I'm not sure why, but the cover did not give me vibes of this being set in London where Olive Stone lives. A little of the story reminded me of myself. She had a group of special friends who made pact with each other to remain closely bonded after college. I made a pact with all of the cheerleaders of which I was one to meet every leap year, but we never met even once. Anyway, I made a few connections like that though they were small. I had a harder time resonating with Olive's lack of desire to be a mother; however, I did understand her point of view and I also believe that any woman or man who does not want children shouldn't have them. I think that because I think it's possible those children might be abused or neglected. Of course, I know even wanted children can go through life being unloved and neglected, etc. She didn't want children whereas I had five and always wanted to be a mother.

Although Olive's friends felt differently about being a mother, they all managed to maintain friendships and their friendships is one aspect I loved. I sadly have never seen one single person from high school, even though I was a cheerleader and popular. I moved from Los Angeles area to the Central Valley in California and that did it. I don't have a special group of friends like that, but I am close with my family and I consider my daughters in particular my friends. I say that because we get together and I always want to include them. Both my sons live about 300 miles from me and in different directions. But I absolutely loved Bea, Isla, Cecily and Olive's friendships. No matter how things go among friends or family, I always tend to love books that zone in on either or both.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Audio for a free ARC audio.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of the opinions are my own and this did not affect my review in any way.

I requested this audiobook without really knowing what it was about. The cover was beautiful and it had very high reviews so I decided to give it a go. I am happy to say I was blown away by this book and it definitely exceeded my expectations.

In this book we follow Olive, independent, loyal and kind Olive who thinks she has her whole life figured out. But when her best friends start to drift into motherhood and marriage Olive starts to questions if that is the path she truly wants for herself.

This book is definitely not a masterpiece, I think I may be a little too young to truly understand it because I am not in that point in my life were having or not having kids is a point of conversation. So even though I couldn’t truly relate to the plot it was still very interesting to see how the main characters managed it.

For me the best aspect of the book was the friendship, I have always wanted to have such a tight friend group like the one Olive has and it was heartwarming to see them grow together and apart. I empathize with each one and I just wanted all of them to be happy with the path they choose.

The reason I took one star was because some things didn’t make sense to me and I think they were just thrown in there to make a bigger impact. Moreover, some of the characters really started to piss me off, I mean they are supposed to be 32 ish and they still act like they are 20, it made absolutely no sense how some of the characters reacted to certain situations.

Overall this is a great debut novel about what it is like to grow up and realize that maybe what everyone else wants is not necessarily what you want.

Thanks so much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for allowing me read and review this book.

30- something Olive is trying to decide if parenthood is for her. She's fairly certain that she doesn't want children but lives in a world where it is expected and throughout the book we see her explore the concept with her friends, work colleagues and family.

This could have been a very preachy or massively cliched book about women and their biology and the expectations placed on us by society but it manages to stay away from the usual tropes and is a very intelligent look at an often ignored question.

Very enjoyable by anyone regardless of whether they have kids or not.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Storygraph!

An eye opener. This book made me think deeply of some really important topics that I never really stopped to consider before.

In this book, we follow Olive in her journey in embracing and standing up for her life choices, especially regarding motherhood. We also see her evolving relationships and struggles with her long time bestfriends and how they lived their lives adapting to different changes life has brought. We have also witnessed Olive in how she has let go of some parts of herself and other big things no matter how difficult and still chose to continue reinventing ang opening herself to new possibilities while taking chances again.

Olive was such an interesting character. I loved knowing her. Actually, all of the characters are. Although I definitely hope some characters could've been developed more instead of just solely focusing entirely on Olive. After the first half, I kind of got tired of hearing the same things Olive is going through. I mean yes, Olive's character was trying to prove something important about motherhood. She's fighting to make people realize that not wanting a child is a normal concept among women and it doesn't make anyone less of a woman if they choose to be child-free. Sometimes, there's no deeper explanation as to why. They just don't want to have children. It's a choice that should be respected. However, every chapter just kind of circles to that over and over again and it felt repetitive and slow. I hope we could've also gotten a closer look to Olive's life outside of that choice not to have children because this book didn't even try to separate Olive from that label every single page. That's a single choice and no matter how big, that shouldn't define her. I wanted to see more of her as a writer, as a friend, as a daughter, without being constantly tagged as someone who doesn't want a child. Her life should be bigger than just that one choice.

But honestly though, this one have taught me a lot and opened my mind to these issues. I used to see women who personally choose not to have children as selfish and full of themselves. But this book have made me form very different opinions.

I really loved this up until the end of the first half and thought I would end up giving this 5 stars. But the second half kind of ruined the great start...

P.S. I LOVED THE NARRATOR! Made the experience more fun and meaningful.

Anyway, thank you Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for my free ARC!

I went into this audiobook blindly as I forgot the details of the summary that I read. But I'm glad I went in blindly because I felt it kept me with an open mind. This book was a great listen and a great book to read, especially being a female who does not have children yet. I have friends who don't want children and that is totally okay. I would highly recommend this book to those friends of mine.

While I originally found the titular character a little bit unlikeable by the time we came out the other side I had grown quite fond of her. I like the relationships between Olive and her three best friends and I thought the subject matter was one that probably needs more attention., I would have liked to have seen an expansion on the relationship between Olive and her elderly neighbour and the end felt a little rushed but all in all I enjoyed it.

Olive is 33, she works for a magazine and doing pretty well in her career. She is in a long term relationship with Jacob for nine years. She has a group of girlfriends which includes Bea, Cecile and Isla.
All her friends are married. Bea has 3 kids, Cecily is pregnant with her first and Isla is trying and struggling to get pregnant. All of her friends are on the next chapter of their life and Olive is stuck. It is interesting how their relationships change as they grow up and make different choices in life. Olive doesn’t want children and wants to be childfree by her choice. This has affected her relationship with Jacob too.
The book explores the issue of how people like Olive are made to feel like less of a woman or selfish because they do not want to be a mother
I really appreciate the fact that it covers a topic that is still considered taboo in our society.
.
⭐⭐⭐.5

I really enjoyed this book. It was my second audiobook and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this on my commute to work. Sian Clifford does a great job with the narration!

Olive is 33 years old , working at Dot magazine and very happy with her life choices and career. Although she doesn't want kids , Olive feels there is a pressure or assumption about women settling down, getting married and having babies. When something comes up at work to research and celebrate baby free women , Olive uses the chance to seek out other women who feel the same way she does and research why this subject is so taboo!
While Olive feels the constant need to explain her decisions , her group of friends are going through their own struggles with motherhood and Olive feels like they are drifting apart!

This is an honest and frank insight in to why women choose to be child free. It was a great read and was really enjoyable with some real laugh out loud moments too...which was so funny when sat driving in the car and bursting out laughing at and I quote "and that's the icing on the clitorus cake" 😅

I can't imagine not wanting children .. I always knew I wanted to be a mum! But its important to remember that some women want children, some are struggling to get there and some are happy child free. We are all on our own journeys. 🍃

I'm so glad the author decided to write this book and I had a chance to read and review it. It covers such an important topic in today's world that many people don't discuss and can be considered taboo. I really appreciated getting to know Olive and her perspective, as we do share similar views. I liked seeing her challenges as she dealt with romantic relationships, friends, family, and work.

The story doesn't have a lot of action and is more about character and relationship development. I listened to the audiobook, which I would recommend. I thought at times Olive could come off as a bit whiny, but that could have been partly the narrator's voice.

I think this is a book that tells and important story and I hope people get to read it, especially those who don't understand the idea of not wanting to have children.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Audio for the Audio ARC.

When I read this book's description for the first time - independent, strong female characters? The role of long-time friendships? A main character who clumsily navigates adulthood, questions the possibility of motherhood and the expectations that come with growing older as a women? - I was S O L D. So when I got my audiobook copy on NetGalley, I was really, really excited

and then I started listenig...

The book focuses on (obvs) Olive, a 30-something who works as a writer at what is described as a feminist magazine in London. Her long-time friends Cecile, Bea and Isla are successful career women and are all either married and with kids, married and expecting, or married and trying to conceive. With the topic of motherhood revolving so close around her and her loved ones, Olive begins questioning if she ever wants to have children of her own, or if she will remain CFBC (child-free by choice)...
But that's about it, since the plot of the book never quite gets of the ground, failing to give such a sensitive and actual topic the REPRESENTATION it deserves.

Overall, the whole 38 chapters of the book follow the same structure: Olive sees a woman, usually a mother, reflects on her own thoughts about motherhood, realizes she might not want kids... and then this happens again and again. Given this, the side characters - her best friends included - seem to serve no other purpose than to give a "human face" to the many myriads of motherhood. This wouldn't actually be a problem if it weren't for the fact that every single one of them is pictured as a cliché.

Gannon's style is far too commercial for my taste, and while I know that many readers may enjoy this type of writing, especially for those days when we feel like picking up something "lighter", at some points it was just straight-out-of-a-sex-and-the-city-fanfic bad.

The cultural and political references that we see splattered here and there felt completely forced: we randomly mention R. Kelly to show that we support the #MeToo movement? Check. Make Olive's assistant gay (but also a cliché) to have some "representation"? Check. Make a weird remark on how one should say "primary caregiver" and not "mom"? Check. If you take into account the fact that every. single. character. is white AND privileged AND educated, this just becomes absurd.

As far as the narration goes, I enjoyed listening to Sian Clifford's voice in the audiobook version, but that's about it. Olive is an unreliable narrator, she's kind of self-centered, annoying and she is als difficult to root for.

At this point, I feel like I have to remark that indeed, I have gone over and over again through my notes on Olive in order to find something that I genuinely enjoyed about it, but sadly, other than the fact that it was an easy book to listen to on the train omw to work, I couldn'd find anything.

I am not child-free by choice. I am also not a mother. Do I want kids in the future? Yes. Do I care about women who do not want them having thoughtful representation in mainstream books and media? Of couse. What frustrastes me about this book is exactly that, in its attempt to revindicate CFBC-women, the character of Olive may just perpetuate stereotypes... but I guess that is for the child-free by choice comunity to decide.

As a reader, all I can say is that Olive didn't do it for me.

I did not like this book. It wasn't for me, and in my opinion the story and characters were very flat.
That said, if you are someone who does not want children, and need someone/something to relate to, this might help you in some way. I'm not sure though, it also might not. Yes, this is a full on apathetic review.

There is not a lot of story here. There is Olive and a small group of friends, and each one has a different story of having/not having kids, wanting/not wanting kids. Olive is adamant about not wanting to procreate, although she has no issue using a baby on board sign so she can get a better seat on the train. Beyond that, the author has a long list of terrible and thoughtless things people say to and about childless women, and she sets about having her characters say those things. And there is not much more to the story.

I was honestly very worried that after all that, Olive was suddenly going to change her mind and live happily ever after with kids. But everyone stuck to their own decisions, as women should, and then everything worked out and everyone was happy and the book ended.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was very good. Her voice was easy to follow and was energetic enough to keep my attention. My problem was only with the story.

I don't have much more to say because it didn't feel like there was much more to the book. People had their opinions, they gave voice to those opinions and worried about them as well. But that was that. And so this is the end of the review. I don't really recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me an ARC of the audiobook. Onward to the next!

I ended up buying the physical copy if this as the audiobook wasn't for me and I'm thankful I did because Olive was such a great read. Highly relatable for a lot of reasons, Olive is a Warm and relatable read.

3.5 stars

Sorry to say I really didn’t enjoy this one. I really don’t like giving bad reviews but I just couldn’t warm to Olive at all (I have heard this book compared to Eleanor Oliphant and I loved that one so I was disappointed that for me, there was no comparison at all)



The narration was pretty good however!

Thanks to NetGalley for the audio edition of this book.

Thanks NetGalley for the preview!

I really disliked Olive. She is self-centered, whiny and not a good friend. Her friends seem to never get the attention from Olive they deserve. I did not connect or even like one character unfortunately. Olive seems to struggle with alcohol abuse and drinks at all hours of the day. Also the whiny tone to the narrators voice when she said "Ol" drove me bonkers!

A very relatable story - listening to Olive navigate life- including relationships and work. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

I would have probably bailed on this one if it hadn't been for Sian Clifford's narration. I honestly think I may be too old for this one even though, like Olive, I have also chosen not to have children. My issue with Olive is that she is too self-absorbed for my linking and I was never invested in her as a character or her struggles.

What a great book! Having spent a large portion of my life CFBC (child free by choice), I could really relate to Olive. So much pressure everywhere to fall into the rhythm of wanting to be a mom once you reach a certain age. Olive is a very like able well developed character who does at times fall into the same trap she blames others for— not being accepting of the choices they have made. A strong book on a topi rarely covered, I recommend this one for your TBR list.

Thank you to Netgalley for an early audio copy of Olive.

I really wanted to love this, but I didn't, unfortunately. I really like how it addressed the important issue of women choosing not to have children and how it highlighted female friendships, but I found the characters quite unlikeable at times. Throughout the story, the women's long friendship is recognised and looked back on, but they didn't actually seem like particularly good friends to me - they often couldn't talk to each other about things, fell out with each other quite easily, and weren't always there for each other because they had their own shit going on.

I understand it was about navigating these friendships through getting older and differing life decisions, but they just didn't seem like a good group of friends and often seemed to act pretty childishly and a bit pathetically. It was all very white and middle class too.

I found it quite repetitive at times and it seemed to be going round in circles - the same discussions, the same arguments with the same people and I just found it all a bit boring. I did like the relationship with Caitlyn and think that could have been explored more - it did feel a bit rushed as something to include. Although I could also understand why some readers think that relationship would go against the ethos of the book. The surrogacy area could have been interesting, but it wasn't followed up at all.

It was easy to listen to and the narrator is really good, although I found her 'thank you's' sounded quite patronising when they weren't supposed to.

I hate being so critical of a book, and it wouldn't put me off reading more of Emma Gannon's books but I just didn't enjoy Olive I'm afraid.

Está centrado en un tema rebuscado pero realmente muy importante. Adoro a Olive pero cuestiono mucho algunas de sus decisiones. Nada es medio blanco ni medio negro, todo se trató de perspectiva