3-3.5 stars
I didn't love this one. It was interesting to peek into the world of theater, art festivals, and criticism. However, it seemed like too many of the characters just enjoyed gloating and gossiping about the put-downs people inflicted on others: the overly harsh theater critic who ruins careers, the shabbily-treated actress who sets out to ruin a life for revenge.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-ARC of this book.

,Alex Lyons, a theater critic gives a one-woman show a one-star review, then sleeps with her the same night, during the Edinburgh Festival. The fallout is massive and it's time for payback. The premise sounded good, and the book was described as often hilarious. Instead, I found it a long and difficult read. The characters were not likable and their behavior was confounding. It was a struggle to read Alex's misogynistic treatment of women, and I wasnt sure what the the writer intended. I liked the setting and learning about the Festival was interesting and fun.

A sort of humorous novel that often seems to be a somewhat weird defense of a man who uses women.

Junior culture writer Sophie and theatre critic Alex, both working for the same newspaper, are sharing a large but rundown apartment in Edinburgh for the four weeks of the Festival. Alex gives a brutal one-star takedown of Hayley Sinclair’s one woman show and then, without Hayley knowing who he is and what he’s done, sleeps with her. Hayley turns this moral crime into a newly revamped show and it becomes the hit of the festival and reverberates far beyond.

Hayley’s show starts to incorporate stories from the women in the audience about how they have also been used and violated and she digs up women from Alex’s past who have felt similarly bamboozled by his charm and then his indifference or rejection. Meanwhile, while everybody is backing away from him, Alex is pleading that everything was consensual and he’s done nothing wrong and our narrator remains his only friend.

There’s some psychological stuff about what makes Alex such a turd and Sophie finds herself conflicted between her growing attraction to him and intellectually understanding he is a rotter. Oh, and she’s having a bit of a career crisis and her husband and son are visiting Edinburgh too so that gets a bit awkward.

I’m not sure what the author is trying to say with this novel. Like Sophie, she appears to posit that Alex and men like him are unforgivable and should be social pariahs. But there also seems to be a glimmer of maybe he’s right: Hayley initiated their brief relationship so what’s she got to complain about? And after all, her new show is a huge and much-talked about success - lemons into champagne. I should note that Hayley is American so maybe there’s a twinge of ‘how those across the pond over-inflate everything’?

Judging by the author’s bio, there seems to be some stuff drawn from her own life - if not the actual plot, at least the setting and set up which give an authentic-seeming feel of the stress, whirl, and buzz of the Edinburgh Festival . I’m not sure this is the searing takedown of toxic masculinity that the blurb would have us believe, it seems somewhat more ambivalent than that suggests. Maybe that’s a good thing? If you’re up for some ambiguity in what seems like a straightforward MeToo case, this could be for you.

Thanks to Doubleday and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

Charlotte Runcie's Bring the House Down is one of the cleverest books I've read in some time.

We open with film critic taking a hatchet to a play only to sleep with the actress from said show. Upon finding out that the man she slept with has written a terrible review, Hayley sets out to exact revenge by revamping the show to be a critique of Alex.

If the premise seems thin, it absolutely isn't. Runcie delivers on it with careful character development and thoughtful plotting. Runcie chooses to present the story from the perspective of Sophie, a fellow critic and his roommate, which gives the reader an interesting place to look in from.

Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie follows Alex Lyons, a theater critic at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Alex is known for reviews that are either brutal or glowing. He gives one of these harsh reviews to Hayley Sinclair, a performer at the festival. After Alex writes his review, he goes to a bar where he meets Hayley and they have a one-night stand. Unbeknownst to her, she has slept with the man who has written the review that may very well end her career. When she discovers who Alex really is, she completely transforms her show to focus on Alex and all the women who he has wronged throughout his numerous dating experiences.

The entire novel takes place in the perspective of Alex's roommate, colleague, and fellow critic, Sophie. Sophie is a new mother and has recently lost her mother. Much of her personal journey revolves around her grief and how it impacts her as a mother, a partner, and with Alex.

In terms of my actual reading experience, I found this to be a quick and engaging read. The concept was immensely intriguing, and it was interesting to watch Alex's state of mind as he deals with a modern-day cancellation. Sophie is also an interesting, complex character. She tends to sympathize with both Alex and Hayley, and I think that her mindset reflects how controversy can appear black and white until it becomes personal. This book really excelled in exploring the gray areas and the complexities of controversy in both the digital and physical world.

I would have loved to hear more from Hayley's perspective throughout. I think her story was worth telling, and because Sophie is in such close physical proximity to Alex, I felt like her perspective suffered a bit. We got glimpses of how the whole situation was impacting her mental state but I would have loved if that was explored more.

Alex Lyons, a newspaper cultural critic, submits a scathing one star review of a one-woman show performed by Hayley Sinclair at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show, which had a lot to say about the climate emergency, was so terrible, that by a half hour in, Alex decided that he actually wanted the world to end as soon as possible. After the show, Alex finds himself in a bar where the woman he had eviscerated in print was seated a few feet away. They engage in conversation — Alex feeling it is a “form of kindness” as doing a solo show “meant no company to debrief and decompress with afterwards” — and they go to Alex’s flat. The following morning, Haley who had no idea who Alex was, sees his review on the kitchen table and realizes that Alex authored career-ending words that would be read by everyone that Hailey had ever hoped to impress.

Hailey responds to the take down by re-working her show into “The Alex Lyons Experience” where she channels every human who had ever been betrayed. Hailey’s revamped show is a sold out success and is live streamed with a raft of guests — women whom Alex had dated who aired their own grievances about him — making Alex look “predatory, like someone with a pattern.” Alex could not believe that “the cavalry was not coming to save him.” Then he reasoned that the episode would blow over with the next news cycle. Then he rationalized that “[e]very break-up happens because the other person gradually realizes that you were awful all along.” He pointed out that “there were two sides to every encounter,” that the context was removed, and he even recalled some of the events with “real fondness, nostalgia, warmth to the women involved, up until now. Now everything was tainted.”

Hailey’s audience continues to grow, along with the conversation around her show. People who had never had a direct personal experience with Alex, but were the recipient of his bad reviews, reported how his one-star reviews caused them to give up acting or attributed to the breakup of their marriage. Alex ponders where the grateful actors are who’d been able to afford to buy a home because Alex’s review boosted ticket sales. He wonders why Hailey, who now appears as a guest on multiple shows, isn’t grateful to him for her new-found celebrity.

Runcie, a former arts columnist for the Daily Telegraph, raises questions in this book about why journalists are supposed to hold artists to account, but who is there to hold them to account when they treat people badly. She questions whether we even need people to vet our opinions for us in advance. There are issues about who gets to be the arbiter of taste and whether Alex holds his vaunted position because his mother, Dame Judith Lyons, is one of the country’s finest living interpreters of Shakespeare and a “National treasure.” This is a sharp, and entertaining send-up of gender politics, the dynamic between critics and artists, culture, and nepotism. Thank you Doubleday and Net Galley for an advance copy of this funny novel that addresses serious questions even-handedly.

I featured Bring the House Down in my July 2025 new releases video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5JWYTfUVq4, and though I have not read it yet, I am so excited to and expect 5 stars! I will update here when I post a follow up review or vlog.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for the ARC of this title.

3.5/5 stars

This really nails its setting of Edinburgh Fringe Fest and all the chaos that entails. I was initially confused by its choice of narrator, but putting that lens in the hands of someone outside the main drama really pays off as the plot goes along.

A twisty, thought-provoking tale of a woman’s revenge against a #MeToo bad man and what happens in cancel culture.

Hayley Sinclair appears in a one-woman theatrical production entitled “Climate Emergence-She” that she’s authored at an Edinburgh Festival. Unbeknownst to her, Alex Lyons, a leading Briish theatre critic, has attended her show and written an unbelievably negative review that skewers her as such a bad writer and performer that, “You’ll be begging for the world to end much sooner than scheduled.” Yet before his savage review gets published, Aelx picks Hayley up at a bar (she does not yet know who he is) and sleeps with her.

When Hayley reads his review, she’s both devastated and furious. She gets to work rewriting her play and turning it into, “The Alex Lyons Experience” that gets candid about Alex’s treatment of her as well as his long history of sexual indiscretions. Her new play’s a hit, and Alex becomes the target of internet rage.

But the focus of the novel slides away onto Lyon’s timid junior colleague Sophie Rigden who gets suddenly promoted from obscurity to cover the paper’s theater beat as Alex gets punishingly sequestered to writing obituaries. The novel’s debate about whether all reviews should be truthful, even if harsh, unfortunately gets dragged down into Sophie’s story.

Thanks to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

This was such a compelling book, would be amazing for a book club. I think there are like 5 too many pages at the end where the introspection went a little further than I thought the character and story needed. There are a lot of interesting questions brought up and I loved how the author framed the story from Sophie’s perspective, it felt very raw and comprehensive because she was close with all the important characters.

I knew I was taking a chance on this one just from the description alone, and sadly, it wasn't the novel for me. I found there to be severe pacing issues in the middle, and a whole bunch of individual ingredients that were interesting enough, but never fully developed in Runcie's hands.

This is the kind of novel that gradually entraps you--it is very hard to look away from, which is appropriate, given its plot: Alex, whose theater criticism is known for being particularly nasty, slams a new production, and then, the same night, meets its star in the bar and sleeps with her. The next morning that star finds his review in the newspaper and revamps her show to The Alex Lyons Experience, which recounts what happened to her. She invites guest stars up to share their Alex experience (spoiler: there are a lot of potential guest stars). It's complicated by the fact that Alex's mother is a famous actress and that Hayley (the actress) is American and just breaking into theater. It's even more complicated by Sophie, our narrator and Alex's not-as-prestigious colleague, who feels loyalty to both sides and is rather drawn to blowing up her own life at the moment. The book is more complicated than summaries make it sound--Runcie is excellent at keeping us in ambiguous territory, moving the story along while keeping us from deciding. It really is an experience. I recommend it.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

4.5. I love this book! I’m not sure how the author managed to give us a fresh and unexpected take on the #MeToo movement, but somehow she did. I also enjoyed our immersion into the world of performing/visual arts criticism, a place I know little about but am now intrigued by. The choice of narrator also really worked for me and added an extra layer to the story. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance Kindle version of this book. (I am now going out to get a hard cover first edition to add to my collection!)

Beware of One-Night Stands!

A one woman shows is performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. It is part of a summer arts festival. Hayley Sinclair is the one-woman performer. She is the initial primary character of the book. On the same night of her performance, she meets Alex Lyons and sleeps with him. And who is Alex Lyons? He is the lead critic of a British newspaper and pans the show, which means she is panned, also. Hayley promptly realizes she slept with a highly respected critic and now is out to revenge this man. She begins by renaming her performance, “The Alex Lyons Experience,” confiding in her readers what this man did to her, knowing who she was. She invites others to contribute which sets up a tidal wave of responses.

Enter Sophie Rigden, who works alongside Alex and also is living with him in the newspaper’s rental apartment. Alex comes from a gifted background and he has no compunction to demean those who are lower than he within the class system or nepotism. Sophie’s career takes off but credit goes to Charolotte Runcie for telling the reader both sides of arguments.

It is a stylish novel which opens to debating both sides of the argument. I enjoyed the book but I seem to remember a similar plot when an actress unknowingly sleeps with a theatre or movie critic and the awful nerve and dishonesty is self-serving to a perilous fault.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Doubleday for this pre-published book.. All opinions expressed are my own.

I think more and more books will be written in this gray Me-Too area - set in all timelines. Charlotte Runcie does this with Bring the House Down.

Overall, it's about what men can get away with. This is about power, the balance of power, between men and women, between artist and critic. It's an interesting view, of unlikeable people doing unlikeable things. But just because we don't like someone or something, does that give us the right to criticize?

I think Runcie makes great points in this story, but the prose had a strange rhythm that I couldn't quite grasp.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The premise of this novel blew me away and I can’t stop thinking about. For a novel with so many profound and relevant topics - the me too movement, cancel culture, infidelity, misogyny, and “everyone’s a critic” - it was also relatable, interesting, perfectly plotted out, and entertaining.

Theater isn’t my form of entertainment of choice but the critic element was really well done and felt relatable in many ways. Alex used the one star or five star rating system (nothing in between) and it felt authentic - three star reviews are good but maybe not? And also, they’re boring! Sophie’s struggles and insecurities wondering if a performance just went over her head were also extremely well written and hit close to home! I think we’ve all been there before - that “was this bad or did I just not understand it?” feeling.

I loved the foldout of Hayley’s story and piece at the festival. To take a horrific event like what Alex did to her and turn it into a buzz worthy show was fascinating. I also loved that the novel explored both sides - did she go too far? Is it still trauma if she profits off it? Regardless of the line or your stance, it was thought provoking and so very on point for the times.

This would be a phenomenal choice for a bookclub. There are so many important themes and topics for discussion.

Thank you to Doubleday for this awesome book. Very excited to read more by Charlotte Runcie!

This was a thought provoking book about culture, criticism, and a unique take on the Me Too movement. It’s a book that would be perfect for book clubs because it inspires conversation and reflection.

Sophie is a art critic and Alex a theater critic, sent by their London newspaper to cover the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where they share an apartment for the month. But when Alex sleeps with the performer whose show he just panned - without telling that performer who he was - Sophie suddenly gets a front row seat to the festival's biggest story - and is sharing an apartment with its biggest villain. A fun, quick read with some serious pondering about the roles of artists, critics, and audiences. Enjoy!

This book brought up good questions about the power dynamic between critics and performers, owing an audience the truth, bias, and personal accountability. In addition to Alex and Sophie, I liked the development of the side characters and how they demonstrated their influence on who Alex and Sophie were or who they became. Because of the intimacy of the setting--Alex and Sophie are sharing a flat--I wanted much more dialogue in the sections recounting Alex's life. Narratively, Alex tells these things to Sophie, who then reflects on them for the reader. This style kind of took me out of the overall vulnerability of those moments and made me question how the bias of the listener could have come into play. I liked the ending--it felt appropriate and had just the right amount of unexpectedness. Overall, this was a fast, thought-provoking read.

3.5 stars. This novel started out really well. Hayley reacts to Alex's review and hookup by completely changing her one woman show - and it's a hit of the arts festival! It was funny and biting. I enjoyed the conceit of Sophie narrating the story, rather than Alex or Hayley. However, Sophie's descent into understanding Alex and his actions didn't feel so much as she was seeing his side as she was weirdly attracted to him and seemingly adrift in her own life. It wasn't until Sophie got a good look at Hayley (and Alex AND herself) that Sophie was redeemed in the end.

"Alex Lyons always has his mind made up by the time the curtain comes down at a performance—the show either deserves a five-star rave or a one-star pan. Anything in between is meaningless. On the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he doesn’t deliberate over the rating for Hayley Sinclair’s show, nor does he hesitate when the opportunity presents itself to have a one-night stand with the struggling actress.

Unaware that she’s gone home with the theater critic who’s just written a career-ending review of her, Hayley wakes up at his apartment to see his scathing one-star critique in print on the kitchen table, and she’s not sure which humiliation offends her the most. So she revamps her show into a viral sensation critiquing Alex Lyons himself—entitled son of a famous actress, serial philanderer, and by all accounts a terrible man. Yet Alex remains unapologetic. As his reputation goes up in flames, he insists on telling his unvarnished version of events to his colleague, Sophie. Through her eyes, we see that the deeper she gets pulled into his downfall, the more conflicted she becomes. After all, there are always two sides to every story."

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.