I really wanted to like this book a lot, I mean look at that cover! But it fell short for me and was very unrealistic at times. I ended up not finishing.
Thank you NetGalley and Macmillian Audio for this audiobook ARC, in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 / 5 ⭐️
The Narration:
A lovely reading by Claire Skinner that pulls you right into the main character’s psyche throughout different times of her life.

The Book:
A book with wit and heart that will resonate with people who like family drama and character’s who are trying to ward off a mid-life crisis as their world appears to crumble around them.

What worked:
The main character, while not exactly the most enjoyable type, has an inner resilience and fight that propels her forward even when life feels like it’s falling down around her, and there’s something compelling about that.

What didn’t work:
I found there were too many big themes in this book which meant that they were mostly just skimmed over, rather than deeply explored.

Overall it was a pretty morose book and an ok read for me.

💕You might like this book if:
🔹 you like books about characters who are facing obstacles (often that they’ve created)
🔹 you like books that have lots of themes / topics to think about
🔹you like multiple time-lines

This book started out witty, funny and compelling. As the book went along it got increasingly zany and went a little off the rails, in my opinion. I think maybe there were just too many elements brought into this relatively short book. I understand that our lives are deeply complicated as human beings, but so much was packed into such a short book that it got distracting.

I do appreciate the opportunity to have had the pleasure of enjoying this ARC copy. Thank you to the publisher and to Fran Littlewood.

I lost a ton of notes in a weird technical glitch, including several points to which I wanted to return and examine more closely in the print edition. So, I'll have to work from my thoughts reconstructed from memory immediately after finishing the audiobook.

Amazing Grace Adams was compared with several high-profile, wildly popular novels of the last just over a decade. I didn't feel that it compared well with any of them. [For what it's worth, I read all of the books to which I've seen it compared on several bookish sites. Three of those books, I rated 4 stars; one I rated 2 stars.]

Littlewood tries to cram too many stories into her debut novel. Not all the bad things have to happen to this one person/family, especially not in a single book. I won't list the topics by name for fear of spoiling the book, but I counted no fewer than eight distinct items off the top of my head.

I didn't feel warmly toward any of the characters. I wasn't rooting for Grace.

The chapters are too short and there's too much jumping around in the timeline. It's disjointed.

Most of the book was just an incredible downer. There was little-to-no comic relief. It wasn't enough for me that there was a sliver of hope for Grace by the end of the book.

Thank you, NetGalley and Macmillan Audio, for the audio ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, too, to Henry Holt & Co. via Goodreads for the print ARC. Publication is expected September 5.

I expected an enjoyable read about a peri-menopausal woman working through a relational crisis with her daughter, and, yes, this book was that. But it was also much more than I expected. The voice in the book was stellar - I felt totally with Grace (and Ben, when it was his point of view). The level of detail and the weaving in of backstory was excellent. What surprised me was the emotional power and resonance of the book. This was a novel about a family that had last its way, fallen apart, and as the narrative unfolds, the reader gradually begins to understand so many things about both how the implosion(s) happened and about all Grace will do to try to make it right. An absolutely lovely and surprisingly powerful book.

A wobbly middle-of-the-road read (and not just because it begins with Grace having *enough* and abandoning her vehicle in the road...). Bits of it were interesting, but the timeline jumping and unfocused plot lines drag the story down. Unlike Bernadette (and we all know I hated her, right?) or Eleanor or Olive, there isn't much to warm up to with Grace or to grow and root for; she's just...meh. An overall "okay"--but ultimately--forgettable book.

This one definitely landed somewhere in the 3.5-4 range (out of five) for me.

Amazing Grace Adams follows Grace, a 40 something woman who is on the verge of an existential crisis. Her daughter is growing up, she is separated from her husband, and she gets fired from her job, that she didn't even like anyway. The book flashes back and forth between present day Grace (mid-crisis) and Grace when she was younger, before she met her husband and had her daughter, ultimately culminating in the "big-reveal" or big breakthrough moment for Grace.

I thought the book was very well written. I was gifted the audiobook version from Macmillan Audio /Henry Holt and Company for review and I thought the narrator did a great job. I really got into Grace's head.

Overall I enjoyed the book and I got really into it, I just thought that there were too many things and plot lines going on in the book, some of which were a little far fetched. I also wished there had been some sort of trigger warning page at the beginning, because some of the plot lines featured really intense topics especially regarding parenting that could be triggering for some people.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy to review.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced listening copy of "Amazing Grace Adams". I loved it! I am drawn to mysteries and while this wasn't a big mystery, the dual timelines (multiple actually) left some questions weave throughout the story. I loved Grace with all of her flaws, she was a likeable person. The author did a great job of wrapping up the various storylines. It gets a little messy on her "journey" but overall, if you think of the journey as a metaphor for her self-exploration of her life, than I completely understand it.

I am not the target audience for this story but I can see who may get something from it, and I believe those who identify with aspects of Grace will enjoy the novel. That said, I greatly enjoyed the narrator and her storytelling abilities kept me involved.

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.

A lovely book that takes place in one fraught day. Grace’s life is on the brink. She’s 45 going through all the things, with a husband who has left her and a daughter who has moved on to live with her father.
Funny moments, and very sad ones too as we understand the cause of these challenges she faces.
Heartwarming, touching moments in this novel. I really enjoyed listening to it.
A great debut.
Many thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for this early audiobook of Amazing Grace Adams.

Thank you to NetGalley for this book.

Let me first start with this is usually the type of book that I normally wouldn’t read, but to mix up the horror and mystery, I thought I would try this adult family fiction novel.

The Amazing Grace Adams is about a 40-something Mom going through the stages before menopause. Bright, enigmatic, speaks several different languages and desperately tries not to come undone because she’s just lost her job. Grace Adams (essentially) is about a woman going through life’s unexpected changes while trying to mend her family's trauma.

Many things were going on, but mainly, it boils down to menopause, which is where the problem lies. Women's bad behavior shouldn’t be blamed on menopause or used as a crutch to explain why we are complicated creatures. Hell, I know all too well what that’s like, but it’s like blaming rap music for the bad behavior of a generation.

The ridiculous outburst of rage that just overtook scenes, as she shoves everything off a counter in a store when she doesn’t get resolve and walks out. Granted, she’s playing out what most of us think in our heads that we want to do but would never do, so some of that I get, but since the book teeters back and for on this sweltering hot day that’s spent trying to get to her daughters 16th birthday party, and going from past to present, it’s really hyper-focused on everything she encounters that day. Hell, maybe blame it on the heat.

This is a family story, and I enjoyed it, but maybe we could have gotten the candy surprise a little sooner vs. reading through 65% before you say, “Ah, ok, that’s what happened.” I realize the author is giving you context, and if you jumped ahead, you would miss key pieces.

It’s about meeting and falling in love with someone you never thought possible, about raising teenagers, which is a whole other rant because in all my years of raising mine. I found myself comparing some things and relating to others, which is why some fiction lies in truth.

This story is a pretty good read, and while it didn’t need a happy ending, there was resolve.

Dear Amazing Grace Adams,
In your blurbs, you were compared to Nina Hill and Elenore Oliphant. I completely disagree with both of those comparisons. Yes, you were interesting, and showed how deeply Grace gave to be a mother, and the pain and suffering she went through when her daughter cut off their relationship. But you were not the same quiet, revelatory book that Nina Hill or Elenore Oliphant were for me. You were loud and messy, which I loved. I loved seeing Grace break out and buck all societal norms. I loved her journey across the city, as illogical as it was. But the way that you revealed the pain in her marriage and in her past made me like you less. I was disconnected from Grace's pain for some reason.

Loved this wonderful book about a woman in the middle of her life - who walks away from everything - in the middle of her day! I felt every emotion and laughed and cried while reading this in public. The author touches on joy, love, parenting grief and every other emotion a woman experiences in the middle of her life and in the middle of every day. I cried when the book was over i adored it that much.
Thanks so much to netgalley and the publisher for the audio arc in exchange for my review.

"Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, peri-menopausal and stalled―the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian . And today she’s really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away."

I should have let my feelings about the cover dictate whether to read or not, yet I did not listen to my gut. This was not the read for me. I'm all for women finding themselves, yet this was a bit too much for me. Will likely resonate with a younger, more aggressive female audience.

Amazing Grace Adams was a beautiful spiral of emotions of a woman who has been through a lot. It was so relatable, and so powerful. It was also darkly comical in all the good ways.

I could not wait to see what would happen in this story, and felt surprised often by it, which was refreshing. This story was so compelling because it handled big problems, as well as problems so many people face, from parenting, to marriage, to life, to society telling us we should be one way and not another. And the main character, Grace, handled it all perfectly. By societal definition she did NOT handle events with Grace, but she handled it exactly as she should have, and exactly as so many of us women wish we had the guts to do.

I do wish there had been a content warning, and since the book has not yet come out, I do suggest it. However, for me, I’m glad it didn’t come with a warning because it’s one of the two topics I will typically avoid…and I’m so glad I didn’t know because I am so glad I read this story.

I listened to the audiobook. The narrator did a fantastic job! The only thing I would change, is that I’d like a different narrator for the second POV that comes in from time to time (Grace’s husband). I listened at 1.5x speed, with 1.75x speed being my normal.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this advanced audio copy. I thoroughly enjoyed this story.

Grace's life is a mess. She is going thru a divorce, going thru the "change" and dealing with a headstrong teen. I liked Grace immediately and felt for her while her insane day was playing out. The back and forth in the timeline did get confusing at times and the story became more hectic as it went on. The ending saved the book so I gave it 3 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

The premise of this book sounded interesting- a woman humorously falling apart at midlife- love life, career, and parenting a teen age daughter all in chaos. . However I couldn’t grasp how this brilliant woman became this neurotic mess. She has lost everything her husband, her job and her daughter wont speak to her. The method of story telling is confusing- jumping back and forth between time periods of when Grace attends a linguistic conference, and meets her future husband. To today, then to several weeks ago, then 16 years ago, then today,
What is suppose be to humor- She actually abandons her car in the middle of a traffic jam, because she needs to get a cake for her estranged daughter’s birthday. She just gets out and walks away. I didn't find it funny instead I kept thinking this woman is having a nervous breakdown, and needs mental health help. DNF Not my cup of tea. .

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the gifted audiobook in exchange for my honest review!

This book’s blurb compares Grace Adams to beloved characters like Ove, Bernadette, and Eleanor Oliphant, so I went in with high expectations. I was definitely rooting for Grace, but by the end, she was such a hot mess that it was more sad than funny. The events in Grace’s life that led to her unraveling were really heavy issues that definitely kept this book from being the lighthearted listen I was anticipating. The writing was good and the characters were well-developed though, so I think readers should go into this without expectations beyond reading about a woman navigating through a mid-life crisis. If that sounds interesting to you, check it out, but do not expect a heartwarming tale like A Man Called Ove.

Amazing Grace Adam's is a fun, funny and touching read that reminds me of Falling Down, but like a female PG13 version. So good and so funny, but also heart wrenching and warming at times too!

Grace Adams has had enough. Life is throwing too much crap at her, and she's reached her limit. Nothing has gone as she planned and no one is cooperating. She's out of a job, her daughter won't talk to her, she's skipped over in line, and traffic is a jerk. She finally says screw it to societal standards and just starts off walking, leaving her car in the middle of the highway as she heads out with one mission in mind - get her daughter to talk to her and wish her happy birthday with a surprise Love Island themed cake.

Multiple felonies mount up, including assault, theft and property damage, but nothing will keep this mother from making things right with her only daughter.

If you loved the movie Falling Down, you'll love this!

Thank you for the audio ARC!