what to do with them. Half the time she’s downright obnoxious, but in a quiet way.

Germaine’s job is to answer the questions of old farts who call in on the help line. She’s not too crazy about their mundane and often whiny questions—about their pension checks, for example. The book is about office politics, mostly, and it’s funny, folks. People who weren’t friends get tight, things that couldn’t change just might. Germaine is always at the center of the kerfuffles, but then, the story is being told in first person, so it figures. There’s a villain or two, a love interest, delusion, even suspense. I don’t want to say anything more about the plot. I’ll just say that I laughed, in between admiring how witty and often insightful the author is.

Favorite quotes (oh, so hard to pick just a few):

“…[I] consumed them in an office so quiet I could hear the saliva form in my mouth as I chewed.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Gladys a total of nine times, all the while dabbing her eyes. Nine is a lot of times to say the same thing.”

“Don and I had a bout of quiet thinking time. Then he said he should ‘let me go,’ when I hadn’t even realized he was holding me up.”

“’Relationships between numbers are much simpler than relationships between people,’ I told her.”

“And just like that he was gone. Disappeared, leaving me feeling like the remainder in a long-division equation.”

My very favorite quote (maybe of the whole year):

“My lowest ebb was the day I looked into the eyes of a butcher, elbow deep in pigs’ tails, and winked.”

Complaint Board (seriously, these are minor complaints)

-Would anyone be able to stand her? Face it, Germaine is pretty much a jerk. Yet she has friends who really seem to like her. Is this realistic? She does some really nasty things, sometimes affecting people’s jobs. I don’t think she’d be popular or be easily forgiven in real life. Her fellow characters don’t like her right away; they warm up to her slowly as she starts inadvertently redeeming herself (the warming up happened to this reader, too). So maybe it’s not so far-fetched. And she isn’t being nasty on purpose; she just has OCD and things must be efficient—she doesn’t really consider whether her actions will hurt people. And she doesn’t know when she is being manipulated; she can’t read people. (There! I almost talked myself out of this complaint—that’s how endearing Germaine is!)

-More calls, please! I wish we could have seen Germaine talking to more Helpline callers. She is a real riot in the few calls we do get to witness. Her view of the world is so strange, it would be a kick to hear how she went about trying to help people. But I guess that would be a different book.

-Nah, a kid wouldn’t say that! There’s a 6-year-old who talks about dumbing down his explanations so that everyone can understand. He also comments on the correct use of “literally.” Come on! I don’t care how precocious he is, this isn’t how a kid talks. Luckily, he has a miniscule role in the book, and those were the only two problems.

-Drawings aren’t readable on the Kindle. I had a review copy, though, so the problem might have been fixed by publication date. There are maybe a dozen charts that Germaine draws, and even though I squinted hard, I just couldn’t make them out. Yes, I tried using a larger font, but it didn’t work. Mostly the graphs weren’t dark enough. I really wanted to see them! This isn’t the author’s fault, of course, so she doesn’t get a point subtracted for this one. (Did I just talk about subtracting points? Is Germaine rubbing off on me?)

I struggled with my rating. It’s the old “this is sort of lightweight so does it really deserve a 5?” dilemma. But what do I mean by lightweight exactly? It isn’t full of important themes or big words or complex sentences and ideas, but it’s well written, and it’s a rich character study of an oddball, analytical woman whom your grow to love. And damn, this book was witty and wise and most of all FUNNY. Funny carries a lot of weight; funny will make me dole out a 5. So after much twitching, I decided to round up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I realize that a Complaint Board usually doesn’t appear when there are 5 shining stars, but really, the complaints don’t bother me much. And anyway, it’s only because I’m somewhat OCD that I had to list them in the first place. Bottom line: if I totally love a book, if I’m excited to pick it up every single time, if I don’t want it to end, shouldn’t I give it the highest rating?

I completely loved the About the Author blurb at the end of the book. It says Collette is a writer and a SEWAGE engineer! Wow, now that’s a coveted job!! Wonder what she does exactly. I looked on the author page on Goodreads; there, it says she’s an environmental engineer. I like the title “sewage engineer” way better. Anyone who has the guts and the humor to call herself a sewage engineer is pretty damn cool!

Needless to say, Collette is now on my radar. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. Check out this secret gem!

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

I enjoyed this book very much. Germaine is a delight and a little quirky. There is laugh out loud humor and a heartwarming story. I look forward to more from this author.
Many thanks to Atria Books and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Germaine is let go from her longtime job at an insurance company. Finding herself without many prospects at her age, she takes a job at The Helpline for local senior citizens.

Germaine loves numbers and is befuddled by people. While seeing herself as providing helpful input, others see her as blunt and tactless. She decides to assist the mayor in closing the local senior center to allow an expansion of his golf club. But Germaine soon changes her mind once she meets the senior rebels.

Unfortunately, despite being The Helpline’s core demographic of an older female, I never liked Germaine or the somewhat derivative plot. I did occasionally feel sorry for her being bullied without even catching on. The humor was missing for me too. Overall, not a good tale. Read the much better Eleanor Oliphant or any of the Rosie Project books. 2 stars.

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book was just okay for me. It is a very similar story line to Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. I absolutely HATE comparing books, but for me this was not an original story at all.

This book started off SO slow and I wasn't sure if I would finish it, but I am not a quitter. The writing did not flow and was not cohesive and sometimes if felt like a thought just stopped abruptly. There were little to no descriptive passages and that made this really difficult for me .

The protagonist, Germaine was likeable . It seemed like she had a personality disorder, possibly on the spectrum but that was never revealed. I don't fault the author for that because those labels do not define a character. It was hard reading about her past.

This was not a light read or enjoyable to me. I most likely won't read this author again.

I wanted a copy of this book because of the comparison to Eleanor Oliphant and The Rose Project. I just adored these books so much. However The Helpline was so different with the exception that these protagonists have some major peculiarities.

Germaine is an extremely bright mathematician who ends up losing her job due an issue with her temper. After months of being off work, she takes a job working for the city answering calls from Senior Citizens. Quickly she is recruited by the Mayor and the neighboring golf club to help shut doesn't the senior center which she agrees to.

I don't want to give too much of the plot, but there, because there are a lot of surprises with this story. My first opinion of this story, was I did not like it and Germaine was not endearing at all, unlike Eleanor Oliphant.
However the last third of this book completely redeemed this. Be sure to stick through this one, because the payoff is high. In Germaine's new role, she builds the relationships she never she wanted and she learns to stand up for herself.

This is a solid 3 stars, just because this took so long for this book to redeem itself.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love a book with quirky old people and this one delivered! It was lighthearted but had gravitas as well. I liked the main character's mathy oddball personality and while she made friends and changed along the way, it didn't seem hokey in places where it easily could have.

Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for allowing me to review The Helpline by Katherine Collette.
Germaine is good with numbers but horrible with people. When she is tired from her long term insurance job she ends up answering phones for the city council’s senior helpline. When the mayor calls her into her office for a “special” project involving some “troublesome” members of the senior citizens centre, Germaine starts to learn that work may not be everything.

The Helpline was hit or miss for me. I did not find Germaine to be endearing and that made the storyline drag along for me. Well written and complicated characters, just didn’t completely work for my particular reading tastes.

This was such a feel good story. Although quite unique, I really enjoyed Germaine’s personality and being inside her head to see how she sorted through things. This was heartwarming, interesting, sweet and I would definitely recommend it. Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for the ARC.

Warm, fuzzy, quirky. These are all words to accurately describe this read. I do so love an antisocial heroine.

The Helpline was exactly what I was looking for in an intelligent summer read - quick, charming, and laugh-out-loud funny. I'll always be rooting for the socially awkward protagonist, and The Helpline's Germaine plays the role so perfectly. I'm sure it's been said, but it bears repeating - if you loved Eleanor Oliphant, you must pick up Katherine Collette's The Helpline!

The Helpline by Katherine Collette is a book that is fun and amusing read, and will tug at your heartstrings. Germaine is a character that is reminiscent of Eleanor Oliphant, yet has her own set of quirky behaviours. Also, the side characters are wonderful, especially the group of seniors that befriend Germaine.

This book is such a sweet and lighthearted read. The concept is really enjoyable and the settings of the mayor’s office and a seniors’ centre make for some interesting dynamics. There is so much humour in the writing that it is easy to envision this novel translating to the screen.

Germaine is a perfect main character for the book. Her ability to track and organize the smallest of details is uncanny, yet endearing. If she is given a task, she ensures that every measure is taken to analyze and improve upon it. When she is given the job of answering the seniors’ helpline, Germaine goes through a transformation as she really gets to know her clients.

Books with multiple generations always seem to have an intriguing plot, Germaine becomes friends with her co-workers, the seniors she is trying to help, and even a child she tutors. All of these characters come together to create a meaningful and laugh-out-loud story.

If you are a fan of books that are both funny and down-to-earth, this is one to add to your summer reading list. The characters are wonderful and the writing is quite funny. I look forward to reading what Collette comes up with next.

'm torn about this one. On one hand it's a humourous, enjoyable read which came to a satisfying but not altogether predictable conclusion.
On the other hand, there's a grey area between laughing at the situations the main character finds herself in and just laughing at the character, and I found myself fairly regularly in an uncomfortable part of that grey area.

I love a good quirky character and The Helpline did not disappoint! ⁣⁣
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Germaine is socially clueless, awkward and cringeworthy. She’s sometimes snarky and mostly witty without even being aware of it. On the other side of the scale, reading about others taking advantage of her lack of social awareness is also cringeworthy. You’ll cheer for Germaine and the other eccentric characters as they navigate life’s obstacles. This was a quick, fun, humorous read. 3.5 stars. ⁣⁣
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Thank you @atriabooks for this advance reader in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars

(Review contains spoilers)

THE HELPLINE is a delightful summer read, perfect for a day at the beach. It has just the right balance of humor and heart, with an unintentionally hilarious protagonist at the helm. The secondary characters were just as likable. I especially loved Germaine's relationships with her mother Sharon and Jack. I found her interactions with them to be charming and a great source of humor. The plot lagged just a tiny bit in the middle, but quickly resumed a brisk pace once the plan to save the community center was put into place. My only complaint is with the ending. I was excited at first that Germaine was planning a trip to Japan. I thought it was fitting for her character, as it would be a realistic opportunity for her to learn, grow, and get out of her comfort zone. I was disappointed when she revealed that her real plan was to move in with Jack. This just seemed extremely unlikely given her preference for independence and the short amount of time she'd known Jack. But overall, I found THE HELPLINE to be a funny, quirky, and cute story. Fans of ELEANOR OLIPHANT, THE ROSIE PROJECT, and BRITT-MARIE WAS HERE are also likely to enjoy it.

I received an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.