I was expecting Bitter Sweet to be an Intense Love Story That’s Not a Romance…and it KIND OF is that, but not really. Set in London, this story is about a young book publicist named Charlie (short for Charlotte) who gets into a steamy, illicit affair with the older and married Richard Aveling, her literary idol and her company’s biggest author. That’s all I knew going into this book. Bitter Sweet is much more Charlie’s story and the love story is a smaller piece to a bigger puzzle about the lasting impacts of trauma…and the situations it can cause that “healthy” people would avoid or can’t understand. This love story is dark - it’s not the kind where you’re rooting for the protagonists to be together. Actually, quite the opposite. Charlie is self-aware about the unhealthiness of her situation, but doesn’t have the strength to do anything about it. It was hard to watch Charlie and to hear some of the rationalizations she was making to herself about why she continued to stay in a relationship with Richard. And, this will be a deal breaker for some readers. Instead of rooting for Charlie and Richard to be together, I was really rooting for Charlie to save herself. Great for fans of The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue & Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler.

Bitter Sweet touched me in so many ways. I truly saw myself as a young Charlie, lost and adrift in life. Then she is given the opportunity to meet her idol, a writer named Richard, and he also plucks her up as his own. We are then drawn into Charlie's world with Richard in which we as the reader can see it as manipulative but Charlie sees it as love. This story was so emotional and raw. It felt like watching a train crash in slow motion but written in the most beautiful prose. This is a story I will think about often and will definitely recommend to others. This book speaks to women who have experience their own Richard in whatever form he may of come in.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine books for early access to “Bitter Sweet” by Hattie Williams. Woof! If the goal of this book was to make me angrier than anything and even more suspicious of middle-aged men, mission accomplished! The writing of this story was so compelling and so gorgeously raw. I felt so immersed by all of Charlie’s emotions and at times, numbness. They say art should make you feel something, and my god, this book did! I loved it as much as I hated it and wanted to throw my kindle across the room. A must-read and also a scream-and-stew after kind of novel!

Bitter Sweet is the kind of book that feels both thrilling and deeply personal—it totally pulled me in from the first page. The story follows Charlie, a 23-year-old book publicist working at a London publishing house, who finds herself in an intense, secretive affair with Richard Aveling, a famous author more than thirty years her senior. What starts as admiration—Charlie idolizes him partly because he was a link to her late mother—quickly morphs into a consuming relationship that forces her to confront just how much she's losing in the process.

Hattie Williams nails the emotional complexity of a power-imbalanced romance. Charlie isn’t just a naïve fangirl—she’s complicated, flawed, and her choices feel real. Richard is charming, but there’s a growing tension as his control seeps in and Charlie’s friendships and career start to unravel. Williams’ writing is razor-sharp yet tender, packed with those small, gut-punch moments that linger—like when you realize love can be both addictive and isolating.

Yes, it’s a heavy emotional ride—the affair’s intoxicating highs and devastating lows play out in painful, thought-provoking ways. And while there isn’t a neat, happy ending waiting at the finish line, that’s what makes it feel honest. You’re left reflecting on how easily admiration can turn into something darker, and what it takes to find yourself again. This debut is a fresh, unforgettable take on desire, self-worth, and the cost of loving someone too much.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the e-arc.

This is a strong women's fiction. I think this will do well on publishing. We follow a FMC as she embarks on a relationship with a married man, making bad decisions and watching the relationship turn sour.

Lots of trigger warnings -- but an important representation of relationships that are absolutely happening in workplaces.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC of Bitter Sweet by Hattie Williams. This is a story that follows Charlie, a 23 (if I’m remembering right) publishing assistant for a publishing house in London. This publishing also represents a very famous author, Richard Aveling, who Charlie adores. On a chance encounter she meets him before she is actually set to work with him on his upcoming novel. Not long after, an affair is started between the two. Richard is married and is is 56 years old. As Charlie navigates her career, she is also trying to figure out things with Richard. They must keep this relationship under wraps for obvious reasons, and it begins to consume Charlie.

I found this story to be very engaging and the characters were very likable. Charlie has two roommates, Ophelia and Eddy, who are well developed characters and are at many times, good listening, if not frustrated ears to the situation between Charlie and Richard.

I really enjoyed this book and I do recommend it. The writing and storyline flow very well.

Charlie was such an easy character to get sucked into. Boy did she make some dumb decisions but something about her drew me in. It’s not my typical read but I really liked the writing style!

I received a copy for review. All opinions are my own. Absolutely stunning book. I cried, I laughed, I lusted, I stressed. I wanted to shout at the characters at times and other times hug them. I was extremely grateful for the length of this book because I did not want it to end. The story was told fully, with lots of emotion, and lots of relatable details. It has been a long time since I read a book that made me hold it to my chest after I finished it. This one did. Reading it felt like living through an earthquake and afterwards I still have tremors. One of my top 10 lifetime favorites.

This is a slow burn. I will say it should also come with trigger warnings about abusive relationships because while there’s no overt physical violence this is a book about a relationship where there is coercion, manipulation, a power dynamic in which the MMC uses his dominance and power to influence and control the FMC. It takes a while for the story build steam but once it does the last 25% you cannot put down. It is uncomfortable, you want to scream at the FMC to shake her out of every bad decision you see her make but you cannot. It is a little wordy but otherwise very good .

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the chance to read this before publication! This book was so well-written, engrossing, and heartbreaking. Every sentence came with a sense of doom but I couldn’t stop reading or hoping for a moment of clarity from Charlie. All of the supporting characters were well-done and prevented the book from becoming frustrating. Overall, enjoyed this (in a deeply sad sympathetic way) and would recommen

Charlie is twenty three and working as a publicity assistant when she begins a relationship with fifty six year old, Richard, a famous author defining his generation.

It took me a bit to get through this one. It’s a very character based story. I did appreciate the view of mental health and how our relationships can directly affect it. The middle slowed down a lot for me and I was just so tired of the relationship by the end.

“It must be a small club to be part of, to have loved and then lost someone whom the whole world has a piece of. Maybe that’s why no one ever warns you.”

Bitter Sweet comes out 7/8.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the chance to read this before publication! This book was so well-written, engrossing, and heartbreaking. Every sentence came with a sense of doom but I couldn’t stop reading or hoping for a moment of clarity from Charlie. All of the supporting characters were well-done and prevented the book from becoming frustrating. Overall, enjoyed this (in a deeply sad sympathetic way) and would recommend.

I got emotionally involved in this. While it is a story I've heard before I was and was not rooting for Charlie. Sure, she should have known better to get involved with a married man especially when all the warning signs there. But there were times where she chose Richard over her friends that just made me so angry with her.

Richard... I hated from the start. Everything about him. The author wrote this in a way that felt real. Opehlia was an amazing supporting character. I found myself rooting for her happiness even though she wasn't a main character.

Overall I found this engaging, heaertbreaking and hopeful all at the same time.

Wow. This book was such a gut-punch. Books on this topic are always tough reads but Bitter Sweet was so crushingly realistic that it hurt a little extra. We as readers can sense the impending doom whilst our narrator, Charlie, is falling into his trap ….and there’s nothing you can do to stop her. It’s anxiety inducing waiting for the inevitable fallout. What starts as a girl grieving her mother and exploring something that helps her feel connected to her turns into a downward spiral into a miserable, all too familiar reality. Regardless of all of the supportive, loving people around her, Charlie still ends up in that place. I think that really adds to the real-world reality of stories like this. (Rot in hell, Richard).

Bitter Sweet is an evocative and emotionally layered debut that takes a bold, unflinching look at grief, vulnerability, and the blurred boundaries of power and desire. Hattie Williams writes with confidence and emotional clarity, pulling readers into the mind of Charlie Turner—a 23-year-old editorial assistant who falls into a complicated, secretive affair with Richard, an older, celebrated author. From the start, their relationship is charged and quietly unsettling, built not just on attraction but also on Charlie’s unresolved grief and her craving for approval in a world that constantly underestimates her.

What stands out most is Williams’s skillful character work. Charlie is deeply flawed—naive, self-aware, often frustrating—but always believable. Her internal voice is intimate and aching, capturing the confusion and loneliness that come with early adulthood. Richard, on the other hand, is as charming as he is manipulative. Their dynamic is delicately constructed, slowly revealing how imbalanced and quietly toxic it truly is. Rather than spelling things out, Williams allows discomfort to simmer beneath the surface, which makes the story all the more affecting.

The supporting cast, especially Charlie’s boss and close friends, add warmth and grounding to the story. These relationships help highlight Charlie’s isolation and her slow realization that what she’s entangled in isn’t romance—it’s erasure. The novel’s exploration of professional ambition, grief, and gendered power dynamics feels especially timely and sharply observed.

The reason this doesn’t quite earn five stars is largely due to pacing. Some sections feel repetitive, particularly as Charlie cycles through emotional highs and lows without clear momentum. While this mirrors her internal state, it occasionally stalls the narrative. Still, even in its slower moments, the writing remains emotionally resonant and thoughtful.

In all, Bitter Sweet is a memorable debut that’s as haunting as it is honest. It won’t be for every reader—the story is heavy, and the protagonist’s choices can be difficult to watch—but for those drawn to complex, character-driven fiction that explores the grey areas of love, loss, and longing, it’s a powerful read.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley. I loved this book. It’s similar to a lot of other books I have read and loved in the way it portrays how a relationship can ruin a woman’s, and particularly a younger woman’s life. It details how powerful and selfish men can carelessly use people and destroy them in ways they will never know about. I thought Charlie was exceptionally well developed as a character. Every woman has either been Charlie or known a Charlie in their life and the choices she made, especially the bad ones, felt very familiar. The way the author rendered her depression was some of the realest writing on the subject I have read since The Bell Jar. I felt deeply for Charlie and just kept thinking how lucky she was to have the friends she did and if she hadn’t how things might have ended quite differently for her as I fear they so often do for many other women. I also enjoyed the way the author used writing to further draw her into her own imagined world by talking about the books she was reading and acknowledging at the end how her perspective may have been marred by the voices she was consuming. I would compare this in some ways to Boy Parts, The Tree Doctor, Little Rabbit, Acts of Desperation, Animals, My Year of Rest and Relaxation and even The Rachel Incident. However, ultimately it ended in a much more hopeful way for me than many of those books did and I deeply appreciated that. Definitely recommend. Probably too late to change but I didn’t like the title. It felt very cliche and disconnected from the depth I found in the story with the sort of random thought at the end which used the words.

This novel is a carbon copy of The Rachel Incident. I am a little shocked and appalled that the author got away with such a blatant attempt to recreate a beloved novel. This book baffled me because it’s such a clear ripoff. Also this book is not as well crafted or compelling. I just couldn’t get over the comparisons. Not a happy camper.

Bitter Sweet by Hattie Williams - not my favorite, felt a bit done to me. Didn't finish unfotunately.

Thanks NetGalley for the eARC of this. I ate this up! Easily my favorite book of 2025 so far. The writing was exceptional and hard to believe this is a debut for the author. I will be first in line for whatever Hattie Williams writes next! Cannot wait to purchase a copy once its out.

This was such a refreshing read, and it was impossible for me to put down. I really love a character-driven novel and the writing was fantastic. I would never have guessed this was a debut novel. I really adored the main character and she felt very relatable. I look forward to reading more from Hattie Williams.