Adelaide is an American living her dream in London. Well, not exactly her dream, but close enough, and when Rory Hughes comes into her life, things seem almost perfect. He's the living embodiment of a Disney prince and everything Adelaide thinks she wants in a partner. One problem: he doesn't feel the same way about her.

This was a tough read, as Adelaide's struggles with mental health and self-esteem are on full display. I mostly wanted to shake her and get her out of this awful relationship, but the author did a good job of creating believable, realistic characters that kept me wanting to read even when I was infinitely frustrated.

The narrator did an excellent job of capturing Adelaide's voice and creating the right atmosphere.

Poor Adelaide… she is looking for love in all the wrong places. I wanted to hug her and tell her how great she is already but alas it is hard to expect that from someone so young gets it until they are ready to recognize it themselves. It would be interesting see where Adelaide is after she realizes her magic.

I received the audio version of Adelaide and the sound was great.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to review this book.

This book was pretty boring to me. And the mental health themes were questionable at best. Disappointed because the synopsis sounded right up my alley.

I read this august 11, 2023. I rated this 4 stars. I remember liking it but it was really slow at times.

Adelaide was an engaging audiobook from start to finish. There is definitely a trigger warning for emotional abuse. That being said, I do think this would be an excellent choice for an 11th/12th grade girls’ book club. Many discussions can be had about the emotional abuse that Adelaide tolerates from Rory, a boy she loves and idolizes, but him, not so much. It is easy to judge Adelaide and why she stays with him, but I believe it’s an important topic to be discussed with girls of dating age. The narrator was excellent and the novel was easy to follow at 1.5x speed. Highly recommend!

Adelaide was not what I was expecting from the synopsis of this book. I will keep this review short and sweet, because this book was not for me. Adelaide is a young 20-something living in London with a successful career. She had some tragedy in her past, and because of that, she seems to have zero self-esteem. She meets Rory, her "Prince Charming" and falls in love. She is surprised that he is interested in her and although he is a misogynist who treats her terribly, using her and only spending time with her when it is convenient for him, she is smitten and sticks with him. I almost DNFed this one several times as it was depressing and I got so frustrated with Adelaide. I know that this happens in real life more times than I can count, but it was not what I was expecting, so found myself getting angry and frustrated. I will say that there is hope at the end and that I am glad I finished to get to that point. I know that this is an unpopular opinion and many people loved this one, so I say if this sounds like a book that you might enjoy, give it a go, it just wasn't for me. I did a read/listen and thought the narration by Caitlin Kelly was well done. This is the first time I have listened to this voice actress and I will listen to more of her work.

This book has been one of my most anticipated reads this year, and I was so excited to immerse myself into this beautiful and heartbreaking story.

I paired the book with the audiobook, and loved to read this way, and completely lose myself in the story. It was compelling and so relatable.

I knew when I couldn’t stop thinking of this book and the characters that it would stay with me, and I just loved it so much!

*many thanks to St Martins Press, Macmillan audio and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

This book was a nice surprise. The plot took a turn that I didn’t see coming and actually touched on an important subject matter in a delicate yet unapologetic way which I respected.

The story is told in a third person from Adelaide’s perspective. She is a bright, giving, thoughtful, hardworking American woman in her mid-twenties, living in the UK. The story begins with the reader learning that Adelaide has tried to suicide. It then goes back in time to relay Adelaide’s life leading up to this tragic decision. In particular, we learn a lot about Adelaide and Rory’s obsessive and toxic relationship.

I just have to emphasize that I grew to love Adelaide. Initially, she seemed too perfect with no flaws to speak of. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to connect with her as a result but it becomes more apparent as the plot progresses why she is portrayed this way. I will also admit that it took some time to feel strong emotions towards Adelaide and her plight but when it finally happened, I was a blubbering mess. Have some tissues near by!

My only reasons for losing a star were the slower parts where the pacing was a bit off. And I didn’t think the choice of narrator was a good fit. The narrator’s voice sounded too young and naive whereas Adelaide would’ve been better suited with a tad older voice with more confidence. Although the narrator did a wonderful job in her performance.

The story as a whole was heartbreakingly sad yet also heartwarmingly beautiful. I absolutely recommend to readers looking for an emotional and relatable women’s fiction that involves loss and heartbreak.

Thank you #NetGalley and #MacMillanAudio for an audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This narrator is one of my favorites. I'm not sure I would have listened to this book if not for her. It was just as painful as I thought it would be, highlighting the things that make relationships when you don't quite have your footing and a solid sense of self liabilities to your self-esteem.

I really wanted to enjoy this one more than I did! It just didn't work for me, though I think at another time in my life I might have connected to it a little bit more. I think everyone has to pick this one up for themselves and decide if it hits. However, take note of the trigger warnings before you do!

Oh Adelaide… I’ve been there. This is a very relatable book. There were several frustrating moments where you just wanted to shake her and be like how many more red flags are you going to ignore?! The multiple perspectives and time hopping also got a little confusing at times. But I loved the narration, and I was satisfied with the ending.

Beginning this one I was optimistic however after listening to the narrated audio version of this book, I could not continue listening. The character voice along with the narrators tone, everything was whining and just a laundry list of this characters sad experiences with past relationships.

Adelaide is a 20-something coming-of-age story based in London. What this story does differently than most coming-of-age is that it offers a raw, realistic, multi-layered portrait of mental health struggles. Adelaide falls in love, but this is NOT a romance book. Instead, the romance fuels Adelaide’s journey through some dark history as she discovers acceptance and self-worth. The book contains many heavy and potentially triggering topics, so please review the trigger warning.

Caitlin Kelly does a fantastic job narrating Adelaide. The story is solely from Adelaide’s POV, and Kelly narrates with compassion and gentle quietness as Adelaide struggles with grief, loneliness, toxic relationships, abuse, and depression. I highly recommend this format. I will add that Wheeler’s lyrical writing style will put your highlighter to work if you like to annotate. I highlighted many quotes in my ebook, so keep the physical/ebook handy. Quite impressive for a debut!

I received an ARC of this audiobook by the publisher via Netgalley in an exchange for an honest review.

Adelaide Williams is living the dream. She's about to wrap up her master's program, is living in the heart of London, and has been offered a job that would keep her in the UK permanently. But little does she know that she's about to meet a f-boy that's going to make her life VERY miserable. As a cis woman in my early 30s, Adelaide was a little too relatable. That moment of instant love when you meet a cute guy. The gushing to all your friends about how he's perfect and you were destined to meet because of this list of coincidences. The constant flakiness and avoidant tendencies that you keep making excuses for. The uptick in anxiety this guy causes as he gets more and more uncomfortable with the growing intimacy. Followed by pain, sadness, self-blame, etc. It took me straight back to being 21, and honestly it made me uncomfortable.

There's a level of angst that comes from revisiting those emotions and seeing all the red flags laid out in front of you. You want to shake Adelaide and hand her a copy of Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller (random aside if you constantly seem to be attracting emotionally unavailable people or struggle with anxiety/avoidance in relationships I highly recommend reading this primer on attachment theory). Or snap at her and tell her enough is enough, he's not going to suddenly change. My patience was wearing thin by the end of the book with the character Adelaide and maybe at how many pages I had to read of this constant toxicity. It's a downer of a book, with the first few pages opening with a suicide attempt. And as much as Wheeler tries to end the story on a happy note, I definitely felt emotional fatigue by the end of the novel. I probably wasn't in the right headspace for this book. I believe when I received this advanced reader copy it originally had a different book blurb. The publisher went back and rewrote it, which does a much better job of summarizing what the book is about.

However, if you're interesting in the premise, Wheeler has a nice writing style and there are some beautifully poignant lines. I can see someone who enjoys underlining, having a blast marking up their copy.

3 out of 5 stars.

Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler was an enjoyable read and really felt true to modern day dating in a toxic world. "When love asks too much of us, how do we find the strength to put ourselves first?" My heart ached for Adelaide and I wanted to tell her I knew and felt her pain. I love that this book was so relatable in that way. Thank you Netgalley for my copy!

I wanted to love this book… but I couldn’t finish it. I was really excited for it because I saw a lot of my favorite authors post about it for months leading up to pub day, but it wasn’t for me. I didn’t enjoy reading about a woman letting a subpar man ruin her life and self-esteem.

I was a bit nervous about going into this book as it was originally described as a romance. I'm happy to see that it has since been reclassed as more of a fiction...because romance is definitely not the right term for this story.

I'm of two minds about the actual writing in this.

I did really appreciate that this book goes much deeper than the average. It delves into mental health, self esteem, toxic relationships and more. In some ways, I do think it handled some of these topics well.

That said, I had issues with the believability of this book. Adelaide is in a relationship with her "Prince Charming" except there is zero chemistry and mountains of red flags. This is a book of a girl who is ignored, ghosted repeatedly, treated as if she is worthless, and basically receives no actual interest from the man she's dating...but then treats him as if he's the best thing in the entire world. I just had such a hard time believing that any woman, regardless of how poor their self-esteem might be, would be tripping over a man like this. Like he doesn't even show interest in her initially. It made me want to rip my hair out.

I also felt that the mental health diagnosis was sort of thrown in as a twist at the end. It's clear that our MC isn't in the healthiest mental place, but I also don't know that we see enough indicators of her actual condition to have an idea of what's to come. Like her relationship behavior is toxic, but in a way that I've seen people act who are not mid mental health crisis. I hope that makes sense. I guess I wish the book would've gone more into depth about the symptoms and how it affected other parts of her life besides her relationship.

All in all, if you like books that reflect on mental health with toxic relationships you may like this one. Be prepared to feel lots of frustration toward the main male MC though.

*Thanks to Netgalley, Genevieve Wheeler, and St. Martin's for the E-Audio copy. This in no way affects the objectivity of my review.

I feel like there are many parts of this book that will be relatable to many. I liked Adelaide but then was also very frustrated with her actions at times as well. I think what I wished this book would have been less about the repititive relationship ups and downs between Adelaide and Rory and more about Adelaide tackling her mental health issues and putting herself first. The narrator did a great job bringing Adelaide to life.

More of a character study than plot driven. I enjoyed the female friendships. I strongly dislike the romance. I also wish Adelaide's lack of judgements was not packaged as mental illness.

Let me start off by saying the audiobook narrator did a fantastic job. Her British accent was perfect and her narrating really made this book more enjoyable than if I would’ve read it with my eyes.

There were parts I enjoyed but overall disliked this book and really struggled to get through it.

It started with the third person writing, I understand the choice to use it here but I struggled to connect to it. I’m all for a heartbreaking read that can put the pieces back together but this book was just infuriating.

I understand this story line can be relatable for other girls going through the same thing but it doesn’t seem productive? I didn’t feel like there was any reflection. When the author insinuates Adelaide has a drinking problem she doesn’t address it. The suicidal ideations are talked about minimally. Type 2 Bi-polar is “diagnosed” but goes no further than that. I needed more.

While I didn’t enjoy the topic of Adelaide’s first physically abusive boyfriend I didn’t find that aspect of the story overly cumbersome. I thought it was talked about well enough and just long enough. Once we get into the story line with Rory it’s overwhelmingly just him being generally non-affectionate, absent and evasive for 80% of the book. It’s the same old song and dance every time they’re together, or it’s Rory ghosting her for several days for the umpteenth time. It was exhausting. I couldn’t see any reason why Adelaide actually continued to be okay with his behavior. There’s no attraction that was obvious to me beyond him looking like a Disney Prince and having a British accent?

After allllllll of the red flags, day after day, I’m supposed to believe all it took was for a friend to say something for her to let go of Rory????

It really bothered me that Adelaide’s happiness in the end revolves around another man, a perfect one albeit, but I just don’t love the message that sends. Sure, maybe I get the idea that you can find Mr perfect after dating a asshat for so long, but aren’t we supposed to find happiness within ourselves first? I mean maybe I’m wrong here..