Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t love this book and therefore didn’t finish, I just didn’t connect with this one. Not for me, sorry.

This was a very good read that showed the reality of life, motherhood and female worries. So many have to juggle so many issues in their daily lives that often important issues like checking out lumps and following up on necessary appointments. Kat is busy. She's holding fort at home, her husband is working in Berlin. Her children are growing up and getting on with life. Her friend from university is coming to visit. This visit pushes her thoughts out of their usual married realm. And she is trying to deal with suspicious medical changes. It was an easy read though, despite her worries. It was thought provoking too. I did enjoy it.

Well, this book was very interesting in many ways because it puts you in the shoes of a forty-year-old woman, her fears of begging her mother, her health anguish, and all the family dilemmas she faces. The book is very (VERY) funny.

I don't know if it was me, but many parts felt "very elaborate" and I found myself conflicted with the translation from German.

I just didn’t connect with this one. It could be the season I am in, Blayne it wasn’t the right time for me to read a book about an overwhelmed who mother who hasn’t put herself first as I am also so often an overwhelmed mother who too often doesn’t take time for herself (although not in the same ways). She may have been too relatable to me while the other characters weren’t relatable enough. Overall the book seems forgettable. But I also know that just because I didn’t connect with it, doesn’t mean that someone else won’t.

This is a novel of mommy life at its worst. As a mother (albeit with younger children than the character) I felt every word. Overall I'm a little torn about this book-one the one hand, its good to read something like this and feel like we're all in the same boat. On the other hand, who wants more of the same nonsense you have to deal with daily?! Depends if you are reading to process your own life vs looking for an escape, I guess.

I think if I were to read this in the original, I would like it. That's not to say I didn't like the translation, but more than I don't really have any feelings toward it.
I found that as I was reading this I could go through a few pages and not recall what I had read, but that I wasn't motivated to go back and connect to the story again. I was indifferent, which is sad because I really wanted to like this one.
I wanted to connect with the characters and connect with a discussion around where our identity goes when we are a parent, how our health is an unseen character in our narrative, and how that all changes when the invisible becomes visible - or in this case a lump.

I tried with this one, hoping it might be something a bit similar in style to The Cactus or something but i'm afraid it just didn't work. I'm wondering if it has lost something in translation as it seemed to veer off explaining something in depth that didn't really need that much of an explanation. It felt a little disjointed too and I didn't really warm to the main character.

That was interesting to read. I won't say I didn't enjoy, for the most part I just found it was an okay book. Nothing special about it. The plot was fine, the struggles real. I didn't feel any connection with the caracters. So yeah, just an okay book.

I didn’t enjoy this book. I felt it hard to relate to and often felt like things weren’t quite making sense. I didn’t know until after this was translated so I 100% think that is the reason for my inability to relate to this story. I didn’t post a review online as I do not like posting negative reviews - especially due to something like translation. .

I loved this funny and poignant book which deeply struck a cord because it reminded me so much about my own life. It could have been describing my life to a T dealing with kids who are finding themselves in life and a husband who is never there because he is travelling for work. Told in a matter of fact way without drama and ending on such a beautiful note we’re all the elements to make this book a success. I loved it !

I'm not sure if this lost something in translation. While I enjoyed the read it was very static and I didn't really see the point. I sympathised with the mother over the daughter's problems and laughed at her chaotic lifestyle but I Just don't think this worked particularly well.

This is a sad, but often very funny, account of a woman on the edge. Katja Theodoroulakis is in her 40s. Her mother died of cancer and now she thinks she has got a lump in her breast as well, but that’s very little compared to a hyperactive daughter, an absent Greek husband, a neighbour who has chopped his thumb off, a life characterised by underachievement in music and a compulsion to write lists. And, that’s just the start of it! She never has time, she runs constantly late and the things that might be nice seem to get overtaken by chaos. Along the way, her sister and most of her old friends seem to be more successful in their lives than she is. Basically, it’s a car crash!

Of course, it then gets worse. She makes an old friend and the neighbour take her to Berlin where she interrupts her husband’s office Christmas party by standing on the stage and taking off all her clothes. It’s not a good place to be.

The sad thing is you get glimpses of how it could be so much better. Even the daughter knows that she needs medication and a bit of prioritising would see Katja spending more time with family and friends, insisting that she needs her husband’s support and enjoying music rather than being tormented by it. She could also have had an enjoyable evening and slept with the old friend as well. You get the impression it would have done her good!

In many ways, she’s her own worst enemy and, although she is pretty certain she is about to die at the end of the novel, I think it’s fair to say there are some questions about that as well! A lot of the book involves revisiting the past which seems equally confused with a lot of missed opportunities and regrets, and events which have been dictated by random chance.

This is a book which if you spend your day running about after your children and your husband, and appear to struggle to simply stay in the same place you would probably enjoy reading – if only you had the time!

Thank you Text Publishing and Netgalley for this ARC.

This was an enjoyable book to while away a couple days with. A good choice for the upcoming holidays.

Fun read with snappy dialogue. This is an interesting take on a harried mother who needs to learn to put herself first.

Our protagonist is Kat, a music teacher who has to pick up her daughter Helli from school after a nose bleed. We follow Kat through this particular day and see her relationships with family and friends. But Kat has a secret; she has felt a lump on her breast (a 'something' she calls it) which she suspects might be malignant.

Kat is a very quirky narrator (I hate the word but it fits here). She doesn't necessarily act as you would expect and she has a different way of viewing her world. At first it was hard to get into the story and connect to her as a character because of this, but as the novel progresses and you become use to this style of narration Kat becomes quite endearing. She is a well-developed character, and there were moments when I could relate to her.

Because we are told this story from Kat's perspective, everything feels quite detached. This is deliberate; Kat feels quite isolated from her loved ones, as her kids grow up and her husband is away most days. Yet by distancing us from the characters, I found it was hard to care for them. The two neighbours, Theo and Heinz, did nothing for me, and when I look back I find them interchangeable. I remember characteristics that belong to one of them, but couldn't say which one. As I say, the detached narration was probably intended by Krügel and it does accurately reflect Kat's feelings about her life, but it affected the secondary characters negatively.

The novel flits between drama and comedy, having moments which are 'life like' and others that are completely ridiculous. There is a moment at some stables which I found stupid, and pulled me out of the narrative. It just seemed highly unlikely that Kat would do what she does, and the ridiculous thing that happens here makes the ending less impactful. The ending is also a bit ridiculous and out of character, but I thought it was sweet and something out of a rom-com. It also shows a character change in Kat. But the earlier moment kind of robs this of something.

Look at Me is not everyone - a quick browse through Goodreads and Netgalley highlights the mixed response. The unusual, detached narration could put people off. Overall I thought the novel was good. It's not groundbreaking and I don't think it'll make my best books list at the end of this year, but I enjoyed myself while I was reading it. The imagery and characterisations were fine, and I thought Krügel's word choice and sentence structure was good. There were some problems which I've already discussed. I think reading a sample to get a taste for what this book is like might be a good idea instead of rushing out to buy it.

Mareike Krügel, Look at Me (German 2017, English 2018)

To say that Katharina is having a stressful day is the understatement of the whole novel. The book starts and ends within one day… and what a day! Katharina is a woman in her 40s, a mother of two (a teenaged boy and a ADHD middle grade girl), a wife to an architect who works in another city during the week and leaves her to manage home alone, a daughter to a woman who died of breast cancer when Katharina was in her teens, a sister to a musician woman who is rather self-centered, a helpful neighbor to an excentric couple, a part-time music teacher for pre-k kids, and many other different hats. But nobody really looks at her and sees her as she is, stressed-out, overwhelmed and afraid.

She hardly has time to catch her breath between driving her daughter around, solving out issues of a clothes dryer on fire, lost pets, injured neighbors, son’s girlfriend, daughter’s first period and desperately trying to stay on top of daily chores. Still, these tasks are nothing compared to deeper problems that lurk at the back of her mind. Katharina has discovered a lump in her breast, and her marriage to Costas is not at its best. But she can’t (or won’t) settle down to take these questions in, she runs from one chore to the next in a whirlwind of daily activities and small worries. She’s a bit like a German cousin of Kate Reddy (from Allison Pearson’s bestseller), but a pessimistic Kate without the benefits of British witticism and Pearson’s chick lit obligatory happy end.

Although I could totally empathize with the nature of Katharina’s problems, it was difficult for the first half of the book to connect with her as a character. We jump from one scene to the next, from one problem to the next without getting properly introduced to Katharina, and she doesn’t come out as very likeable at first. Also, it’s a feminist stream-of-consciousness novel, but imposing an endless to-do list on the reader is unfair, I have my own mental load, thank you very much!

I did persevere (slightly because the book is set in Lübeck and I have such fond memories of this town!) and I was glad I had, because the second half was much better. We get to the back stories and the deeper issues of Katharina’s life and the ending just blew my mind and nearly made me cry.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

This was a pretty good story. I had a hard time getting into it at first - but once I did, it very well could have been my life <3 Complete and utter chaos -- I struggled a bit with the flow, but overall it was pretty good

Upon re-reading the description of this book, I feel like this book is no longer in my interests. I did read the first few chapters and felt like it wasn't what I wanted.

Very difficult read. I skimmed the last half only because I was too invested to quit. The characters were not engaging and I just didn't understand the storyline.

Interesting novel about a woman obsessed with a health condition while assessing her choices in life. A women with two kids, one who constantly requires attention and the other very uninteresting. Her husband has taken a job out of town and only comes home once a week. She appears to look forward to the weekends, but they usually end up quarreling. It told the story of a family in Germany with an austisic daughter and a mother trying to deal with the onset of Breast Cancer. How to deal with life itself. My first book by this author, Mareike Krugel, got this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

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