This was brilliant! My first ever Nick Hornby novel but I'm pleased to see that there are plenty more for me to check out! Loved the topical nature of the book and I found the writing style so engaging. A beautifully authentic read tackling complex issues head on. Would definitely recommend.

I really enjoyed this book which examines a number of cultural aspects in a realistic way without being preachy. It is easy to read and captures the differences between generations around the time of brexit. I have always enjoyed Nick Hornsby books and was grateful to Netgalley to be given opportunity to review this latest offering. Very readable

Just Like You tells the story of Lucy and Joseph. Lucy is 42, separated and mother to two boys. Joseph is 22 and works several part-time jobs, one of which is babysitting. He starts working for Lucy and they become friends. They tell each other about dates they have gone on. And they have a growing attraction for one another. They become more than friends, but both feel self-conscious about their relationship. The age difference, what others will think, the fact that he's black and she's white. This is all set within the context of the EU referendum and Trump's election to the presidency. The world is becoming ever more divided. Despite hurdles that seem to be hard to overcome, Lucy and Joseph prove that love has no logic, that thinking about the future is pointless, and that living for now is what counts. I enjoyed this book but I did not feel particularly connected to Lucy or Joseph, and their relationship felt a little contrived at times. There was a lack of intimacy that made it difficult to believe in their relationship as much as I would have liked to.

2 people separated by age, culture and colour. Can their relationship last ? Will it survive the tests of everyday life? Will they both be able to change and make compromises? Only time will tell....

I read this compulsively. Even though I have loved all the author's previous work it was exciting to be so gripped.

Just Like You is a novel set in 2016 in the run up to the Brexit Referendum. Lucy, a forty-something white woman falls in love with Joseph, her sons’s babysitter and local butcher. He’s a black 22 year-old. Their relationship is unexpected, but the complexity of their emotions was so beautiful to see. I love the North London setting, and the very timely themes, but I didn’t think the ending made sense. Nevertheless, I’m so happy I discovered Nick Hornby’s writing - he has such a good understanding of humanity & relationships and it was a really pleasant read!

I was looking forward to read this, as Nick Hornby has been on my *to read* list for a very long time. Sadly, it has been a very disappointing read. The subject and characters are cliche, stereotypical even. Predictable evolution on both subject and characters. As for the dialogues: really cringeworthy. Lines that I would have expected a teenager to utter and not a 40 something woman. It was very hard to stomach them.

The part I've liked was the Brexit talk that I found rather balanced. An interesting look at all the facets of it and all the people who voted and their motivations.

Thank you for the opportunity to read it!

You can't always chose who you fall in love with and age is just a number right? This novel explores the trails and tribulations of falling in love when you are 2 decades apart in age, come from different backgrounds and different social cultures. As you would expect from Hornby, its a witty novel, with well developed characters (ie they are not perfect). The novel is an honest account of how hard love can be, with many obstacles to overcome, not least that the leading lady is same age as your mother.. All this is gong on with the Brexit saga bubbling in the background. I think it captures the essence of Brexit so well. How it divided a nation,, how it frustrated everyone, and how its been the talk of the nation for the last 3 years. All in all a great novel and I am sure Hornby fans will love it.

Set in 2016 before (and later after) the EU referendum, the story focuses on the relationship between Lucy a 42 yr old teacher, mum of two and soon to be divorcee who is white, and Joseph 22 yr old; aspiring DJ/ Saturday butches/kids football coach who is black. I thought that the book looked at both sides of the argument for and against Brexit and in some cases the ambivalence felt by both the younger and older generation in the run-up to the vote without forcing the author's opinion either way.

Absolutely loved this book from start to finish. Would recommend as a read for fans of Nick Hornby and Nicholas Sparks as it has traditional rom-com elements but it's placed within a time of heightened tensions of race, social class, age, and politics.

I really enjoyed this book about unexpected and difficult love - and a little about Brexit, racism, family, music, books, and a few other things as well.
Nick Hornby is the master of quietly witty dialogue which carries the story remarkably well, assisted by a colourful cast of characters that sends the story in twisted directions along the way.
Hornsby's best work since "High Fidelity".

Nick Hornby is one of those authors I always wanted to read more from. Right after finishing «About a Boy» and «Slam» almost 10 years ago I intended to read his other books, but never got around to pick up anything else by him. Seeing his new novel on NetGalley, «Just Like You», made me incredibly happy! Not only because I knew I was going to love the prose, but also because “tender but also brutally funny” sounded exactly like something I’d love!

At first glance, «Just Like You» seemed like a light-hearted romance, full of funny moments and witty jokes (I love Nick Hornby’s humor!). But after reading further and further, we start to see many other facets of this book and its thought-provoking take on Brexit referendum 2016, racism, and interracial relationship.

Social aspect aside (for now), this is essentially a romance between the two characters no one would have paired together. As you know, I’m not a big fan of romance. It was never the genre that appealed to me, even though I do find some hidden gems (*cough* «Beach Read» *cough*) from time to time.

Nick Hornby writes incredible stories, be it romance or not. He always tries to explore different sides of human nature, of our personalities, and seeing them clash in his books is a very captivating experience.

Reading the blurb, I was expecting a bigger contrast between the two main characters, and yes, the age difference was a big factor, but overall, I don’t think it was the main factor that stood in their way. There was more attention to prejudice and what others might think.

Besides this attention to the differences between the characters, their relationship lacked some tension. And while there were conflicts throughout, their resolution felt too easy (almost too emotionless?) I didn’t want a full-on drama, but I needed a little bit more spank and battle from both of them to truly believe in their feelings.

I haven’t read any books about Brexit so far, but I know that it has become a popular subject in books and understand why some people might be getting tired of it. However, for me, it was a new topic in books and I was interested to see different positions Nick Hornby’s characters took when it came to voting to stay in or leave the EU.

What I found even more interesting was the fact that we couldn’t see Nick Hornby’s opinion on this subject. More often than not authors tend to “pollute” their books with their own opinions which can result in poor characterization or condemnation of one view over another.

In «Just Like You» we had so many different characters, from different age categories, different backgrounds, different financial positions, different races - and it was interesting to see the debate that sparked amongst them.

I’m very torn on this!
On one hand - it’s surprisingly engaging - very readable.
But it’s also fairly lightweight after the relationship is established, and feels like it was often ticking boxes rather than reflecting any kind of reality.
I’m not sure how much Nick Hornby really knows of the inner workings of middle aged white women or young black men, but hey.

This is not one of Nick Hornby's best books. It tells the story of an older woman, white aged 42 and a man, black aged 22. It is also set against a background of the Brexit vote, which I think almost everyone is tired of hearing about.
Some interesting subjects covering racism, class, Brexit and age differences.
Thanks to Netgalley for an A.R.C.

Just Like You. And, probably, me…

I have always loved Nick Hornby. I fell in love with his prose when Fever Pitch came out and was suitably skewered by his analysis of insecure, introspective young men with High Fidelity. I was, of course, charmed by About a Boy.

And, although I feel like these are going to the three books on his tombstone, even his less well known/popular books are, at worst, always readable.

Love Across the Brexit Barricades
I can’t quite decide if this book is going to get him in trouble or not. It certainly tap dances into some pretty heated areas: this is a novel of love across Brexit barricades, splintering society, race. Not too many hot button issues for a white, middle class writer of a certain age to try and tackle.

Except it isn’t really. Because it’s Hornby and he’s just so good at what he does. In Joseph and Lucy he seems to have the only two people in the world prepared to admit that they don’t understand issues and don’t have all, or indeed any, of the answers.

Plot Summary
Lucy is a divorcee in her early 40s with two kids. Head of English at a not particularly good north London comprehensive, she juggles a trying-to-reform alcoholic ex, a good group of friends and some fairly shambolic blind dates with good humour and a resignation that this might be what life has left in store for her.

Into this fairly acceptable world comes Joseph. A 22-year-old man who dreams of a making music while paying for himself through football coaching, a part time job in a leisure centre, a bit of babysitting and tutoring and a Saturday job in the butchers of Lucy’s gentrified area.

With the Brexit referendum looming in the background, these two magnetically attracted people must decide where they stand and whether their race, their income, their education and their very different worlds can be surmounted by love.

Fragmentation
What the novel definitely does do is a fantastic job of demonstrating the divisions within which our society works now.

Joseph and Lucy inhabit different worlds, by dint of race, age and income but – crucially - the flow of information is literally different.

Joseph gets his information from Instagram, chasing rabbit holes of information inaccessible to Lucy.

However, her white, middle class privilege means that both characters are ensconced in their own unintentionally echo chambers. If not comfortably then at least unquestioningly for a big chunk of the novel.

Hornby’s description of Lucy’s awareness of the difference between her generation is very well done and, frankly, scalpel sharp:

“Lucy was beginning to suspect that he might be what the girls at her school would refer to as a ‘fuckboy’, a word she discouraged them from using because of its first four letters but which in all other ways seemed an entirely welcome neologism. There had always been tarts and slags and sluts, and now there were fuckboys, and the contempt with which the girls spat the word out gladdened her heart.”

Astonishing achievement
And yet, possibly its most astonishing achievements as a piece of work devoted to the present is that this is a novel from which anger is absent for the most part.

In fact, possibly the weakest aspect for the reader is that Hornby chooses not to show the arguments even when they do happen. They are reported but we don’t hear the words, we are merely told the fall out and left to decide for ourselves.

For a novel in which race is an enormous factor and at this moment in history, that’s a phenomenal achievement.

Hornby is still the best and most accessible of modern observers. He is razor sharp on the gentrified areas of north London where one normally encounters his characters.

There’s a definite lineage between High Fidelity’s Rob and his DJ ambitions and 22-year-old Jospeh and his tracks. Of course, whereas Rob ran a slightly dilapidated record shop which his partner was a corporate lawyer, here we have a partner who is Head of English at a bog standard comprehensive and a young man with a portfolio career, scratching a living working multiple jobs.

The fact that this makes him better off than his peers at university is one of the quieter and depressing twists of Hornby’s knife.

Witness Joseph’s musical mentor and school friend. Zech.
“Americans used the dollar sign to look flash, but PoundMan sounded cheap, like Poundland. Zech meant it to sound cheap, too. It was, he said, a celebration of Haringey consumer culture.”

Yet, at heart this is a novel of simple things. In a complicated world in which both characters come with baggage, make mistakes, there is a simple message.
“If you’d asked him…what made him happy, he wouldn’t really have understood the relevance of the question. Now he knew the answer: sleeping with Lucy, eating with Lucy, watching T.V. with Lucy. And maybe there was no future in it, but there was a present, and that’s what life consists of.”

Maybe that is something we can all, in this most heated and divided of times, get behind.

Nick Hornby's latest book Just like You is about Lucy who having been married and then divorced meets a young man, named Joseph that she seems to connect to in a way that she doesn't expect, especially as she is 20 years older than him. I've never read one of Hornby's books before but have watched film adaptations which I have enjoyed. Like his other stories this one is about normal people trying to live in the world. I thought this was a timely story as it was one about race, Brexit and where a person fits in society. I enjoyed the introspection of the characters, which is what most people do when faced with tough choices and thought the book was well written. Overall I enjoyed the book and thought the characters likeable and that tough subjects were addressed quite well.

Hornby nails it again. This story captures the follies and shortcomings of romantic partners with too-close-for-comfort accuracy. Cleverly, the characteristics that draw together, and create tension between, Hornby's protagonists are not the obvious ones: Remainer, Leaver; White, Black; Middle-class, working-class. Instead, the witty, sometimes cynical, character studies we are offered move beyond the tick-box categories of a dating app and allow the reader to watch two individuals grow together with increasing honesty and openness. Brief, entertaining and food for thought.

I was really disappointed with this book, perhaps because of my happier memories of past Nick Hornby novels. This one seemed an absolutely average love story set against the backdrop of the Brexit debate, which, for me, failed to ignite much passion in either area. I found the characters rather stereotypical, almost as if the writer had tried to tick as many elements as possible from all boxes of potential social conflict: race, age difference, race, politics etc, but with little conviction or real interest. I found it a rather lacklustre read which struggled to keep me engaged and certainly did not grip. Not his finest work, I think.

Nick Hornby’s latest novel is incredibly culturally relevant, with a healthy dose of humour and tenderness in the mix.

Lucy is a middle class mother of two, and Joseph is a young aspiring DJ, with a part time job in a butchers. They are worlds apart but there’s a spark nonetheless, and Hornby explores their relationship in a very believable way; with incredibly tender highs and relatable lows.

The differences in the way these two characters are written is expertly done, with subtle but authentic differences in language.

There are many political elements to this story- the run up to brexit, racial injustice, class, age differences in relationships- which provide a fascinating snapshot of the UK in 2016 and beyond.

As a long time fan of Nick Hornby, this latest offering did not disappoint. It’s an intelligent, sweet and insightful story and a highly enjoyable read.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book for review.

A comforting and thoughtful book which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The characters are relatable and the story hopeful and real.

A return to form I feel for Nick Hornsby.

I really loved the premise of the book and the fact that it commented on so many difficult and current aspects of society;class/age/gender/race, so openly and honestly.

I felt as if the ending was a bit of a disappointment - a bit too 'happy ending' after looking at all the reasons they shouldn't be together, but I did enjoy the book overall.