Think that this book could’ve been great for some people but I just found the descriptions of her ED to be too much at times, especially the fact that she gave it a name.

Advanced Reader copy - Enjoyed this book, really opened my eyes and made me seek out other similar books to read.

DNF. I couldn't connect with this book at all and found it really hard to get into. I had high hopes for this, which is a shame.

Unfortunately I didn't finish this book, as I couldn't get into it - nothing against the author or book, just not to my personal taste. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.

This was a pretty depressing book but I really enjoyed it for the most part. I'm glad I read it, even though it broke my heart at times.

I was really, really hoping there wouldn't be a romance between Robin and Hedda, so that part was difficult.

Wow, her mother is a piece though.

Actual: 3.5

I received this from Netgalley for review, and wow, I adored it. This is probably one of the best YA debuts of the year. It was so powerful and touching, and I think everyone should read it. I felt I had so much in common with the main character - she was flawed and still clearly very unwell, but she had so much love in her heart. The ending absolutely destroyed me, but in a good way! I would recommend this to anyone.

This isn’t your typical Young Adult contemporary. This book has very little romance, a main character who cannot conquer all of her problems and there isn’t a magical cure for any problems that arise.

Countless is a heartbreaking perspective on what it is like to live with Anorexia. The main character Hedda has given all control of her life to her Anorexia or Nia as she likes to call it. This book contains no easy solutions to the problems that Hedda faces. There are no bandages to hide her wounds under, instead we see everything Hedda faces as it is, raw and messy.

I really enjoyed reading about Hedda. She is one of the most realistic teenage characters I have read about. Hedda is so determined to get through her pregnancy without damaging her child even with all the troubles that she is facing with her family, friends and keeping Nia under control. The relationship Hedda has with her parents and younger sister is also extremely realistic. They have their issues and argue a lot, these problems aren’t just magically fixed when Hedda tells them she is pregnant.

Countless in my opinion has one of the best and most realistic representation of mental health in young adult fiction. This book covers very hard-hitting topics such as Anorexia and depression. All of these topics are handed incredibly by the author Karen Gregory. It is easy to make mistakes surrounding the topic of mental health but Karen Gregory portrays it very accurately and with the needed sensitivity.

My only issue with this book is that is it a little slow in parts. This meant that my interest in the book dipped occasionally but once I got passed the slower parts I was a big fan of this book.

Despite the sad and heart-breaking nature of this book I did feel hopeful throughout. This helps to balance out the emotional intensity. For such a big set of heavy topics, this book is told in a very relatable way. Countless contains flawed characters, an urban setting, a vicious demon called Nia and no magical problem solving abilities. This is a tough read but it does contain topics that should not be treated lightly.

Overall, this is a powerful, heart-breaking and hopeful story that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. I highly recommend this to you if you are a fan of YA contemporary books that dead with hard-hitting topics.

Thank you to Karen Gregory, Bloomsbury Publishing and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When I’m talking about books that deal with a difficult subject I’m never sure enjoy is the right word to use. Countless was a difficult book to read, but an important one too and I’m going to try to explain why. Firstly the book and the review will talk about eating disorders so if this has the potential to be triggering for you I completely understand if you don’t read any further than this. Also while I won’t go into huge detail about the plot, other than what is clear from the blurb I will be talking about some of my general thoughts on the book, some points along the way and the conclusion, only broad strokes, but again if you don’t want to be spoiled at all don’t read beyond the end of this paragraph, but come back and tell me what you thought once you’ve read it!

Countless is the debut novel from Karen Gregory. It tells the story of Hedda, a young adult who is struggling with an eating disorder and has been in and out of inpatients since she was a young teenager, the story begins with Hedda discovering she’s pregnant and followers her on her journey as she tries to make decisions and live her life.

I won’t talk too much about the story line, but I will warn you Countless will trample over your emotions and spit them out for fun. Countless shows Hedda’s personal experience of her eating disorder, how it affects her everyday life, and the difficulty she faces in balancing her disorder and what she knows her baby needs. Countless also shows how an eating disorder can affect those around them, the strain it can put on relationships through the whole family.

I liked the fact the ending felt realistic, the book covers a relatively short period of time, particularly in relation to how long Hedda has been suffering with the eating disorder. By the end of the story she isn’t miraculously cured but you can see she is making progress and beginning to beat her disorder. It’s not perfect and all rainbows and kittens but it is hopeful.

Would I Recommend?

Yes! I had a friend who suffered with anorexia when I was 12 or 13 and I really wish this book had been around then. I know that no one book can tell the truth as it relates to everyone, each person has their own experiences and their own truth about how the illness affects them, but as a teenager I had no clue about what one of my very best friends was going through, and this would have given at least a little insight into what she was dealing with, and maybe I could have supported her a little more. In a world where more and more people are being diagnosed with eating disorders I think this book is a really important read for all teenagers, and everyone else too!

At seventeen years of age, Hedda is anorexic and living alone in a small, damp apartment with threadbare flooring, without a pension and without parental support. After a one night stand, now discovers she's pregnant. Hedda has spent her teen years unable to maintain control over her body image, resulting in an eating disorder that has consumed Hedda whilst devastating her family. Living within the treatment centre, the predominantly female adolescent residents have attended counselling and while in eagerness to remain thin, become competitive. Then Hedda is released as an out patient.

Hedda is unwell, still unable to come to terms with the disorder but discovering she's expecting a child may have saved her life. At twenty weeks pregnant, abortion isn't an option for Hedda who is considering placing the baby up for adoption, believing she is unable to take responsibility for the new life that will depend on Hedda to remain well. Forcing herself to consume was incredibly confronting. Hedda's narration also explores mental illness although Hedda is never officially diagnosed. She refers to her eating disorder as Nia, allowing her anorexia to consume her as a perpetual and influential presence. Hedda continues to count calories, only allowing herself to consume to maintain the health of her unborn child.

Throughout her pregnancy, Hedda continues counselling as a component of her release. Her relationship with her parents is constrained and while Hedda's father is compassionate, her mother is an authoritarian woman who sees Hedda as a noxious presence, advocating for her accomplished daughter while Hedda is deprived of support. Her derelict apartment is unbefitting for a young mother and child but Hedda's mother is unwilling to allow her daughter to return home.

Robin provides tremendous encouragement to Hedda throughout her pregnancy, nutrition and companionship and considering the confronting nature of Hedda's illness, I appreciated the amicable friendship. Hedda's assistance consists of counsellors who attempt to guide her throughout her recovery and children's welfare, who seemingly cared more for the adoption of her unborn child rather than Hedda's well being and fragility.

Author Karen Gregory mentions that Countless is a work of fiction but had referenced her own journey within the acknowledgements and should be applauded for a brave and exceptional debut novel. Confronting, captivating and compulsory reading.

Sobering read about anorexia but not really my cup of tea.

5 Words: Family, love, compromise, friendship, hope.

That was heart breaking.

Totally heartbreaking.

I had expected Countless to be triggering to me. But actually, I loved reading Hedda's story. It wasn't until near the end that it started getting to me and by then I was so invested that I couldn't put it down. But I was OK.

Hedda is not special, she's not "not like other girls", she's not magically cured. This story was SO REAL and so relatable for me. There's no hand-holding or sugar-coating, no gently-gently approach. It's harsh and hard. I think Hedda's disconnection from Nia, her seeing her disorder as an almost separate entity, meant that I could actually read this story without getting too drawn in myself.

This isn't a fell good story, it won't fill your heart with joy and make you smile. It will tear your heart to shreds and leave you in a sobbing heap on the floor.

But it's absolutely worth it.

I really enjoyed this new YA novel. It was a fascinating story, and it seemed to be Own Voices too, from what I could infer from the acknowledgements. I think reading a book where the author has had a similar experience helps to cement the reality of what you're reading. 

Countless is a love story. It's a love story of the boy next door, of the baby in your arms, of your sister, your dad, your mother. Hedda has had some really difficult relationships in her life, and this book really made me well up when she was dealing with relationships she has been trying to mend.

The book is told in four parts: The Thing, Countdown, Count Up and Nia. I felt like parts three and four were the most powerful, but although this was  a debut novel, Gregory's voice was strong throughout the entire book.

Hedda was a great character to narrate, too. She can't always understand what's right in front of her, and although her character development was slow and hidden, it was really rewarding to see how much she grew and changed towards the end of the novel. Throughout the whole thing, she's only 17 going on 18, which is just a year younger than I am now, and that's scary. It's really amazing to read about her as a character.

I liked the involvement of Robin, but towards the later part of his story line, I felt that he was really quite unnecessary; similarly with Hedda's father and Laurel. I think this shows how Hedda has grown up throughout the novel, and she even suggests this herself towards the end. However, the early scenes with Hedda and Robin (aside from later scenes with Hedda, Rose, and her mum, which I won't delve into because ~spoilers~) were probably my favourite.

I'm really happy to see a strong new YA writer coming to the forefront of the young adult scene, and I'm so excited to (hopefully) see Karen Gregory at YALC 2017. She's a very talented writer, and although Countless has only just come out, I am excited to see what she writes next!

*I received this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

When Hedda discovers she is pregnant, she doesn’t believe she could ever look after a baby. The numbers just don’t add up. She is young, and still in the grip of an eating disorder that controls every aspect of how she goes about her daily life. She’s even given her eating disorder a name – Nia. But as the days tick by, Hedda comes to a decision: she and Nia will call a truce, just until the baby is born. 17 weeks, 119 days, 357 meals. She can do it, if she takes it one day at a time …
Heartbreaking and hopeful by turns, Karen Gregory’s debut novel is a story of love, heartache and human resilience. And how the things that matter most can’t be counted. Perfect for fans of Lisa Williamson, Non Pratt and Sarah Crossan.

Rating: 4/5 stars

I did not expect to be as utterly engrossed by this book as I was. It was complicated and incredibly sad and sadly complicatedly relatable for me.
Hedda, the main character, suffers from anorexia, and it was so interesting to read a book that captured a lot of the ugly sides to mental health disorders. Particularly for me, as someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, it hit very close to home when Hedda feared she didn’t know who she was without her disorder, and the way she missed the comfort and reliability of her life when she was suffering from it compared to the weeks when she was somewhat better.
This was a very close and personal perspective of mental illness- we see everything from Hedda’s side, and even though you know she’s hurting herself and other people, sometimes I couldn’t help but identify with her actions. I don’t know whether everyone could say the same, but I definitely saw some of myself in her.

This really isn’t your typical Young Adult novel; Hedda’s health swings wildly and for the vast majority of the book she is close to killing herself through starvation. She also has a child, and this book doesn’t gloss over how physically and emotionally and mentally draining that can be. It also touched on the fact that you can’t rely on other people to save you- you can’t pin all your hopes and faith in a single person because it’s not healthy and that hope and faith has to come from within eventually for it to stick.
Finally, the most unexpected (and very anti-YA) aspect of this book is the friendship Hedda had with her neighbour Robin. In any other book they’d get together and he’d be a substitute dad to Hedda’s daughter and they’d live happily ever after, but very much the opposite occurs (which yes, because I’m YA trash I was sad about, but kudos to the author for going in a different direction).

I stayed up until 2.30am reading this book, god knows why. I couldn’t stop reading and I didn’t want to anyway, and I went to bed completely emotionally drained from this novel’s topic. But it was good. It was real good.

Countless is an incredible book. It's both heart-wrenching and hopeful during the rollercoaster that is Hedda's story. Karen Gregory has written a very real character and story. Both teenage pregnancy and eating disorders are very difficult subjects to write about properly but Gregory has done both amazingly. Countless made me cry, not many books can!

This was not an easy book to read. It is dark, harrowing, honest and at times utterly heartbreaking. Hedda, the main character is seventeen years old and in the grips of an eating disorder, and her narrative shows the reader how overwhelming her struggle is. This book does not shy away from the harsh truth of her situation.

At the start of the book she is outpatient and about to attend her weekly session. She has spent a lot of time in inpatient units, and this is something that she thinks about quite a bit. She lists the bad things about the unit and the end of some chapters, how scary it can be. It’s not something that I’ve seen talked about much before in books. There are parts that look at the culture, the competitive element that can develop in these places. Nothing is sugar-coated or romanticised, everything we see feels really honest.

Lets talk about Hedda. She is in a really bad place both emotionally and physically. She is incredibly isolated, and spends a lot of time in her own head. As a reader, you are there with her. The hardest part of this book for me was wanting to help her, and look after her. This book really got to my emotions and made me really feel for Hedda and route for her. She was an incredibly complex and human feeling character, who is really well-developed over the course of the book.

Hedda’s personification of her eating disorder, Nia was an interesting inclusion. It gave it a presence and voice, which was really effective. It was especially powerful to see how Nia could creep up on Hedda and the impact it could have on her.

On top of dealing with eating disorders, this book also deals with teen pregnancy and the attitudes that people have regarding it. This book takes place in the UK, and the reactions and judgement that Hedda encounters unfortunately feel incredibly realistic. It’s an incredibly controversial topic in this country, and one that everyone seems to have an opinion on, and some people do feel entitled to let their thoughts be known. As a single pregnant teenager, relying on benefits to survive, Hedda faces a lot of judgement. Gregory makes it clear that the judgement is not necessarily fair or deserved.

Something that I really appreciated about this book what how it dealt with the romance aspect of the story. It’s not the main plot line, it’s not even the main side plot. It avoids the problematic love cures/fixes mental illness/eating disorders trope, which can be so harmful.

All things considered this is beautifully written, incredibly important book, not easy to read, but worth it. The sheer emotional power of this book is a testament to Karen Gregory’s skill as a writer. I actually found it really difficult to write this review and rate this book, because it was so intense, and there is so much to talk about, but I think I’ve settled on 4/4.5 Stars for this book.

Countless is the story of Hedda, a girl struggling to recover from the grip of an eating disorder. Her anorexia has been a part of her life for so long that she’s even given it a name - Nia. Then Hedda discovers that she’s pregnant and she and Nia strike up a truce. Nia will let Hedda eat for the next few months for the sake of the baby.

This was a heartbreaking read that actually had me in tears at the end. I know. Me, the Ice Queen, in tears.

Hedda was a really sympathetic character. I often find it hard to empathise with characters with eating disorders, but that wasn’t the case here. This was one of those books that wrapped me up so completely that I genuinely felt I was there. The writing was just the right amount of descriptive to let me feel like the characters were real and that I was actually in Hedda’s dingy flat.

The plot first goes through Hedda’s pregnancy and then the months after where Hedda is struggling to look after herself and her baby in a depressing tower block flat on benefits. The story deals not only with eating disorders, but also the way we as a society treat young single mothers (*narrows eyes at Daily Mail and Tory party*), about our social care system (which is actually portrayed really well) and about what it’s like to live on screw-all money a week.

This was unusual for a contemporary in that there was no real romance storyline, and it was all the better for it. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a romance thread, but having a guy come in being all, ‘Let my love be the cure for your eating disorder!’ would have detracted from Hedda’s journey and taken her strength away.

Instead of romance, we see quite a lot of Hedda’s family life and how this has affected her decisions over the years. Although Hedda claims not to have a reason for her eating disorder, the more we see of her family, the more everything starts to click into place.

All i all this was a total emotional roller coaster. As we watch Hedda fall back into Nia’s grip after her baby is born, I just wanted to reach through the pages and give her a damn good shake and scream at her to look after herself and her baby properly. I was sobbing, like actually sobbing at the end, but don’t let this put you off. Hedda’s story is sad and horrific but it’s ultimately hopeful.

Warning: This book and review both talk about an eating disorder, please do not read on if this may trigger you in any way.

Wow. This book had a real hold on my heart and emotions from the very first pages and that grip only tightened as the story went on. I felt like I was with Hedda on her journey and so wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool and take care of her.

From experiences on the unit, to counting calories, exercising and that voice in her head, Hedda’s anorexia, or Nia as she calls it, is life consuming, until she discovers that she is pregnant. When faced with this enormous life changing experience, Hedda is forced to confront her own feelings, fears and emotions. But what will her future be?

This book is so emotionally driven and it is such a raw read. I don’t have any personal experience with having an eating disorder and neither have I been a teenage mother and I found this book to be a real eye opener. It gave a really honest insight into being anorexic and how hard it is to fight your own demons. The way in which Nia was always there looking over Hedda’s shoulder, ready to pounce and spit out spiteful names at her was something that really got me because it was such a powerful way to show the world just how life consuming having an eating disorder is. There isn’t a moment in this book where Hedda’s mind isn’t somehow straying towards counting calories or comparing herself to others and it is frightening to say the least. I am thankful that I’ve read this book because I genuinely feel that I’ve learnt so much from it.

Teenage pregnancy is another topic which still seems to be somewhat taboo in the UK and that is tackled head on in this novel. There are many occasions where Hedda is receiving dirty looks or is made to feel uncomfortable and whilst we must also take on board that this will be because of her appearance too, there is something to be said for those who judge teenage mothers. At the young age of seventeen and completely isolated Hedda certainly does not have an easy time of it when Rose comes along. It was so heartwarming to read of Hedda’s journey with Rose and to see how that motherly love just blossomed over time into something so special and beautiful. Of course it is not plain sailing but Hedda’s love for Rose knows no bounds and the last few chapters and the epilogue of this book absolutely destroyed me. I think that sobbing would be an understatement.

This book is beautifully written and deals with such a raw and complex subject matter in a really authentic and meaningful way. This book is a very difficult read and I imagine that for someone with personal experience it may be too difficult. That is something that really needs to be considered on an individual basis. Personally I loved that this book didn’t have a fairytale ending. Hedda’s problems weren’t solved by a knight in shining armour and there wasn’t a happy ever after. What we ended up with was a heartbreaking story that felt real. It was worth every single tear that I shed.

Thank you, Karen Gregory, for putting Hedda’s story out there.