We find forty-something linguist Grace Adams in the midst of great change: her changing body, marriage, and daughter. In telling Grace's story, Littlewood jumps back and forth in time, slowly revealing the details that led to her separation, tension with her 16-year-old daughter, and overall cracking façade.

Littlewood's writing is real and raw. We are right there with Grace as she rages, she pines, and she grieves. I appreciate that the ending is pleasantly resolved but not an overly forced happy ending. Littlewood's storytelling and revelations give Amazing Grace Adams a fast flow and make for a heart-warming--and breaking--read.

Great book. Great cover. Unfortunately, the cover does not fit the book. Based on that, you’d imagine Grace Adams decided she didn’t give an f and started terrorizing class moms a la the Class Mom series. This book is actually deep and emotional — about a divorced woman in middle-age who is going through a serious mental health crisis. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it but know what you are getting in to.

An interesting story but I was not blown away. I was lost in some sections of the timelines and the recall. There was just a lot going on. Still, I am happy to have read it.
Many thanks to Henry Holt & Company and to Netflix for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I just didn't connect with this book as much as I wanted to. I think I was hoping for more of a where'd you go Bernadette vibe. But it wasn't bad.

Unfortunately this book didn’t work for me and was a DNF but I am sure other readers will feel differently! Thank you for the ARC!

I wanted this to be funnier but I think that it hit a little to close to home with how women have to balance everything and sometimes it just falls apart.

Thanks #netgalley for this book in exchange for an honest review. While I enjoyed this book, I felt like it moved slowly and switched to so many different timelines that I had a hard time keeping interest. I would have enjoyed more time in each timeline and less skipping between. Overall a good story.

I wanted to love this one because the premise felt so relatable but I struggled with the writing style and overall execution of the story. Timelines were difficult to navigate though and the pacing was a bit off.

This one was tough because I had high expectations due to it being a Jenna's book pick. It was a little farfetched for me and I honestly didn't love Grace the way I had hope to love her. I also didn't love Eleanor, so I guess this tracks. Overall, the writing was good, but it just wasn't my favorite. Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thanks so much for the arc!

I saw this book advertised by Jenna (Read with Jenna) on the Today Show. I was psyched to get a chance to read it!

Grace is a bit of a mess. The book has a slow build. We meet Grace in current day when she’s buying her daughters 16th birthday cake. But her daughter doesn’t live with her and we get the vibe that she’s not even speaking to Grace. We follow Grace on quite a wild and unhinged journey across town to get said cake to said daughter.

While she basically unravels on this journey so does her story. We’re transported back to her youth, back to when her and her husband meet, back to her daughters childhood, and only a few months ago when things really took a turn.

I will admit I struggled with this book. It was hard to keep track of all the timelines even though I knew the stories were each clues as to who Grace is and why. It had a slow build. A lot of the stories didn’t really impact me… until about 75% of the book. That’s when I feel the story got me. So many heavy things were unveiled (& I did not see coming.) It made the reader really get a better picture of why Grace unravels. As a mother, some topics were hard for me. I’m glad I saw the book until the end. It was worth the read but definitely a drawn out build up.

I was so excited for this book based on the description and it was very disappointing. It moved slow and the multiple timelines were confusing. I was expecting a lighter story with humor related to mid-life and menopause and that was not this book. This book needs several trigger warnings and includes darker themes than I was expecting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Oh, Amazing Grace,
I really wanted to love you. You and I are in similar phases of life, and I'd hoped we'd have a connection.
Alas, I'm not really sure what to think about you. I'm not sure we would be friends IRL.
Grace, you really had your life together for awhile and WOW has absolutely everything gone wrong!
Your dual/triple/quadruple timeline story was a bit hard to follow at times. The narrative jumped around so much I often forgot about your little trek on foot through London...
And, why on earth did you include some details about your life, like that weird doctor's appointment, and then never mention it again in your story? SO random, Grace. I'm not even sure why that was in your story.
My main question for you, Grace, is: are you actually suffering from mental illness? I have great empathy for those who are struggling, and I might suggest you get yourself some help, Grace,
All in all, Grace, I hope are able to move forward with your life after all that's happened. But frankly, I"m glad to be finished with your story. Wishing you the best.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a complimentary ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Just ok for me

I'm sure there are readers who will simply adore this book, unfortunately it fell flat for me. The premise was good, and so was the beginning, but then it got a bit off track and felt desperate to me. I appreciate that this was a debut book, and that the author put her heart and soul into it, and I thank her for it. Wishing her good luck in the future.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book, but my opinions are my own.

This book started out strong and then it was just a solid 2.5 overall. It was confusing jumping back and forth between different months and years and even though I typically like books written like this it was just terribly confusing at times. There were some high points and good descriptions of a woman aging and in menopause but overall I was so happy when crawled to the finish line to have this one over.

I'm not sure why this was advertised as funny and hysterical because that was misleading and set a different expectation. Once I put that aside, I found it to be a wonderful and painful story of a very messy menopausal woman trying to connect with her sixteen year old daughter. Yes, Grace is funny and the circumstances she finds herself beyond ridiculous injecting humor into the story, but I think I teared up more than I laughed. Poignant and verbalizing some of the fears and tight rope walks mothers of teenage girls try to navigate. I really liked all the characters in this family and that's what made some of it so heartbreaking.
I have seen mixed reviews, so I would say if you put it aside go back with a different expectation, and I hope you will find it the worthwhile read that I did!

The September Read with Jenna pick, Amazing Grace Adams is a wonderful, funny, well-written, empathetic story about a woman who has reached her breaking point, with her daughter, her husband, her work and everyone she encounters on that fateful day in which everything that can go wrong, does. The relatable story is filled with emotions everyone can relate to, anger, embarrassment, mistakes and a love so deep and desperate you would do anything to try and fix it and make it better. It’s about never being able to come back from loss, but at least trying to live and deal with the sadness openly. It’s about the good, the bad and the ugly of life and finally saying enough is enough.

Grace Adams is having a very, very bad day. She’s stuck in traffic trying to get to a bakery across town so she can pick up a 16th birthday cake for her daughter Lotte who does not want to have anything to do with her anymore, let alone see her.

So, feeling she has no choice, she gets out of her car, leaving it in the traffic and begins the long walk to find the bakery and make it to a birthday party which she is not wanted at. As she tries to maneuver through the different and difficult moments getting to the bakery, she begins to relive her life and assess what she has done right and wrong. At 45, and being perimenopausal, sweating at the drop of a hat, she relives what has led up to her husband wanting a divorce, her daughter moving out to live with her father and being fired all because she can’t seem to open her mouth. She can’t explain her feelings, so she just shoves them deeper and deeper into a vault she has never opened before.

As her life during the walk explodes around her and as she explodes on everyone she unfortunately encounters, Grace realizes she has become a person she does not know or understand. How and why did her life take such horrible twists and turns.

But by the time she finally makes it to the bakery to get the cake and brings it to Lotte’s birthday party, a party she was told NOT to attend, she is a new Grace, determined to make up for the mistakes she felt she has made , to love more deeply especially to love herself and try to be the woman she knows she wants to be, not the person who everyone around her wants her to be.

Amazing Grace Adams will make you smile, tear up but also make you realize how human everyone really is and make you admire Grace Adams for what she was able to do during that long difficult day, and perhaps we all could learn from her how to react when we make mistakes, or when we don’t speak out mind. She teaches us that no matter what you need to pull yourself up, experience the feelings, learn from them and grow. This is peace…

Courtesy of HOLT Social Media, here are some cute mobile backgrounds for your phone to fit the fun mood this book brings out, along with a delicious cake recipe!




Thank you #NetGalley #HenryHoltandCo #FranLittewood #TheAmazingGraceAdams for the advanced copy.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I really wanted to like this book. It started off ok but it was hard to keep the multiple timeline straight. The current timeline felt too over the top and I kinda lost interest in it. I could relate to the menopause symptoms. The whole golf course encounter was where I started skimming thru that timeline. I loved the older timeline of how Grace and Ben met. I would have loved to see that expanded on. The ending was good. I liked who she did wrap things up and while not perfect was good.

I really liked the premise of this story, especially as a mom of multiple teenagers. We've all been there — wanting to leave the vehicle in traffic when we are running desperately late — and a lot of what Grace went through and much of her behavior throughout that day were completely relatable. That being said, the flashes forward and back became very difficult to follow. I would probably reduce some of those in order to increase the enjoyment of reading the story.

This book was hilarious, and it really hit home for me in a lot of ways and gave me hope. I’m not the biggest fan of this genre, but I was very pleasantly surprised!

DNF at 37%. As a woman in her mid-40s, I was drawn in by the premise of this book about Grace Adams - a 45 year old woman who is having an incredibly difficult day. It’s told in three different timelines - today (her daughter’s 16th birthday), 4 months ago, and then going all the back to before her daughter was born and moving up to now. I was really into the beginning and especially learning about the language competition where Grace met Ben. But then this story really lost steam for me as it went along and ultimately I decided not to finish. Thank you to the publisher for the free book to review.