Format: audiobook ~ Narrator: Rose Akroyd
Content: 3.5 stars ~ Narration: 5 stars

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize

The story is very slow, and I believe it is too slow for some readers. But when we get used to this rhythm, we get to know Sunday, who is autistic, and her daughter Dolly, her mother-in-law and father-in-law. And most importantly, we also meet her new glamorous neighbors, Vita and Rollo. The story is multi-layered, so we also learn about the past life of Sunday, her sister Dolores, her parents, and her childhood.

I liked Sunday and how she organized her life to cope with everyday challenges. But I didn't like all the other characters in the book. Only Dolores, Sunday's late sister, seemed like a nice and understanding person, but there's not much story about her.

This is not a novel I would expect to be nominated for the Booker Prize. But nonetheless, I appreciate it and found the presentation on neurodivergent thoughts and functioning very insightful.

All the Little Bird-Hearts is excellently narrated by Rose Akroyd. I enjoyed her narration. In this case, an audiobook format was a better choice for me.

Thanks to Hachette Audio for the advance copy and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.

Sunday is an autistic woman raising her 16 year old daughter, Dolly alone. Sunday is able to function quite well by following her “rules” such as only drinking fizzy beverages. As a teenager, Dolly is of course embarrassed by her mother’s quirks. So when Vita and Rollo move in next door, Sunday and especially Dolly are drawn to their posh lifestyle and descriptions of their escapades in London society. The couple seems to be very accepting of Sunday’s oddities and Vita is especially attentive towards Dolly as Sunday struggles to interpret cues that she has never encountered before. As she allows Vita and Rollo to become more and more involved in Dolly’s life, she is ill-prepared for their underhanded motives.
First, I will say that this book is extremely well written and engaging. Sunday’s character was so well developed and her autism was expertly described. There were incidents that made me laugh and Sunday’s thoughts were priceless at times. I was also extremely saddened by her descriptions of treatment by her own mother and it was heartwarming to read about her own wonderful parenting in spite of this. The author also did an excellent job of portraying Sunday’s compassion towards others such as her coworker, David. However, regardless of Sunday’s delightful character, her story is not happy. No spoilers but the ending of the book was difficult. But I can’t lower a book’s rating just because I don’t like the ending.
The narration of the book was also well done and enjoyable to listen to with the exception of maybe what I perceived as over-exaggeration of Vita’s voice. But Sunday’s thoughts were portrayed very well.
I highly recommend this fantastic book, whether audio or written version!
#NetGalley #HachetteAudio-AlgonquinBooks

ALL THE LITTLE BIRDHEARTS by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow is expertly read by Rose Akroyd.

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, this is a mesmerizing story of an autistic woman with a 16 year old daughter, whose very ordered life is upended when a charismatic couple moves in next door. Their charisma isn't all positive, however.

The author of this story is autistic and brings so much insight into Sunday Forrester and her relationships with Dolly, her daughter, and then Vita, her neighbor. The way this was told had very specific pronunciation changes that were captured superbly in this audio. For example; Sunday fixates on how the glamorous Vita says her words and in her inner monologues, tries to repeat it.

I was taken by Sunday. There were multiple ways in which her insights were so much deeper and richer than her counterparts, despite not having the ability to easily converse without planning. Her etiquette bible and methods for maneuvering her world were logical, relatable at times, and sometimes ineffective when a situation didn't quite fit. Her challenges and connections with her daughter were interesting and sometimes confusing. I would have loved to had Dolly's perspective!

It was clear this was building to something and when it happened, it was heartbreaking. I am not sure what I was expecting, but this felt like a family drama unlike I have read before. The epilogue was a critical piece of the story for me. It felt so real.

I feel like I have learned so much from this story. Thank you @NetGalley & @hachetteaudio for @algonquinbooks for this fascinating story and letting me share my thoughts! This audiobook was published December 5th so is available now!

I found this novel quite interesting - an autistic woman and her daughter are befriended by a flamboyant couple who have moved in next door. The inner thoughts of the autistic woman are fascinating. The story and characters are colorful and engaging. The audiobook was exceptionally well read.

Sunday is neurodivergent in the same way as Molly [book:The Maid|55196813] is. However, she's a little more self aware of her differences. As someone with a constant inner monologue, hearing her inner thoughts put me at ease. On certain days, she eats white foods. She has an etiquette handbook. She is oddly into Sicilian folklore. It's a thing.

This cast of characters also includes Sunday's daughter, Dolly, and their new neighbors, London couple Vita and Rollo, who are honestly so pretentious. But, I suppose that's the stereotype. I enjoyed Sunday mimicking their accents in order to further understand them. Accents, and language, are something I enjoy about people.

Things appear carefully ordered in the first half, the half I enjoyed more. The second half is where Vita and Rollo begin to show their true colors. A childless couple, they begin to spend more and more time with Dolly, even beginning to think of her as their own. But, she's not their own. She has a mother...

This is beautiful. My brother is a lot like Sunday, so is my son, and my daughters are little fireballs. I just got Sunday is what I mean.
It was a good book about an empathetic character.
I lik the narration as well.

Sunday lives alone with her teenage daughter, Dolly, in a cottage on the large estate owned by Dolly's paternal grandparents. Sunday thinks of herself as unlovable given her particular preferences, which include colorless foods and cold, fizzy drinks. Too many people overwhelm her, and she has difficulty deciphering social cues in everyday interactions. When Sunday and Dolly get new neighbors, they'll both be in for massive upheavals — both positive and negative — and will struggle to retain their ties to one another.

This is a tender little novel that sort of broke my heart. Sunday is such an empathetic character, and I absolutely loved reading about her experiences from her perspective. I had to remember to cut Dolly some slack given that she's only sixteen, but man was she aggravating me throughout this story! This is one of those books where people might say, "nothing happens," but I found it to be a beautiful character study and exploration of relationships.

Thank you to Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, Algonquin Books, and Hachette Audio for my advance audio copy.

4.25⭐️ Quietly devastating.

Long-listed for The Booker Prize, All the Little Bird-Hearts tells the story of Sunday, a divorced autistic woman living a carefully structured life with her 16-year-old daughter, Dolly.

Enter Vita and Rollo, gregarious new next door neighbors, who quickly befriend Sunday and Dolly, pushing right through Sunday’s boundaries.

The story allows us to watch Sunday slowly awaken to the idea that she may not be the problem I’m their shifting dynamic, as we are given the unique perspective of being able to see Vita’s more nefarious intentions long before Sunday is able to understand them as such. This is sometimes frustrating and frequently devastating, as I wanted desperately to be able to step inside the story and help her. A very effectively empathetic tale.

Thank you Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, Hachette Audio, Algonquin Books, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

I was attracted to this book for both it’s Booker longlist status, and it’s unique point of view in having an autistic author and main character. Sunday Forrester lives a fairly simple life with her sixteen year old daughter, Dolly, working in a greenhouse in a small lakeside town. Glamorous Londoners Vita and Rollo move in next door upending all their lives.

I found the story being told through Sunday’s lens interesting – and honestly anyone who has ever felt like an outsider in a social situation or like they didn’t quite fit in would be able to relate to much of her story. Given that the book is set in the 1980’s she and everyone around her doesn’t know she is autistic, but just that she has some quirks, which no one can really understand. Why can’t she be like everyone else? It builds compassion in the reader and you really feel for Sunday who is just living the only way she knows how and raising her daughter the best she can. Events at the end of the book broke my heart a little.

I found this book reminded me a little of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – an offbeat main character who the rest of the world struggles to relate to, but as a reader you can see both sides of the story. For me this book was heartwarming, witty, and heartbreaking all at the same time. It brings up themes of mental health, compassion, kindness, and parent-child relationships, and would make a great book for a book club.

This was a beautifully written book! The writing just completely transported me into this story.

I found this lovely and heartbreaking. There is a lot of trauma discussed, and I thought the depiction of mental health was well done. I loved Sunday, our protagonist. She was sweet and kind, and my heart broke for her. We see her deal with motherhood, the fear of her beloved daughter on the cusp of adulthood, meaning she will be off living her own life soon. We see her try to cope with the ways in which her own mother clearly couldn’t care for a neurodivergent child.

She lives a quiet life, trying to keep herself in a box as to be more palatable to others. When new neighbors arrive and she is pulled into their orbit, she basks in it… until it’s clear they could take the one person she loves most from her, her daughter Polly, who is also enthralled by them.

This was a darling audiobook with spectacular narration.

3.5 stars? I really like Sunday, and this is a quiet, often heartbreaking, sometimes uplifting story of a neurodiverse woman learning to finally live on her own terms after a rough life. I admit I thought it was setting up something a lot more dramatic than what eventually unfolded. It’s a very slow and not altogether rewarding read, ultimately, but if you’re not expecting fireworks it’s enjoyable enough. Listened to the audiobook via Netgalley - excellent reader.

I was really excited for this one when I saw the FMC was an autistic single mother with a teenage daughter. Unfortunately I found the story really slow moving and while the neighbors moving in next door who try to influence her daughter away from the mother were insidious and dislikable, I ultimately just wasn't that invested. Okay on audio this was overall a miss for me. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

The writing is superb and the story was so moving. It's incredibly slow and I wasn't sure if this would be my type of book, but I loved it a lot. I think it will have a wide appeal and if readers aren't put off by the quiet nature of the story, they will love it.

3.5 rounded up.

The blurb made this sound like a mystery/thriller, but it’s labeled as women’s fiction so I was a little uncertain of what it would be when I started. For anyone else in that position: this is character-driven women’s fiction. Its value is in sharing an underrepresented perspective, that of an autistic mother, and the desire to understand her is what will compel readers to keep reading.

The plot itself is very predictable from the start, but this isn’t a mystery and the woman’s story was moving. Her perspective felt very authentic (the author is autistic) and I liked how it didn’t paint her as a manic pixie dream girl, as autistic women in literature often are.

Unfortunately, all the other characters (including her daughter) were awful in a 1-D way. I would have liked to see more gray, more complexity in some of them.

Fans of different perspectives, rich people behaving badly, and complicated family relationships will love this!