This was such an easy, pleasurable read, and dare I say, typically Nick Hornby. He has relationships down to a tee, seems to understand both the male and the female side. Don't come to this expecting a detailed literary piece of work, it reads much more like a screenplay, very conversation-led, but that's what makes it such a simple easy read. The only thing that slightly annoyed me was the continuing type of humour that all the characters seemed to have, thus the type that Nick must have which he puts onto his characters. He seems to forget that we are all individuals with each a different sense of humour.

Although the setting of the story is a few years ago leading up to the Brexit referendum (so interesting to hear them all discussing it now we are the other side), one of the themes is very topical - black lives matter. We see the world through the eyes of a twenty something black male, dating a white 40 something female having to face comments about age, race and Brexit opinions. And none of it is flippant, it is dealt with sensitively and with heart.

A recommended read.

Nick Hornby is just one of those authors you have to pick up. I've read all his books to date. I must admit, I'm a bit down the middle with him. Some of his works (About A Boy, A Long A Way Down for example) are some of my favourite ever books. Others, I really didn't like. Just Like You is another one of those gooduns. Full of heart, laughter and emotion. Thanks for the chance to read.

Very good. I think Nick Hornby is an excellent writer, particularly when it comes to relationships, and this novel dug deep into the two main characters and how they came to be together, also what happened next, despite some barriers. It was believable and funny. Recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. It's about a couple who, on paper, shouldn't be together due to differences in age, education and social status. But they seem to work. The book starts just before the Brexit referendum and finishes at the start of 2019. It explores the many and varied views of both the Leave and Remain camps during and after the vote and there are some good discussions about the merits of both between some of the characters. The book also highlights the racism and ignorance experienced by black people, especially young black men.

The book is very well written, as you would expect from Nick Hornby. I'd recommend this book and can't wait for it to be published so others can enjoy it.

Set in the months leading up to the Brexit referendum in 2016, Lucy, a white 42 year old single mother of two, unexpectedly finds love with Joseph, a black 22 year old man of multiple part-time jobs. Just Like You follows the ups and downs of what an interracial relationship with a large age gap is like in a country getting more divided by the week.

I loved Nick Hornby’s early novels - High Fidelity, About a Boy and How to Be Good - but I lost interest starting with A Long Way Down (unfinished) and everything else that followed (Slam, Juliet, Naked) didn’t entice me back. It didn’t help that the screenplays he was writing were for some of the worst movies I’ve ever seen - An Education was an education in patience because it was torture to sit through!

But I decided to revisit Hornby to see if the old magic was still there and initially I was delighted to see that it was. Just Like You is a charming romance novel with an unusual setup and it was sweet to see Lucy and Joseph falling for each other. Some light conflict kept things interesting - Lucy’s drug addict/alcoholic ex showing up to cause trouble, Joseph being hassled by police for the “crime” of being black and in an affluent neighbourhood at night - until around the halfway point when things took a nosedive and never recovered.

The biggest problem is that Hornby doesn’t really have a story. Once Lucy and Joseph get together nothing much really happens. The ex disappears forever, and all that’s left are people’s reactions to the two appearing as a couple which gets repetitive and tiresome after a while. Joseph half-heartedly sees a couple girls and sorta tries making it as a DJ but neither go anywhere or mean anything. Lucy keeps saying things like “When you’re 50 I’ll be 70”. It’s so boring!

And then there’s the Brexit and racial stuff that clogs up most of the second half. I am so done with Brexit - I honestly never want to hear about it ever again, let alone read a novel featuring it prominently, and so having to read page after page of the same tedious arguments for leave/remain was so annoying. The racial angle is part of the reason why Hornby chose to write this book but a lot of the conversations Lucy and Joseph have about race are so contrived - Lucy says something, Joseph misconstrues it in this cliched “what do you mean ‘you people’?” way, and they make up, agreeing once again that Lucy isn’t really racist. No - obviously she’s not, so why does this sort of conversation have to keep happening?? Coupled with the Brexit shite and any enjoyment there was to be had was completely nixed.

Sure, race relations is a relevant topic, particularly in 2020, but Hornby doesn’t have to say about racism beyond it exists and it’s bad. Duh. It got so angsty in the second half of the book that I began to wonder why Lucy and Joseph were even a couple. Joseph gets on well with her kids and there’s obviously a physical attraction between him and Lucy, but the way Joseph kept bringing everything down to race/class made me think they shouldn’t have been a couple in the first place! It also made them less likeable as characters and they weren’t that amazing to start with.

I feel like Hornby really wanted to write a Brexit novel but was also aware that most people are fed up with hearing about Brexit so he got around it by conceiving Just Like You as a parable-esque novel about Brexit with Lucy representing Remain and Joseph representing Exit and taking the form of an appealing contemporary romance novel. Except Brexit and the near-constant banging on about class and race turns a fine romance story into dreary muck. It’s like he aimed for both and fell short twice so he fails at a romance story and he fails at a Brexit novel (even though the latter I’m pretty sure shouldn’t exist).

I’d have liked to have said that Nick Hornby was back to writing great novels like he did when he started out but, like other popular writers hellbent on being taken seriously and “literary”, Hornby sabotages what could have been a decent story firstly by dragging it out for too long without adding anything to justify the length, and then ignoring it altogether and choosing to focus on overbearing politics and ham-fisted social commentary instead.

By the time I got to the uninspired and flat ending, I was just relieved it was over and vowed never to bother with Hornby’s fiction again (his nonfiction Stuff I’ve Been Reading columns, collected in several books, remain the best things he’s written in recent years - if he restarted those, I’d read them, but only them). Just Like You is unfortunately just like poo.

Not having read Nick Hornby's books before I wasnt sure what to expect.
It's basically the story of an older woman and a much younger man. She gets rid of her drug using husband, sees joseph , who is her burcher, and has a bit of a fling with him via baby sitting et al. Once they had got together nothing much seemed to develop.
It's not a book for me, but than you to Net Galley for a review copy.

Nick Hornby at his very best - written with such empathy and style. This is your must read book of 2020.

As someone who has read 'Funny Girl' more times than they can count and adored 'Juliet, Naked', I was really excited to receive the eArc for Nick Hornby's upcoming novel.

The novel starts off strong, giving the reader a clear idea of the two main characters and helping the reader grow fond of them. On the one hand, we have Lucy, a 42 white middle class woman who's head of the English department at a secondary school; she's also a single mom but that has recently come out of an abusive relationship and is keen to start dating again and find a new partner. On the other hand, we have Joseph, a young black 20-something man who lives in Tottenham with his mother and has a 'portfolio lifestyle' to make ends meet while working on his yet-to-develop DJ career.

Considering that Hornby is a white man, I don’t feel that he’s necessarily well suited to write from the perspective of two characters with which he cannot identify, even if starting off with good intentions. The proof is in the pudding as beyond the first quarter of the book, the two key characters remain static: their internal worlds remain simplistic and unexamined, whereas I often got the feeling that the writer relies heavily on existing images and stereotypes from other (if not similar) works of literature, TV or cinema to help the reader picture the characters in action or their interactions with other people. Dialogue sometimes gets stiff and convoluted; in some occasions where it's not clearly stated who's talking, it's tricky to tell if it's Lucy's or Joseph's turn to say something.

Also, no clear answer is given to how this unorthodox but well intentioned relationship works after everything they’ve been through. This is not to suggest that I consider it unlikely, but I was expecting that since the writer chooses to put it in the centre of the narrative, to at least shed some more light into the relationship's inner workings - something more than 'we're taking day by day' for the reader to hold on to.

The question of interracial relationships might seem aligned with the ongoing conversation about Black Lives Matter and structural racism, but with social media and traditional press shedding light to a plethora of fictional reads by black writers who are more likely to give a realistic and accurate accounts of their experience, it’s hard to estimate how well-received Hornby’s story could be.

Some of the other reviewers here suggested that the focus on Brexit is a dated topic, especially considering the BLM movement and COVID-19. As the public conversation will have to come back to it eventually, I disagree but Hornby could have delved a bit deeper and get more specific. Both Lucy and Joseph seem open to hear both sides which is great (and rare!) but the processing of this input feels hastily written.

Usually I am a big fan of a Nick Hornby book but this one fell flat.
Nothing happens that hooks you in. The book kind of bobs along - younger man meets older woman and covers Brexit and Trump’s election.

Thank you to the Author, Publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book really didn't do it for me I'm afraid.
It was boring, I wasn't keen on the writing style and it was just far too political for what I thought was going to be a romantic comedy.
I suppose a clearer description of the book would make sure it went to the correct target audience, which I am obviously not.
It really did seem that the author just wanted to see how "woke" he could actually come across in one book!

Hmmm... I was excited to read a new book by Nick Hornby but sorry, this wasn't my kind of thing really.

I felt that I did engage with the characters but kept waiting for something to happen. It didn't!

Basically this is the story of boy-meets-woman (younger chap, older lady) and just drifts along and then... Well, the book ends. The only reason I kept reading was to discover if anything happened.

The story spans the time period of the Brexit vote and election of Trump, so not many laughs to be had.

As a lover of @nickhornbywriter 's work since the mid 90s I was thrilled to receive an ARC of his new book "Just Like You". Hornby's characters are always deftly constructed and I love that we, the readers, have the implicit characterisation he writes so well; allowing us to let characters unfold rather than explicitly being told what they are like from the offing. The morally-bankrupt and aimless Will Freeman in "About a Boy", the disillusioned Katie Carr in "How to be Good" and commitaphobe Rob Fleming in "High Fidelity" are characters who have stayed with me for decades and I must say that our lead characters in "Just Like You" will have the same lasting impact.

Lucy Fairfax is a 42 year old English teacher (of course this rings true with me as I am 41 and also an English teacher but that's where the similarities end), mother of two sons and separated from her alcoholic cocaine abusing husband Paul. It is is the "calamitous collapse" of her marriage which leads to Joseph, a part-time butcher/ university drop-out/ babysitter/ wannabe DJ who is 22 and black. A relationship commences and Hornby writes about their age-difference in a comedic yet sensitive way; from Joseph's toes curling as Lucy "boogies" to his tracks to Lucy agonising over what her 42 year old backside looks like in comparison to Joseph's previous lovers with "nothing as taut or as smooth as it had been".

It is the early part of the relationship I particularly loved with Lucy's texts to Joseph which make him see punctuation in a whole new light. Punctuation and in particular the apostrophe have become sexy (which I love!) and he pores over her texts which have been written, deleted and re-written as she fights with her conscience on how to say what she wants to say without coming across as desperate and needy. Joseph states "Why using punctuation in a text was sexy, he couldn't say, but he found himself wondering what it would be like to sleep with someone like that."

Hornby captures the zeitgeist of a pre and post-Brexit England, complete with the polarising views of the divided nation who are all given a voice during the course of the book. It is the political backdrop of the referendum which provides crackling dialogue between teachers fighting in the staff room and the dinner party where Joseph informs the middle-class guests exactly how he voted. It is, as Hornby puts it "the conversation that couldn't be avoided".

Hornby covers racial profiling, the police's treatment of Joseph who visits his girlfriend at 10pm and Trump's election adding another dimension to this multi-layered narrative. The issue of race is particularly prevalent as despite Lucy and Joseph initially not appearing concerned with their own respective races, it is the election of Trump and Joseph's anger for what he represents which acts as a trigger for the rest of the action. "He was angry, and he wanted to pick a fight.... This felt personal, in a way that no other political event in his lifetime had."

"Just Like You" is released in September and I urge you to pre-order. It is a stunning read and if you love a book rich with sparkling dialogue and characters you want to gradually unwrap like beautiful presents, it is one for you!

Just Like You by Nick Hornby is a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the 2016 EU referendum and perennial race relations. I love novels that combine big social issues with light comedy, so Just Like You is my literary sweet spot. In fact, in all honesty, I can best compare Hornby to Shakespeare on this front, and it's no coincidence that a production of 'As You Like It' features within the novel.

It may seem audacious for Hornby - a sixty-something white man - to write the perspective of a 22 year old black guy, but then the other narrative voice is a 42 year old white woman. Who does Hornby have least in common with? Who is he less entitled to portray as a fictitious character? Neither, or do the two together neutralise the audacity? As a middle-aged white woman, all I can say is that Hornby nails the voice of a plain speaking, fed-up-with-frivolity Head of English who has had her sanity tested by an alcoholic, drug addict ex-husband. With refreshingly scant physical description, I could picture Lucy perfectly. Joseph represents a life experience much further from my own but why shouldn't any author create this multi-layered, lovable character? I'd bet my bottom Euro that Nick Hornby culture-checked these scenes with young black friends (perhaps of his own sons) - I certainly felt I gained an authentic insight into a side of North London life that I don't otherwise have access to.

But away from the heavy stuff - reading this novel towards the end of a tense corona lockdown in the UK, I laughed like a relieved drain within the first few pages of Just Like You, and then at regular intervals throughout. The dialogue dances and the symbolism sings in sotto voce; the frustratingly unclean break from Europe reflected in Lucy and Joseph's unpredictable relationship as well as their wider cultural dissonance.

I was also impressed that Nick Hornby explores both sides of the Brexit debate: this novel isn't a Remainer's eulogy. The Leave argument is given fairly equal credence with voices represented that have been largely unheard in mainstream culture - the scaffolder, the northerner, the NHS nurse who believed the bus poster. Hornby doesn't abuse his platform by preaching from it; he makes room on it for diverse opinions.

Ultimately, I guess I didn't care that much about the final trajectory of Lucy and Joseph - they're not really the point of Just Like You. And if I have one quibble about this book it would be that more could be made of the societal hypocrisy that middle aged men regularly date women half their age, with few eyelids batted.

But I massively appreciated seeing the world from a different perspective; I enjoyed being plunged into a London I'm only half familiar with (to previous reviewers who don't believe Londoners queue outside a butcher's to spend £100 on meat - yeah, they really do) - and most of all, I luxuriated in laughing out loud, for two days solid, at a thoughtfully and skilfully written novel. I think this is exactly what the world needs right now.

Like most people, I always enjoy one of Nick Hornby's books but I'm afraid I completely lost the plot with this one. Was it to show that a relationship with a 20 year age gap is possible, I'm not quite sure? Certainly things moved very fast from Lucy buying her meat at the butchers where Joseph worked, to having him become her babysitter and shortly after her lover. From thereon it sort of fell into a ditch with lots of time spent on Joseph and his yearning to be a well known disc jockey, this is where you feally felt the age difference, and sadly it all became a bit boring. These middle chapters were really aimed at a younger audience. Again, I wondered what the point of it all was.

I don't know if the relationship between Joseph and Lucy would work for the long haul. I like how Joseph and Lucy know that and do it anyway.
As others have commented, it is a very London-centric story. I don't know anyone personally who could afford to spend £100 on meat. The setting around the Brexit referendum is now dated and the country is in a different space now. I would have pared that back and focused more on the May to September romance and the difficult ex-husband.

I enjoy Nick Hornby books as they do reflect on modern life dilemmas. This book was no exception and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Good on both of them for living for the day and not worrying about the perception of others.

It's been a while since I read a Nick Hornby and oh my goodness, I have no idea why I left it so long. Just Like You is an absolute joy. I settled in from the opening paragraph and didn't want to let go at the final sentence.

#NoSpoilers but it's a cracking story, told in a way only Nick Hornby can.

Highly recommend.

Excellent. Real return to form and familiar territory. Possibly a little breezier than recent Hornbys.

This was different from what I was expecting but it had the Hornby stamp all over it. A detailed character study of two unlikely lovers who break through boundaries to their love. Age, race and class are expertly explored and Hornby's excellent way with words ensures the story is told honestly yet lovingly.

I found it hard to warm to either of our main characters - both were flawed (and rightly so) but I struggled to empathise and connect with them both. Perhaps I am too removed from their way of life to really imagine what it's like to be in their shoes. However, I very much enjoyed the development of the relationship and the exploration of how love isn't always as straight forward as people would have you think. There's often barriers to love and they can't always be overcome.

Just Like You is an age gap romance with a difference - the woman is 20 years older. Now, that shouldn't be that unusual, but there's not many books that focus on this topic without taking a raunchy cougar sort of tone. Just Like You instead took the high road, focusing on real romance not a sad cliche.

However, I did feel like the romance was the least important part of the book. There's so many other issues covered that it almost faded into the background, with the focus instead being on social issues such as sexism, racism, classism, agism... basically near enough every ism is covered within the pages of this book. And that's not a bad thing if it's done well, but instead it felt a bit clunky, and like the author just wanted to tick off a load of boxes to show how diverse and woke they were (other examples include, divorce, the glass ceiling, addiction, and brexit, which sadly was the focus of much of the book - have we not all had enough of it by now!?).

As other reviewers have stated, I can't help but feel that this would work so much better as a film than as a book. As a book, there was a lot of filler, and several sections that just dragged too much for me to enjoy. But turned into a film with a strong cast and director, and the fat trimmed from the screenplay, this could be a winner.

2.5 rounded down to 2.

Disclaimer - I recieved an advance reading from NetGalley and the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way, and all opinions are my own.