Amazing Grace Adams: The New York Times Bestseller and Read With Jenna Book Club Pick

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I finished her story on a plane above the country, so full, and in tears. "Ma'am?" my seat-mate asked, "are you ok?" "Oh, yes," I answered. And gave him this book' SARAH BLAKE, New York Times bestselling author of The Postmistress and The Guest Book If you’re feeling hot out there today,” the woman on the radio is saying, “according to the latest report from climate think tank Autonomy, it’s only going to get hotter…” This is a book who may be enjoyed by readers of women’s fiction, particularly those who are perimenopause or menopausal who may relate to some of Grace’s emotions. There are some beautiful foreign language words regularly scattered in the narrative. These were fun to learn.

Grace’s character had many admirable points but also many annoying ones. While it is easy to admire her stance of standing for herself, her attitude and her approach towards problems didn’t endear her to me. I could sympathise with her only to a certain extent. Not only is Grace amazing I think Fran Littlewood is too. It’s hard to believe this is a debut so accomplished is the storytelling and the creativity in some of the phrasing. This is a clever novel as on one level it’s about motherhood, family dysfunction and individual fears which is so well done it’s emotionally raw at times. They have to face huge difficulties and surmount enormous obstacles. On another level it’s about language which is what brings Ben and Grace together, it’s about a different and often secretive language of Lotte’s generation and it’s also about the inability to find the right language, the right words at the right time. Grace and her family feel brilliantly, dramatically real and believable, and she becomes a heroine to take to heart Apple Books My agent loved the idea of Grace from a very early one-line pitch, and so she was championing me all the way, which made all the difference. I wrote it pretty intensely as a result - the first draft was completed in just under nine months. Julie Andrews, obviously. I saw an amateur production of The Sound Of Music when I was maybe eight - and it was like I’d discovered the secret! I lobbied hard to get the star part in the class play after that and wore the teacher down. I played a missionary (it was a Church of England school), and there was no Captain Von Trapp, no singing, and no lols whatsoever, but it was my main character moment and I did not care! I would have played a piece of rotten fruit - and in fact, once did, in a local Saturday morning drama group production…Of course, the protagonist of a good novel need not be likable. The problem with this book is that there isn’t any indication that the author realizes that the present-day Grace is annoying, not amazing. Four months prior to the “NOW” chapters, we learn that Grace has lost her husband Ben’s love and her daughter Lotte’s trust. But not from her life - towards it. To the daughter who won't live with her anymore and has banned her from the party. To the husband divorcing her. Towards the terrible thing that has blown their family apart . . .

A gripping story of joy, grief, stress, worry, love at first sight, parenting...frank, nuanced, and evocative.” Everything was amplified and it all felt very acute. So it wasn’t difficult to get into Grace’s headspace. I wrote the book all over the house, but mostly at the kitchen table and in my bedroom. There was a moment when I was writing on the doorstep, trying to escape it all. It was a cathartic write. A cry for help! And then...we find out about a major thing that happened, and my heart just broke into a billion pieces and 100% understood why Grace, Ben, and Lottie acted and kept acting the way they did. I understand because I have lived it and everything is so realistically portrayed I had tears running down my face. What is the significance of the theme of the cake? How would you have responded in Grace’s shoes? Do you think it’s Grace’s make-or-break moment?I LOVED Grace Adams! With all my heart! As a woman of a certain age she was so relatable. She could have been me. I could have been her. She was funny and frank, forthright and feisty. But as the story unfolds and her layers are shed you realise that there is so, so much more to this remarkable woman. Her rivers run deep and I felt my heart breaking for her as the circumstances of her life are slowly revealed. AMAZING GRACE ADAMS is a book unlike anything I've read before. I wasn't truly hooked on this one until the second half, and then I just couldn't walk away. To be honest, I didn't like Grace much in the first half. But I think that was kind of the point. She's an unlikely character, an unlikely person, with a certain set of traits that make her difficult to deal with, both as a partner and as a parent. In dealing with the massive problems she experiences with her family in the course of this book, Grace experiences a great deal of growth. And so do we, as audience members, in being granted the opportunity to be this close to someone who is so fraught with emotion and yet unable to manage or express it. This can be an uncomfortable read, but it is well done. I loved the idea of Grace and Ben being polyglots and meeting at a language convention. It was nice to see geeks come together in a romantic relationship. A tragicomic character that middle-aged women can celebrate . . . It's a tale of giddy love, thwarted ambitions, devastating loss, the dangers of 21st-century adolescence, the horrors of the menopause and how badly language can let us down . . . Littlewood writes with ferocity and compassion about Grace's all-too-believable agonies and the impossibility of spinning all the plates that modern life expects us to manage. Read it and weep (then cheer) THE TIMES