Theatre critic Alex Lyons is in town for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and on the opening night he publishes a scathing review of Hayley’s feminist play. Later that night, they cross paths at a bar and end up sleeping together. The next morning, Hayley comes across his review and decides to switch up her play to be a monologue that completely exposes him and his behavior, becoming the hottest performance of the festival. This whole story is seen through the eyes of Sophie, fellow performance reviewer who is forced to board with Alex by the paper they work for.

This was an interesting exploration of cancel culture and consequences of behavior in the public eye. I think the idea was that the narrator, Sophie, was giving us an inside and somewhat unbiased view from outside the animosity between Alex and Hayley. We do get back story with Sophie that I was interested in but it’s sporadic and muddled the story because so much focus was on the drama. I see what the author was trying to do here, but I also was constantly rolling my eyes at Alex and how much time was spent almost justifying his behavior. Maybe it’s just the mood I feel because of society right now but I don’t feel like reading a book that is playing devil’s advocate for a borderline predator. Then again, I do understand that it’s about the gray area of whether Alex was a truly bad person or just a dummy airhead. Either way, the behavior wasn’t acceptable.

Overall a decent read that had me turning the pages to see what would happen! Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for a digital advance copy of this book! All opinions are my own.

“Bring Down the House” by Charlotte Runcie
Something Different
Just as a coin has three sides (heads, tails, & the rim); this story has multiple sides, too. It took me longer than I would like to really get into the lives of the lead characters; but I did and glad I persevered. I did not fall in love with this story, nor shed any tears but it did make me do some thinking. We probably do not know others as well as we think we do, even those we are closest to. It seems to me this would be a good book club selection, but I have been a member of a book club discussion group only one time. Happy Reading ! !

Well written and entertaining. A snapshot of ego and talent causing fates to fall and rise.
Fun read.

I would like to thank Net Galley and Doubleday for the opportunity to read this as an ARC. The book is set in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival. Alex Lyons is a newspaper critic and has just finished writing his review of a one woman show. He hated it and gave it a one star. After he sends in the review, he goes to a bar, where the woman who wrote and performed the show( Hayley ) , is having a drink. He does not tell her he reviewed the show. They go back to his place and have sex. In the morning she sees the reviews. On the basis of this, you would expect the book to be about Alex, or about Hayley. Actually, it is narrated by Sophie, who is also a critic for the same newspaper and is sharing a house with Alex. And, gradually, the book becomes about her. The book is ok. It is not a "fantastically funny read". It is actually quite cringey and upsetting at times. It is thoughtful and thought provoking, but not all that funny.

Sophie, a junior arts and culture reviewer at an important newspaper, heads off to Edinburgh for the three weeks of the Fringe Festival, where she’ll see and review shows every day. She’s accompanied by her colleague, Alex Lyons, a handsome man and son of famed actress Dame Judith Lyons. They share the paper’s usual flat in town, and Alex reviews the higher-profile plays. Alex is a big name with years of experience and tells Sophie that namby-pamby three-star reviews are worthless; only one-star and five-star ratings should be awarded and the reviews should be brutally honest. But Sophie can’t stop thinking about the work the performers have put in and how her review might affect them and their friends and family.

In the 21st century, we’ve all become reviewers and critics. Every time we buy, eat, listen to or watch something, even when we go to the doctor, we’re asked to rate the experience and maybe even review it. But when we rate or write a review, do we do it to help other potential consumers? Are we brutally honest or do we pull our punches so as not to hurt the target of the review? Do we write to entertain ourselves, vent our feelings, entertain readers by being dramatic? These issues run throughout the book and are interesting to those of us who enjoying reviewing books—though of course understanding that reader reviews don’t have the same impact as reviewers in national media.

When Alex one-stars an earnest one-woman show about climate change and then, within a couple of hours after submitting it for next-day publication, meets the performer, Hayley Sinclair, in a bar and takes her back to the flat for a one-night stand, the results are explosive. Hayley reads the review and turns her show into an exposé of Alex that includes inviting anyone who has been mistreated by Alex to come up and tell her story. Hayley’s show becomes a sensation and Alex a pariah. Sophie is in the position of hearing all these stories while, at the same time, living in the flat with Alex and hearing his side.

This is an inspired idea for a novel—literally inspired, I understand, by the author’s experience of having panned the Fringe performance of a comedian some years ago. (I was very curious about that, because apparently it’s a comedian who became quite successful, but I wasn’t able to find out more about what happened.) The story is told from Sophie’s point of view, which is a good way to allow for both Hayley’s and Alex’s actions and perspectives to be set out. But then the author shifts her focus to Sophie’s life and struggles with being a critic, a mother of a young child, a woman struggling with her unresolved grief over her mother’s death and the problems that causes with her personal relationships, especially with her partner. Sophie’s story just didn’t interest me as much as the Hayley/Alex story, and I don’t think the author was successful integrating the two stories. So here I go, giving the book a namby-pamby three-star rating because I liked half of it quite a bit and the other half not so much.

Rounded up from 2.5. This book had a lot of potential. The premise was interesting, and it started really well. Then it stalled out. The narrator was lost in her own depression and it really took over the story for too long.

Thank you to Net Galley and Doubleday for the ARC. I enjoyed reading this book. While the pacing is a bit odd and the writing style took a bit to get used to, I really enjoyed the plot because strong gossip and drama vibes.

I'm afraid that this book was not for me. Perhaps it's my age?

I went into it with certain expectations, and those were not reached. This book was filled with over-inflated egos, sarcasm of the nasty kind, and Me Too whiners. I'm not of the generation that appreciates the me-too's - I think they just want their five minutes of fame, but that's probably just me.

I initially thought this was going to be a fun read, and was quickly put in my place. This was a depressing, cruelty-filled read. If I were Hayley, as soon as I read what Alex wrote, I would have gone after his dangly bits with a rusty toenail clipper. NOT because of the critical review, but because he slept with her without thinking about how she would feel when she woke up in his apartment and saw the papers. Used...yes, humiliated... again, yes.

Oddly enough, I just read online some criticism from an 'author' on one and two-star reviews, that we reviewers should be sensitive to the author's feelings. Uhm, if you are that sensitive that a critical or sarcasm-filled review would put you in a depression, then you are in the wrong profession. I b lame the advent of the old-time Vanity Press companies and the ever-popular self-publishing world.

*ARC supplied by the publisher, Doubleday, the author, and NetGalley.

Bring the House Down a brilliant read from first to last page.Great characters that really come alive a gem of a novel.#netgalley #doubleday

frequently giggled through the course of this book. i appreciate taking the heavy and often flattened subject of #metoo and bringing nuance, complexity, and humor. a quick and enjoyable read.

I realize my initial review of this book got lost, or at least didn’t get published. Here goes,
The first few pages of Bring Down the House were a struggle for me. Alex Lyons is a theater critic and one evening he give Hayley Sinclair’s show at the Fringe Festival a one-star review. A few hours later unbeknownst to Hayley, she meets Alex in a bar and winds up sleeping with him, only to discover the next morning Alex is the person who wrote the terrible review. From there the book takes off in a direction I didn’t anticipate.

Sophie is a coworker of Alex at the same newspaper also attending the festival and sharing a flat with Alex. The aftermath of the one-star review is told from Sophie’s perspective. Sophie finds it hard to be objective due to what appears to be feeling for Alex. Over the course of the two-week festival there is fall out all around as Hayley takes her bad review and turns the tables on Alex.
Though Sophie’s perspective the reader learns more about Alex and what it’s like to be a child of a famous person while trying to have a career of your own. What happens to Hayley when suddenly you become overnight famous for something different than what you wanted. Finally there is Sophie, she seems unhappy in her life and has feelings for Alex.
After completing a book, I will google the author, and I highly recommend reading up on her idea for this book. Thanks, NetGalley for this advance reader copy. #netgalley

This book has a lot of interesting things to say about reviews and reviewers, and the rapid rise and fall of Internet discourse for every scandal that comes by. In some ways, it also touches on influencers and flash news that don't always show what's accurate or real. I enjoyed the basic story and will remember some of the key points for a while.

Two things keep it from being 4 stars -
1. The author's writing style isn't my favorite. There wasn't enough dialogue. Sophie, Alex's colleague and temporary flatmate, told us the story mostly in summary. So many long paragraphs that glossed over what were probably emotional conversations. It kept me from really connecting with Alex at all. Also, there were several sentences that were too long and should have been broken into two. It was too many asides and commas, which I recognize as hypercritical of me because I love commas and asides. But it made for clunky reading occasionally.

2. This one is a small spoiler. Sophie's husband, several years before the story starts, had a short affair. Towards the end of the book, Sophie and Alex share a kiss. When the husband asks Sophie whether anything happened between her and Alex, she says yes. But she never specifies it was one kiss. She acts like her one kiss is on par with her husband sleeping with another woman twice. Then they sort of say "let's call it even" and (presumably) never revisit it. That soured the ending for me.

I received this book in a giveaway on Story Graph. Review appears on Net Galley and Story Graph.

Things go askew in this fiction book pitting a critic and an actress. While the theatrical critic is pompous and predictable, he is a likable character. I rooted for the actress in her clever quirky reactions. Predictable is usually a killer word in a review, but this is a fun ride throughout the novel.

After reading this funny, deep, yet lighthearted retaliation story, which happens to include a few different perspectives about writing reviews that others will read, it feels odd to write a review over it. This story incorporates the art of theater & those critic journalists who review it for others. Of course there are many facets to the characters, choices they make, & challenges they face. Very well written. Will it be the best thing you've ever read? Probably not. Is it entertaining & fun? Most Definitely!

This is my unbiased, honest review. Thank you to NetGalley & Doubleday books for an ARC.

Charlotte Runcie's 'Bring the House Down' is a whip-smart, layered debut that dissects the combustible intersection of art, ego, and public scrutiny in the digital age. Set against the electric atmosphere of the Edinburgh Fringe, the novel pivots around a one-star review that sets off a chain reaction - both onstage and off.

Told through the keen eyes of Sophie, a critic grappling with grief and motherhood while navigating a strained friendship with her flatmate and colleague Alex, the story captures the subtle politics of the arts world. When Alex writes a brutal review of a rising actress's solo show - then sleeps with her the same night - it becomes the first domino in a larger collapse. What follows is a sharp look at the backlash, vitality, and messy moral terrain of performance, criticism, and accountability.

Runcie's voice is confident and cooly observant, blending satire and sincerity with ease. The novel is particularly incisive when exploring how power operates within supposedly liberal, creative spaces. While the central events are provocative, the book doesn't offer simple answers - just a sharp mirror to a world where reputations are made, broken, and rebranded overnight.

Perfect for fans of fiction that critiques the cultural zeitgeist with intelligence and wit. I found myself highlighting passages and laughing out loud, then suddenly quiet, contemplating its quieter questions about complicity and the stories we tell ourselves.

This is a surprisingly fun and enjoyable read, given how serious its themes are. I really enjoyed the festival setting and learning more about the work done by critics. The premise and set-up are intriguing, and the action in the story takes off immediately. I also enjoyed the first-person narration that is so heavily, at least for the first half of the book, so centered on other characters in the novel. Really good!

Bring Down the House was a romp that brought into question “cancel culture” and the acts of people on their personal lives affecting their professional lives. I enjoyed this but it was a bit light on the bigger issues for the main character and I think it could’ve delved in deeper to hit harder.

Bravo! 5stars.
I’m not nor have I ever been in the theater circle, but these characters and this story are so relatable. It’s written so well that you’re immersed in it and you are an audience member watching it all unfold. Alex and Sophie’s reviews shape and break careers as they take us on the ride of self discovery and self destruction.

Life lessons told in such a captivating way: Be nice you never know what someone is going through. Take the negatives and make a positive. Don’t worry about someone else’s opinion of you. Sticks and stones hurt but words do too. Sometimes it’s just a job you’re doing. Forgive and forget. Life isn’t always black and white, there’s a lot of gray. Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget.

—“Whether or not you’re famous enough to have a newspaper obit written about you, somewhere, after your death, there will be a summary written of your life, and it will not be written by you. Someone else, whether someone you love or just the person who types up the council death notices, will weigh up the most important things you left behind, the people you knew, the prints you left in the mud. And that summary will exist alongside the summaries of all the other people who died the same day. And it will be read, for a while. And then it will be forgotten.”—

I was able to read this book because I won a giveaway, but I think it was meant to find me. My name starts with S. I lost my mom to pancreatic cancer in my 30s after it just being us for years and my gaping hole of grief years later isn’t filing in.

Alex Lyons, son of famous actress/director Judith Lyons, was the theatre critic for the most prestigious newspaper in Britain. His reviews could make or break a show and he was tired of the nuances between a one star and a five star performance. His solution was to drop the in-between and award most shows a one star review except for the precious few that merited five stars. Of course this made him a tyrant to most actors and productions but he got away with it as he was devilishly funny and boyishly handsome-love him or hate him he stirred up controversy which was good for sales.
He and colleague Sophie, the junior art critic, were sent to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe, a yearly festival of the arts where new bohemian work intermingled with the tried and true, and they were put up in the paper's yearly rental flat. Sophie was just coming off her year of maternity leave and was eager to resume her journalism career at the three week festival, as mothering was not helping her creative side. She wondered how she was going to cope with bad boy Alex as her flatmate, but had no idea how weird this was really going to get.
One of Alex's first assignments was a one-woman show by American Hayley Sinclair on the climate emergency. While he expected a performance, what he got was a heartfelt lecture that he felt would be better housed at a university. He wrote a stinging review and gave it one star because he wasn't allowed a no star review, and the copy was sent to the paper to be printed the next morning. After the show he felt hungry and went to a pub for some food, but they had already closed the kitchen. Sitting at the bar was Hayley, fueled up with adrenaline from her performance and they started chatting-of course Alex knew who she was, but didn't let on and they slept together at the flat. As Sophie sat down to read the morning paper with her coffee, she turned to the review, Alex was taking a shower and Hayley emerged from his room. And she saw the review-horrified, she shoved on her clothes and left. Alex figured that he would never see her again so it was over for him, but she left her cell phone and Sophie was tasked with returning it. She figured she could drop it off at that night's performance. But things had changed-instead of repeating the climate talk, Hayley had changed the show to "The Alex Lyons Experience," where she told her story and asked the audience to tell all of their friends and participate in tearing Alex down. At the end of the event, she burned her copy of the review.
No one had seen anything like this before-every night she told her story, and solicited guest speakers from the many women Alex had wronged...it was a three week sellout and tickets were impossible to buy. Even as Alex's career hit the toilet he would not apologize-he admitted being a cad, but would not touch what he considered the integrity of the review itself, which he felt deserved the one star treatment. As Sophie watched Alex's downward spiral, she felt like a referee and saw both sides of the arguments. But what if this gets too personal-will she go down with him?
The novel was based on a real incident that happened to Runcie, except she actually was the rookie writer who wrote a bad review of a (now famous) comedienne who wiped the floor with her for the rest of the festival. By making it a battle of the sexes and letting observer Sophie narrate the action in the first person, we get all angles of the disaster-behavior, feelings, and emotions of both combatants...will make a great discussion book and perhaps a five star play.

4.5 stars, rounded down
Bring the House Down takes a whole new spin on the Me, Too situation and does it brilliantly. Alex, a popular theatre critic, known for his savage reviews, writes a one star review of a one woman show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Then he goes out for a meal, picks up the actor, has sex with her, all without ever telling her about his review which will show up in the newspaper the next morning. But she doesn’t just accept this. She revamps her show, exposing what he did and it’s a hit. More and more women come out of the woodwork, actors reveal how his reviews have hurt them. The man becomes a pariah.
The story is told from the perspective of Sophie, the “junior culture critic” also in attendance at the festival and sharing a flat with Alex. Through Sophie’s eyes, we are constantly reminded that there are two sides to each story. She raises some interesting points. “It’s not like with a bad review of a book or film, where the creative work is already out there in the world and done with, and the writer or the performer can just shrug it off and go onto the next thing. I can’t imagine what it must be like to get a bad review on the first night of your theatre run, and then have to get up again and keep going, putting yourself out there, knowing that people think you’re crap.”
I loved seeing Hayley, the actor, take matters into her own hands. But even she begins to wonder how everything will play out and what constitutes fairness.
The book lays out a lot of interesting points about creativity, acting and reviewing. It was a book that made me think, especially about to whom a reviewer owes their allegiance. And Alex has a point, no one wants to see a three star review. We are drawn to the dramatic. It would make for an interesting book club selection. Runcie knows whereof she speaks, having been an arts critic and columnist for The Daily Telegraph who frequently attended the Edinburgh Festival. And kudos to her for not taking the predictable way out with the ending.
I was less interested in Sophie’s personal story. She’s the typical working mom and there wasn’t much new there. It was a drag on the main plot.
My thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for an advance copy of this book.