Ooofff i slogged through this book. Charlie, a young publishing literary agent, finds herself fully emerged in an inappropriate relationship with her idol, an older married author represented by her firm.

It was painful to read about Charlie, her struggles and her choices. I couldn’t connect with her at all but also had a hard time sympathizing with her given her lack of thoughtful decision making.

I received an advanced copy of this book thanks to NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book to be incredibly compelling and, at times, uncomfortable to read, which means I think it absolutely hit its mark. The dynamic between Charlie and Richard was so interesting, and I think that having this be told in Charlie's point of view was impactful because she would continually try to convince us that they were in love and it was a normal relationship, but as a reader looking in, I found myself wanted to yell at her and pull her out of there.

The characters were definitely the front and center of the story, and I adored Charlie's friends. They just felt so real and reminded me of my dynamic with my friends. Overall, a well-written story that had me hooked!

Charlie, a young book publicist at the start of her career meets Richard Aveling, an older, married, successful, author, about to publish his opus novel. During a brief meeting, an attraction develops, and as they move into an affair, life changes for Charlie. The book was a real page-turner for me, rooting for Charlie all the way. Hattie Williams does an excellent job of depicting the exhaustion and isolation of living a lie, the relationship dynamics of power and control, and the sadness and loss of the intimacy of friends, coworkers, and family kept in the dark. Hattie Williams' development of the characters was A+. I found them multifaceted and very relatable. Bittersweet was easily a 5-star read for me.

𝗕𝗜𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗦𝗪𝗘𝗘𝗧 by debut author Hattie Williams tells the story of Charlie, a young book publicist. On the job she meets and falls in love with a much older author who she’s long admired. He also just happens to be married. Charlie knows she shouldn’t get involved with this man. She’s risking her job, friendships, and even her own sanity. She moves from giddy happiness at being able to be so close with him to wildly unstable, doing whatever it takes to protect and secure their relationship. Charlie sees that it can’t turn out well for her, but she’s obsessed.⁣
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While overall, I liked the book very much, it took a while for me to get there. I found the first half to be slow and a little tired. A younger woman with an older, married man is not a trope we rarely see. Eventually though, this story started to distinguish itself, moving in directions I didn’t expect. I’m so glad I stayed with 𝘉𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵 despite my initial doubts. The second half was the real heart of this book. And before I give my star rating, I just want to give a shoutout to Ophelia, the best roommate 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣
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Thanks to @BallantineBooks for an electronic copy of #BitterSweet.

I am a sucker for stories about smart women making terrible choices. Charlie is a young assistant at a publishing house and falls into a relationship with a famous and much older author she has been in awe of since she was a child. This is part coming of age, part family/friendship drama - frustrating, beautiful, emotional, and a pageturner. Can’t wait to read what Hattie Williams writes next!

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for this ARC.

Hattie Williams delivers a powerful and emotionally charged debut in Bitter Sweet, a novel that dives deep into the complexities of power, desire, and self-worth. Through the eyes of 23-year-old Charlie, readers are immersed in the intoxicating world of literary publishing, where ambition collides with vulnerability. Williams writes with precision and empathy, capturing the slow unraveling of a young woman swept into a relationship that begins as thrilling but turns quietly devastating. The prose is thoughtful and intimate, and Charlie’s voice feels raw and real as she navigates the blurry lines between admiration and exploitation.

What makes Bitter Sweet compelling is its refusal to offer easy answers. The relationship between Charlie and Richard is layered with tension, magnetism, and an unsettling imbalance that lingers throughout the story. While some moments may feel deliberately restrained, the emotional payoff is worth the slow burn. Williams does an excellent job of showing how even seemingly glamorous lives can hide painful truths—and how reclaiming your voice can be its own kind of love story. A stirring, sobering, and beautifully written novel that lingers after the last page

This book tore my heart out.

Bitter Sweet follows Charlie, a young publishing assistant who is just starting out in her career. She’s assigned to help with the next book of a very famous author, that she’s a huge fan of. He’s also about 30 years older than her, married - but that doesn’t stop the two of them from beginning an affair.

By the time Charlie is in her early twenties, she’s already dealt with a great amount of trauma in her life. The book shows how that trauma, coupled with her embarking on this power-imbalanced relationship, has huge effects on her mental health.

While it was heartbreaking, it was also hopeful. It's not a book where you're going to like the main characters, or agree with their choices. But I think there's a lot to relate to, in that we all learn to move through the world as better adults and learn to make better, more mature choices when it comes to love, dating and friendship.

Hattie Williams delivers a remarkably assured debut with Bitter Sweet, a novel that masterfully captures the messy vulnerability of being twenty-three and desperately seeking validation in all the wrong places. Charlie, working as a publicity assistant at a London publishing house, becomes entangled in an affair with Richard Aveling, a celebrated fifty-six-year-old author whose work has been intertwined with her grief since losing her mother at sixteen. What could have been a heavy-handed exploration of power imbalance instead becomes a tender, albeit uncomfortable, examination of how unprocessed trauma makes us susceptible to manipulation. Williams writes with the wisdom of hindsight, as if Charlie is looking back after years of therapy, which gives the narrative both immediacy and reflective depth.

The real brilliance of this novel lies in Williams' ability to make Charlie simultaneously infuriating and deeply sympathetic. You want to shake her for making such obviously destructive choices while completely understanding why she makes them. Her relationship with Richard is written with painful authenticity—the way she hides the affair from friends who would rightfully disapprove, the stubborn hope that love can transform someone fundamentally selfish, and that awful internal battle between logic and emotion that keeps her trapped. The power dynamic is expertly rendered without being exploitative, showing how charisma can be weaponized and how young women often mistake intensity for love.

The supporting cast provides the novel's sweetest moments, particularly Charlie's chosen family of friends and colleagues who offer unconditional love even when she pushes them away. These relationships serve as a beautiful counterpoint to the toxicity of her affair, showing what healthy love actually looks like. Williams has a gift for character development—she can sketch a complete person in just a few paragraphs, making even minor characters feel fully realized.

While the pacing occasionally drags in the middle sections, and the ending feels somewhat rushed after such careful buildup, Bitter Sweet succeeds as both a coming-of-age story and a sharp commentary on the publishing world. It's the kind of book that will stay with you, making you reflect on your own past mistakes with a mixture of cringing recognition and hard-won compassion. Williams has crafted a debut that feels both timeless and urgently contemporary—a promising start to what will hopefully be a long literary career.

Thanks to NetGalley + Ballantine for the ARC!

his debut novel is just wonderful, despite the cringeworthy subject matter. So many novels about an imbalanced extramarital affair are heavy handed and depressing, you read with your hand over your eyes. This one is tender, realistic, and will anger you but also keep you wanting to protect Charlie.

Charlie is an assistant at a UK publishing company, she does pretty menial work, processing expense reports and getting coffee. But at age 23, she is happy just to be working in the publishing industry and hoping to advance her career. She inevitably meets Richard, a 56 year old bestselling author, her favorite. Immediately she is star struck and they connect and start an affair that lasts a year. Obviously the imbalances of power in the relationship is egregious, and the reader is likely older than Charlie. I remember what it is like to be- truly- in a sort of relationship with your job, with the hope of your industry and in becoming something special. "Work never ceased to give us something to talk about."

The author has this way of sharing a few anecdotes about a character, and within a few paragraphs, you know exactly who this person is and how they will interact with everyone else. Charlie never really properly grieved the sudden loss of her mother at age 16, and at 23 she is eager for love and approval in a way that makes her - while brilliant - insecure to the point of being incredibly vulnerable. It is also written from a past perspective, as if Charlie has had 10 years of therapy and is now able to look back at her relationship with a healed perspective. "If you told me ... I wouldn't believe you."

Somehow by the end- you realize that she has grown and taken back her power. It's depressing and sad and yet at the end she has come full circle. Well written and a fresh voice in literary fiction.

This was SOOO slow and SOO frustrating. I wanted to shake Charlie the entire book and just make her realize that she was making the wrong choices so. many. times.

While I did enjoy the last 30ish% of this, everything else before the was so incredibly slow. I also felt like the author was doing a lot of telling rather than showing for a lot of the book, which made it feel like I was reading Charlie's diary rather than watching her actual live experience. It also got kinda repetitive in the middle, but that almost felt like the point? I can't tell.

This does cover a lot of important topics really realistically, in my opinion, especially mental health. I did think that Charlie's journey, especially at the end as everything kinda collapsed, felt really real to what it would be like if it were to happen in real life.

Thank you to Ballantine and Netgalley for the advanced copy!

Oh how I love a messy book about a 20 something making terrible decisions. Bitter Sweet follows Charlie, a publishing assistant, as she falls deeper and deeper into an affair with Richard, a successful author 30 years her senior.

Reading this was uncomfortable, but it was also impossible to put down. It was dark, but it had its hopeful moments. I loved how raw Charlie’s emotions were, how despite the isolation from her affair, her friends were always there to support her. The author also handled several heavy topics (grief, depression, etc) with care.

Overall, I really enjoyed this!

this was a bitter sweet read, frustrating and stressful and sad and also real and well-written and true.

i read the first half slowly over a week, and the second half frantically and consumed over a plane ride. i cared about our protagonist and the people who loved her and the people who didn't. very impressed by this debut.

DNFed at 64% - I kept trying to like this but I was booooooored.

I wanted so badly to love this because it seems right up my alley and the cover is GORG, but I found the writing rambly and slow and had a hard time pushing through. I kept trying but it took me 2 weeks to read 64% so I gave up! I wish it had been higher stakes or the MC had been more likeable.

Time wasted. It began strong, held together throughout most of the book and then dropped like a massive rock. I’m still shaking my head.

This book was excellent. It is one of my favorite microgenres of toxic relationships and I liked the added dynamic of a toxic relationship with an age gap. Although it was incredibly frustrating being in Charlie's head, I found myself rooting for her. Overall an unputdownable story and I can't wait to read more from this author in the future.

Bitter Sweet is a rather heartbreaking story, told with an emotional nuance that lingered for me. It's complex and at times uncomfortable. It starts in a formative time of early adulthood for Charlie, touching on everything from friendship and career aspirations to grief and growing pains. The feeling of being so young, uncertain, hopeful, and still learning where your boundaries lie. The power dynamic of the relationship that begins between Charlie and Richard leaves one person more vulnerable than the other.

This story doesn’t wrap things up neatly, and that’s what makes it feel so real and bittersweet. To me, it was a quiet kind of coming of age and a debut at that!

Very good! Such a hard story to read, but I loved seeing how far Charlie had come by the end of the book. She was able to take the power back and move forward.

Hattie Williams’ debut, Bitter Sweet, is a quietly devastating exploration of grief, desire, and the subtle ways power can distort connection. It follows Charlie, a 23-year-old publicity assistant still reeling from her mother’s death, as she begins a secret affair with Richard, a celebrated, married author nearly twice her age and someone her mother deeply admired.

What makes this novel particularly compelling is how Williams captures the emotional confusion that follows loss. Charlie’s fixation on Richard is less about romance and more about filling an emotional vacuum her mother left behind. The relationship unfolds with a slow, simmering tension that is at times intoxicating, at others deeply uncomfortable, and it’s that discomfort that gives the book its sharp edge.

Charlie is a complicated character. Sometimes, she’s self-aware and deeply feeling; at others, frustratingly naïve and self-sabotaging. I often found myself wanting to shake her a bit, especially as she distances herself from the incredibly supportive friends in her life.

There’s a lot to unpack here— from the blurred lines of professional and personal boundaries to the way grief can warp our judgment and sense of self.

Bitter Sweet isn’t a feel-good read, but it is an incredibly thoughtful one. It lingers. And while this isn’t my typical genre, I found myself pulled in by its complexity and care.

3.5 stars rounded up. Thoughtful, emotionally layered, and unafraid to explore uncomfortable situations.

I realized early into reading Bitter Sweet that I'm really not the ideal reader for this debut but still found much to admire about the prose, structure, and voice in the novel.

Hattie Williams' debut novel, "Bitter Sweet," offers a compelling and often uncomfortable exploration of power dynamics, vulnerability, and self-discovery within the cutthroat world of London publishing. Following 23-year-old Charlie as she navigates her dream job and an affair with her literary idol, Richard Aveling, this book is a nuanced and ultimately rewarding read that earns its four stars.

Williams truly shines in her character development, particularly with Charlie. Her journey is portrayed with a tender realism that makes her struggles and triumphs deeply resonant. The novel doesn't shy away from the "cringeworthy" aspects of the age-gap, power-imbalanced relationship, presenting them with an unflinching honesty that feels both authentic and unsettling. This unflinching gaze at difficult subject matter is one of the book's greatest strengths, prompting readers to reflect on complex themes without offering easy answers.

The exploration of mental health issues is handled with sensitivity and depth, adding another layer of authenticity to Charlie's character and her experiences. The writing style itself is engaging and fluid, drawing you into Charlie's inner world and the high-stakes environment of the publishing house. While the subject matter can be challenging, the narrative maintains a captivating quality that keeps you turning pages, eager to see how Charlie will navigate the complexities of her situation and ultimately find her voice.

"Bitter Sweet" is a powerful and well-crafted debut that bravely tackles difficult themes with grace and insight. While the uncomfortable nature of the central relationship might not be for every reader, those who appreciate character-driven stories that delve into psychological complexity and personal growth will find a lot to admire here. It's a promising start for Hattie Williams, and I look forward to seeing what she writes next.