I liked this book and the light way it talked about a very serious and often heavy topic! It felt like the book equivalent of a Sunday afternoon movie and that was exactly what I needed.

Olive follows the story of a woman in her early 30s who does not want to have kids. The whole book revolves around that topic and the impact of this decision in her relationship with herself, her boyfriend and her 3 best friends. We get to have a glimpse at the very different lives of 4 women who are very close friends but seem to be living distinct phases of their lives or have very different views of what they want their future to look like .

I’ve seen a lot of reviewers state that they found Olive very selfish and self-absorbed, but I disagree – in my opinion, Olive never came across as disrespectful of her friend’s choices, while the opposite happened often and she was way more patient with then than I would have been. I believe the author was able to create a flawed but realistic character who perfectly encompasses the way a lot of women feel about motherhood, as well as the ridiculous comments they constantly must deal with. It also talks about how difficult these comments are for couples dealing with fertility issues, which is not only very important but also often forgotten when this topic is discussed.

I think some topics and secondary characters could have been explored a little more in-depth but all in all it was a very pleasant read.

The first thing that attracted me to this book was its title, My name is Olivia, and here is a book about an Olivia, I had to jump on it.
I'm glad I did.
The book Olive although named after the major character isn't just a book about one woman, it is a book about choices and staying true to yourself and your choice despite societal pressure.
It is a book about friendship, love, family, and motherhood.

I personally think motherhood is damn difficult and definitely not for everyone.
The idea that a mother should be perfect and have everything under control is another scam, sometimes they get tired of putting everyone else first.

I would recommend this book because it is a jolly good read, raises a lot of questions about friendship and motherhood, it's the ideal 21st-century read.

Olive Stone is 33 years old, and has recently broken up with her boyfriend because he wants kids, and she does not. The story follows her as she processes the break up, want she wants, and the very different wants and choices of her friends. The story is told with flashbacks to key events that brought Olive and her friends to where they are today.

While the big question of Olive is how to feel confident with wanting things that break away from a conventional life path, there are several other threads throughout the story that I found really interesting. I think that Olive’s story captured how it feels to be in your late twenties/ early thirties and to feel very unsure of the choices you are making. Especially, when your close friends' lives are going in different directions than yours. Emma Gannon captures the jealousy, judgement, and pressure to impress others that is pretty universal.

The story is very engaging and the characters are interesting and likeable. However, sometimes the dialogue feels a little forced and the plot points seem unrealistic. I would recommend this book to anyone who is currently facing big life choices, or who just overall feels anxious about life.

I am so glad this reading experience is over!!

BLURB:
OLIVE is many things.

Independent.
Adrift.
Anxious.
Loyal.
Kind.
She knows her own mind.

And it’s ok that she’s still figuring it all out, navigating her world without a compass. But life comes with expectations, there are choices to be made and – sometimes – stereotypes to fulfil. So when her best friends’ lives branch away towards marriage and motherhood, leaving the path they’ve always followed together, she starts to question her choices – because life according to Olive looks a little bit different

The book promises so much but sadly didn't deliver for me. Approaching the themes in this book should be commendable, but it honestly deserves better craft.

There was absolutely no overarching story and no credible characters.

I thought Olive was really hard to relate to (and not just because i am a mother of 2). I found her entitled, obnoxious and quite unlikeable. Her behaviour was mostly irritating, I found myself wanting to shake her and telling her to grow up.

The female friendships the book portrays weren't relatable at all. Olive feels frustrated that her friends are no longer as accessible as they once were and fears being left behind while her friends move through life settling down into relationships, having families. Isn't this just life!? I found her attitude really brattish!

Maybe this is a generational thing, I feel like millennial podcasts will be raving about this one but for me it was dull as dishwater.

Its only January I know, but i predict this will be the worst book I read all year!

I was originally drawn to "Olive" because it was the first time that I could picture myself really connecting with a main character. Similar to Olive I do not want children, and can empathize with the struggles she faces throughout the book. The concept/theme of motherhood in most contemporary fiction novels revolves around wanting children and the struggles that can come along with that. I enjoyed that "Olive" wasn't blind to these issues and explored them through the character Isla. Gannon does a wonderful job of touching on so many various stages throughout one's life (birth, death, divorce, middle age, motherhood), which helps reiterate the thesis of the novel that life is going to play out differently for everyone and that's okay!

With that said, I did have some overall issues with Olive. The four main group of girlfriends, while facing their own struggles, all felt too similar. None of their personalities stood out all that much, and that goes for Olive too. Secondly, the plot felt far too disjointed. Both the breakup with her long time boyfriend and the introduction of a new romance could have been explored in way more depth. The book starts off with her breakup with Jacob, and I would have appreciated seeing more about how it reached the breaking point. I just do not find it plausible that throughout their entire 9 year relationship having (or not having kids) was never brought up.

So was the book for me? In some ways yes, and in other ways no. For other readers like myself who share Olive's views on not wanting children, I think it's a good book to pick up. Otherwise I do think you'll have trouble fullly engaging with this novel. I would love to see Gannon really hone in on character development, because the main characters in "Olive" definitely the potential to leave a lasting impression.

This book was not my favorite. 😬. While the concept was great and seemed like it would be super relatable and a deep introspective look, I found that Olive was kind of a miserable character. I didn’t really connect with any of the women in the book, and was left feeling slightly disappointed.

One of the best people I've 'met' in a book.
The tale of four women whose lives have always followed the same path, the trials and tribulations of adulthood until the taboo subject arises, Olive does not want to have children.
Olive, our protagonist is a thirty something women who is independent, loyal, kind and a little anxious. Olive knows her own mind and struggles when those closest to her try to tell her something different.
This book is about the struggles of parenthood and fertility but also relationships. This is the part I loved. The relationship between Olive, Isla, Bea and Cecily is something many women dream about and the strong female bond resonated with me on so many levels.
I really cannot find the words to express how much I enjoyed this book. The characters were all so real and Olive so refreshing.
Having your best life after your 30... that's something to shout about.

*ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed by this book.
On the one hand, I really enjoyed the premise but I did not connect with any of the characters.

Oh my god. This is like a Bible for normalizing childless women. This is for every woman who has decided they don’t want to have children in their life, and also for women who either have children or want children and struggle to understand what it’s like for women who don’t want children. As someone who does not want children, this read was so empowering and made me laugh, cry and all things in between as I began to feel like I belong somehow to this imaginary flock of women.

I really really appreciated that it gave perspective from every end of the spectrum to those who do not want children to women who want children but cannot, to women who have children. Of course all shared with varying degrees and reasons behind their decisions.

I LOVED everything about this read and honestly can’t stop gushing about it. I definitely think it wouldn’t be for everyone, but for me it was everything.

The premise seemed aboslutely to my liking, and it hit close to home, though, unfortunately, my expectations were not met; I can stomach an unreliable and unlikable narrator, however in Gannon's case Olive was absolutely dreadful to spend time with.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this book for free in return to an honest review.


The book was..ok. I think it would have benefited from more editing, but the spirit of navel-gazing/stream of consciousness was part of the charm...most of the time.

Some of the dialogues didn't read all that true to me, too.

One of the things that I appreciated most from this book, and that particularly struck a chord with me, is the depiction of the friendship of four adult women that have been together since childhood, and how difficult it gets sometimes to realize that despite their shared past, at some point inevitably their paths had changed, perhaps even to divergent directions, but with enough communication, empathy, and understanding (which are not easy things to reach, as we can see over and over in this novel) friendship might prevail above all, once they can embrace their differences. The conversations around the clashes of opinions and expectations around the choices to pursue motherhood, and between child-free and child-less characters, as well as the different representations of loss and the approaches to it, add up to the mix to make it quite captivating.
Sometimes I wished we could get out of Olive's head and voice for a moment, just to have a better and more nuanced sight from the point of view of her friends, because they all are very interesting in their own right, but I felt like we didn't hear their voices enough.
If I had to point out something that I didn't enjoy much, and this is a particular pet-peeve of mine so I understand it might not bother other people, there were way too many pop-culture references used as a resource to ground the characters and their shared experiences on a time frame, which was, for me at least, completely unnecessary, considering that once the novel starts getting momentum and moves forward, these references disappear entirely.

As a self-proclaimed Anglophile, Emma Gannon's debut novel, "Olive", checked all of my boxes and gave me all of the feelings that I find in a book that I adore. The characters were fun, interesting, loyal, quirky and caring; the setting was all things that I love about Great Britain...pubs, parks, flats, cold rainy days; and the storyline was crisp, quaint, thorough and thematically important and brave. I will carry the main character, Olive, in my heart for a long time. The premise of the book is that Olive, a thirty-two year old, single, career-minded independent, is not the least bit interested in having children, while her three best mates are knee-deep in the child-bearing and raising years. Of course, this is a strain on all of their relationships, but the handling of some tricky situations is what makes this book such a delight. Thank you NetGalley, Andrews McMeel Publishing and Emma Gannon for this fabulous eARC. I wish you much success with this wonderfully written and genuinely appealing story.

Unable to download this book to kindle due to already being published and archived. This is a mistake on Netgalleys part as I was only accepted for the book today 27.12.2020

I was really looking forward to reading Olive - I'm in my mid-thirties and feeling some of the same feelings that Olive is. Unfortunately, this book didn't quite hit the mark for me. I enjoyed the first half, but started to lose interest after that. Things became a bit repetitive and Olive's close friend group became the focal point. I do appreciate how the friends each added a different perspective on motherhood, but I really wasn't interested in their constant squabbles. I still enjoyed this book, I was just hoping for a bit more depth I think.

Olive by Emma Gannon was a book that I think was aimed at 20 or 30 something women who like Olive, may be struggling to decide whether or not they want to have children. I, as a mother of three, was interested to see why women make a decision like that, as it is so different from my own experience.

This book explored that theme through a few different plot devices, the CFBC ( Child free by choice) group, the myriad experiences of Olive’s friends, and a meeting with a homeopathy focused family planning counselor. At the end of the book, I had a greater understanding of why a woman would choose that path. Even though it was not the direction that I chose in life, I respect women who made that choice and I now know a little more about some reasons why they may have decided to not have children.

This book had an enjoyable cast of characters with sometimes laughable and sometimes heart wrenching side storylines. I enjoyed seeing how her friends grew and changed throughout the story. Her friends were true to life and reminded me of people I have known and loved. They all had satisfying character arcs, and were very well written.

Having or not having children is a difficult choice to make, and I feel that Emma Gannon did a good job of using several side characters and plot points to condense that theme into a lighthearted easy read.

I was provided a free advance reader copy from Andrews McMeel Publishing in exchange for my honest review from Net Galley. The opinions shared in this review are my own.