a cute book, but the multiple timelines made it a bit hard to follow

thank you to netgalley and to the publisher for this review copy.

Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood September 5, 2023 Henry Holt & Company
Grace is having a hard time. When the novel begins, she’s late to pick up a Love Island cake she purchased for her daughter’s sixteenth birthday, despite the fact that her daughter is not currently speaking to her. When the traffic becomes unbearable, she abandons her car in the middle of the road and hoofs it. Thus begins Grace’s spiral towards becoming unhinged. We are reeled back in time, four months earlier, when her daughter’s school attendance is scant. A third time period, and arguably the most compelling, goes back further in time when Grace meets her husband through their joined love of language. Grace is a polyglot and currently hosts “Dictionary Corner” a television segment where she teaches viewers a new word. I wish this were a real thing! While at its best, it had some Lessons in Chemistry Vibes, the three timelines were discombobulating and made for an overall choppy read. Thank you to Henry Holt & Company for the advanced review copy.

The Amazing Grace Adams is a book about a woman in her mid-40’s. She knew she used to be amazing! She is fluent in five languages, she looks great than most and she have everything figured out as efficiently as she can managed in the palm of her hands.
Lately, Grace does not feel that amazing anymore. She feels like she is being attack from all corners of life, she feels like she is not seen and was just passing through. Her opinions do not matter, she suddenly becomes clueless and unable to comprehend despite her fluency in many languages. She is losing it! She stresses mostly about her rebellious teen age daughter Lottie and her estranged husband Ben. Where has all the amazing connection between them both have gone?

The storyline is packed. Told in three time lines, which was interesting and I must admit that it can get overwhelming and a little confusing. There were so much going on that its a little bit tricky to track. Reading it might be better rather than listening to the audiobook. The narrator does a great job but with the story line that looks like a shopping cart overflowing with groceries and purchases, its hard to keep the other stories from spilling.

I do love how Grace Adams character was packaged. It is very relatable to every woman who is at the same stage of her life. There is humor and there were facts. Generally, it was just an “okay” read for me. Thank you to Henry Holt via Netgalley and MacMillan Audio for the digital copies both in e-book and audio format in exchange of my honest review.

I very much enjoyed that the characters were polyglots. The timeline was very difficult to follow as each of the 3 separate timelines had flashbacks. This did not work for me. The occasional switch in perspective to Ben was confusing. Hitting readers with 2 major emotional triggers 75% in seems unfair. Due to the latter, I would not recommend this book.

This amazing tale of hope, love grief and life is told in flashbacks of Grace and her husband Bens life and courtship. Throughout her life Grace holds it together, behaves as she should. But on the day of her daughters 16 th birthday Grace finally loses it! I rooted for her throughout the book and had my fingers crossed for a happy ending… sensitively written with heart and courage, this is a book for women that celebrates our strength and grit. Thank you to NetGalley for the electronic copy.

Amazing Grace Adams was a pleasant book to read about a couple falling in love in unusual circumstances and building a family the non-traditional way. It is interesting to read about a young woman --Grace-- who has her whole life in front of her (she speaks fluently 5 foreign languages, she has a strong personality, a good head on her shoulders). She knows from a young age that she does not want to have children; she wants to focus herself solely. And then she meets this guy... Ben. They never really dated, but they spent a steamy night together. And then, Grace's life gets turned upside down when she discovers 5 months later that she is expecting. As a respectable and responsible young adult, she decides to keep the baby and inform Ben, even though she hasn't seen him since that night. Ben, just as responsibly, decides to give this relationship a try, and be a daddy to this unborn child. That's when you think, "Nothing can go wrong, right?" Well, wrong! Anyone's life can go wrong. The reason being that no one has any control over their lives. Fran Littlewood takes on this amazing woman's journey; how hard it is to be a mom, to handle so many things in life: your relationship with the kids, with your husband, trying to juggle a career in the middle of all that chaos, and manage to tackle the constant obstacles, flawlessly.

There is no perfect mom, and sometimes we mess up: we say the wrong thing, we make the wrong decision, we look like the asshole or the bad guy for a greater good, BUT we love our family with every fiber of our being. I recognized myself in Grace Adams, that might be why I enjoyed this book so much. It was a good reminder to give myself a break.

Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for this advanced copy in exchange of my honest opinion.

This book was a rollercoaster ride for me! Grace snaps under stress and just walks away from everything. This whole story takes place in only one day. Her stress mainly comes from her relationships with her teenage daughter and her husband and a huge mistake she made years ago. This book has so many timelines going at once that it was confusing for me. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of this book!

great book and I enjoyed the characters growth. Loved the friends and how this all worked out. I enjoyed the characters journey to finding oneself and others. I hope to read more by this author again.

I really liked this book for about 200 pages, it was witty, sharp and a decent story, then I am not sure what happened. Too far in to give up now, I carried on into the melodramatic and sometimes awkward (not in a good way) storyline.
It is a shame as it was going so well, even though the characters were pretty much all unlikeable, the humour kept me with them, until the last third of the book when I just wanted it to be over.

Grace Adams had at least one amazing quality when she was younger. She could speak five languages and won a competition for Polyglot of the Year, also winning the heart of the young man she defeated by just one point. But now, at the age of 45, her life has imploded. Her teenage daughter, Lotte, is receiving inappropriate messages on social media and won't talk about them, Grace herself has lost two jobs simultaneously, her perimenopausal body is letting her down, and her estranged husband has moved out. But Grace is determined to deliver a birthday cake to Lotte, who now lives with her father, even though she hasn't been invited to her 16th birthday party, and even though she has mindlessly abandoned her car in the middle of the road.

In short, Grace is a mess and, to me, not an endearing one. Yes, she has been through some traumatic events, but her seeming refusal to take any responsibility for her spiraling life makes her unrelatable. The constant time shifts are jarring as well. I found this to be a way more depressing book than I would ever knowingly choose to read (the blurbs are misleading), so it wasn't the right read for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review of this book.

Grace Adams, a divorced middle aged woman is falling apart as she traverses London determined to bring her recently estranged daughter a special cake for her 16th birthday. Using multiple timelines and flashbacks, Littlewood unravels her story of a mother's love.

The publicity for this book is misleading. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about Grace. She wasn't "amazing," just amazed.

The tale of Grace Adams unfolds through alternating chapters, depicting both a significant single day and the preceding years leading up to it. In life, things don't always unfold according to our desires, yet Grace Adams is determined to seize control and fulfill the task she has set for herself on this scorching summer day.

While Grace's proficiency in linguistics only plays a minor part, it serves as the foundation for the entire narrative. What captivated me was the way Littlewood skillfully weaves together Grace's life story and the events of a single day. The convergence of these elements through this remarkable storytelling technique is truly intriguing and creates a captivating narrative.

Where to start with this book? the concept of the book was interesting, I wanted to read about a woman in her 40s trying to figure out who she is and where her life is going after her divorce and the events leading to that, but then it became so boring it took me ages to finish it simply because I really didn't want to read about her anymore!

the writing was decent, but the characters were all so meh and I didn't feel connected to any of them, and I think that was the main reason it took me so long to finish it. also, the whole going back and forth in the timeline stopped working after the midpoint and was just not interesting.

overall, was it the worst book that I have read? No. but would I recommend it to others or pick it up again? Also no!

A big thank you to Netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for providing me with this ARC.

What a nice find. This was the first book I've read from this author and I really enjoyed it. The story was different from anything I've read recently and really captured my attention. It was so well written and the characters were fantastic.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed this book more than I actually did. The jumping timelines made it really hard to follow the flow of the story, which may have been the author's intent - to help the reader get into some of what is going on in Grace's scattered mind - but by the middle of the book I was just over it.

The book had a great premise, but just didn't live up to itself. I think a strong edit to keep a more consistent flow would help it tremendously, because I have a lot of sympathy for Grace, and I'd like to see her win this battle of middle aging. But I lost track of how many different time lines there actually were, and the last 100 pages I really just read to check off the "done" column.

Thank you to Net Galley who provided me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I picked this book up after listening to the author at a virtual netgalley event. I was looking for a fast paced fun read and it met some of that criteria. It is fast paced. I enjoyed the fast and short back and forth between time zones although there were moments it felt like I was jogging to keep up with it! At times it is funny but there is a serious and sad side to the read. I’m always intrigued by the decisions an author makes on what interesting side stories or details to include. In this case it is the fact that the main character is a linguist. It definitely added positively to my reading experience. This read is a social commentary and may make you break out in hives if you are currently raising a teenage daughter!

Thank you to netgalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I was drawn to this because it was compared to Eleanor Oliphant. I acknowledge the attempt at matching the quirkiness of Eleanor was earnest, but the author didn't quite pull it off. Too many jumping timeliness that were confusing to follow, and Grace herself was not a character I cared much about. It seemed to me she created most of her own problems and accepted no responsibility for them at all.
I will say the author has a knack for snappy, razor-sharp dialog; that alone makes me want to give her one more try.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Amazing Grace has been compared to "Bernadette, Eleanor Oliphant, Rosie, Ove..." and I disagree with that comparison. It sets the wrong expectation for this book. Yes, there is a sort of meet cute in the beginning, but this isn't really a humorous book with cranky, but funny characters. It stands on it's own without the comparisons. It is a look at a woman who changed her course in life, then life hit back hard. Very hard. Unequipped to handle the pain and guilt, Grace checks out of her family's and her own life until one day she just snaps. When Grace abandons her car mid-traffic to reach her daughter's 16th birthday party of which she wasn't invited, her mind starts to unspool over her losses and what she wants going forward. It seems like way too much time and trauma have occurred to repair the damage, but I was rooting for all the members of this damaged family.

I really wanted to like this book more but there is a lot going on and it’s not always easy to know “when” in the storyline you’re reading about. It also seems to just keep going when you already know how hard or sad or depressing or difficult a situation is just so emphasize the main character’s current state of mind. It is a story about a strong woman who is approaching menopause and is coming to terms with several different events in her life and deciding how to deal with these events, over the course of one day, her daughter’s 16th birthday.
I rate it 2 1/2 stars. Thank you Netgalley for the eARC.