I had forgotten how refreshing Nicholl’s writing style can be. Like in the previous novels I have read by him, there are plenty of musical references from the 80s to make one’s heart beat with nostalgia while a silly, unconscious smile is permanently planted on your face.
Nicholls knows precisely how to do that. How to involve the reader, almost in a casual way that breathes out depth. Depth of feeling, depth in character construction, depth in building a story that goes back and forth in time to recreate the situations that brought the main protagonist to the present time.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow”. says Juliet to Romeo when they are saying goodnight in Shakespeare’s famous play. What an adept title for a story about first love, that violent and memorable kind of love that usually burns itself out.
Charlie meets Fran accidentally one summer and he embarks on a quest very unlike himself for the sake of being close to her. During the course of the hot season, Charlie will rehearse in an amateur theatre company playing Benvolio while Fran plays Juliet, and as weeks go by and he gets to dig deep into Shakespeare’s lines, he realizes that he has fallen seriously in love for the first time at seventeen.

As many teenagers of his age, Charlie is lost and has no clear vision of himself. His parents have recently separated, his father is depressed and drinks way too much, money is always short. A couple of unwise, reckless decisions will define the future of Charlie and Fran, and a very pleased reader will take a peek into their lives twenty years after their initial encounter.

Indeed, I will say it once more. Nicholls knows how to pen his stories. There is plenty of intelligent banter, like in Shakespeare’s plays, also sincere empathy for people who have to make their own way, fighting against the odds, to become what they are meant to be.
Emotional without being sugary, light without being superficial, Nicholls unfolds a multilayered story about the many facets of love: first love, familial love, mature, bored love and the kind of love that true friendship irradiates, helping us at crucial moments.
His books sound like real life with the perfect soundtrack of good literature referenced in the right context, and one can’t help but dance at the tune of his characters, and smile to see how they grow to become reflections of what we were... and what we still might be.
Thumbs up, Mr.Nicholls!

The summer after I turned 16 was 1969. Many people mistakenly call this the “Summer of Love”, which was actually 1967, but it was definitely my summer of love. Don’t worry, no details provided here, but there are plenty of details about Charlie Lewis’ summer of love in David Nicholls’ touching novel Sweet Sorrow. In any case, I can’t remember a lot of details (understandably, given the 50+ year gap) about my SOL, but Sweet Sorrow certainly jogged both happy and painful memories. It’s the clarity of David Nicholls’ writing that makes Sweet Sorrow such a joy to read.

By accident, Charlie spends the summer with a group of misfit, artsy teens staging Romeo and Juliet. Of course he falls in love with ‘Juliet’ played by Fran and, despite his role of ‘Benvolio’ and not ‘Romeo’, she falls in love with him. Sounds like a pretty standard bildungsroman, but it isn’t. Charlie has a complicated life and although SS is a love story the love is not restricted to his new-found romance.

If you have ever taught Romeo and Juliet or remember much about what you were taught, you will know that the love in the play is not just mad passion between crazy teenagers, but the disastrously loyal love between friends, the destructive love of family pride and the devotion of those who cannot walk away from a train wreck relationship because they need to be there to pick up the pieces. Well, that’s the way I taught it anyway. Did David Nicholls choose Romeo and Juliet for the ‘Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-operative’ because he wanted these parallels? Not sure but in the last few pages ‘Charlie’ says:

This is a love story, though now that it’s over it occurs to me that it’s actually four or five, perhaps more: familial and paternal love; the slow-burning, reviving love of friends; the brief, blinding explosion of first love that can only be looked at directly once it has burnt out.

Charlie’s summer of love has all the parallel ingredients and with a good deal of sadness and, yes sweet sorrow, but thankfully without the death and destruction.

This is a great read, just as are Nicholls’ other books. If I have one criticism it is that I do not remember being as witty and erudite at 16 as Charlie and Fran… but it was 50+ years ago so maybe I have forgotten!

3*

This is a decent read, unsurprisingly well written by this excellent author, it just didn’t hook me at all.

Charlie, a teenage boy, is going through all the angst you’d expect from someone of his age. He’s got a difficult home life and then he meets Fran. What follows is a bitter sweet tale of young love, I’m sure diehard Nichols fans will love it and I honestly really wanted to, but, just found it under whelming.

A decent, enjoyable, easy, solid good read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview.

I'm an unconditional Nicholls fan, read all his work, so Sweet Sorrow couldn't possible be getting a negative review from me. Even better, this is a coming-of-age novel, a genre that suits me very well. This shouldn't come as a surprise, since Nicholls has always written masterfully about nostalgia.

To my own suprise it took me a couple of chapters to really get in the mood. I put it down for a couple weeks and then quickly read on as the novel found its rhythm. There's a lot to love: beautifully written characters, the comedy in dysfunctional families, first love and the despair and confusion it brings on.

Nicholls has yet again written a very good novel. But I would like to see something complete new. Get of the trodden paths, David, and surprise us next time!

Thank you to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #netgalley #davidnicholls #sweetsorrow

Sweet Sorrow is a poetic, bittersweet and nostalgic coming-of-age story! Charlie has just finished high school and this novels follows him throughout his last summer as a teenager. We see him being terrified of the future, fall in love for the first time, and handle family dramas. Nicholls so cleverly interspersed it with bits of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s a book for everyone, but mostly, it’s a book for people who love to reminisce about their past. It reminded me a bit of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and the feeling you get when you know you’re about to enter a new phase of your life. Nicholls is such a talented writer - I didn’t want this to end.

This was a sweet coming of age story. A nice read but not as good as I had expected.
I found it quite funny in places and by the end felt the story was pleasantly concluded.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is my first David Nicholls book, even though I've been eyeing a copy of One Day at a local book-sale everytime I attend. Sigh.

Sweet Sorrow is a tragicomedy written from the perspective of middle aged, average guy called Charlie Lewis, who's about to get hitched, but can clearly recall the memories of a brilliant summer spent with his first love, Fran Fisher.

There's also various other things going on in this book: 16 year old Charlie is trying to help his dad survive a brutal blow of depression, while barely trying to stay afloat himself. He's positive that he has flunked his GCSEs. He gets a job, and tries to put in a place a scheme of sorts, to help his dad and himself float by the rough time they're going through. But when it all gets too tough, he takes off with his newfound love for literature and cigarettes, and ends up meeting the girl who would be the redeeming grace of that summer. The catch is, she's also cast as Juliet in a production of the eponymous play, Romeo and Juliet and if he wishes to continue seeing her everyday, he ought to be cast as Benvolio.

And so begins a tale with numerous ups and downs, complete with references to the play and a plotline where everything falls apart in the Third Act.

I personally found the prose to be a little tiresome and long-winded. But I did love the parts where Nicholls describes the various intimacies surrounding the emotions you feel in your first relationship. I have highlighted plenty of passages from this book that made me gasp, because they were so accurate with emotions I had felt / was currently feeling.

The ending was surely bittersweet but fitting.

Thank you HMH Books and Netgalley for giving me an e-ARC to read and review!

This book is very eerie to me, because the summer I turned 16 and got my GCSEs (10 years after this book was set) my parents were also mid-divorce and I was working in a petrol station, I'd also done a "shakespeare camp" the previous year (comedy of errors, and no romantic prospects as iirc it was an all female cast).

The story is set in 1997 and is focussed on a summer romance between two teenaged am-dram actors. They're doing Romeo and Juliet and themes from the play are echoed in the off-stage romance. He's expecting to fail his exams, and his friends have nicknamed him "council" where she's a straight A student from a well-to-do family who go and see plays and eat hummus, which tbh i didn't even try until 2010. So, they're star-crossed, just like R&J.

Sweet Sorrow is an enjoyable and quick read, but I didn't feel like I got to know the characters all that well and some of them did merge in my mind. It's nostalgic, and sort of funny in parts. I don't read a lot of romantic books so it wasn't 100% my thing, but it's fun escapism.

This book didn't really turn out what I thought it would be. I was hoping for a more coming of age, romantic story, but unfortunately the writing made it hard for me to get into it that much or see that side. Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Books for the ARC.

I found Sweet Sorrow to be a sweet coming of age story. I enjoyed the view of the adult version of Charlie looking back and telling the story of the summer that he sort of found himself and the people who would shape who he's become. I really enjoyed the way David Nicholls writes dialogue and the way he captured and described moments, even the embarrassing ones. I found it a little slow going at first but I'm glad I stuck with it.

What a beautiful book – I’ve no idea how I missed this when it was published last year but now I’ve found it I want everyone else to enjoy it too. David Nicholls really is the king of nostalgia. He’s able to whisk middle-aged readers back to the heady days of adolescence where anything is possible and yet everything is just out of reach. Where life is either sublime or tragic with long spells of boredom in between.
The story is set in 1997 and told by Charlie Lewis, ‘The kind of boy you don’t remember in the school photograph.’ Charlie, now in his thirties is looking back on the summer when everything changed. As he prepares to leave school with a fairly poor set of exam results, he is not a happy boy. His parents have divorced, his father is drinking, he’s growing apart from his school friends and he has a boring part-time job. He’s going nowhere until he literally stumbles across Fran Fisher and discovers first love and Shakespeare.
This is a beautiful and believable coming of age story about one summer which changed everything.
Nicholls manages to spin a touching and tender tale that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming; realistic and yet magical.
The book is a brilliant and compassionate evocation of teenage confusion, dysfunctional families, friendship, first love, and the uncertain road to adulthood.
Whatever your own experience of teenage life, Sweet Sorrow is written in such a relatable way that you feel every bit of Charlie’s pain, fear, sorrow, and joy. If only every teenager could know that they’re not alone, that those dizzying high and lows, the pain and uncertainty doesn’t last forever and that one day they’ll look back and see things as Charlie does.
With thanks to Netgalley for a free review copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have loved all of Nicholls's books except, unfortunately, this one. I found it bloated and the central characters not engaging enough for this day and age.

Charlie Lewis is drifting along on his own one summer. His parents are separated and he lives with his unemployed dad who is mostly sleeping, and then he meets a girl and the only way he can spend time with her is if he joins a Shakespeare theater company that is producing Romeo and Juliet.

I liked the premise and the book started off well--but then it lost steam and had trouble holding my interest.

Having read and loved One Day by David Nicholls, I knew I had to get my hands on Sweet Sorrow. This book is a different sort of book. It is a tragicomedy, reflecting on young love, but it still focuses on concepts of family, friendship, and first love.

Nicholls introduces readers to Charlie Lewis, who is a bit down on his luck. He is altogether unimpressive, and his homelife is nothing to be envied. His life changes when he meets Fran Fisher. Fran comes to symbolize light and hope and change.

Looking ahead at an uneventful summer, Charlie finds himself agreeing to be in a production of Romeo and Juliet so that he can be closer to the luminous Fran. What comes from there is a coming of age story that's not fully unpredictable but is still "sweet sorrow" when it ends.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review by the publisher on netgalley. This is a sweet coming of age story. It was slow to start but overall an enjoyable read. Charlie is done with school and trying to fill his time over the summer as he avoids his depressed father. Charlie meets a girl, Fran, who he wants to get to know but the trick is she wants him to join her in a summer production or Romeo and Juliet. Charlie has never been much for reading or school work but the play helps Charlie not only fill his time but figure out who he is. The book alternates between the summer Charlie was 16 and his current life two decades later. This was a sweet heartfelt tale.

I couldn't get into this one, I tried a couple of times but just couldn't do it. I' sure if you are a fan of this author, that you will love it.

David Nicholls' novel, Sweet Sorrow, is a sweet coming of age romance that I easily finished in a day. It is a good, easy read, laced with comical situations. A suitable book for the beach or anywhere you may have distractions. Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In 1997 sixteen year old Charlie Lewis has just finished his last year at school in a small town in Sussex. It's not been a good year for him. His mother has left the marriage, moving in with another man and his two daughters, taking Charlie's younger sister with her, but leaving Charlie alone with his depressed and recently bankrupt father. Charlie knows he's done badly in his GCSE exams and won't be going on to sixth form college and apart from a few hours working at a service station doesn't know how he's going to fill in the summer break before exam results come out.

Cycling around the nearby countryside, he one day discovers a crumbling mansion where a theatre troupe are rehearsing Romeo and Juliet with a group of local youth, several from his own school. Not usually interested in theatre, Charlie is reluctant to accept their invitation to join the troupe until the very attractive girl playing Juliet, Fran Fisher makes him an offer he can't refuse.

Now, twenty years later about to attend a reunion of the theatre troupe, Charlie looks back on that summer. His experience in being part of a close knit group, the power of Shakespeare to open him to literature and ideas and first love. David Nicholls has written a bitter sweet tale of young lovers, both humorous and poignant. While this feels like a fairly standard coming of age story, he has a wonderful understanding of teenage boys and a light touch that makes for an entertaining novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this early copy!

Did not finish - I did not connect with the plot and writing and decided to put it down.

“In the chaos of our family’s self-destruction he had quietly and unassumingly made himself present and though I could hardly recall a conversation that might be considered personal or honest, in the strange, mute semaphore of teenage boys he’d communicated a sense of care and somehow passed on the message to the others, an unspoken command to be, if not kind , then not actively cruel.”

Sweet Sorrow is the fifth novel by British author, David Nicholls. It was mid-1997, school was done, and sixteen-year-old Charlie Lewis was resigned to an unpromising future, waiting for the rest of his life to begin. Meanwhile, there was a long summer to endure, living with his father, Brian, the currently unemployed former owner of a chain of failed record shops. By default, as the older child, Charlie was left to look after his father when his mother left to live with her lover, taking along his sister.

“I knew from science fiction, rather than from Science lessons, that time behaves differently depending on your location, and from a sixteen-year-old’s lower bunk at the end of June in 1997, it moved more slowly than anywhere else in the cosmos.”

Brian Lewis was now often a sad, Mad Dad (chronically, clinically depressed), and sixteen-year-old Charlie was frightened, furious and resentful of the father he’d formerly connected so well with: he went out on his bike as often as possible.

“Boredom was our natural state but loneliness was taboo and so I strained for the air of a loner, a maverick, unknowable and self-contained, riding with no hands. But a great effort is required not to appear lonely when you are alone, happy when you’re not.”

On one of these rides, Charlie found himself quite unintentionally rehearsing Romeo and Juliet with Full Fathom Five Theatre Cooperative on a hint of a possibility of a promise from the lovely Fran Fisher, playing Juliet. It was something he kept meticulously separate from his school mates, whose ridicule could not be borne, but which he eventually realised was enjoyable for more reasons than Fran’s proximity.

Few authors can match Nicholls for portrayal of the kind of hopeless male who might show a bit of promise but ultimately excels in mediocrity: “Not admired but not despised, not adored but not feared; I was not a bully, though I knew a fair few, but did not intervene or place myself between the pack and the victim, because I wasn’t brave either. I neither conformed nor rebelled, collaborated nor resisted; I stayed out of trouble without getting into anything else. Comedy was our great currency and while I was not a class clown, neither was I witless” and “in photos of myself from that time, I’m reminded of those early incarnations of a cartoon character, the prototypes that resemble the later version but are in some way out of proportion, not quite right” are examples.
Nicholls gives the reader a moving tale of first love with a protagonist who will strike a chord with anyone who can remember their teens, can remember agonising over every word, overthinking every gesture. There’s plenty of humour, some of it a little bleak, but also some lump-in-the-throat moments. A beautiful read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.