Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

A biting satire that should be read by everyone with an interest in modern current affairs. The state of the nation novel is hard to do well, but this gets extremely close.

I suspect that Tim Lott is a misunderstood man. He writes about grotesque characters in a sympathetic way and people imagine this is because he wants the characters to be admired.

In When We Were Rich, we re-encounter the characters from White City Blue - four lads living in and around the White City estate in West London. Frankie Blue is an estate agent; Nodge is a taxi driver who has recently come out as gay; Colin is a computer geek; and Diamond Tony is persona non grata following an incident on a golf course.

Picking up almost immediately from the end of White City Blue, we follow these characters and their newly found partners from the eve of the false Millennium (the real millennium started in 2001); through the boom years of the New Labour project and into the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

What Tim Lott does, seemingly effortlessly, is capture the atmosphere around major events and show how ordinary people responded to them. He holds up a mirror to ourselves and if we don't like what we see, we have only ourselves to blame. In When We Were Rich, we see the naked greed around the London housing market. We see people who believe they deserve the wealth they have accumulated through owning property - and expect to be able to repeat the feat for ever. We see people who judge others by their income, their job, their postcode. And because we have lived through these times ourselves, we know it won't end well. It's Rumours of a Hurricane twenty years on.

I believe firmly that Tim Lott wants readers to sneer at his characters, not admire them or aspire to be them. Whether it is venal Frankie, selfish Vronky, lazy Roxy, the vain and hypocritical Fraser, the psychopathically angry Tony - they are all there to be mocked. Especially Fraser, the fifty-year old ripped EasyJet pilot - promiscuous on the gay scene while demanding fidelity from Nodge - turning up to Labour Party meetings to lament the fall of Militant. A thoroughly vile man in every way.

When We Were Rich is the perfect summation of London in the 2000s, just as White City Blue was for the 1990s and Hurricane was for the 1980s. It is an easy, enjoyable read with much humour and quite a bit to say about class struggle and karma.

Most readers will hate When We Were Rich if reviews of Tim Lott's past works are anything to go by. Their loss.

A novel about three friends living in London as the world moves into the year 2000. It's a time of excitement and change across the world but in London, it seems as if there's an added buzz. There's many events of the time referenced such as the Millennium celebrations and hopes and fears of the time, the terror attacks of 2005 etc and more besides. Then there's the pop references, the musical memories. I admit to not knowing many of them but maybe that's just me. There's also a lot of product placement if that's the right way to explain it in a novel. It's as if the author wants to be sure you know this is set from 1999 to 2008.

I just didn't get what the novel was supposed to be about. The characters for me faded into the background and whilst I enjoyed the descriptions of the city, I came away not knowing what they were about and who they were.

This is what I would call an 'observational novel' where you look but come away none the wiser.

Beginning with drunken Millennium celebrations and concluding eight years later, Tim Lott draws us into the lives of old school friends Frankie, Colin and Nodge and their partners. Through these very different characters, Lott explores the consequences of the property boom and crash, the rise and rise of gaming and what it means to be a gay man in the early 2000s. But this isn’t just a novel about a man’s world. Through the eyes of Veronica, we see what it means to be a working mother, dissatisfied with career and marriage, and through the acquisitive Roxy, for whom shopping is a passion and possessions her gods, how meaningless the material becomes.
This character driven story works because Lott’s skill at creating credible flawed people is so strong. None of them, Nodge excepted, are particularly likeable and none of them seem to grow much wiser over the decade or so of the telling. The parents make the mistakes they vow they never will; businesses fail through greed; money is carelessly won and lost; happiness is usually short-lived. Yet, the last scene in the novel points towards some sort of redemption as Frankie and his daughter, China, embrace, soaking wet, in a park. ‘We’re drowned!’, she exclaims whilst Frankie has realised that, no, they have been baptised. It has taken many years for him to understand what is truly worthwhile. Richness is not all about following the money.
As an exploration of selfishness and greed, this novel works well. Because Nodge balances the often-bleak outlook with kindness and decency, the reader is regularly reminded that people can be good. It’s just that, sometimes, this potential is lost in our collective cultural norms.
My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

It's hard to care about a lot of the characters in When We Were Rich. The stand-out friendship in this book is that between Veronica and Roxy. The state of the nation novel set in London has been written many times and it needs something original to stand out from the pack. This isn't it.

When We Were Rich follows the lives of three old school friends from Shepherds Bush, thirty years old at the start of the millennium and up to the 2008 financial crisis. It’s a novel about the changing city and society as much as it is about the characters’ relationships and growth. The story moves through some of the major events of the noughties, such as the anti-war march of 2003 and the 2005 London terrorist attack and this signposting works well, grounding the reader in time and place.

My relatively low rating – 2.5 out of 5 stars - may be in part due to this being an ARC and perhaps not a final version of the novel.

The novel is peppered with pop culture references and these were somewhat problematic. I think if you’re going to be very specific with pop culture references and use them liberally, they should be correct and many references weren’t – quite a few items mentioned in the first part of the book either didn’t exist at the time or, if they did exist, were not so widely popular that Lott’s characters would have had them. They’re not exactly 'early adopters'. And this continues throughout the book. So many brands and products are namechecked and Lott may have aimed to say something about our obsession with having things and he may have also aimed at humour but for me, this wasn’t always successful. It often just felt like an unnecessary infodump. Sometimes, less is more. Hopefully, some of the mistakes might get corrected before publication, they did spoil my reading experience somewhat and I’d have rated the book a little higher otherwise.

I also wasn’t fully on board with the characters. For a big part of the book, they weren’t compelling enough. The three main characters, when seen through the eyes of wives, girlfriends or boyfriends are pretty much only seen in a negative light and characterised by what they own or want. Everyone’s behaviour and actions are predictable, signposted by a conversation or an event in a way that you know will be significant at some point later on. It’s a shame really as the main characters are three decent blokes just trying to live their lives. The novel does get better towards the end though when Lott finally lets his characters grow. It’s an OK book, just not a great one.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review When We Were Rich.

When We Were Rich is a novel about London at the turn of the millennium, following a group of friends as their lives play out and head towards the financial crash. On the eve of the new Millennium, Frankie is gathered with his new wife Veronica, and his old friends Nodge and Colin, along with Nodge's cutting boyfriend and Colin's friend of a friend date. They talk about New Labour and the novelty of a phone with a camera on it. The story follows the characters over the next eight years, from Frankie's work as an estate agent during a time of cheap credit to the changing landscape of London and White City where they grew up.

The narrative weaves their lives together well and weaves London into their lives too, particularly the way in which it played a key part in the events of the 2000s. Obvious points like the 7/7 bombings and anti war march are touchstones, but so are less solid events such as dodgy letting practices. The novel uses the recent past to highlight the present, particularly elements of the housing crisis and technology, but often feels too much like just another London novel about some comfortably off people making and losing money and dealing with relationships. This was an enjoyable read, but not something that feels like it will linger in the mind.