Really good read. Would recommend to friends and family. I could sympathise with characters (important for any fiction novel!) and looked forward to picking it up and reading the next few chapters! Interesting plot line and a good ending. Will look out for more novels by the author. Thank you.

I really like Nick Hornby's work but this wasnt my favourite of his book, but that is my personal opinion.

Lucy is in her early 40's, other of two boys and the Head of English and Hornby navigates her story along Joseph (not Joe) black, early 20's and who works a multitude of part time jobs including babysitting for Lucy.

Although the love story was lovely - everyone loves a love story.
BUT my main reason for not 'loving' Just Like You is the constant references to Brexit and politics. 

Great writing from Nick.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for an early review copy in exchange for a fair assessment of the title. 

I've been reading Nick Hornby for about two decades now, so when I saw that he had a new title coming out I jumped at the chance to review it. 

On the surface, this is a book about Lucy, a white middle-aged divorced mum of two boys, and Joseph, a working-class black man in his early twenties who has opted out of the uni-to-desk job existence. Both are thoughtful, wary of other people's emotions, and a bit distanced from life. Despite not really being like each other (hence the rather obvious title), something sparks between them and they start a relationship.

But this is not a romance; it's not even a novel about the pains of growing up. This is a Brexit novel, about getting older and less certain in a world that seems progressively more divided and divisive. Hornby has structured the novel in three parts (pre-, during, post-Brexit) to show a kind of layering of this massive political change on the lives of his ordinary characters. It's an ambitious and sprawling attempt, using two generations to reveal layers of class, race, age, and political perspectives while still trying to get Lucy and Joseph together. 

It's an interesting story: the ending felt messy, but possibly more honest for being that way. Some of the characters were delightful. Lucy's two boys were probably the strongest characters in the novel, tactlessly honest and clear sighted about their parents, and permanently connected to a game of some sort. I enjoyed Lucy's liberal friends constantly tripping over their own internalised racism when introduced to Joseph. 

In the end, although it was interesting enough to keep me reading into the night, I wasn't convinced the novel had much to say about any of the layers it had unwrapped. Joseph's response to Trump's presidential win was possibly the most interesting part of the book, but it was slight. There was nothing in the novel about Grenfell Tower, even though the book ends in 2018, nor was there anything about the Windrush scandal. Lucy's angst about age and acceptance of age/change never develops, and her concerns were all about her body changing while Joseph was still young; nothing about her changing abilities or desires as she ages. I'm not sure Lucy ever felt fully developed and, as the book went on, she read less as a female and more like a male character who had minimal charge of his own children rather the enormous and exhausting emotional labour of a mother and a head of department in an inner-city school.

I found myself more skim reading this book as I just couldn't get into it.  It might be more suited to being a film/TV adaptation so you can invest more in the characters and the emotions behind the text you are reading.

Joseph is twenty-two and works part time in a local butchers. One of his many jobs in an attempt not to have a full time job that would mean selecting a career. One Saturday, whilst attempting to defeat a loud and flirty customers comments he notices that she has a quiet and good looking friend.

Lucy is a forty-two, mum of two, who is going through a divorce after her husband drank too much as well as taking drugs. She starts chatting to Joseph in the butchers and mentions that she is looking for a babysitter. Which Joseph offers his services.

A friendship forms between them but they both want more. However, is the age gap too big, would their respective friends approve of an interracial relationship? Along the way they have hurdles to get over, not to mention Brexit voting and the Trump election.

I persevered through the book but didn't feel that there was much chemistry between Joseph and Lucy. I feel it might come across more on screen than it does in the pages of the book.