Grace Adams is a woman who realizes that she gave birth to a child and is now 45 and perimenopausal. She is unhappy and her child is giving her fits, One day she gets stuck in traffic and walks away from her car and starts walking .This book was so funny and I think all women can relate to this story. Grace just wants to be amazing again,

This is the story of a perimenopausal woman losing it. And unless you've been there, you're just not going to understand it. If you are a woman and haven't started the transition to menopause, Grace's life will seem terrifying. She had everything going for her, and then due to circumstances that will likely happen to all uterus-carrying adults and there's very little you can do to prevent it. She loses everything that matters to her, and that's so terrifying that people will reject the book. Understandable.

The title of this book isn't Amazing "Grace Adams", it's "Amazing Grace" Adams, and that tells you what it's about- one person's quest to find forgiveness for her sins. Is it funny? No, not really. Is it chaotic and messy? Yes, because that's what it feels like. Does Grace constantly complain about how hot she is? Yes, and because when you hit perimenopause you lose control of your body and mind, and the simple things like being warm become all-encompassing, and that's what Littlewood wants you to feel. It's not pretty, or comfortable, to read and experience. And maybe it will help others understand just a little of what it's like to go through The Change, and maybe, just maybe, you'll give us a little Grace.

Debut novel about a woman who is desperately trying to get a birthday cake to her daughter’s 16th birthday party in time despite so many roadblocks and situations that delay and prevent her from getting to the party on time. While I appreciated the writing technique of multiple timelines and how the “now”
Is one day bit by bit, this one didn’t land with me. I think the author took on too many directions and didn’t create characters that I really cared about - which is necessary when characters are struggling. There was a lot going on - too much - so much so that I didn’t feel much about any of it. There’s lots of fun writing which I always appreciate. Thanks to Henry Holt and Co for the copy.

This is a book I will remember for a long time. Grace Adams is every woman. Her story resonated with me at a deep soul level. I think everyone should read this book.

Faced with a failing marriage, an angry out of control teenage daughter, and a floundering career, Grace Adams’ life is in a free fall. On the hottest day of the year, Grace sets out to make amends with her daughter by bringing a perfect birthday cake to the 16th birthday party she wasn’t invited to, and ultimately completely loses her shit.

Alternatingly funny, moving, and heartbreaking, the story is told across multiple timelines, each one revealing a bit more about what led Grace Adams to the break she’s currently experiencing.

Though the structure was a bit confusing for me, I struggled a bit to keep track of which timeline we were in, I think it made sense given the disjointed state of Grace’s mind on the pivotal day she finally unravels. So much has happened to her, and all of it right there, top of mind, breaking her open.

Midlife is a tough time, the most unhappy time in a woman’s life as quoted by The Guardian, and those of us in this stage will likely identify with the feelings of being invisible, lost, and irrelevant, along with the unnerving physical symptoms of perimenopause: heat flashes, exhaustion, brain fog.

Amazing Grace Adams is an amazing story about love, grief, and hope. You’ll find yourself rooting for Grace and her family until the very last page.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House, and Fran Littlewood for an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Three timelines here.

Billed as the next Where'd You Bernadette? and I just didn't see it. The humor never resonated for me and I just felt frustrated constantly with how far-fetched this was. I struggled so much with Grace on top of the world to Grace abandoning her car in traffic. This reminded me a lot of In Her Shoes by JoJo Moyes so if you liked that one this may be a great book for you to take a peak at.

It might be a sign of my age (ahem) that I am drawn to the stories of middle aged women and the challenges we deal with as we age. I found the premise of this book really exciting - middle aged woman snaps and ditches her car in a traffic back up to make it to her daughter’s birthday party.

I always enjoy reading about the complexities of life- they impact us all and I think too often we don’t consider what other people are going through. If you are ready for a roller coaster of emotions this is a book for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I tried really with this one. I made it to 42% before admitting defeat. Everyone keeps calling this book funny, but I found zero humor in it. It was endlessly depressing. And as a 48-year-old woman who lives in southern Kentucky, I understand hot flashes in the heat of summer, but the constant repetition of how hot she was and how hot it was outside was wearying. At first, I wanted to find out why her life had spiraled out of control, but the more the story drug on, the less I cared. This book simply wasn't for me. Thank you to Netgalley and Henry Holt and Company for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was OK - it wasn't my favorite because it was giving me FInlay Donovan vibes with the slapsticky type of antics, and I struggle with those.

I think this book will resonate with many readers and despite my age and the description it just didn't strike a chord for me. However, the Amazing Grace Adams definitely told the tale of a woman with the determination to start over and overcome. I think that will attract many readers.

Have you seen the 1993 Michael Douglas movie, Falling Down? As I read through Grace’s trials and tribulations, I kept thinking about that film, only to find out in the author’s notes that yes, in fact, this book was inspired by the movie. So be prepared for a wild ride.

Told in triple timelines, we follow Grace, a 45-year-old linguist whose teenage daughter’s birthday is that day. The daughter is living with her dad, and even though she hasn’t been invited, Grace is determined to deliver a 16th birthday cake to her daughter, Lotte. Something went down with the teen in the recent past, but you have to read the book and flashbacks in order to find out what happened. That’s the second timeline, occurring four months prior. The third timeline is the beginning of Grace’s adult life, when she wins an award and hooks up with a guy named Ben and then subsequently finds herself pregnant. We follow their relationship over the course of the past 17 years.

As a woman of a certain age, I found myself relating to Grace in a lot of ways. Can you say mid-life crisis? There’s teenage drama, a marriage that’s disintegrating, perimenopause, you name it, it’s being thrown at Grace. And she has. had. enough. I do love the fact that while the world around her is falling down around her, Grace, while seemingly suffering a mental health crisis, loses nothing of her forthrightness, feistiness, or humor. There are so many layers to Grace, and slowly, throughout the course of the story, we find them revealed.

For a debut author, I thought Fran Littlewood created a great novel. I’ve not read any of the books it is being compared to, but it certainly held my interest. My only complaint was that there was enough drama in the book to sustain it until it’s end, and then she threw in something else which was wholly unnecessary to drive the story along. It felt like a little bit like the kitchen sink being added. Grace had enough on her plate without adding to it; women can go a little crazy without extreme drama piled on with more drama.

My favorite timeline was the four months prior one, only because I have four teenagers (three girls!) and could predict the drama that surrounded Grace and Ben’s daughter, Lotte. And I did enjoy meeting the feisty Grace prior to having a baby and comparing her to the modern-day, middle-aged woman she became.

If you’re looking for some good women’s fiction and are of a certain age, I highly recommend this book. I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and Henry Holt in exchange for an honest review; all opinions expressed are my own.

The blurb for Amazing Grace Adams lets us know that the novel "tells the story of a life, a marriage, a family, set against a single north-London day. A rollercoaster ride of redemption and discovery, it's a powerful celebration of womanhood." But the book tells another darker story of loss and longing and it is this piece that makes this book both deeply moving and unsettling. I wanted to like Grace more than I did for most of the book - her life experiences as a middle aged women who no longer recognizes herself in the mirror are certainly relatable but her slightly slapsticky actions are not. And yet, when Littlewood unspools the devastating core of this novel (and not the subplot, which is devastating on its own too), I better understood Grace Adams for her approach to this challenging period of motherhood, career, and womanhood. Kudos to Littlewood for crafting a compulsively readable complex novel about a woman barely hanging on. Thank you to Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book was, unfortunately, a bit of a disappointment to me. Maybe it was just me, but it was not funny or touching or heartwarming, as the description promised, but rather a bit crude, depressing, and painful to read.

The premise was interesting - a book about motherhood and finding yourself... not as a parent of a young child but rather a teenager, later in life (but not too late in life). From the beginning, it is clear that Grace is a determined woman, independent and strong. Yet she has been hurt and is seeking to heal now. Overall, this book had potential but fell short for me. I thought that all the bad things that happened to Grace over the course of one awful day (when she is trying to win back her daughter's affection) detracted from the message of the book - that she is worth it, that life is something she can overcome, that she shouldn't be counted out yet. The bad stuff overshadowed the heartfelt elements/lessons learned by Grace.

I also found the timelines confusing. There were varying timelines in this book - both pre and post divorce, but also multiple years ago and several months ago. I felt the timeline piece made this book a bit confusing to keep track of what happened when. Perhaps others will love this book and I'm just in the minority.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

Grace Hall is having a meltdown. We’ve all been there. But hers seems to be cascading. Whatever she does is wrong and today is her daughter Lotte’s sixteenth birthday. In one of Grace’s most frustrating failures, rebellious Lotte has gone to live with her father and doesn’t even want to see Grace.

I hope I’m not making this sound awful because it’s really a good and fascinating book. Littlewood is an excellent author. You care about Grace from the moment you find her stuck in traffic and deciding to just walk away and abandon her car. The setting is London, but it could be Los Angeles or anywhere else just as easily.

Littlewood unfolds Grace’s life, pre and post divorce, by flashbacks. Or maybe that’s the wrong word. It’s not a first person novel, so Grace isn’t remembering (at least not always). It’s more like Littlewood is examining how Grace arrived at this moment in her life.

There were moments when I couldn’t stand how unhappy Grace, her husband Ben and daughter Lotte all were, and how almost obtusely misunderstanding of each other. But I still couldn’t put it down. I had to know what happened. Would there be a way back to amazing for Grace?

Littlewood is excellent at emotions. If you’re a parent you will probably relate, and definitely feel for Grace. But in the end, the book is about hope, and redemption, and breaking down walls that we never even wanted and don’t know how they got there. And love.

My thanks to the publisher and author for allowing me to read an advance copy. All opinions are my own.

This book felt unfocused, like the author couldn't decide which trope/theme to follow through the story. I f0und myself confused by the three timelines that were described as they also included flashbacks of their own so it was difficult to follow at times. Character development was solid and overall, an enjoyable read.

This is definitely going to be a love it or hate it read, and unfortunately for me it's going to just be a DNF. For me, it's lacking the warmth and humor that some of the comps had, and it's a little crude.

Amazing Grace Adams follows the story of a messy mom, who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that she is getting old and that her teenager daughter is becoming an adult. I like how realistic and messy it portraits motherhood and being an aging woman in general. Nevertheless, I found it confusing at times when the storyline jumped from one year to another. It dragged a little but I liked the story. This book reminded me a lot of "Where'd you go, Bernadette?". If you liked that book, you'll like this one.

Thank you netgalley and the publishers for the e-arc.

Initially, I thought this book was about one thing and then it turned out to be about that thing, as well as several other things. I enjoyed it, but as more was uncovered, it felt unfocused. And the resolution seemed a little too easy. I do think many women will find something that resonates with them, however.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

This is a hard book to review because I loved it, it was exactly what I wanted/needed right now, AND it was a bit of a mess. So I’m stuck wondering if I would actually recommend it, even though I devoured it and loved it. There was a lot going on, a lot of sad stuff, including a few things that could be very triggering, however, the book is basically about a brilliant woman with a family history of mental health issues trying to fix her life that has slowly fallen apart. I fell in love with Grace and cheered for her every step of her walk across London. I loved that her passion was linguistics and wish that would’ve been an even bigger plot point!!

Grace Adams has had enough and calmly abandons her car in the middle of traffic, and so begins her very long day.
Through timeline jumps, we find out that once upon a time, Grace was amazing. She could speak multiple languages and was the hottest thing on a tv quiz show. Then she got pregnant and she settled into a life with Ben and their little family in a London suburb. Fast forward 15 years and Grace is trying to reconcile with her estranged daughter.
This book was quirky and as others have mentioned, it was a little tough to follow with all the timeline jumping. It managed to keep me entertained and wanting to get to the resolution. The end spun out a little and was a bit over the top but overall a good debut.