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Sunday 26 January 2020

#Adults @emjaneunsworth @BoroughPress


About Adults


Jenny is unloved, unemployable and emotionally unfiltered. Her long-suffering friends seem sick of her and whilst her social media portrays her life as a bed of roses, it is more of a dying succulent.

Adults is what you want it to be. A misadventure of maturity, a satire on our age of self-promotion, a tender look at the impossibility of womanhood, a love story, a riot. And Emma Jane Unsworth is the only voice to hear it from. Adults is excruciating, a gut punch of hilarity and a book laden with truth that you will read again and again.






My review of Adults


Adults is a huge gulp of fresh air. I absolutely ADORED this book for its honesty, its humour, its frank commentary about how we live our lives on social media and the reality of modern day relationships while trying to achieve that work life balance when we find it so difficult to switch off. This book has a LOT to say and I devoured every word. It's a thought provoking read that makes you laugh on one page and cry on the next. It's a pure delight.

Adults is Jenny's story and even after reading only the first few chapters i found that I had a real sense of who she was and how she lived her life. I found her to be funny, insecure, ambitious but ultimately a nice person who had made some bad decisions in her life and who was trying to find her way in the world. This book works because she has such a powerful and distinctive voice. This is her story and we stay with her every step of the way as we don't want to miss a single second.

Jenny works, but this word should be used very loosely, as it is not exactly made clear to us the reader, or to Jenny herself, exactly what it is that she does for a living. Her day seems to involve posting photos on twitter and Insta, creating interesting hashtags and detailing every aspect of her life in her weekly column. But at what cost? That's the question that is being asked here. What happens when the lines between reality and online presence become blurred? What happens then? But just to add that I found her twitter posts incredibly current and funny.

We then read about Jenny's relationships. Throughout the novel we read about her past experiences and present day life, so that her relationship with her mother, best friend and now ex boyfriend become perfectly clear. What we read is both funny and tragic in equal measure, and in learning about her relationships, we learn more about why Jenny relies so much on social media. 

Adults is such a tender, honest and heart-warming read. It really does cover every emotion.  It is a compulsive and all consuming read. I found it hard to put down. It's hard to explain how so very important this book is for today's modern world of online profiles and trying to live that ultimately unachievable perfect life. I loved this book, I really did. And, I will never quite look at a croissant in the same way again.

Adults is published by The Borough Press on Jan 30th.

With thanks to the publisher for the advanced reader copy.

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