I was in the mood for a light, funny read that also had some substance that would help to pass some time when it was harder to focus on more “serious” reading, and the premise of this one was all I needed to know to give it a shot. I’m happy to report that it delivered exactly what I needed at the time and is a book that I can see having wide appeal this summer when it is published.

The story follows Alex Lyons, a theater critic and son of a famous actress who is known for his very extreme reviews - everything is either five stars or one star with nothing in between. After sitting through a terrible one-woman show one night, he quickly writes his scathing review and heads to the bar, where he ends up running into the star of said show, Hayley, and having a one-night-stand with her. Of course, Hayley had no idea who this man was when she went home with him, but it only takes until the next morning for her to put it together, and the story takes off from there.

I appreciated that the novel was interestingly not written from Alex or Hayley's POV, but from the POV of Alex's colleague and temporary roommate, Sophie. Sophie has her own storyline throughout the book and is doing her best to balance Alex's drama with that in her own personal life. The narrative is both a literary character study and an examination of culture and the human condition in today’s day and age. I enjoyed the commentary on some big topics like cancel culture, relationships, forgiveness and parenthood, and while it was contemplative in that way, it also made me laugh. I also really appreciated that the author was able to paint Alex in such a real way that even though his actions were often terrible, we still managed to be sympathetic towards him. It was really interesting to me how the author never really chose a “side” when it came to Alex - he was never fully redeemed but also never fully condemned, leaving it up to the reader to decide his fate for themselves.

Although there was a lot that I enjoyed about this one, it definitely felt like the debut it was to me in that some of the storylines could've been a little more fleshed out and benefited from some tighter editing. I found myself wanting more development and backstory from some of the characters, such as Hayley and Sophie and her family. It also seemed to drag a bit for me in the middle after such a bang of an opening and a strong ending. All in all though, it was successful in being an entertaining story that really made me think about all sorts of things from when criticism crosses the line into rude territory and the role of honesty in all things in life.

Although I'm going against everything Alex Lyons stands for by giving this one a middle-of-the road rating, I still had fun with it and I'm looking forward to what this author will do next. Thank you so much to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Bring the House Down is a light, occasionally whimsical novel that didn’t quite land for me, though I can see its charm for the right reader. Charlotte Runcie has a playful style, and there are moments of insight and humor scattered throughout—but overall, I found the story a bit too silly to fully engage with.

The tone feels like it’s meant to be quirky and offbeat, but at times it veered into territory that made it hard to take the characters or their situations seriously.

During the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Hayley meets Alex in a bar and sleeps with him. Unbeknownst to her, he is a theater critic who has just given her performance a scathing one star read. When she finds out the next morning, she responds by making her one person show all about Alex and the atrocities he has inflicted upon women over the years. The show becomes hugely popular with negative repercussions for him. The only person who seems to still support Alex is Sophie, a fellow critic who is struggling with her own professional/domestic situation.

This debut fiction by a Scottish journalist familiar with the world of art and critics is a compelling narrative that gives the reader much about which to contemplate. There is exploration into ageless topics as well as some that are very contemporary. It touches on mysogyny, art and criticism, the power of men and critics, motherhood, grief, Me Too, cancel culture. Despite such deep and sometimes dark subjects, it is entertaining, even amusing at times.

From the beginning, this reminded me SO much of "Fleischman Is In Trouble" (one of my favorite books): the female close friend/confidant who's a little on the outside telling of a man behaving badly/ seeing a relationship from the outside. There was a lot I liked about it, and the characters were really drawn well and felt like real people I'd encountered before. I found myself skimming the last half; it went on a bit long and I was just ready to be done. I related a lot to Sophie's character. 3.5 stars

While I was hoping a book about criticism would have a bit more bite to it, this was a fun story that flips expectations on its head. I loved how the play morphed and it was unlike anything I'e read all year.

If you have ever wondered how an artist/writer/actor, etc. rebounds from a really terrible review, this is the book for you.
Or if you have thought about the awesome responsibility/power of a critic who can make or break a book/theatrical production/art exhibition, etc. with the stroke of a pen.
Or if you have thought about how and why a critic can be so cruel without understanding that there is a human being behind who he or she may criticize, this book is also recommended.
Because that is exactly the storyline of Bring the House Down. Alex, the critic, only gives one star or five stars to the theatrical productions he writes about. He thinks that anything in the middle is not worth discussing. The story begins when he gives one star to the wrong person at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He then compounds it by further humiliating the performer. Hell hath no fury….
In addition to having intriguing content, Bring the House Down is well written and nuanced as its characters try to deal with circumstances they have created but that take on lives of their own.

First off thank you to @Doubleday books for providing this ARC!

I was immediately drawn to this book by the brief synopsis. I thought it would be intriguing. This book follows a theater critic, Alex Lyons who writes a less than favorable one star review for a new artist, later that same night he decides to have a one night stand with said artist without disclosing his career and his soon to be published one star scathing review of her debut show. The next morning once she discovers the lie by omission, she decides to scrap her debut play and highlight her experience with Alex Lyons. What follows is a litany of women who had similar experiences with Alex coming forward to share their pain and be in community.

This is all told through the eyes of his colleague, Sophie a junior critic who is on the fence about the whole situation.

The themes within this book are art, criticism, misogyny, power, entertainment, accountability, female rage, and the weight of our words.

I am uncertain how I feel about this book. There were some banger one liners that really made me savor the words of the author. (I read somewhere that some men only love their children for as long as they love the mother of their children. … How can she be dead when I still need her?” I really empathized with how Sophie experienced grief and death.

In many ways this book was cathartic for me. It was however difficult, as I personally experienced something eerily similar while I was more embedded in the arts world. My own similar experience made it challenging to read and it took me longer to get through this than I do with most books.

The beginning is a whirlwind and the outrageousness of it all really sucks you in and is captivating in the same way a car crash is. From there, for me it was a bit lackluster, while things were still happening, I wasn’t super invested as I did not like any of the characters nor was I impressed with their choices. However, they did behave how humans often do, by making mistakes and figuring out how to move forwards.

Despite not liking the characters, I did enjoy the book. It made me think of the power dynamics between the artist, the audience, and the critic. Art is so personal; the degree of weight to which some people place on critics (or even those who just share their opinion) can often persuade the audience in some way or another. Personally I always take critics opinions with a grain of salt as everything is personal and how we all experience the world is different.

In similar ways to sex, a performance is all about trust. If you’re not someone who understands it, does that make the thing bad? The weight of our words matter.

All in all, I enjoyed the book and if it sounds like something you’d like, I’d say go for it.

This book started out fantastic, but it lost me by the middle. It was all I could do to finish it. it was just all too depressing.

**Thanks Doubleday Books via NetGalley for the arc in exchange of my honest opinion.

I would describe this book as "juicy" (complimentary). Told through the perspective of a friend of the man, it tells a story of how he gets "canceled" by a performer in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I thought the extra layer of storytelling was brilliant, showing how a man's behavior impacts all the women around him. I truly thought this was an incredibly creative premise, and I would truly recommend this to anyone.

This is peak British humor: a journalist rips apart a play before having a passionate night with its lead actress. As anticipated, things go down hill FAST. The situation escalates to a shocking degree infusing the story with absurdism but also a decent amount of comedy. Wholly original and entertaining.

I was absolutely blown away by this stunning debut! I’ve recommended it to multiple people & then been distraught when I remember it won’t be out until the summer.

I was initially drawn in by the premise: a brutal (and very litbro coded) theater critic writes a one-star pan of a show at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and then proceeds to have a one-night stand with the lead, setting off an unprecedented chain of events that irreparably impact everyone involved.

There is so much packed into this kaleidoscope of a novel. It’s a masterclass in perspective and a study of the biases we all carry with us. It raises so many interesting questions about the role of criticism in society and what we owe one another (as artists, friends, lovers and people).

I also really enjoyed the narrator, Sophie, and appreciated her perspective on grief, motherhood (and the grief of being a mother without a mother). I felt it helped deepen my understanding of her character and how she was processing the events of the festival.

This book will definitely make waves this summer & I can’t wait to follow its success. Many thanks to Doubleday for the early copy!!!

I found this book to be such a compelling and good read - the characters were just grey enough that I found myself rooting for them and then feeling bad that I was rooting for them, which I thought was a delightful takeaway from this book. As someone who used to be involved in the theater world in college, I really loved that this felt like a peek behind the curtain, and I can tell it was written by someone who was knowledgeable about the space.

I also really loved the social commentary of this book - about cancel culture and the way things can quickly spin out of control. The writing of the book kind of reminded me of Fleishman is in Trouble - I thought that the choice for the book to be told from an outsider's perspective was so clever and I enjoyed it so much, especially with her marital issues coming into frame as well.

A critic gives a one-woman show a one-star review, and then immediately sleeps with her without telling her this. She finds out and revamps her show to be a scathing takedown of him as a human - inviting anyone else treated badly by him to join the show. Soon, his career and reputation are looking as empty as the rest of his life. Meanwhile, our narrator is watching all of this unfold, while trying to sort out her own life: grief at her mother's death, feelings about motherhood and husband's affair, etc. In the end, maybe, the point is about confronting those who hurt us and being receptive to repair? Also, that criticism isn't as meaningful as creation, so maybe take a beat before you decide to shred someone else for lols.
I enjoyed this; it's a pretty quick read. The performative angst (of specific characters and also as a theme) is kind of tiring, but I suppose that's part of the point. In the end, I appreciate that most of us do some messing up, and as long as we try to muddle through to some kind of repair or understanding, it's not the end of the world.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

A well-written, insightful, and humorous story of a couple of reviewers (colleagues) attending the three weeks of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Alex — the handsome, 30 something son of a famous actress who can’t keep the girls away — gives a one woman show a seriously scathing one star review… and then sleeps with the actress before the review is printed. With some pretty intense malice, she turns around and makes his life a living hell with a me-too style assault that happens to catapult her show into something extraordinary and incredibly popular. Sharing the trip apartment, his colleague Sophie is the only one who is kind to him during his ordeal, but she has insecurities (so many) and troubles of her own.

I appreciated the fact that the book did not proceed in any obvious way. Instead, we’re given insight into the many different perspectives on who Alex really is (including his own), we get to peep into a panoply of lives that are (quite) different from our own (or at least mine), and (multiple!) people actually grow and learn from their experiences. I found it ultimately uplifting, though some of the raw honesty in the middle was a little off-putting and at times cringeworthy (oddly enough, it was Sophie whom I found cringeworthy, not Alex).

Worth a read (and probably less cringeworthy for the younger set).

A reviewer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival gives a woman's one woman show a one star review. Then he picks her up at a bar without revealing that he is a critic. Chaos ensues when she changes her show to rant against the critic. Fun, good sense of time and place. Loved the setting.

After Alex, a suave, playboy theatre critic, writes a scathing one-star review for a struggling actress’ one-woman show (and sleeps with her) he must reap the consequences. Namely, the actress, Hayley, rebranding her initially eco-friendly and tree-hugging show into a smear campaign of said critic. However, “Bring the House Down” by Charlotte Runcie, isn’t told from either of their perspectives, but from Sophie’s, another reviewer from Alex’s paper. She is a… semi-unbiased third party, watching everything unfold in the loft she shares with Alex during the colorful, chaotic, and buzzing Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

As a former theatre technician and occasional writer, there was a lot of relatability within this book. Few things compare to the throws of theatre drama. That, combined with the heavy discussion of cancel culture was an interesting mix. I feel like this book captured how intense of an echo-chamber not only theatre people can be but how I imagine Edinburgh Fringe being (thousands of artists trapped in one city for a few weeks? I always suspected it would be a tornado of drama).

For a book so heavily focused on the repercussions of cancel culture on both ends (those giving and those receiving) I felt there was little growth amongst the characters. They all spoke their truth in some capacity, but I didn’t see much learning or even developments of empathy from anyone, which I thought was what the entire book was working towards.

For a book that focuses heavily on the importance of star reviews, I’m worried I may fall into the middle-ground of the territory. It was a fun and entertaining read, especially if you need a quick-drama fix. However, the social commentary it was making fell a bit flat and was slightly redundant for me. I was also really excited as I kept hearing that this book has a similar energy to “Fleabag”. I really didn’t see the resemblance other than “Fleabag” initially premiering at Edinburgh Fringe. I was expecting more dry-wit and complex-characters due to that comparison. There was also a “will-they-won’t-they” dynamic that seemed forced, I almost feel the story would’ve been stronger and more interesting without it?

If you are a nosey person that secretly loves learning a bunch of tea and gossip about your coworkers, despite barely knowing them (but still being heavily invested). This is the book for you. It gives that energy through and through.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me a free e-ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review!

What could have been just a funny takedown of an entitled white male, becomes something more nuanced in Runcie’s book that features the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as a backdrop.

Alex Lyons is a witty and withering critic for a London newspaper. After attending a one-woman show at the Fringe, he fires off a hurtful one-star review sure to please his readers hungry for his cruel takedowns. In addition to his writing skills, he’s also a womanizer and ends up bedding the recipient of his latest evisceration. Haley has been working for this moment: to perform her show and use the fringe as a launchpad for the rest of her career. Unfortunately the opening of her performance was lackluster, so she heads to a bar and meets a handsome stranger, who listens and says all the right things. The two head back to his place together, and it’s not until our narrator (Alex’s colleague), Sophie shows Haley the review, does she realize what’s transpired.

Unbowed, Haley revamps her show and Alex’s life, both personal and professional will never be the same.

I thought this book was terrific, while it reads quickly, there are moments of serious reckoning. Sophie has been cruising along writing tepid reviews, and struggling to find her way after having a baby with her partner. While Alex is a cad and his reviews are scathing, his diatribes on art are thought-provoking and make a case for the lack of critical thought regarding most of our media. Haley, too, is a complicated character. Alex’s hurtful review and loathsome behavior pushes her to stretch her boundaries and go beyond what she initially thought she was capable of.

I received an advance review copy of Bring the House Down from the publisher through NetGalley.

Thank you to NetGalley, and Doubleday publishing for this ARC.

I will be honest, this wasn’t my favorite kind of story. Lots of ire, lots of confrontation and I was uncomfortable by proxy. I didn’t much care for any of the characters, but the whole situation made me want to become a hermit.

Should a woman who decided to have a one-night stand with a man who knew that his soon to be published theater review would destroy her career, take her revenge public and destroy his life? This fast, witty but certainly thought-provoking book will have you thinking and rethinking every position you take. The narrator, a female colleague, is sharing a rental with the critic as things unfold. She also is going through a one-sided marital crisis. Her perspectives keep changing and at times you feel you are bouncing back and forth at a tennis match (in a good way).

The underlying events enable arguments for and against serious issues while not being preachy. The reader is able to draw their own conclusions regarding topics such as chauvinism, elitism, cruelty, narcissism, power including power of the written and spoken word and humanity. The book can be read as an interesting read or taken deeper as a commentary on today. Your choice. You will enjoy it whichever you choose.

Thank you NetGalley and Doubleday for this advance read.

I enjoyed th​is story​!
It was an easy read and kept me interested to see what would happen.
​Even the naughty characters were likeable in their own way. (Alex)
​I will say that not a lot happened... it was short & sweet, which is why my review is too.

Bottom line... it was good and I would read another by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.