I really wanted to enjoy this story, but I found it had a hard time keeping my attention. I was initially drawn in to the story by the idea of a coming of age story, with a young college student that meets an older mysterious woman. I found the story started off well and drew my attention, but ultimately couldn't keep it as I found Natalie a character I had a hard time connecting with. The majority of the storyline is her questioning and doubting her relationship with Nora and I found the story fell flat here. Luckily, I enjoyed the ending and it brought a nice closure to the story.
Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I’ll start by admitting that this book and this particular story were not for me. I think the book is well written and the pace great and I enjoyed the beginning and found it a very relatable coming of age , finding yourself story. But the central relationship in the book and the questionable power imbalance made me deeply uncomfortable and perhaps that is because I am a teacher myself but it stopped me from enjoying the book as a whole. I also found the ending more confusing than I would’ve thought it would be. In conclusion I think this is a good book for a certain type of reader but I wasn’t it’s best audience.

Thank you so much to Penguin Random House Canada for this e-ARC and it never occurred to me that I never reviewed it! Sorry! First off, I love a good Toronto mention and a coming of age setting. This book was honestly a little bit of a struggle to get through, as I understood Nora's struggle and motivations, but the characterization just... fell really short unfortunately. The twist at the end just felt there, and I was not really curious along the way or even really invested.

🚶🏼‍♀️The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer: a coming-of-age story about a young student who falls in love with a mysterious older woman. The protagonist is really observant and clever and the novel is compelling to read. I suspect fans of Sally Rooney or Elif Batuman might really like this one.

Synopsis:

18 y/o Natalie leaves her small hometown for Toronto to attend university. Everyone is so self assured - chatty, confident Clara from down the hall; intense, determined Rachel from her poetry class. Natalie doesn't know what she wants. As she tries to find her footing, she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her. Natalie begins spending more and more of her time off-campus at Nora's perfect home living in her beautiful, quiet world. She lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a secret boyfriend called Paul, and carefully protects this intimate, sacred adulthood she is building for herself. But when it becomes clear that Nora is lying, too, her secrets begin to take an insidious shape in Natalie's life, even as Natalie tries to look away. What, or who, is Nora hiding?

Review:

This was a coming of age type story as Nora finds her way through the big city and her first real relationship. She is consumed by her need to belong somewhere and acts accordingly in her relationships. I felt bad for her - it felt like Nora was stringing her along for her own purposes. With her hiding this big relationship from her friends, it also made her friendships seem inauthentic. I found Natalie quite unbearable - but she was written intentionally so because she's young and inexperienced. Weren't we all unbearable then?

Thank you to the Penguin Random House Canada for my digital copy!

This was a pretty good book. I definitely wasnt expecting what Nora was hiding! I enjoyed it up until the end. I found it hard to follow towards the end.

Is the writing overwrought? Yes. Nobody's inner thoughts are quite that rich. The plot twist is evident to the point that I don't even know if it is supposed to be a twist. But is it a great book nonetheless? I think so.

Bronwyn Fischer captures the feeling of being a small-town, awkward freshman dropped into a suddenly big urban university pond remarkably well, layering in the obsessive rush of a first relationship. She captures the complexities of an age gap, that slow churn toward something feeling not quite right but still the thing you know and take comfort in. And she closes it with the relief of finding something much more comfortable after it crashes and burns.

The Adult is a slow-burning lesbian coming-of-age story. Natalie is from a small town and moves to Toronto for University and finds herself struggling to adjust to the big change. Leaving behind all she knows and keeping up with her classes become too much along with her struggling with working through discovering herself and making friends. After some time she becomes involved with an older women and her insecurity of the relationship are apparent. We witness this character grasp onto this older women and the relationship consumes her, which could be understandable actions this being her first relationship but the age gap and how much life experience the love interest already has compared to Natalie doesn’t match up and it feels uncomfy.

Intrigued right from the beginning and while at times it was frustrating to read the decisions Natalie made but I still wanted to know how her decisions would playout. The Adult is all about self-discovery including all the messy and unflattering parts. It’s about exploration and experiencing new things as a young adult in post-secondary education. It’s about first loves and heartbreak and friendship, and experiencing defeat. It’s about moving away from home to a big city and about change. A very relatable and raw story.

Campus novels are a favourite of mine, and this one did not disappoint. The campus setting was exquisite, and the love story real and layered. It was a profound meditation on love and desire as they are interwoven with academia and professional aspirations. I couldn’t put it down.

While the idea of this book, exploring the space between adulthood and the teenage years, a space where many get lost, is good, the character of Nora, who reads much older than she is,makes this book a hard read.

I absolutely loved this book. It accompanied me through a lazy afternoon which turned into a sleepless night reading about the first love story (? one might call it) of Natalie and Nora. Natalie is on her own for the first time and dives in head first to a queer relationship with an older partner in this coming-of-age novel. The both delicate and abrupt way this story is written makes you feel completely in tune with the main character, and I loved it. I couldn't put it down.

Recommending to everyone, especially those who love Sally Rooney esque queer fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!

this was just not my cup of tea and I'm disappointed because i did think it was going to be (especially due to that cover dear god) - i just knew how the book was going to unfold since the beginning, knew who was going to be related to who and how this would all turn out - but by the end my brain turned off so aside from the 'big' moment when natalie is made to face the reality of being an 'adult' in the way she is, i have completely forgotten how the book ended. says a lot

Rounding up from 3.5 stars. I'm not sure how to review this book. I'm not sure I'm cut out for writing reviews of litfic. This book was weird, boring, uncomfortable but still somehow pretty compelling and relatable.

It is very competently written in a lot of ways with some really engaging and lyrical turns of phrase. And sometimes it felt like a bit of a fever dream? Although my first year of university was very different from the main character's it was still somehow familiar.

It was a worthwhile read but I'm not sure how exactly to recommend it . . . I think this book is like if Sally Rooney wrote characters who were more naive and unsure of themselves? And where it's not about an ensemble but one painfully awkward unsure young person.

I liked this book a lot more than I expected to. The author has a talent for getting into the mind of a naive, 18-year-old student who is new to Toronto and also new to relationships. It felt like being transported back in time to my own university years, to not understanding the different dynamics that exist between people. The book was slow-paced but felt well thought out. It was read that felt cozy, like a warm blanket in the winter.

I did not finish this one, it was not for me, I couldn't relate to the characters, and just did not care for the story.

This book made me reminisce on my time as a uni student living in downtown Toronto. I felt like I was 18 again in the best way possible. I enjoyed hearing this story through Natalie’s internal dialogue, and I think the author did a great job of describing exactly how you feel when you’re young and in love (or in lust). Although I’m aware that I was probably just as delusional when I was the same age as Natalie not long ago, her naivety did annoy me at points. Overall this is a great addition to the “sad hot girl” list of books, and would be the perfect back-to-school read.

I absolutely loved this book!! I couldn’t put it down.
I just loved all the characters. I highly recommend this book.

“The Adult” by Browyn Fischer is defiantly a powerful and intriguing debut novel!
This is a queer coming of age story as we follow our main character through her first year of college, not living with her parents and making her own way.

While this book was beautifully written, I do not feel like it was an enjoyable read. It has an age gap romance that also has clear manipulation and power imbalance. It was very hard to read about and made me feel “icky”. It was super powerful, but not something I could say I had a good time reading. Which I think was the entire point.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

It’s amazing how you can be reading a book and you know you like it but it doesn’t click exactly how much you liked it, exactly how impactful the words were- exactly how it’s changed you. Exactly how seen you felt. Until you go and look at all the highlights.

When I was reading this. I thought numerous times. Natalie why are you INSUFFERABLE sometimes. Then I thought back and realized .. I recognized this feeling. This is shame. This is shame for seeing myself in those insufferable moments.

“My mind, smiling a gaptoothed knowledge. Can you look at someone, half in darkness, leave them there, and still love them?”

Being completely enraptured by someone. Someone older. Someone who’s hiding you. Someone you don’t know much about. But you think you know their whole being.

“Her stomach almost touched me. I thought about forcing my own to grow. I thought, what if every day I gathered the ribbon of my own desire and I forced it into a ball. What if that ball lived inside me and fed off me and, without any air, was able to yawn. Nora spoke.”

You hang on their words. They are everything. You are nothing. That seems okay.

“Nora had spoken as though the hardness had all but dissolved. As though one day you could walk home in the dark, your chest feeling as though it had just been stitched, and then the next walk back the other way, feeling healed, almost okay.

You see your worth only in how others feel about you.

“I wondered if everyone thought of me as unbearably nervous, if each week they dreaded the sound of my voice, aware of the possible shaking. I looked up, imagined all twenty people thinking, Come on, just get through it.”


Sorry this review is mainly quotes but . The quotes. The vibes. So many. This was flawlessly written.

Thank you to Penguin Random Canada for my Arc.

This was a lovely debut. I really enjoy reading books set in places I have once lived, and Fischer was able to write so notably about first love, and discovering oneself.