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.

"Bitter Sweet" follows Charlie, a 23-year-old publicity assistant at a prestigious London independent publishing house who becomes entangled in an illicit affair with Richard Aveling, a 56-year-old married author she has long idolized. Richard represents not only literary greatness but also a connection to her late mother, who cherished his work. As their relationship intensifies, Charlie finds herself forced to hide this consuming affair from everyone she cares about, ultimately discovering that losing Richard threatens to unravel far more than just their relationship.

I gave this book five stars, though I struggle to articulate precisely why. Reading "Bitter Sweet" was like witnessing a car crash from which you cannot turn away—you feel deep empathy for the protagonist's immaturity, vulnerability, and what appears to be clinical depression, yet you remain simultaneously maddened and riveted by her choices. The 24-year-old Charlie proves infuriating in her consistently poor decisions, yet she remains undeniably relatable. Her profound loneliness and crushing insecurity create genuinely heartbreaking moments that linger long after reading.

Hattie Williams demonstrates exceptional skill in her prose, which cuts directly to the emotional core while maintaining remarkable restraint. The writing never feels overwrought or indulgent, instead achieving that rare balance of being both emotionally devastating and precisely controlled. There is a specific line about an ink well that will stay with me for a while. Williams excels particularly in her detailed portrayal of the publishing world, creating an authentic atmosphere that feels lived-in rather than researched. The specificity of the 2009-2010 time period—from song references to cultural touchstones—adds layers that ground the narrative in a particular moment.

The audio narration deserves special recognition for its exceptional quality. The narrator skillfully navigates multiple British accents, from northern to posh Queen's English (received pronunciation) to east London inflections. This accent variation significantly enhances the listening experience, bringing distinct voice to each character and adding depth to the social dynamics at play. For readers who appreciate strong narration, this audiobook delivers particularly well.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars, but i'm rounding up because of the ending

bitter sweet tells the tale of a young woman just getting her start in the literary world who begins an affair with an esteemed author she's held on a pedestal since she was kid, a man who's 30+ years older than her. though the main focus of the story was about the affair, everything in this book traces back to charlie, the 23 year old young woman who has so, so much trauma. it wasn't any easy book to read, because charlie was so burdened with past trauma that made her relationship with richard even more toxic than expected. she was likable, but so, so misguided at times (a lot). once i got into the book about 30% in, it was really hard to put down; i constantly found myself asking "how could this possibly end for her?"

i probably would've rated it lower, just because i found the middle pretty repetitive and frustrating, but the ending really got me. charlie's story goes to show how important a good support system is, even when you think you don't have one. (also that therapy is always the answer!) i'll definitely keep an eye out for what hattie williams comes out with next.

I cannot believe this book is a debut novel because it certainly doesn’t read like one.

Bitter Sweet is more than a book about a younger woman who has an affair with an older, married man — which is the focus of the plot — it is about rediscovering one’s identity, consent, navigating grief and depression, the loss of girlhood as a result of grief, friendship, and growing up.

Bitter Sweet is poignant and careful with its themes and the characterization of Charlie, the main character and narrator. There were times while reading that I was certainly frustrated with Charlie, but her desperation as a result of her insecurity was an aspect I related to.

Charlie’s relationship with Richard becomes her everything — an unhealthy attribute. It is quite obvious from the start that Richard is taking advantage of Charlie, and manipulating in subtle ways which I think makes the narration much more sad.

Overall, I don’t know if this was an enjoyable read, but it is a book I thought highly of.

Bitter Sweet was such a unique read - I am always drawn to coming of age stories where the girl makes toxic decisions (I know, I know), and this was an excellent debut from Hattie Williams. I was completely captivated with Charlie's decisions and wanted to scream at her and shake her at times and then at others, I just wanted to give her a hug.

It is impossible to critique the "style" of Bitter Sweet without considering the "substance." While Bitter Sweet has crisp and razor sharp writing, a tense (and intense) plot, and interesting characters, it is hard to get past the fact that the main male character is the poster child for "narcissist." So selfish and self centered is Richard, you can't fathom what Charlie sees in him, especially to the depths she feels. What Bitter Sweet needs more of is background into Charlie's mental health to understand why she behaves as she does. While we know Charlie's beloved mom died when Charlie was a teenager, as traumatic as this event was, it doesn't seem to fully explain her overwhelming devotion to Richard. Bitter Sweet is a cautionary tale about handing over your entire life to one person to the exclusion of family, friends, and career. The compassion and kindness of Charlie's best friends, Eddy & Ophelia, somewhat balances out Richard's inflated sense of self importance and total lack of empathy for anyone else, but in the end the story winds up with an abundance of bitter and very little sweet.

I expected to love this novel, based on the synopsis but I found it so poorly written that it was a struggle to finish.