I really wanted to like this book, it got blurbed by Marian Keyes for Gods sake! However I found Jenny to be supremely annoying, shallow character. I get the author was trying to portray her growth from someone who lives her life purely on the surface, and cares more about 'likes' and the lives of the people she follows social media than having any kind of depth and self awareness or quality inter personal relationships. I just didn't care. Sorry! I know loads of people loved this one, but just not for me.

Jenny is obsessed with her social Media and the approval of others. Not getting these brings her to the edge of anxiety. While the premise of this book was totally up my alley, I struggled with the execution. The writing style, jumping around, and switching between Jennys storm of thoughts and a linear way of storytelling was quite confusing for me. Unfortunately I am not in the right headspace right know to appreciate this style. Jennys as the main protoganist was also really stressful. I dislike her from basically the second chapter onwards, and with what I 've read, this won't change.
I'm thankful for having gotten the chance of an ARC and getting to know a bit of this story. I'm sure it will find it's audience and I can sell it to the right customers now.

This book is fucking perfect. It’s completely delicious watching this Fleabag-esque woman be a complete disaster but so satisfying and life affirming in so so many ways. You root for her to get it together despite being completely abhorrent at times and her happily ever after is pitch perfect. Just absolutely what we all need to be reading.

No matter how hard I tried I could not seem to connect with this book. Unfortunately, I was disinterested after the first few chapters and nothing quite held my attention.

I always adore a good Coming of Age novel, and I still believe this fits even as protagonist Jenny is in her 30's and is wrestling with her life in the digital age. As a journalist, she is consumed by Instagram and other social media, constantly checking her phone for the number of 'likes" and followers she has garnered. Seriously, she spends an inordinate amount of time posting the "perfect" croissant picture and caption! And when she lands the perfect boyfriend, Art she is still constantly distracted by her phone--even during intimate moments which he complains of frequently. Told through texts, email, conversations and narrative, the novel focuses on Jenny's present and past, her dysfunctional relationship with her mother, her friendships with other women, and her workplace dilemmas. It's smart and funny, includes both satire and pathos; my heart went out to Jenny as she navigates this millennial life and struggles to fit in without being swallowed whole by social media influencers and her desire to be "seen" and acknowledged. No life is perfect and as she comes to realize her flaws don't have to hinder her best self, we see true growth and her realization that life can evolve without thousands of likes and followers as long as she is true to herself. It's a gem of a book!

Boring, vapid story of a woman obsessed with Instagram, Facebook and the like. She bases her life on the number of followers and likes she gets, spending large amounts of time composing posts for the internet. She is obsessed (there's that word again!) with certain internet personalities, some who she knows and others who she stalks. Not engaging and very hard to follow or care about the characters.

Seemingly slow to start, but a sly take on social media, the havoc it can wreak, and choices for women in the 21st Century--all with a funny, wicked smart heroine in ginger haired Jenny.

“‘Do you? Or did you just want a houseful, and then you created a chaos to remove yourself from the situation?’

Fucking hell. That enquiry seared me to the bone. here he was, slicing through my carefully curated kindness. I wondered how many other times he’d seen through my little charades…”

Unsworth book follows Jenny McLaine, a woman in her mid-thirties who is suffering from interpersonal, professional, and internal turmoil. She has just gone through a breakup, she loses her job, many of her friendships are unfulfilling, and her obsession with Instagram and social media has warped her sense of self and reality. Jenny’s narration is as neurotic as she is, a mix of prose, emails, texts, Instagram comments, and script dialogue. When she gets distracted and loses her train of thought, we lose it with her.

I really appreciated how skillful the writing was. We were really deep in Jenny’s head in a way that was successful in how exhausting it was. I thought Jenny was really irritating, and I wanted to put the book down several times because I have a hard time with unlikable protagonists/narrators. Kelly was the character I liked the most and related to the most, and given that, I think that Unsworth did a great job with Jenny’s character. I found her insufferable, and that worked–I don’t use Instagram much, and I don’t understand (or appreciate) the obsession with it among people my age. I found it unbelievable that Jenny was thirty-five, because I expect people who act like this to be around my age or younger (I’d say 16-25). Much of the time I was reading I had to ask myself, “seriously? She’s 35, for Christ’s sake!”

I appreciated the characterization of Jenny’s mother, Carmen, just as much. As someone who also has a complicated relationship with my mother, it was evident that Jenny’s mother is the reason she is so neurotic. This is really the only aspect of Jenny’s life that I related to. I enjoyed it and appreciated the truth of it. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to use the phrase “childhood trauma”, but it was really interesting to see how problems we’ve encountered as children really stay with us for the rest of our lives. Also, this book really re-affirmed my belief that people should not be friends with their exes too soon after a breakup without going through the necessary and internal work of healing first.

The Flebag comparisons were meaningless to me because I’ve never watched it and have no interest in doing so. The book was fine, the most interesting thing about it being that it was so different from what I usually read. Finding out that an influencer she likes unfollowed her causes Jenny to spiral. In a book I read a last year, the protagonist’s love interest getting falsely accused, convicted, and forced to do time for a crime he didn’t commit causes her to spiral. Basically, the protagonists of the books I normally read have other priorities, namely racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Jenny is shallow. Her life post-breakup is shallow. Her problems, while not insignificant (to her, anyway), definitely reveal to me that some people live in a completely different world than I do. For those people, I’m sure this book is insightful, important, etc. For me, it was a fun, brief escape - both from the world I am used to and from the literature I am used to - before plunging back into books that more accurately reflect my realities.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I was a little wary of this book because it was recommended for fans of Fleabag and I've found few books actually live up to that comparison but in the end I preferred Grown Ups! Jenny is a 30-something columnist at an online magazine with an internet addiction. She's obsessed with her instagram feed and how things look to other people and she thinks she has friendships with people she follows online. It's funny and relatable and a really easy read. I found the main character a little frustrating in places but I think that's the point. Would thoroughly recommend!

Grown Ups (also published as Adults) is the third novel by British author, Emma Jane Unsworth.
Meet Jenny McLaine: Single. 35 years old. Radical feminist online magazine columnist.
First impression: Obsessed with social media. Agonises over the image she projects. The epitome of shallow. Overthinks everything. Excessively needy. Endlessly seeks approval. Constantly second-guesses every nuance. Thinks IMPORTANT things in SHOUTY CAPITALS! Begs her friend to proof-read emails to her new boyfriend. Priorities severely distorted. Radiates insecurity.

“I interrogate myself. That’s what the midthirties should be about, after all: constant self-interrogation . Acquiring the courage to change what you can, and the therapist to accept what you can’t.”

All this even before she loses her job, her best friend and her boyfriend. How did she get like that? An unconventional upbringing by quirky single mother may have played a part… By the time the reader reaches the halfway mark, enough interactions between Jenny and boyfriend, Art, and Jenny and best friend, Kelly, have been described for it to be clear why they might want a break from her.

Jenny’s mother, Carmen turns up; she and Jenny don’t have a good relationship, but despite her self-promotional leaflets in the neighbourhood letterboxes (Carmen McLaine— Spiritual Healer and Psychic–Medium. Specialist advice on Love and Relationships , Family Matters, Exams, Careers, Jobs, Luck, Death, and more. 25 years’ expertise in dealing with Spirit. Pay after results) it’s clear her intentions and her instincts are good. “You wonder why you’re anxious —when you constantly stare at a device that beams nightmares into your eyes.”

On rare occasions, Jenny has a flash of insight into her own behaviour: “It’s so hard to be spontaneous and thoughtful at the same time. This is why you’re generally better off staying in and watching TV or interacting safely on the Internet behind a semi-affected persona. The outside world demands too much reality. And I find reality stressful in the extreme. Reality doesn’t give a person enough thinking time. It renders one ill-prepared.”

“I don’t know who to trust because I don’t know who I am. At thirty-five years old, at halfway, I am still waiting for my life to start.” Will Jenny survive the challenges life has thrown her? Will she join the adults?

As well as Jenny’s rambling inner monologue, the format comprises emails and draft emails, Instagram posts, texts, imagined play scripts, letters, tweets, psychology therapy session transcripts, Google searches, and a suicide note. Unsworth has a talent for descriptive rose: “A huge man comes out of the lounge. He has earlobes like medallions of beef.”

Although a little disjointed, this novel has some blackly funny scenes, and some very perceptive observations on today’s world. It will likely tick a lot of boxes, and not just for millennials.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Gallery Books, Better Reading Preview and Harper Collins Australia

I could not get into this book. The story was not compelling enough and I just was not motivated to read beyond the first few chapters. My apologies.

the book was so difficult to get into. There was really just nothing that held my interest for more than a few chapters at a time. Disappointed
Thank you, NetGalley for an advance copy to review.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’m really sad because I had been on an amazing run of ARCs of late, and this is the one in the batch I had been most excited about.
It’s been more than 20 years since Bridget Jones introduced the feckless single city girl to the reading public, and this book makes me feel both decades. It’s that stale and cliché. Every single stereotype of an urban millennial jacked up times 1000. It was hard to finish because of the cringe. Sad.

I was very very invested in the book after the first chapter but was quite disappointed with how it shaped out. The first chapter is about our Instagram-crazy protagonist thinking and rethinking about posting a picture of a croissant—the filter, the angle, the caption, the hashtags. She worries about likes, It was funny. Slightly overdone but the right kind for me to make me laugh out loud and get curious about her life. I love Instagram and I kept thinking—Finally! A novel about people on which Instagram has a huge impact.

But then on, the novel just repeats this scene in various forms. Instead of adding to the drama it becomes tedious. She worries about reception of posts, has an unhealthy obsession with an influencer (I loved this angle but I wish it was explored in a stronger way), she stalks pictures of ex-es and others (like we all do), and is worked up when her favourite influencer unfollows her. The heroine becomes an annoying, unlikeable character. Of course, such characters in books are the best kind because they have so much to offer to a reader. But here, the barrage of text messages with friends interspersed with the actual narrative was jarring.

There isn't much plot, neither is there a strong character arc to grab your attention. This is a book I desperately wanted to like and was very intrigued by the premise but sadly it fell flat for me.

The book is described as Fleabag meets Conversations with Friends. At times I found it difficult to follow the story as it uses various types of media to move the story along. I feel like this book had such potential but ultimately feel let down by the chaotic storyline.

I had a blast while reading this book. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this story and how relatable it is to this technological era we are living in.

Jenny is the perfect portrait of a person who has succumbed to the power and negative side of the internet. She simply can't live without it, being online, checking what people are doing is her main goal in life and also, the death of her.

Jenny's character is this insecure, mid thirties woman, who's life is in crumbles and the only relief she has are her profiles on social media, where she presents to the world a fake version of herself. And it doesn't help, that the obsession with online people and their beautiful manicured lives, only increases her insecurities and her low self-esteem.

However, this is not only a book about Jenny's obsessions and the time she spends on social media and how that affects her. We also follow Jenny navigating through some hilarious and crazy episodes of her life, her interacting with people (or at least, trying), her dealing with the end of a controlling relationship and struggling to accept that she has a very peculiar mother that might have fucked up her life.

I read that is was compared to Fleabag, and let me tell you, it's totally true. From time to time, I would close my eyes and picture Phoebe Waller-Bridge, breaking the fourth wall and giving me some snarky and hilarious comments about social life in general.

I had a great time with this book. The writing was unique and the content, eye-opening. Unputdownable and highly recommended it!!!

A smart, funny exploration of the evils of social media for those of us who didn't grow up with it - and so much more besides. I found the book insightful and was told off by my child for laughing too loudly whilst reading it. I loved the cultural references from Jenny's past, the characters (who each resemble someone we all know) and the sheer honesty of the protagonist. I related to much of this and it kinda startled me. "Grown Ups" is a wake up call and a battle cry. Emma Jane Unsworth is the voice of a new wave of women's fiction, acknowledging that we can all be a bit hapless and hopeless but we are also nuanced and complex characters underneath.