DNF @ 17%

I guess I couldn't relate but in reality I just couldn't connect with the characters whatsoever.

Olive by Emma Gannon is the story of the protagonist, Olive who finds herself feeling as though she can no longer relate to her best friends. All of her best friends either become pregnant or are trying to do so. Olive doesn't want kids and knows that she never will, so she finds herself questioning whether she is normal. Everyone she encounters doubts that she will never want kids and they believe it is just a phase that she is in. She and her best friends did everything together when they were in college and her friends seemed to think she would want kids and have them around the same time as they did. Olive finds herself feeling very alone since she has lost her perfect relationship with her longtime boyfriend because he wanted kids. This book tells Olive's story as she struggles to have other people accept her choice to not have kids.

I adored this book so much and I found Olive to be easily relatable. This story was so refreshing because rarely do we have a female protagonist in this situation who stays true to herself once she has decided that she doesn't want kids. I loved how the book addressed the struggles Olive has with getting other people to accept her decision. It hurt me to read her struggles but I felt like it was very realistic how people would respond to a woman who openly says she does not want kids. Overall, I feel like this book should be celebrated as a story about a woman's choice about her body and her life. I highly recommend this book and am giving it 5 stars!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to listen to this audiobook in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are entirely my own and not affected by receiving this as an ARC.

I knew I was right in sticking it out until the end...overall, it was lovely but there were SO many times I wanted to give up because Olive was too annoying and self-absorbed too many times and for too long. A lot of bits felt a bit too cliché or radical but I wonder if maybe I've just been lucky to not have had to deal with judgement from people for being child-free.

I'm glad Olive's story took a bit of a turn to show she dislike kids, she just didn't want them for herself which I knew to be the truth but for a while she came across as someone who really didn't want them because she hated them. Her judgement of other people's kids and life with them were a tad too much at times.

I think everyone should do as they please whether they want kids or not - not everyone wants to procreate and not everyone should and I really sympathise with people who choose not to and are unfortunately judged by that decision but Olive went on about it way too long.

Although I didn't stop reading because I felt like the end would be worth it (and I'm not one to not finish a book), I have a feeling a lot of people might give up around the middle.

I loved the narration though!! Really fab, especially the different voices and accents!

Like Olive, I have been friends with the same 3 girls my whole life and am the only one child free by choice. Yes some reviews have called her selfish or her friends selfish and both are true but when you are friends for all your life it is a different level of friendship, so for me Olive's and her friends voices ring true.

I enjoyed the audiobook reading of this one and think that it enhanced the experience. Plus I am a fan of Emma Gannon's non-fiction works so perhaps I am a fan of her writing style.

I loved this audiobook and the narrator was very good. This is a story of women and friendship, choices and how they effect our and people who love us's lives. Olive tells us how the relationship with her friends from university has changed through years. They are married with kids (or trying to have kids) while she is recently singled because her long time boyfriends wants kids and she doesn't.
It is a multivoiced tale of how friendship evolves from young age into adulthood.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

If you were a fan of HBO's Girls, then this is the book for you!

This book is exactly what I would imagine a revival season of Girls to be like, if it flashed forward to their early/mid thirties. Olive and her group of girlfriends are just as tight knit (and toxic) as Hannah, Marnie and the characters in Girls.

The story follows a group of college friends as they each go through different major life transitions - babies, new jobs, weddings, breakups, fertility struggles, career successes, struggling with a 9-5 etc. The author, Emma Gannon, does an excellent job putting the reader deep into Olive's mind, including sharing some of the less than kind thoughts we have but don't always admit. This made Olive both extremely unlikeable and relatable at the same time.

If you're a thirty-something whose friend group is going through different phases in life, then this is the book for you. And it was so refreshing to read a book with a childfree protagonist.

I will say, I wish we had a bit more time with Dorothy, she was my favorite side character and I wanted MORE!

3.5 Stars, but I rounded up to 4 because I liked the way it ended

This is a story of women and friendship. Olive is looking at her life through the lens of her friends' lives and how their relationships have changed since they shared a house during their university years. All of her friends are married while she is in the midst of a major breakup. Olive has to find her own path to happiness while trying to maintain her friendship with her three best friends. Each of the women in this friend group are incredibly selfish and self-centered. This is the driving force for the plot and leads to an interesting conclusion.

I appreciate Harper Collins giving me an opportunity to read Olive by Emma Gannon for my honest review. I was immediately interested in the synopsis of this book.
"Independent.
Adrift.
Anxious.
Loyal.
Kind.
Knows her own mind.

OLIVE is many things, and it’s ok that she’s still figuring it all out, navigating her world without a compass. But life comes with expectations, there are choices to be made, boxes to tick and – sometimes – stereotypes to fulfil. And when her best friends’ lives start to branch away towards marriage and motherhood, leaving the path they’ve always followed together, Olive starts to question her choices – because life according to Olive looks a little bit different.

Moving, memorable and a mirror for every woman at a crossroads, OLIVE has a little bit of all of us. Told with great warmth and nostalgia, this is a modern tale about the obstacle course of adulthood, milestone decisions and the ‘taboo’ about choosing not to have children."

There wasn't much that I personally could relate to Olive about. We are roughly the same age but while she chose to not have children, I did chose to have children. I do think society makes us think that as women our worth is in finding a husband and producing children. People want to know "why" you don't have kids by a certain age and it must be something medically wrong with you.

While I understand her views on that subject, I felt Olive to be a very selfish character. That would be ok if she learned something but by the end she was still the same. She lost friendships, lied, didn't care about much else than herself, and complained, A LOT.

With that also said, the author made some good points and had a good writing flow. Just because I didn't like this character does not mean I think this author did a bad job at all! I would read something else by her again and I feel like there will be many people who can relate to Olive more than I and will love it!

I loved this book so much olive is sweet Cinnamon roll Who should we protect all Cost This book made me Cry and laugh at the same time Emma cannon is my new Instant buy auther!

I love a well written book with women as the varied, complex people that we are. I am one of those women that chose to have children, as deliberate thought out choice that I went into slowly while resenting expectations that it must be choice, even though it was in fact my choice, I hated the imposition, the assumption that we must all want the same for our lives, or that our happiness is hinged on one common goal, purple or function in society. This book is about that choice and the women that know motherhood is not what they want or choose. For me, the fact that women can a should have this decision for themselves somehow makes my choice also more valid, rather than some default role that had to be fulfilled. Great concept.

The audiobook has a great narration and would be fantastic to listen to in the car.

On one hand this book is quite lighthearted and fun, on the other hand sad and one dimensional. Mostly focuses on the 'want kids/don't want kids' issue rather than anything else in their lives. If you want something serious about choices about having children read something else.
The girls go from loving friends, deeply caring for each other, to people at crossroads in their lives where their decisions seem to take over their whole lives to the point of selfishness. Bea and Cec talk non stop about their pregnancies without a thought for Olive, who doesn't want kids and Isla trying to with IVF. On the other hand, Olive expects them all to stay exactly the same (quite understandably taking the piss out of Cec for monogramming everything after the baby' OAP' and that she chose the name before she'd even conceived and spending £75 on his first muslin!) Olive struggles to get a word in edgeways with them about her break up with Jacob.
Poor Isla, poor Olive. Smug Bea and Cec. So much disappointment with friends as they grow older, growing apart but desperately trying to keep together.
I feel allegiance with people deciding not to have children and, even though I have, I can't stand this over obsession with having kids, pregnancies, massive expense on every possible baby purchase, pretentious and smug parents with perfect homes and kids.
I don't think Olive is selfish and do feel for her in a world where women are expected to have children, but just wish all these girls would stop obsessing about themselves, be more tolerant of each other and get on with other parts of their lives.

A fantastic refreshing heart-warming story!

The story centres Olive, an independent woman in her thirties who is still ‘figuring life out’. Like so many women, Olive feels pressured and judged by society when it comes to making important life choices. When her best friends enter marriage and motherhood, everything begins to change. Life often comes with expectations, and Olive questions her own choices as she walks a different path to others.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it was modern and relatable, and I read it in a matter of days. The plot features Olive and her three best friends as they navigate through life, taking different paths and overcoming their own personal hurdles. I felt such a strong connection to them all and it broke my heart to read each of their own struggles and heartache.

Olive is such a heartfelt story about female friendship and how it changes with age and personal decisions. Adulthood is an obstacle, and this book addresses such a huge number of subjects including marriage, fertility, careers, societal pressures, and the ‘taboo’ of not having children. I admire how Gannon portrays the complexities and uncertainties of growing up so deeply.

I highly recommend this book! I would say that it is highly character driven story and if you prefer a conventional plot, this book will not be for you. I can’t wait to read more from this author.

Thank you to Netgalley for a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.


This story follows the life of Olive Stone, a thirty something woman who has chosen not to have children. I loved the premise of this book as I thought it would be a really interesting topic that I hadn’t read before. I won’t say I disliked this book but I was definitely unwhelemed. I was glad I was listening to the audio version as I don’t know if I would have stuck it out if I was reading a physical copy. The last 3rd of the book I found to be rather repetitive and it seemed to drag on longer than it should have. The characters were all very stereotypical and rather annoying at points. I found many of the conversations between Olive and her friends to be rather unrealistic.


Overall a great idea but poorly executed. That said, I will pick up more books from this author in the future.

This is a book about an incredibly worthy topic from the most unlikable, childish, selfish narrator. Yes, there needs to be more of a discussion about women choosing to be child-free and the social pressures they face. But instead, this is a book about a whiny, self-centered woman who refuses to acknowledge that her friends are going through their own struggles while she wishes she was still a 20-something with no responsibilities. Even the conversations about being child-free are framed around how the main character (who annoyingly goes by "Ol") only reconsiders her stance against having children because her best friends seem happy with kids and her boyfriend broke up with her because of it. There's no reason these women continue to be friends other than their shared past and the "best friends" things they do. As ground women, the overreliance on "we've been friends forever, but have no communication skills" got old.

Add in the questionable ethics she displays in her career (both in terms of professionalism and in terms of using people's struggles to write her articles). It feels a lot like what a high schooler believes being an adult with an adult job would be like. I don't mind unreliable narrators or unlikable narrators, but this falls into the Sex and the City fallacy about what being a writer should be like.

The writing is fine, if not very whiny. And the pop culture references are excessive and somethings factually off. The story tries to hop from present to past, to near past, but the narrator sounds exactly the same and her friends are so indistinguishable that you really can't tell what and when anything is happening.

The long and the short of it is that more conversations should be had about women living their lives independent of the societal pressures of the biological clock of motherhood, but this just ain't the book for that topic of conversation.

Olive is a 30 something, newly single woman struggling to understand her place in the world.

Successful in her career, with a solid friendship group, Olive watches her peers settling down, starting families in there apparently perfect lives and wonders why she lacks a desire to do the same.

I loved how Emma Gannon presents such a mismatched group of friends, demonstrating the various struggles women can face in relationships and motherhood.

Gannon addresses some very real, sometimes difficult topics that are really discussed in literature. Reading this novel brings these topics to the forefront and demonstrates the normalcy of them, breaking some of the taboos surrounding them.

At times, the subject matter and scenarios that occur in Olive felt slightly repetitive and the interactions between friends are slightly unrealistic, leaving me wondering at times whether people actually interact in this way.

However, if you’re a woman looking for a fictional novel exploring self discovery and self acceptance, particularly around the topic of choosing to be childfree, I’d completely recommend this.

If children and family choices are not something that interest you, I’d recommend to pick up something else!

Personally, I would definitely choose to pick up another of Gannon’s novels in the future.

Thank you to @netgalley and @andrewsmcmeel for this audio in exchange for my honest review.

Oh this book made me feel seen! There are not that many books about being child free by choice. I have felt what Olive has felt so many times. Heard what Olive heard. I really appreciated this book and hated to put it down.

Listened to on Audio.

We meet Olive and her friends as they move from school, A levels, to university then out into the world where they work, marry and start to have children. This is where the differences emerge between Olive and her 3 friends.

Olive is very firm in her belief that she does not want babies. She feels that her friends do not quite understand that she wont have babies, that it is inevitable that she will eventually change and have babies. This is the storyline of the book, and it creates distance between the women. This distance is reflected very realistically and memorably in the chat group the friends communicate through. There is one instance where one of the friends is typing on the chat and you are very keenly awaiting the response. Its very realistic - who hasn't been left hanging waiting and watching the … as someone responds? The feelings of guilt, anxiousness and difference are all very keenly highlighted, and it is very realistic and reflects modern day use of chat groups, wots app etc.

The theme being that Olive doesnt want babies, and the response to that by society and worse the reaction of her friends opens up a discussion that child free women are after all quite normal. The book is essentially about love, friends and family. And you dont need to have babies to feel the strength of familial love that Olive feels by the end of the book. Her friends and family create the loving family atmosphere that is possible despite not wanting babies.

I loved the narrator, characters and the friends' relationship was very true to life. Its a fresh, honest and real portrayal of female friendship, and the changes that women encounter in life. Read/Listen/Learn from it and enjoy.

Rating 5/5
#Olive #NetGalley

This book was so not for me. All I kept hearing about is women wanting babies, being mommies, and those women not wanting babies and being so misunderstood by society. I couldn't care less what other women want to do or NOT to do with their bodies; who are those women judging other women who don't want to procreate? This is beyond me. And make a whole book discussing this topic? This just blows my mind. The only thing I agreed with is that a woman who never want to have children has a partner who hopes to become a daddy one day needs to be honest with him and not waste his time so he can end the relationship and find another partner he can build a family with. This is only fair. He shouldn't be blind sighted.

This story is unrealistic, I came across too many stereotypes for my liking, and the friendships did not come across as genuine. The characters were not relatable, one dimensional, and the character Olive was very immature for her age. A real waste of my time.

Thank you Net Galley and Harper Collins for this audio in exchange for my honest review.

OLIVE: Rating total 3.25

OLIVE is a easily digestible novel about a woman named Olive who has decided she wants to be child free, but at every turn is presented with all the ways in which having children is the ‘right’ way to be an adult. She’s had a group of friends since primary school and as they all move forward with their lives, (getting married, buying houses, having babies) Olive doesn’t feel that path is for her. She’s recently broken up with her boyfriend of nine years and doesn’t feel like she can really chat through the breakup with her friends because of all of their issues with their fertility or infertility.

I recently had a discussion about the topic central to this novel. Why are childless women seen as having less going on or less value attached to our existence without children? And with acknowledgment that no one’s pain negates anyone else’s pain, why are women (because let’s face it, men don’t get the same demand of them to become fathers) called selfish when wanting to talk about issues that have nothing to do with becoming a mother?

OLIVE was a quick read (or in my case, a listen) but I never was taken away by the story or characters. I want to really feel for my characters and what I got was more like a fictionalized essay.

NOTE: I was provided an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. Thanks NetGalley!

As a woman in her mid 20s, who's often prodded to settle down or provide a family by strangers and family members, Olive by Emma Gannon is a relatable experience. The pressure to provide a family is strong for both women who do and do not want children. Adult life can be complicated. Everyone working and dealing their own struggles, it can be hard to find time to come together and simply enjoy being alive.

Olive can be very long-winded, judgmental, and lost in her own struggles. She forgets about promises she's told friends. She's lost in her own losses and emotional turmoil to properly support her friends when they also go through hardship. While this makes Olive come across as unlikable at times, I found her actions and thought process to be incredibly realistic. Olive is a complex, flawed person who is trying to find her place in a world which doesn't quite fit her. Learning where you belong is a universal struggle which any reader could identify with. In Olive's case, she is trying to figure out how her life fits in with the narrative of child-rearing. Her lack of interest in having kids creates tension in her relationships, friendships, and how she views the world around her. With some effort to find others who assure her that her life path can be meaningful without kids, Olive begins to truly thrive.

The feeling of sinking away from friendships was a real theme in this book, which defines living in your 20s well. As people begin to figure out who they are and where they see themselves in the world, it's natural for people to drift apart from one another. In some cases, people can reconnect. In other cases, people must learn to cherish memories and say goodbye. This was a very underrated subplot present in Olive, as many reviewers focused on the central themes and plot of the story in their reviews.

This book feels long-winded at times, repeating information that was already presented without adding a great deal of different perspectives or insights. This is meant to support the main thesis of the book, but instead hides some truly beautiful character conversations and internal dialogue that Olive experiences. In addition, the story is so singular in its message of living without children, I couldn't help but think about the amount of women that still do not have access to family planning resources. In the book, Olive has the choice to remain childless. Olive has a relationship with a man for about 9 years and has never once had to worry about access to contraceptives. One of Olive's friends is paying for in vitro fertilization visits. This book, which is set in the United Kingdom, comes across as written in the perspective of the white, upper middle class woman. While the story was fine and it's important to have a variety of stories and perspectives in literature, I would have loved to see someone challenge the idea that being childless isn't always a choice a woman has.