What a fascinating book. I was impressed by the storyline and the characters were all well written and complex. Where there are complex storylines combined with intriguing characters the reader experience is magnified tremendously. To have a book that is well written as well as entertaining is a delight. Reading is about escaping your world and entering another one. Here I forgot about my own life and was immersed in the world created by the author. I would recommend this book.

I found this to be a fun book about coming of age when one is thirtysomething. The way the book uses social media to come across is perfection. I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher and this is my honest opinion.

I really loved this book! I thought the writing was really funny and wry and satirical. The story revolves around 35 year old Jenny who's hit quite a rough patch - relationship failed, friendships drifting, job in crisis - and all of it is centered around her social media addiction. I found this relatable and funny and a different take on how social media plays a role in our mental health. Her relationship with her mother provides added depth to her main crisis in the novel (not to give anything away). Definitely recommend!

This book fell flat for me, it wasn't my taste I guess. It was hard to relate to. The idea and concept but the main character was hard to connect to.

Recently out of a long-term relationship, living with thankless Zoomer boarders in her home, ever-obsessed with social media validation, and hating her co-workers, Jenny is feeling trapped.

In an upset of life circumstances, her fortune-teller mother, an erstwhile soap actress, moves in with her. She mourns the end of her relationship with a sexy man-child photographer whose betrayals are really only beginning, and struggles along in a job she finds asinine. Her closest friends, both interestingly and intensely drawn characters, become pawns in her anxious machinations, while she ignores the realities of their lives.

Jenny’s hyperfocus on Instagram engagement is relatable, if extreme. Her carefully curated feed is hiding the behind-the-scenes mess, and her fascination with gaining the attention of influencers has her ignoring the people she knows who love and care about her.

The balance of Jenny’s narcissism and self-awareness is difficult, but Unsworth nails this. As Jenny callously abuses her friendships, we understand who her first example of this behavior was, and how great her anxiety is that she can’t see past the tip of her own nose. While she’s frustrating and self-absorbed, she’s brilliant, pithy, and far more worthy than she thinks. I loved every second of this book.

Hard to read, hard to put down, hard to forget!!

Excellent material for book clubs and thoughtful discussions. However, as thought provoking as it might be, it's also quite disturbing.

So, I need to start out by saying that I feel like I would have enjoyed this book much more if I hadn't read it during a pandemic. I feel like the struggle of this woman would have resonated more, had it not been for the backdrop of such immense struggling of a more significant nature, worldwide. I tried to take myself out of the current climate, and enjoy this book for what it was. It is a great summer read that has a bit of bite to it, and it rises above the fluffy summer chick lit by leaps and bounds. I liked this book, and I'm sorry that it was published when it was, as I think it would have been better received in any other year.

Unfortunately not my taste ... could not relate to the craze of social media these days. I think young adults would enjoy this.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

A clever angsty novel

Such a fun read - great for Sally Rooney / Naoise Dolan fans! I really enjoyed it, but it was also a bit bizarre - but hey, I like bizarre! It'll be one of those polarizing reads where people either love it or hate it. I'm the former.

Giving up on the audiobook version, just not for me! I believe this book is aimed at twenty-somethings who would probably connect with the author's humor and love the story.

This was not the book for me. The comparisons to the show, Fleabag, should have given me pause but I was hopeful for a more endearing main character. This woman is a self-centered mess and I was left dismayed by her friends, coworkers and family continuing to rally around her as she self destructed and took down everyone in her path. Thanks to netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pairing the irreverent humor of shows like “Fleabag” with the sardonic humor of works like THE ROXY LETTERS, Emma Jane Unsworth’s GROWN UPS is the satirical, deeply human and surprisingly poignant answer to the question: “What do you do when your life is falling apart?”

In short, the answer is not to do anything that Unsworth’s lead character, Jenny McLaine, would do. Self-conscious to a fault but bitingly funny and capricious, Jenny would tell you that she was only going through a breakup, and not a particularly bad one at that --- but the truth is much closer to a full breakdown. While she was once a cool and self-assured 20-something, the end of her seven-year relationship has left her 35, borderline friendless, burnt out at work, and nothing at all like the adult woman she imagined she would be at this age.

Writing in stream-of-consciousness prose, text messages, emails, tweets and Instagram captions, Unsworth immerses her readers in the immediate wreckage zone of Jenny’s life and mental health. With her life crumbling around her, Jenny has become obsessed with social media, drafting and redrafting captions of her latest coffee order, a clever sign at a pub and even a stale croissant, often calling upon her best friend, Kelly, to reassure her of her coolness and social media savvy. When she is not posting herself, she is neurotically tracking her “likes,” confirming her status as a follower of her social media crush, a picture-perfect woman named Suzy Brambles, and sending increasingly worrisome emails to her ex, Art (and, oh yes, he is an artist named Art who makes moody and often meaningless art).

Rather than inspiring her or making her feel less alone, Jenny’s social media obsession only amplifies the distance between her --- lonely, flawed, unmoored --- and the women she follows. She is desperate for validation and weighs her self-worth in likes and follower counts, even as her real-life friends and coworkers rally around her, offering advice and support while asking for nearly nothing in return. And then the unthinkable happens. Her mother catches wind of her breakup and hops in a van full of nothing but gin, mismatched eyebrows and tarot cards to give her the best gift she can think of: herself.

Cooped up in her tiny house with her equally self-centered mother, Jenny is forced to reconcile with some hard truths. Unsworth turns a keen, sardonic eye to the plight of the 21st-century woman, poking fun at social media, fashion, alcohol and the particularly painful self-consciousness that plagues so many millennials. Without pushing Jenny into a transformation too soon, Unsworth manages to highlight the ridiculousness of her situation, while still pushing her into new challenges and periods of rapid-fire development. With an experienced and sharp eye, Unsworth breaks down the way that Jenny has allowed curated feeds to influence how she perceives others and herself --- and forces her to break down her own fear-built walls to allow herself to break free from her self-imposed chains. But not only is this a satirical and hilarious novel, it is also highly relevant and searingly current, making it a sharply drawn portrait of our time.

It would be wrong to call Jenny immediately likable --- she is often cringeworthy at best and completely intolerable at worst --- but Unsworth infuses her with such brutal honesty that you still cannot help but root for her. Though highly self-aware, Jenny often misses her own best qualities, like her sense of humor and her success at work and in life. By throwing these traits up against her innermost thoughts, the “why can’t I be like her” thoughts, Unsworth highlights not only the pervasiveness of the toxicity of social media, but also the universal desires for validation and acceptance.

Although GROWN UPS is a truly funny and sharply written novel, at times I felt that the message was a bit forced. Much like her main character, Unsworth occasionally tries too hard to make every moment laughable and “grammable,” a failure made even more noticeable by her remarkable capacity for nuance during the book’s weightier moments. There is a lot to love about this story, from its poignant takes on the digital age to the slowburn resolution of Jenny’s relationship with her quirky and eccentric mother, but the authenticity was often marred by the “look at me” tone.

Brutally honest, breathtakingly current and laugh-out-loud funny, GROWN UPS is a modern-day BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY for readers who enjoyed MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION and irreverent television shows like “The Office” and “Fleabag.”

DNF @ 25%

I just can't get into this one at all. The main character is so hard to relate to that it is affecting my enjoyment of the book. It is a fantastic concept. Just not for me.

I was interested in reading a light-hearted book to escape from serious days. This title had a lot of characters (many secondary) & while it provided an escape, I also found it unrelatable & vapid. If your life is, or recently was, a mess, you may enjoy commiserating, otherwise it may not resonate as much. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Grown Ups, by Emma Jane Unsworth, is the story of a thirty-something, stressed woman struggling to keep it all together. The story is told in an interesting format mix of emails, texts, stories, and internal dialogue. In theory, this may have been a very fun book to read.

Jenny has lost her job, her relationship has tanked, she has alienated her best friend, and her mother is moving in. Jenny is so insecure and undecided that her life has become one big self-absorbed mess Jenny, as is common this day and age, is a social media addict and cannot tear herself from the temptation of all things online and act as a responsible, productive, hard working, adult.

I found Jenny to be extremely selfish. It was all about "me-me" and how she felt cheated or misunderstood.. She thoughtlessly mistreated and disrespected those around her without looking back. Jenny wanted for attention and pity. no matter how self-humiliating. The novel was written to be highly satirical and humorous.. In actuality the author tried so hard to accomplish this goal, that the story and its characters truly lacked depth Jenny's life was a shitshow and needs to get a grip on the reality that she is , age wise anyway, an adult., Jenny is one of those people you try to separate yourself from as her negativity will only suck the life out of you. Fortunately, I was unable to relate well with Jenny. and her pathetic lifestyle.

Reading this novel took multiple tries and much patience. I did not care for the storyline or the characters. I hope that other readers will find more enjoyment than I did.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

#netgalley #grownups

I thought this book was incredibly honest. On the surface, Jenny has the perfect life but underneath it all she is caught up in the pitfalls of the social media age. I thought this was a good book but it didn't necessarily make me feel good while reading it, if that makes sense.

I was expecting more biting wit with this book, but it was choppy. While I didn't mind the author going back and forth in time with each chapter, the flow of each page didn't make for a very meaty ready. The protagonist was frustrating in a way that Carrie Bradshaw from "Sex and the City" was: Vapid, self-indulgent with no real redeeming qualities. The obsession with social media being a big part of the book was a little tiresome (we get it, we're all obsessed with social media). I did enjoy having her mother play a large, overwhelming and PTSD-inducing role in her life, and -- by the way -- her best friend should have been a lot more pissed off than she was. All in all, the book felt stuck between "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Fleabag," but it couldn't decide which.

This fell really flat for me. I was hoping for something funnier, and better character development. I could have looked past both of those things if the story was even remotely fast-paced, but I found it to be soooooooo slooooow.

This was just the thought-provoking and engaging read I’ve been looking for! The storytelling style is different and refreshing and the characters are complex.