I loved the first chapter of this book. Jenny posts a picture of a croissant and then is waiting for the likes and comments. She obsesses over a person that follows her, what she is up to, and if she is liking her posts.

It just didn’t totally work for me. Jenny is 35 and single obsessed with her phone and social media. There is a story here. I just didn’t really buy this character.

I loved her crazy mother Carmen and had a few laugh out loud moments. I also loved her interactions with her mom fiend. At one point the mom friend comments that maybe she is jealous of her doing what she wants when the mom has to thoroughly plan to do anything she really wants to do. I can relate!

There are a lot of important discussions about the pitfalls of our phone obsessive society.

I received an ARC of this from Net Galley that was called for an honest review

It seems fitting that there’s some ambiguity regarding the title of Emma Jane Unsworth’s new novel. It’s been published in the U.K. as Adults, but it seems to be headed for U.S. shelves as Grown Ups.

The book’s protagonist doesn’t particularly feel like much of either, putting Grown Ups in the same ironically titled corpus as Tom Perotta’s Little Children. A Londoner in her mid-30s, Jenny’s recently single and struggling enough to allow her mother to move back in and help her sort things out. Meanwhile, she’s reeling from her ex’s new relationship with one of her online frenemies and also pursuing “friendship therapy” with a pal who’s grown sick of her.

We understand where the friend is coming from, because Jenny’s a mess. A columnist whose readers are drifting away, she’s gone from mining her personal life for prose gold to rendering it into toneless Instagram posts. One of the book’s best scenes is its opening, as Jenny drives herself to tears over a stale croissant she didn’t have the guts to refuse — and over how to caption an image from the bakery, ultimately going with “CROISSANT, WOO! #CROISSANT,” and passive-aggressively adding “#shameabouttheservice.”

One of the refreshing things about Grown Ups is that Unsworth makes Jenny’s phone as constant a character in her life as ours are in our own. She nicely captures the way that technology mediates experience in episodes like the cringe-worthy moment when Jenny tries to snap a tipsy selfie with a social media influencer who has to say no, thank you.

She includes full text and e-mail exchanges, one of the features — along with numerous chapters that are short, sometimes to the point of having little more than a title — that makes Grown Ups an easy read. Truth be told, though, it’s not a page-turner.

A major reason for that is the slightly scrambled timeframe, flashing forward and back among chapters that rely on your knowledge of Jenny’s trajectory to figure out when they’re taking place. The technique evokes Jenny’s jumbled mind, but also impedes our investment in the narrative. Jenny gradually learns that a boozy haze is an unpleasant state in which to live your life, and we believe it, because we’ve been right there with her for the entire book. Wait, what friend is this? Were Jenny and Art still together when this happened? Does it really matter?

There’s more going on here than there was in Unsworth’s acclaimed novel Animals, since made into a movie starring Alia Shawkat and Holliday Grainger, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. The earlier book focused closely on the relationship between two tight friends, with the less outgoing woman learning how to move beyond a reliance on her spitfire ally. You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family, meaning Jenny’s stuck with her mom, an entertainer who’s recently been in the business of channeling the deceased.

Unsworth explores the shape of the love-hate relationship between mother and daughter, but only in fits and bursts among the other legs of this sprawling story. The book is full of amusing quips, but they land like laugh lines, often distracting instead of illuminating.

All that said, Grown Ups is a genuinely adult look at a decade of life that’s gaining increasing attention as marriage and kids get pushed back — or pushed out. Jenny’s frustration with her photographer ex is a incisive illustration of what it’s like to wrestle with the kid question when you’re the one whose body is tugging your sleeve and reminding you about biological realities.

“Once you hit thirty-five you’re technically a geriatric mother,” observes Jenny, asking her boyfriend, “What should we do?”

His response: “I was thinking we could order a takeaway and demolish a box set.” In other words, Netflix and entirely too chill.

This novel received a good deal of buzz before it was released. Pitched in part as being akin to Fleabag, it promised to be a funny, honest and maybe painful look at modern life. As it turns out, it is. I quite enjoyed this.

That enjoyment was only in part because of the main character, Jenny. In many ways, I preferred other characters in the novel, and I have a feeling that’s intentional. She is kind of awful for a lot of the novel: she is the epitome of the social media-obsessed, narcissist that, I have no doubt, everyone knows. She spends ages crafting and strategizing the most insignificant aspects of a social media post. She is addicted to her cellphone, sometimes in the extreme.

“Okay,” he said. “We have a problem.”

I finished my comment, a simple, single red heart emoji — the classic choice; just… enough — clicked the phone to sleep, and looked at him.

Art said: “You are on that thing when we eat, you are on it when we watch TV, you are on it when we go for a walk, and now you are on it when we are having sex.”

“It was a slow bit!”

“It was sex, Jenny. Not a film.”

She assumes that her friends and acquaintances only exist to listen to her woes and angst. Eventually, they call her on it, but for quite some time we see her blithely ricocheting through life and love. Only slowly do we learn of a traumatic event of her past, which certainly helps explain a little bit of her character but, to me, not enough. She’s difficult with everyone. Including her extremely endearing mother (who has some of the best lines in the novel). Jenny’s relationship and breakup with Art is woven throughout the novel, as we sometimes drop back into the past. He is in so many ways, the worst. His self-involvement is different to Jenny’s, but it is also timeless: his like has existed since the beginning of humanity.

I think the comparison with Fleabag is quite apt, but I didn’t click with Jenny as easily or quickly as I did with the eponymous protagonist of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s magnificent TV show. Jenny has very few redeeming features and qualities. She is an anti-hero, in many ways, so it’s perhaps not surprising that I clicked far more with many of the supporting cast — her mother, who I’ve mentioned, and also her various friends who struggle to balance their affection for her with her obliviousness. As the novel develops, however, they start to exert influence over Jenny in small, positive ways.

Unsworth is a very good writer, and the novel is often amusing, and a couple of times it is laugh-out-loud funny (not something that happens with me often). The novel is also highly, amusingly and intelligently observant. The commentary on modern life is very sharp, but doesn’t bludgeon you around the head. (Dave Eggers could learn a lot from Unsworth — I’m looking you, The Circle!)

“I see you, hipster.” He smiled sweetly. “I see you, with your piecemeal personality and your dietary restrictions and your General Pinochet T-shirt.”

“Do you think you are upset by these things because you secretly want them for yourself?”

Overall, then, I would certainly recommend this novel. It’s by turns funny, sharp, and moving. If you despise social media obsession and narcissism, you may struggle with Jenny, but I still think it’s worth giving it a try. Unsworth is a great writer, and I look forward to reading her next book.

Wooow! I don’t even know how to start this review, so I’ll just say that this book is remarkable, uproarious, and touching. Jenny, the main character, is quite unique. She’s funny, clever, and she overthinks too much. She’s obsessed with her social media accounts, with the comments people leave, who follows her and who doesn’t, and the “likes” her posts get. She can’t help taking a picture of something and upload it to instagram with the best caption, which Jenny thinks over and over in order to get more likes.

Therefore, I couldn’t help thinking of the Jennys out there, with all these perfect pictures of their perfect lives. All this superficiality and the lack of spontaneity. Jenny thinks real life is difficult, because she doesn’t have the same amount of time -she has on the internet- to think of the best reply or comment in a simple conversation.

I like the way Emma Jane Unsworth deals with this topic through the main character, Jenny, as well as the other subjects, such as relationships (between friends, mother-daughter, couples, society, etc.).

I will definitely read her previous books.

At first I wasn't convinced by this as I found Jenny very annoying and shallow but about a third in to the book and I started to enjoy it more. She isn't the most likeable character but somehow I got drawn in , I guess you could say she is a modern day Bridget Jones. The book is very witty and entertaining and it shows how younger generations are obsessed with social media . I liked how the book is told using texts, emails and narrative which makes it a fast read.

I'm excited to read more from Emma Jane Unsworth. I so closely related to this book since it accurately taps into my demographic: 30-something, female, and trying to navigate the realities of getting older but getting no closer to stability. Would recommend.

this was a witty and entertaining read. Very identifiable and I look forward to reading more from this author.

I was super intrigued by the concept of Grown-Ups by Emma Jane Unsworth. The strong focus on social media mixed with the desire for approval from others was timely and in a nutshell, life in the digital age. I ended up enjoying the mixed media style which I wasn't sure would work for me at first.

Unfortunately, I just had a hard time connecting with the main character, Jenny. for much of this book. I understand that this book is party a satire, but the obsession and thought process that went into presenting her life a certain way was funny at first but then I just became disinterested.

As someone who is also in my mid-thirties but also in a very different life stage, I just could not relate. I think some of this would be great in a shorter essay format but it just felt dragged out and sometimes a little cringe-worthy. A lot of this is just my perspective and I can see this being a huge hit for many.

I did really appreciate the inclusion of the dysfunctional family dynamics with her mother, Carmen. This was a great element of the book for me and I enjoyed seeing some of the "why" behind who Jenny is today. For most of the book Jenny was a frustrating character who came across as way too shallow but I think that was the author's intention.

I would have loved to learn more about who she really was and see some kind of self-awareness on her part, but I think part of this is just me expecting more from something that is something to be a light and humorous easy read.

All in all, I have mixed thoughts about this one but I think it is worth a shot!

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

I adored this book! I can not wait for the physical copy to come out so I can reread and highlight and mark it up. I am very much happy with the characters. The story made me feel a lot. Really a good book. Worth the read.

I wasn’t sure this book would come together for me. The first half felt a little try hard in terms of the amount of wit (think back to how Dawson’s Creek was just TOO witty and smart for the time lol) and the extremity of the social media anxiety, but the second half drew me in and I ended up much more invested in the storyline. I’d compare the main character to a Queenie in her 30s with a social media addiction or maybe a Bridget Jones type in terms of a woman who is sort of falling apart, but not in a tragic way. Wrapped up a bit too neatly for my taste.

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.

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.

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.