What a tender book. I liked this book a lot more than I expected. I was looking to read more Irish literary fiction and glad I’ve started off on a good note with Snowflake by Louise Nealon. I recommend this book to any one looking for a heavy-hearted story. If you’re a Sally Rooney fan get this book as soon as you can. I felt so in tune with Debbie and followed her willingly and happily through her world. Thankful for a whole bunch of characters that felt true to themselves.

Goodness I loved this book. Coming of age stories are just my cup of tea - and following Debbie was truly a lovely, albeit dark, experience. I’m so shocked this was a debut, and I can’t wait to see what else the author puts out there!!

The perfect encapsulation of the millennial experience - not just in college, but in life.

I loved Nealon's approach to mental health and many other touch to talk about subjects. I think this could be a great book for anyone interested in coming-of-age stories in the vein of Sally Rooney.

Such a impressive, first novel. Louise Nealon, has a beautiful, lyrical way of writing. The sentences just flow into the chapter etc. Before I knew it, the story was over and I wasn’t ready for it. Debbie lives on a dairy farm, 40 miles from Dublin, with her mother and brother. Her mother is skittish and her brother has a drinking problem. He lives in a caravan behind the family house and has some serious issues. Debbie gets a scholarship to Trinity College and must travel to get school. This is the first time she has gone out of her little bubble. Although wacky, they are her family and she is very comfortable at home. She is torn between the farm and the city life. Feeling out of place at both now. She is also starting to have dreams that are a family trait. This time in her life is so challenging and yet the author writes about it so well. Love, depression, anxiety and the feeling to belong are all addressed. Will Debbie find her way? Will she be able to make friends? Will she be able to keep her demons at bay? I really did feel like I was in Ireland, with Debbie struggling along. The writing is excellent and the characters were so honest.. I am so glad that I was able to read a copy for an honest review. Thank you to Netgalley and Louise Nealon.

A story about a young Irish women who tries to make sense of the world around her as she navigates between the dairy farm, where is born, to the big city life.

The author Louise Nealon beautifully written often humorous story about Debbie who tries to to find out her purpose in life while dealing with a mother who believes that her dreams are prophetic in nature. Her uncle Billy who runs the dairy farm, drinks to much, and prefers to live in a caravan.

A story that speaks to mental illness, consent and suicide addiction.

Louise Nealon's "Snowflake" is a stunning debut novel about Debbie, an 18-year-old girl who is navigating a new life as she moves out of her rural home and into her life at a city college. This story is aching with the trauma and tenderness of a woman on the verge of being pulled in too many directions. I think the characterization is the best part of this story.

Wow! What a beautiful debut. Loved the gorgeous writing and the characters stole my heart. This tender, coming-of-age novel, captures the story of a young Irish woman as she navigates the changes from her rural life to college in the big city. Her dream-obsessed mother and larger-than-life Uncle Billy complete her small family, full of fierce love and experiences of trauma. As Debbie transitions to her new life, she struggles with making friends and finding a place to belong. My love affair with young Irish female authors continues!

And here’s another chaotic family, this time living on a dairy in rural Ireland. Debbie is 18 and headed to college in the city. Taking the bus back and forth from the farm, she struggles with making friends her own age. At home, her flighty mom, who doesn’t know who Debbie’s father is has sunk into alcoholism. Her Uncle Billy lives in a caravan behind the farmhouse. He’s the stable adult in Debbie’s life. Debbie’s life unfolds slowly in the chapters showing how dysfunctional her life is and giving good reasons for Debbie’s challenges in life. She makes a friend in Xanthe, at Trinity College. Luckily, there’s plenty of humor to lighten this sad story.

Apart from some clever wording and turn of phrases, there wasn't much here to make me feel like this one was even set in Ireland, which was one of my primary reasons for requesting it.

I'm not a Sally Rooney fan (yet) - I've only read one of hers and I didn't fawn over it nearly as much as others, so comparisons to Rooney also didn't pull me in. I liked the synopsis and, despite trying to limit the number of Netgalley requests I've made this year, it was compelling enough for me to be interested.

Unfortunately, the plot was not - it was scattered and confusing. I can handle a book that is depressing, but only if I'm really engaged with the characters. I didn't finish this one, and won't be publishing a public review because I just didn't read far enough to justify a negative public rating.

Debbie is a farm girl, raised on a dairy farm in County Kildare in Ireland, who is accepted to study at Trinity College all the way in the big city. She's spent her entire life in the boondocks - a real "culchie" as she jokingly calls herself - milking cows and watching the stars from the top of her beloved uncle's caravan (RV, as we Americans would call it). Her first day in the city, she has massive culture shock, feels like she's incapable of making friends, and spends her days hiding in the toilets because she is too overwhelmed at what's out there.

She commutes back and forth from her family's home, and feels like she's pulled in both directions. Her family at home is by no means normal - her uncle Billy is one of her best friends, a crotchety and hardworking guy with a lot of attitude and a big heart for Debbie. Her mom sleeps most of the day away in her room, "the Tabernacle," and dreams vivid, intense, and oddly psychic dreams that she writes down and pins to her walls. They like to visit the beach together, swim naked in the frigid ocean, and collect shells, the most beautiful of which are displayed in the windowsill of the Tabernacle.

In Dublin, Debbie does manage to make one friend, a girl she met on the very first day of freshers week and who was kind enough to welcome a complete stranger into her life. Xanthe, a beautiful and rich city girl, quickly becomes Debbie's best friend, her unfurnished city apartment above a porn shop becoming Debbie's home away from home on nights when she parties all night long in Dublin's clubs. Xanthe is lovable too, so different from Debbie in many ways, but a kindred spirit nonetheless.

I thought this book was beautiful. From the first few pages, I fell in love with the characters, especially our protagonist Debbie, and the setting. Things happen in this book, yes - loss, grief, mental illness, transitions - but you don't stay with it for the plot, you stay with it for Debbie's personal journey, for the idiosyncratic characters and their antics and growth, too. The comparisons to Sally Rooney are apt - both writers create beautifully rounded, adolescent characters who experience sadness and drunkenness and love and joy and despair in only a way that 21st century Irish
young adults can. I personally liked Nealon's writing more than Rooney's, and I hope to read more of her work in the future.

Thank you to Harper for the ARC via Netgalley!

Excellent quarter-life crisis read perfect for Sally Rooney fans. -It’s about these characters who have these rich, complicated emotions but just the complete inability to express or confront them, so it comes through in this really balanced prose and really measured pacing and peppered in are these outbursts of conflict and these major life events and then they keep trucking on… because they’re Irish.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed this and it’s deserving of the heaps of praise I’ve already seen online!

Snowflake definitely has a spot on my top ten for the year - I loved this coming of age story set in Ireland. I loved the magic and the dreams and the shells, I loved it all. So good.

Debbie was 18 years old and living on her family's dairy farm. She lived a sheltered life and looked forward to moving to a big city. When she is accepted to Trinity College in Dublin, she's thrilled but very nervous. She is so shy that she ends up commuting every day from the farm to college and misses out on the college experience.

Debbie lived on the farm with her mother who always seemed to be on the verge of a mental breakdown and her uncle who lives on the farm in a camping trailer and spends much of his time drunk. Both of them are less than perfect but they both love Debbie and want the best for her. Debbie soon finds out that life in the city wasn't what she thought it would be. She finds the anonymity unsetting plus she is disappointed by her fellow students. She does make a friend and at first Debbie isn't sure how to be a friend because she has no friends at home. She soon begins to understand how wonderful is to have a friend.

I found this book to be very intriguing. It's character based without a lot of action but seeing Debbie's thought process is an everyday adventure. I ended up loving the book and all of the characters. The book made me laugh and it made me cry but it's a book that I won't soon forget and I look forward to future books from this author.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review.

I really enjoyed this coming of age story.
It’s set in Ireland and Debbie White is starting college in the city but lives on a dairy farm miles away.
Debbie has a close relationship to her Uncle Billy who lives in a caravan on their land and has a strained relationship with her mom, who is thought to have mental issues. Her mother is obsessed with dreams..and Debbie is starting to have dreams too… these dreams sometimes precede real happenings that occur after she’s dreamt them.
Debbie is also having a rough transition into college life and in making friends.
I enjoyed this story and the characters!
A story of family, friendship, and madness.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins for the ARC!

I picked up this one at the right time and just flew through it. I would describe it as a more accessible Sally Rooney type of book. The plot flows through almost short story-like chapters. It touches on growing up, making friends, going to university, death, mental health struggles and therapy. It paints a beautiful and heartbreaking picture of this family living on a rural Irish farm. I really loved the characters and found beauty in their lives.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

"Eighteen-year-old Debbie was raised on her family’s rural dairy farm and her life is changing ... " And .. so .. what?

I generally enjoy hard luck stories and the sometimes really broken people who live it. But the writing felt uneven and I had a difficult time getting into the story, it was hard to stay focused on it.

2.25☆

Irish fiction at its best. Unfortunately, that means everyone will be comparing it to Sally Rooney's work but Nealon's is a unique voice and she covers sensitive subject matters both gracefully and realistically. The characters are rich and the story has just the right touch of Irish folklore. This story took turns I never expected but what an engaging ride it was.

I wish I could say something better about this book than the Roddy Doyle blurb on the book cover - “Mad and wonderful. I thought I was reading one thing, then discovered—several times—that I was reading a different, even better thing.” Maybe I can convince you to read it by saying that it is about a disdain for magic, but also an exuberance of magic? That’s not right at all. One skill I’m looking to hone is getting better at writing reviews for books that blow me away. So, yeah. One of the best books I’ve read this year, and so far this year I’ve read 139 books.

Some have compared this novel, which is a contemporary coming-of-age tale, to Sally Rooney’s “Normal People.” It focuses on Debbie White, an eighteen-year-old who lives on a dairy farm with her mentally ill mother, as she begins her life as a commuter student at Trinity College in Dublin. I do see some comparisons between the two novels, but I think that this debut novel is the better of the two.

With that being said, I found this to be an interesting story, with excellent writing and decent character development, but it was somewhat of a difficult read for me — despite the fact that it was a short, quick read. I say “difficult” because when I put it down for a bit, I was not all that eager to pick it back up again. I think that Louise Nealon has written a good book, but not a great one by any stretch.

It is a laudable debut, however, and I think that Nealon has handled rather sad subject matter (mental health issues) in a profound and moving way. I am definitely interested in seeing what she turns out next.

This was a powerful book, telling the story of Debbie White as she moves from her home in rural Ireland to life as a university student in Dublin and navigates between those two worlds. The writing here is terrific, and the characters full realized. This one of the most impactful coming of age stories I've read. Highly recommended!