This was not my favorite book .I found myself losing interest I had to force myself to finish reading it.

I really enjoyed this story about a wide cast of characters whose lives intersect in various ways in London’s Soho district. Mozley plays with a LOT of themes here (and does so successfully IMO): power, wealth, history, agency, ownership, gentrification, sex, what changes and what stays the same, etc. The writing around the characters and Soho itself is where her talent really shines. It’s rare to have this many characters in a story and find them all well formed and interesting, and Mozley accomplishes that here.

This was a dnf for me for sure. I couldn't get into the story or the characters. There were too many characters and I was having a hard time keeping th eir stories straight. I could have focused and pushed through but I really didn't feel like it would have been worth it.

I felt like this book was supposed to be funny but I found it mean sprited towards sex workers. Ironic because I think she was trying to lift up their stories. The writing was clunky and seemed forced.

In a small section of London, the SoHo neighborhood is home to a cast of characters that will definitely provide you with hours of entertainment.

A wealthy heiress with a personal project to rebuild on her owned land. To do this, she must evict renters from all the current buildings. However, the ladies of one of these buildings are resisting. These ladies run their business as well as live in this building and they have built up a very good clientele base and don't want to move. Add to that the local homeless group and a few other local residents and this story has a little something for everyone.

I found characters that I felt empathy for, and some that I couldn't stand. But it was definitely a story that has scenes that will stay with me for a bit.

Readers who like drama or stories that center on city-life and have multiple POV's should pick this one up.

Hot Stew
by Fiona Mozley
Genre: Lit Fiction
Pub Date: 4/20/21

A charming, raw look at London's gentrifying underbelly and the souls who refuse to leave without a fight.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞: Precious and Tabitha are sex workers living and working in SoHo as billionaire-gentrifier Agatha Howard attempts to push them out of their brothel/home and the neighborhood that once was theirs. Their clients and the local homeless population also feature in this fight against the development dreams of the upper crust. They won't go quietly and Agatha won't rest until she gets her way...

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝: From the 2017 Booker Prize shortlisted author of Elmet, Mozley is no stranger to excellent prose. I loved her detailed environmental descriptions and the way she paints a visual in your mind of the world she builds--no pun intended.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐝: I’m not sure I totally agree with her portrayal of sex work, but I’m no expert and it is a nuanced and controversial subject to be sure. I think readers will find the discussions it leads to intriguing and important in addition to the other prevailing topic of gentrification, which Mozley tackles beautifully.

Thank you @algonquinbooks for this gorgeous finished copy in exchange for an honest review.

Read if you:
🏡Live in a major city
🏡Appreciate a sharp social critique
🏡Can handle controversy
🏡Need to step into the charm & grit of foggy London

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Living in Toronto, it’s rare to see properties that have true history behind them. It’s a city where developers eschew historical notices for a slap on the hand after a new high rise has broken ground. So I feel like I am the direct target audience for this gentrification dramedy.

Hot Stew reads like a novelized play, with short chapters of different characters in a Soho neighborhood that are fighting against renovictions. Their lives weave together between the cobblestones and back alleys.

We have actors and sex workers, barmen and hired hands, and the history of how they live and move through the neighborhood. But because we have such a huge cast of characters the reader doesn’t get much time to connect to any of them.

It’s beautifully written and charming in parts but lacks true heroes and villains. I don’t need to extend sympathy with a billionaire raising rent to demolish affordable housing. I don’t sympathize and I won’t. While I believe the intention was to humanize sex workers, most are only cast as background comic relief.

I loved the atmosphere and the chapter dedicated to Cheryl’s hidden hideaway, but the majority of the novel felt two dimensional and heavy.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for providing me with an ARC to provide an honest review. The paperback release of Hot Stew comes out April 12th.

This quirky novel is not for everyone. I found most of the novel entertaining and an interesting enough read for what it was. Hot Stew was able to examine how fragile London life is for the interconnected characters with the increasing growth of people and capital making it an unstable lifestyle for middle class. It showed the separation between London classes well. The author also explore sexuality, gender politics, and classism with a sprinkling of, of course, money.

Although not as well reviewed as her previous book, I though this was just as good as that one! Funny and absorbing I almost couldn't put it down! Loved it

Thanks to Algonquin and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I knew that Fiona Mozley was shortlisted for the Booker a year or two back, so I figured she had some chops. This book is one of those large cast of characters in a big city kind of stories. There are definite heroes and villains, and a few in-betweeners who could go either way. Basically, a bunch of character studies stitched together into a larger story about Soho and the changes being wrought upon the neighborhood, with a few observations about the haves and the have-nots tossed into the salad for good measure.

The nutmeat of the story centers on two sex workers (actually one is a former sex worker who basically does domestic stuff for the other) and their fight to remain in their home atop the brothel which employs them. Trying to remove them is Agatha, who has, with the help of her mother, edged out her half-sisters from their late gangster father's fortune. Agatha is looking to make bank by tearing down the brothel and its neighbors and replacing it with high end apartments and restaurants. Agatha is drawn almost as a Bond villain, a bit cartoonish for my taste.

There are many, many other players and we go through the book meeting them and seeing how their lives weave in with the other characters'. It's a good enough story, but basically one you have read a version of before. The writing is capable and the character studies are interesting, bit since there are so many characters, we don't get too deep into any of them, which is a little frustrating.

Overall the book is fine, but I don't know that I would seek out Mozley's work in the future.

A rich, illustrative tour through contemporary London, HOT STEW is a literary marvel that proves Mozley is a fantastic writer.

"Hot Stew" was very interesting in that it's about a modern-day brothel, but kept me thinking it was written way back in the day. It takes place in Soho, a neighborhood of London.

There were a lot of characters to keep track of. And this level of detail made me have to go back and reread quite a few chapters. But it's mostly about Precious, a 40-something sex worker who does things on her terms. Richard, one of her clients. And Agatha, a building owner, who wants to evict Precious and her business.

The writing was well done. It just didn't make me want to root for anyone. So my rating is based on whether I'd recommend it to a friend. It's not for everyone.

Soho is a changing neighborhood in London. These days it is home to those who don't have anywhere else to go. There are drug addicts, prostitutes, unemployed and struggling workers. But neighborhoods are ever changing and there are those who think Soho is due for gentrification and a makeover.
Agatha is one of those who want things to change. She is the recipient of a huge fortune from a father she never met, her mother having married an elderly man with a fortune who died during her pregnancy. Agatha owns a building in Soho that with its central location, she believes would be the perfect place for condos. The sticking point is that the inhabitants of her building don't want to leave.

Precious and Tabitha are two of those inhabitants. They are sex workers by choice and this has been their home for many years. They share the building with a group of homeless people and drug addicts in the basement, a restaurant, and other people struggling on the margins of life. They are determined not to be pushed out and Precious starts a protest and movement to fight Agatha. There are other characters. There is a former enforcer for Agatha's father. There is an actor who isn't sure he wants to be one. There is a man pining for his ex-girlfriend who has inherited wealth he tires not to use. There is a struggling magician who makes his living with tawdry tricks in bars and a woman who is so far gone that few notice when she disappears. Together they struggle to maintain their precarious hold on life in the only place they know.

Fiona Mozeley's first novel, Elmet, was a Booker Prize finalist. As in that novel, this second one is concerned with the ideas of ownership of property and what becomes of those pushed out by the constant pursuit of profit. The characters are finely drawn although some are mysterious and remote and the novel raises questions of social justice and the rights of those less blessed with money and power. It also explores the thoughts of those engaged in sex work and whether such work is sometimes a valid choice. This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.

Thanks to Netgalley and Algonquin for the review copy. I really enjoyed the writing, Mozley is a funny writer and the observations made were funny and darkly accurate. I have already purchased her first novel, I want to read more from Mozley!

This book wasn't for me. I can see the value and where others will enjoy it, the writing itself is great. The story would have benefited from more research.

I didn’t realize this was a sequel when I requested it. I spent the first half slightly confused for this reason, but found I wasn’t interested enough to hunt down the first book.

My Highly Caffeinated Thought: With an assortment of diverse characters, this carefully constructed story deals with social, gender, and class issues in a thought-provoking and discernibly clever way.

HOT STEW is a timely and intelligent novel centered around London’s Soho. Mozley creates a cast of characters that on the surface should never have their lives intersect. However, because of one location and a few intersecting relationships, their lives will be touched by each other even if they don’t realize it.

Through the sheer power of her words, the author shines a light on many issues facing society as a whole by not shying away from any difficult subject matters. In fact, Mozley delves into everything from brothels to gentrification to human trafficking to drug use. Not to mention the diversity in age, wealth bracket, sexuality, and cultural background of the characters. The tale told about all those who live in these pages is one with candor and grit.

To be honest, this book was just as eye-opening as it was entertaining. It is a complicated tale chronicling the lives of people who read as real. The world is not a fair place and for many, it is just about making it from one day to another with the hope that there will be some level of contentment within moments had. HOT STEW shares this side of life.

Thank you @algonquinbooks for inviting me to share a review of Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley. Hot Stew is available in bookstores April 20th!

Hot Stew was not exactly what I thought it would be an sadly I think that affected my enjoyment a little bit. What I thought was going to be a novel about a brothel in Soho and the fight of two workers to keep it open, turned out to be a collection of shorter interconnected views from many different people related to the brothel in various ways. And while I enjoyed most of the viewpoints, there were a few that did not keep my interest at all. I kept feeling my interest draw back to Precious and Tabitha, two workers in the brothel, and I did wish to learn more about them and their lives as sex workers.

In the end, I liked most of Hot Stew.
I think I would have liked more of it if I hadn’t wrongly settled myself in for one continuous story rather than the more mentally taxing knitting of various viewpoints.

DNF @ 31%

This was just not working for me. Too many characters, all over the place. I could not get invested with anyone really - other than Precious - but then the story would shift and take ages of stuff I didn’t care about to get back to it. There are too many other things I want to read more, so letting this one go. Probably just a “me” thing - since objectively it seemed fine enough.

Hot Stew is a unique read. The author did a great job of bringing the setting to life. Initially I was drawn in by the relationship between Precious and Tabitha. What I wasn't expecting was to get to know a whole cast of characters. As much as it was interesting to see the different stories unfold I found that I really just wanted to see more from Precious and Tabitha. If I could change anything about the novel that's where I would, less individual stories and more around the central plot.