This was a real palate cleanser for me after some gritty crime. A  lighthearted beautifully woven tale with plenty of belly laughs thrown in. It has the entertainment factor from me.

I really enjoyed this and can’t wait to read more from this author. Even though I’m not a mother myself I akways enjoy fictional books about the antics of motherhood. Kids are so funny, and you never know what’s around the corner when your with them.

Thanks goes to net galley and the publishers  for providing me with a copy in  exchange for  an honest review.

Incredibly funny and honest look at motherhood, especially at how the realities of it are nothing like what appears on social media or in magazines.   It's not all glossy and wonderful, and there are times where parents really do struggle. 

So Stevie is mother to 6 month old Cherry, a rather unfortunate infant who suffers badly from reflux, and is a real mummy's girl.  After many sleepless nights Stevie starts writing a blog which she never expects anyone to read, venting about her true feelings on motherhood. 

She is convinced she is failing at motherhood, and then she finally gets herself some new parenting friends, and her outlook on life starts to improve.  I loved Nelle and Will, and their kids too, they provided such a refreshing perspective on things. 

Whereas I really didn't take to Stevie's work-aholic husband.   Easily my favourite parts are the blog posts that Stevie were righting, and I think a large amount of this book will ring true with mothers, whether they admit it or not. 

From a personal point of view I could have done with a lot less bodily fluids in it, there were for me far too many descriptions of baby sick and poo.  I know that's what little kids do, but it meant reading this while I was eating was a challenge at times! 

This was just so very entertaining, probably my favourite book to date from this author.  I found myself whizzing through the pages, not wanting to put it down, I was completely hooked to see just what would happen next. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Canelo for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

The perfect book to read when you are up in the early hours feeding your baby. This book is funny and just what I needed to read in the first few weeks of having my second baby.

Another corker from Canelo Publishing; as the tagline says, this is ‘A heartwarming momcom that’s guaranteed to make you smile.’

Stevie’s life has changed beyond recognition since having her first baby. Stevie loves being a mum, but between the isolation and being vomited on five times a day, she really wishes she had someone to talk to.
With husband Ted working hard to keep the family afloat, Stevie really doesn’t want to burden him with her feelings. Turning to the internet, Stevie starts the anonymous First-Time Mum blog and blasts the rose-tinted glasses of parenthood right off her readers.
In the real world, Stevie meets the formidable Nelle and gorgeous Will, along with their own little treasures, and starts to realise that being a ‘perfect mum’ isn’t everything. 

But when the secret blog goes viral, Stevie must make some tough choices about who she wants to be, and whether she’s ready for the world to know the truth…

A perfect laugh-out-loud read for fans of The Unmumsy Mum, Gill Sims and Emma
Robinson.

This was one of those ‘un-put-downable’ reads. You can’t help but instinctively feel for Stevie and the utter panic she feels in her new situation, constantly feeling that she is being judged for being a ‘bad mum’. When her new friends give her an injection of confidence and her blog suddenly goes viral, it’s clear that suddenly her life will never be quite the same again!

With a script many new mums will relate to, but equally appealing to those who don’t fall under that umbrella, author Poppy Dolan writes with wit and humour, whilst also addressing issues that will probably strike a cord with many. Highly recommended!

I found this an ok read, but found it a little condescending in places. 

First time mum's do struggle and quite often rely on online blogs for advice. I didn't think the speed at the popularity of the blog was realistic.

Becoming a mum was by far the biggest change in my life. It not only changed my lifestyle and the way I looked but it also made me more aware of certain things. 



Quite rightly noted by Stevie, becoming a mum surrounded by spit, vomit and other delightful smells all day can be torturous on the soul and make you feel incredibly lonely. Confessions Of A First Time Mum sounded like it was quoting my every thought word by word. Having no gossip for your partner is tough, especially when they work long hours and are sometimes too tired to make conversation themselves. 



Confessions Of A First Time Mum continues to follow Stevie as she makes her first 'mum friends' and starts to have a little bit of a life. Little troubles at home still play on her mind but having something to look forward to gives her seemingly monotonous life a glow at last.



There is so much in this book which relates to new mums like me. My daughter is now 15 months old and I still experience a lot of the issues flagged up in Confessions Of A First Time Mum. Although there is a lot of little moments that made me smile, I only give four stars as my rating because in my opinion it wasn't a funny read as described and actually made me feel a bit depressed in places instead. 



That being said, I still think there is some great reading material here for parents with older children or anyone who loves to have a giggle at the daft things that children do.

When I saw that Poppy Dolan was releasing a new book, I was delighted to hop onto the blog tour train, and get a chance to read and review.  I have read one of her books before - The Woolly Hat Knitting Club - and thoroughly enjoyed her writing style.

Confessions of a First-Time Mum was as delightfully brilliant to read as I was expecting it to be, if not more so.

I myself am not a mum, but I still thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and found myself nodding along in reaction to certain parts, which resonated with parenting trials and tribulations that I've witnessed... and in some way experienced when my sisters were little (temper tantrums...in public...oh joy).

As a blogger myself, I was able to easily connect with Stevie, using the internet as a platform to communicate, which obviously I do too! I found myself laughing at her responses to getting views/followers, because I'm exactly the same in that I don't expect a lot of people to visit my little tiny corner of the internet!

The array of fantastically witty and lovable characters, brilliant plot, and humour that had me chuckling throughout, truly make an all round amazing read, and they - to little old me - capture exactly what I think Poppy Dolan is aiming for, in that this book is real. Now, I know you are probably looking at your screen thinking "what on earth are you on about?", but let me explain.

Everything, and I really do mean everything that occurs throughout the entirety of this novel, happens in real life.  Those temper tantrums that happen in the middle of a public place when it feels like everyone is looking at you, yup, those happen.  The instant warm fuzzy feeling you get when someone connects with something you've written on your blog or on social media, yep, that too.  Not to mention the friendships that you create an inexplicable bond from over life's little triumphs and disasters.  All of these things that feature in this book and are part of the bigger picture in life for the characters, happen to us all. That (to me), is the true beauty of this latest release from Poppy Dolan.  It's easy to relate to no matter who you are, all whilst drawing us into the plot itself.

Perfect escapist reality, and something that I truly enjoyed reading.

***** stars from me!

Poppy Dolan’s latest novel Confessions of a First-Time Mum is a book which has really resonated with me, she’s totally nailed the insecurities of motherhood and put them in a funny and inspiring read.
Stevie’s a first-time mum to Cherry, a baby who knows exactly what she wants, her mum all the time with added crying and bouts of milky sick for good measure. Stevie loves Cherry with all her heart but she’s finding motherhood hard and lonely as husband Ted doesn’t get a look in where Cherry is concerned. Feeling lonely Stevie clings to health visitors just so she can have an adult conversation as the mum-mums all around her are far too intimidating. Then one-day she strikes gold and meets Nelle and Will and the three form a solid bond.
One night the sleep deprivation gets too much for Stevie and she starts a blog and becomes First Time Mum, a blogger who becomes an overnight sensation, after speaking out about her true feelings about being a mum. The new-found confidence from blogging, along with her new friends slowly help Stevie to see she can do the parenting thing pretty well…until husband Ted drops a bombshell which leads to one blog-post too far.
I think every mum should read this book, as it’s a book any mum can relate to as we’ve all had moments of insecurity and worrying if we’re doing the right thing. In Stevie, Poppy Dolan has created a mum who is a hero and shown us that every mum is the hero of her own life. Being a mum is hard work, you’re responsible for another human being and you don’t get a manual so trial and error is the only way to go. Sometimes things will work out and sometimes they won’t, but that’s okay. Stevie has shown us its okay to have a meltdown every now and then, its okay not to be perfectly dressed, its okay to reach for the ready meals (it’s maybe not okay to leave your baby in the library) and it doesn’t make you any less a mum or love your baby any less.  I loved Stevie, in my eyes she’s the perfect mum. It’s obvious she adores Cherry and will do anything for her, including being caught on camera looking rough in the rush to get her to the doctor and being covered in sick at every social event going; but she also has her flaws, her main one being not expressing her emotions enough which leads her into trouble.
Confession of a First Time Mum is a realistic portrayal of the mum-life but written in a way which makes those stressful, insecure moments funny. Poppy Dolan has shown us there is a funny side to your baby being the one that has a poop explosion in the ball pool and shuts down the soft -play centre. We’ve all had those cringe-worthy moments where we want the ground to swallow us up but remember it happens to all of us and one-day it WILL be funny. I’ve read many “mum” books like this but this one is my favourite and I highly recommend it to any mum and every mum.

Poppy Dolan how I can relate. You nailed all those emotions so well. I was so involved in this, I forgot to take the dinner out of the Aga.

A fantastically funny and authentic read for any audience. 

I adore the fact that you don't need to have had children to be able to sink into this well written read. 

Poppy Dolan does an amazing job at creating such relatable and down to earth characters that you can't help falling in love with. I adored Stevie, Nelle and Will as characters, they had me wishing they were my friends in real life. 

Poppy does an excellent job of immersing the reader on this hysterical journey that has you laughing out loud, 

I would thoroughly recommend this feel good read!

picked this book up this morning and have just put it down finished. Verdict? You, Poppy Dolan have the ability to read minds! I’m a first time mum and I struck so many chords with the themes in this book. If you didn’t or don’t I’m glad you never had too. I loved this book!  Thank you for not writing the ‘rose tinted’ version of motherhood. I loved the characters and I hope every mum finds their own Will and Nelle. Laugh out loud and Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!

Loved this book and thoroughly recommend it for a light hearted read that is pretty funny in places. It's all about Stevie, who is a first time Mum to Cherry and struggling with the fact that her life has been turned completely upside down  as a result. She pours out her thoughts and emotions into a blog called First Time Mum, which is an anoymous insight into how it feels to become a mum and the trials and tribulations that go along with that. It's a very amusing interlude between chapters to read the blogs. I really enjoyed the character of Stevie and I think most mums will see a lot of themselves in her. The supporting characters are great too. All in all, it's a great, light read that rides really well off the back of the mummy blogging trend.

In Poppy Dolan's book, "Confessions of a First - Time Mum", our main character Stevie is ... yes, you guessed! A first - time mum! And let's be honest - she doesn't cope so well, which, of course, is totally understandable. Her husband Ted works hard to provide them a comfortable life, all her friends are working, her parents are on another continent... So Stevie starts to write about her feelings on her First Time Mum blog that quickly turns into incredible success. But, as it usually, where you find success you also often finds defeat and troubles... Will Stevie, with the help of new friends Will and Nelle, a) realise that there is no such thing as perfect parenting, b) save her marriage?

This book tells it how it really is to have a baby. I mean, you can attend all kinds of antenatal classes but the reality is in any case going to slap you very, very hard and nothing can prepare you for the shock. Thanks god my baby was not as extreme and demanding as Cherry was, even though then I thought it couldn't be worse but now, in perspective, I can see that she really was uncomplicated, and we didn't have such adventures as Stevie and her daughter. But I can imagine that there are babies like Cherry, and I so really well understood Stevie and her frustrations, desperations and problems - Cherry was not a child I'd call cute, to be honest.

Every mum can recognise herself, more or less, in Stevie, our main character. Stevie, with her brand new daughter and her feelings of happiness and love mixed with confusion, uncertainty, failure, loneliness. I really felt for her, for her struggles, for the fact that she was so authentic. Also, Nelle and Will were brilliant addition to this story and did well as Stevie's new friends - I'm still friends with the girls I got to know when I was pregnant and it's almost seven years now, although I think that none of them is as sharp and honest as Nelle and Will, sadly - every new mum needs such friends as those two.

This book started in a brilliant way and I couldn't put it down at the beginning. However, somewhere around the middle, it lost the whole impact and it started to feel repetitive and flat. It also felt too full, as if the author wanted to cram all possible events into the story. I don't know, I can't put my finger on exactly what was wrong with the second half, it simply read differently and was not as lightly written and as full of joy as the first part.

Altogether, "Confessions of a First - Time Mum" was brutally honest, incredibly funny and also poignant, a read that I could easily relate to. It gave a very realistic look at motherhood generally. Poppy Dolan has really brilliantly captured how it is to be a first - time mum - a mum altogether, showed both sides of motherhood, this of incredible happiness and being proud but also this of feeling totally misunderstood, alone and desperate. A story also about friendship and support and backing up your friends no matter what. It isn't only about being a new mum but it also explores many more issues, and even though I sometimes felt a little overwhelmed with the number of events, I still enjoyed how different and colourful those subplots were, and because of them the pace felt really quick.

Stevie is the First Time Mum in this new book for Poppy Dolan. She has a beautiful bouncy baby called Cherry who has arrived in her and Ted, her husband's life - like a force of nature.

But Stevie now feels lost - all she seems to do is deal with baby sick, stinking nappies and a few hours sleep. To vent her frustration she has started a blog and reaches out to other people who may be struggling like her in the wee small hours between night feeds.

In reality though, Stevie struggles to deal with everyday activities like taking Cherry to the health clinic for her checkup or trying to get a cup of coffee in a cafe. She meets Nelle who is struggling in her own way for the third rather surprising time with her baby Joe and Will who is father to twins, who have one speed - fast.

A friendship forms and whilst this helps Stevie and she starts to feel she might have a purpose in life and be worth something, her marriage with Ted seems to be slipping away from her. Of course to vent her frustration on her anonymous blog is a way to deal with it.....

....until being anonymous stops..... and the whole world wants to know who you really are and what gives you the right to make any sort of comment or judgment on families and parenthood.

I wasn't sure about this book, as I did not think I would be able to relate to any of it, as I am not a mum but Poppy Dolan gives it such depth and wonderfully funny laugh out loud moments that really this book is about how you need to talk about what is going on and that hiding behind something is not always the right thing to do. The use of parenthood is the vehicle for it all.

What a wonderful account of what can happen when the media turns and it becomes news, and sad we live in a world where some publications in print or online thrive on such material.

The structure of the book was great, blog posts, emails, texts and was very 'current' and 'on topic;, a book of its time probably and that is why it will resonate with lots of readers. You don't have to be a mum to read it but if you are I am sure this book will strike a chord with you all.

I really enjoyed this book, it is completely relatable and will make a whole lot of mums feel better and feel like they aren't the only ones who are having tough times. 
The whole blog posts and all in this are so funny and I really loved reading these parts they kept getting better and better the more confident Stevie was getting.
There is so much drama in this, it is hilariously good and so exciting.

Confessions of a First-Time Mum is my first book that I’ve read by Poppy Dolan and my word, it’s an absolute corker. Right from the first page I was laughing out loud, not just a little chuckle but a full on laugh and I just knew that I was going to love and devour this book.

Stevie has just had her first baby, the adorable Cherry. However her life isn’t what she imagined, Cherry vomits a lot and cries a lot, Ted her husband works a lot and Stevie is well feeling lonely. She meets two new parent friends Nelle and Will who help her realise she is a brilliant Mum. Stevie also pours her heart out onto a blog where she has a realistic outlook on her parenting experience which I loved reading about.

Now I don’t have kids yet but after having worked with small children/babies in the past I related a lot more than I thought I would have done. I laughed my way through this brilliant book where it made me realise that not everyone knows what they’re doing when they have kids. I will admit I am petrified of having my own kids, what if they’re not what I expected? What if I regret having them? This book has made me realise that no matter how bad I think I’m going to be, there will be people out there who can relate to me!

I absolutely loved the characters of Stevie, Will and Nelle, I would love to have friends like that in real life. By the end of this book I felt I had made some fabulous friends in these characters. Poppy, please can we have another book with these relatable, well-written and brilliant characters? Cherry although she was a monster at times, she was so adorable and you couldn’t help but love her.

Poppy’s writing was just flawless, from that hilarious first page to the excellent ending I was hooked. I couldn’t tear myself away from the lives of Stevie and co. The humour is there throughout the book as well as some emotional moments that did pull at my heartstrings on occasions.

Confessions of a First-Time Mum is a stunning, fun, hilarious and relatable read that will appeal to to not only parents but really to anyone who loves their books funny and full of well-written characters.

5☆ A Fabulous Insight to the ups and downs of being a Mum!

Confessions of a First-Time Mum is a laugh out loud look into the ups and downs of becoming a first time Mum.

Stevie is a first time Mum to Cherry.
She isn't finding things easy as most first time mum's.
What I loved was how you got to see Stevie's vulnerabilities, her struggles, her triumphs. I loved watching her grow with confidence, with Cherry and her life in general. As motherhood changes all aspects of your life.
Her mishaps and mayhem had me laughing out loud.

I really enjoyed Stevie's Blog Entries. She had me laughing and sympathizing with her as she laid everything out there for all to read and equally judge.

I haven't yet got children but Poppy certainly gave me a realistic look into what it could be like. 
This was a wonderfully written, warm, funny, relatable read that I thoroughly enjoyed. I felt like I was on a journey of discovery alongside Stevie and I love books that make you feel involved, or trigger memories. 

Poppy really thought of everything, she made the book current with the use of blogging, which with the use of websites like NetMums can really help.

If you are looking for a feel good, laugh out loud, realistic portrayal of becoming a first time Mum, then you will really enjoy this wonderful warm read.

Oh yes, I remember it well. 5 years of no sleep except in short naps (preparation for menopause and beyond if i did but know); exploding poo - or rabbit droppings all over a friend's guest bedroom; the wee in the eye (little boys); the sick and more sick; the joy of measles when the youngest catches it at 13 months just before her injection and you're in hospital after an op, and husband brings her in to see Mum!

And don't get the kids started on being forgotten in a supermarket car park and then there was Orlando and Disney!

So I've been there and thus my memory helped me laugh at the tales of mishaps and joys that are in this book. So much truth and such great fun to read.  May not appeal to those without knowledge of bringing up a child.

This is the second of Poppy's books we have read and loved. Confessions of a First Time Mum has me laughing out loud and left me with an achy face from smiling and a warm fuzzy feeling inside. It really is a feel good read.
No baby comes with a manual and guidance notes, and it's often difficult to talk and admit that as a parent of a new baby you are feeling guilty, overwhelmed, scared and incredibly tired. The addition of a third little person in a relationship can also pull on a strong partnership. It can be an isolated time and not an easy thing for every new Mum to talk about. And that is exactly how Stevie, the main character in this story feels.
Stevie finds comfort during the small hours through writing a blog, and meeting Will and Nelle. Sharing, writing and talking through her experiences makes Stevie feel like she is not alone whilst her husband is working full time to keep the family afloat financially.
It's through the blog by opening up and sharing her tales 'warts and all' as the saying goes, of being a new Mum Stevie finds she is not alone and experiencing the same as other mothers. When her husband reads the blog and discovers it's his wife writing....... no spoilers here!
This makes for a funny, heart warming and captivating read. Poppy has a style of writing that will engage you and absorb you into the pages of the story.
Thank you to Ellie, Poppy and Canelo for our advanced copy.