I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It’s not that often that you encounter a female protagonist who does not want to have children- in fact I’ve never encountered one. The story explores all aspects of motherhood, from the perfect family to Olive’s own rejection of the idea, further exploring how motherhood is almost considered a requirement of being female in modern society. The book did something which I’ve rarely encountered, which was to teach me a new perspective. I was once one of those women described repeating “you’ll change your mind one day” to those friends who have told me they don’t want to have children, and I now see this from a completely different angle, for how flippantly is disregards a person’s opinions. The story is funny, thought-provoking, emotional and upsetting, and definitely worth reading.

I really enjoyed this book. Olive is a 31 year old who has recently broken up with her long term boyfriend because he wants children and she doesn't. She has 3 close friends, but none of them understand her decision not to become a mother. This is an insightful look at the pressures facing young women, and the prejudices they face when they don't choose what is expected of them. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
Copied to Goodreads.

I really enjoyed this book and it was the first time I'd seen themes such as choosing to be child free explored in such depth. The characters felt relatable and there was enough plot to make this an engaging read.

Olive follows the story of a thirty-something woman who has made the decision that she doesn't want to have children. As the women around her start to build families, Olive begins to unpack the implications of her choice, and how this will affect not only her future but also the relationships with those she loves.

I went into Olive so intrigued and excited by the premise - I've ever read a novel which centres itself on the decision to not have children, and I can't from the top of my head think of a main character who is actively childfree by choice.

The writing was very easy to read and it felt very contemporary. I'm sure there will be many women who relate to Gannon's writing and will warm to her style.

I'm afraid for me, the book fell flat in a number of ways. The main issue I had is that Olive, the main character whose perspective is the only one we follow, came across to me as a horribly self-centred, self-obsessed and insensitive human being. I wouldn't necessarily mind this - problematic narrators can be very effective - but I have the distinct feeling that this wasn't intentional. She repeatedly judges women (often for things that she herself does - and indeed congratulates herself for doing), she centres herself in every drama even if it has nothing to do with her, and she constantly complains about her friends' decisions to have children because of how their choices affect her. I found her infuriating.

This is also a novel which is not only about choosing not to have children, but one which actively judges women who do. As a thirty-something without children myself, I appreciated some of the social commentary on the pressures to make a family, but the occasionally smug finger-pointing at women who do I found distinctly distasteful. At one point Olive states that her friend Bea is 'not like other mums' because all other mothers ignore their friends' problems and are incredibly self-absorbed. Pot-kettle-black situation there, Olive.

Overall, maybe I'm not the intended audience for this book. If you enjoy novels about friendship, relationship dynamics, and slice-of-life stories which focus on women's issues, then I could see this being a good option. Despite not connecting with the story, I did enjoy the writing and style.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about a group of friends living in London and working their way through many challenges that we can all recognise. It encapsulates a time in London and in women’s lives in particular. A page turner that I have recommended to all my friends

Opening with the line 'I am the same age as my mother when she had me' Emma Gannon uses her debut novel, Olive, to raise awareness of the stigma and the stereotypes that surround women who choose not to have kids. As a woman on her thirties Olive is surrounded by friends who either have kids or are desperately trying to have kids and finds that, as someone who isn't sure she wants them at all and has just broken up with her long-term boyfriend over their differing views on having children, she feels quite lost. The novel follows her as she comes to terms with her place in society and decides if she is right in her choice to stay childless, but also as she learns more about her friends than she ever has before.

I listened to a talk that the author did on launch day and was in absolute awe of the stories she told as to how the book came to be, but unfortunately I wasn't as in awe of the book itself, or its main character.

As with Expectation by Anna Hope, it was the type of book that made me think far into the future to what my decisions might be 5 or 10 years in the future, but I just couldn't click with the main character. Olive seems so certain of the fact that she doesn't need to be a mum to fulfil her place in society (which I loved), but then ends up making comments that don't quite fit with that, she makes questionable decisions and never ends up regretting them and, until later in the book, she lacks much empathy for her friends' very different but equally valid situations. I found myself frustrated with Olive most of the time and felt that the other characters faded into the background a little bit.

I'm so glad this book was written as it is amazing in the way it highlights that women who can have children, but would just rather not, can feel intensely pressured to have kids by those around them and judged for something as personal to them as choosing to have kids. It does have some quite funny lines and some quite deep reflections, but I think in the end I was a bit disappointed with the way that it panned out in the end.

4.5 Stars

This book spoke to my soul.

I cannot believe how related I felt with Olive, and how many similarities we shared.

I went blind into this book, victim of a very nice cover .. and I couldn't be more pleased.

The relationship between the women in this book was so real, 4 different ladies dealing with different things at the same time,

I'm not sure if this book will be every single woman cup of tea ( strong belief etc etc) but in my opinion it definitely should.

This book wasn't at all what I was expecting which was a whimsical, Eleanor-Oliphant-style novel; instead, it was a child-free woman's raw account of navigating a society that still very much believes that women were put on this Earth to give birth.

Olive is 30ish and knows deep in her heart she doesn't want children. 'Oh she'll change her mind, there's still time' says everyone. But Olive doesn't want to change her mind - she's known for a long time now and is quite fed up at having to justify her decision. Her friends are all at different child-bearing stages of life and Olive is still the young, care-free woman they paint her to be. Like she's the lucky one. But this is her choice. So why does it feel like she's being punished for choosing to live her life this way?

I wasn't sure how I felt about this book at first - it felt more autobiographical and quite narrowed in on the child-free topic. But as Olive's character developed, I really felt what life must be like in her shoes. Her long-term friends shunning her because their children are now the priority. People making her question her life decisions on a daily basis. Heck, she can't even stay with her beloved boyfriend of nine years because she knows she'll never change her mind about wanting a family and how can she ruin that for him?

It's a shame because I do believe this book will divide opinions but I commend the author for tackling such a sensitive and taboo subject with unapologetic freedom. There was plenty of comedic relief which made the topic a little less heavy and enough real-life situations to make everything feel far from a fictional story about a woman going through a seemingly midlife crisis.

I really enjoyed everything about this book - the characters, the themes, the diversity, the ending - it really was a refreshing perspective for a contemporary novel.

Perhaps I'm not quite the target audience for this one but I can still appreciate it for what it is - a modern reflection on how women can follow the path they choose to lead rather than conform to societies expectations.

Emma Gannon's debut focuses on Olive and her changing relationships with her female friends amidst marriage and motherhood. There has been a lot of advance praise about this book and I started reading it feeling that perhaps I was the wrong demographic for it as I am a woman in my 50s with an adult child. However, I found it to be an intelligent, funny and insightful read with believable characters that I really rooted for. The novel takes a powerful and thoughtful look at society's expectations of women and the pressure we face to have children.

I loved this book, the characters really stayed with me and I would highly recommend it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC.

Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this as much as I had hoped I would. The subject matter seemed promising but I just couldn’t get into it, I have awarded 3 stars as I felt that the subject matter had potential.

This is a tricky one to review. On the one hand, I really enjoyed the premise of the novel, as the concept of being childless by choice is one that is still rarely explored even in modern day literature. As someone who is currently childless by choice, I found it really refreshing and interesting to see this approach to life being acknowledged and celebrated in fiction.

You also get a lot of interesting perspectives scattered throughout the novel focusing on all sides of the debate in terms of the decision of whether to have children, ranging from the intentionally child-free, those desperate for children, and others dealing with the life changes that accompany both the early and later years of having children. In this sense, it’s a great book club read as it has a lot of contrasting POVs.

On the other hand, I really didn’t like the main character. I felt like a lot of the drama in the book resulted from decisions of her own making, which she refused to acknowledge and instead blamed on everyone around her. While the premise of the novel is relatively unique, Olive and her portrayal of the modern child free woman is sadly not. By the end of the book, she feels like just another childish and rude caricature of the ‘selfish, child free woman’ trope.

All in all, a great premise let down by a weak and unlike able central character. Sadly not one I can recommend.

2.5 rounded down to 2.

Disclaimer - I received an advance reading copy from NetGalley. This has not affected my review in any way and all opinions are my own.

This book seriously makes you think about the choices you make and what effects it has on those around you. However it also makes you realise how special the people you have around you are and the ups and down you have with them through life, but they will always stick with you.

I'm on the fence with this one. I loved the subject of the book. I often read about couples getting the happy ever after with marriage and a baby but life isn't like that so it was refreshing to read a story that showed the other side of the coin. Not every woman wants a baby and I feel this is still a taboo subject even in this day and age. It was good to read a book that openly covers the topic. Even as a mother myself I found it a refreshing read and it gives food for thought. I thought the subject was handled really well as were the issue brought up surrounding mental health. I had a few issues with the characters especially out main lady. She made alot of her own drama then tried to push it off on everyone else for being too busy to listen to her and this left me feeling quite negatively towards her. Overall I found it a read eye opener and it would be a great book club read to sit around and discuss

This book is thoughtful and addresses lots of topics that are considered scandalous but shouldn't be. Olive is over 30 and expected to settle down, get married and have kids. Her friends are following the conventional route, but this is not what she wants. She shouldn't have to feel bad about not wanting what conventional society wants. And she shouldn't have to justify her choices. She needs to figure out what she actually wants, and where she fits in in this world. She challenges all the conventional wisdom of what is supposed to make a woman happy and together with her friends, we see what other options women have.
I love that the book addresses all those feelings of failure and pressure around what woman of marriageable age are expected to want and feel. It covers marriage, divorce, betrayal, sexual fluidity, IVF and childless by choice. At the same time, there is humour and warmth and earthy entertainment. A lovely easy, thought provoking read.

1.5 stars

When I first saw the synopsis of Olive, my heart filled with joy. Despite of my efforts to find books about women who choose to remain childfree, these stories are nearly impossible to come by. Instead, women without children are often villainized and portrayed as miserable, angry ladies who hate kids. This is also what the society at large seems to think about women who don’t want children; I’ve been told that I’m selfish or that I’m not a woman at all if I don’t want children. I have been told that I will sorely regret not having children, and most often that I will change my mind. Books about childfree-living are sorely, desperately needed. And I felt a little spark of hope when I saw Olive’s synopsis. I wished so bad that it was the book that I had been looking for! And although the rep turned out to be as meaningful as I wished, otherwise Olive was a painful read. And not in a good way.

But let’s talk about the rep first! Olive is a 30-something powerhouse of a woman who works in a feminist magazine and loves meeting up with her friend group after work for dinner & wine. She is perfectly content with her life until her long-term boyfriend tells her that he is ready to start a family. But Olive doesn’t want kids. And even though this realisation doesn’t seem ground-breaking to Olive at first, she soon notices that her relationship and friendships are going to be turned upside down because of it. Everyone turns on her with the same offensive arguments that I have heard during my life.

Olive grows increasingly certain of her decision even though she doesn’t get any support from her friends. In fact, being childfree is explored from many different angles. Olive’s friends include Bea who has three children, Cec who has just given birth, and Isla who desperately wants a child but has had difficulty conceiving. This set up gives a rich platform for exploring the issue with loads of different perspectives and experiences in the mix. Unfortunately however, some encounters with fleeting side-characters felt like they were forced within the narrative only to spice up the debate; we have a random childhood friend who relates to Olive how she regrets having her child, bigoted parents who see Olive as less of a person for not contributing to the world’s overpopulation, and an older neighbour who has become estranged from her children. Although the rep is important, I felt awkward about some of these encounters and they didn’t seem to contribute anything to the book other than another perspective on Olive remaining childfree.

The book also went over the top in other areas. I found many of the characters annoying or one-sided; I felt like some characters refused to see anything from each others’ perspectives, and the dialogue was cringey at times. I even found a couple different disturbing remarks that the characters make, here is one of them:

“Like obviously it’s not great to be sexually objectified, but also I kind of missed it”

That isn’t a good take 😐

I also came across this unrealistic scenarios, which left me rolling my eyes:

“The night ended with loud music and dancing on tables, and the restaurant staff seemed to love it just as much as we did, pouring free shots straight from the bottle into our mouths.”

ermmmm well that never happened. Not even in fiction.

I found Olive herself to be the most frustrating character of all. She is childish and rude throughout the book which was such a disappointment to me. I really wanted this book to be a relatable account of a childfree character, a person who is independent, anxious, loyal and kind, like the synopsis says. Really, Olive is none of those things and most certainly not loyal or kind. She almost comes across as a bully, making mean comments about her co-workers and dismissing others constantly. Even though Olive does portray a character who doesn’t want children, the rep leaves a lot to be desired. In a way, Olive’s hatefulness brings to mind the traditional portrayal of childfree women as bitter and miserable.

There is one thing left to be addressed that almost made me DNF this book within the first few pages. Quite a few characters in this book constantly hate on vegans. In the beginning we get a completely unnecessary scene in which a vegan activist comes to Olive who is smoking outside her workplace to complain about the fur coat that she is wearing. Olive rudely points out to the activist that her coat is faux fur, and suggests that the activist secretly eats bacon sandwiches even though they are vegan. Later on in the book, the characters mock vegans again without any apparent reason. This random, ridiculous commentary happened here and there in the book from the mouths of different characters, and it almost made me feel like the author has some sort of an agenda against vegans rather than the characters. I just couldn’t understand what the hate added to the narrative. These scenes did nothing for the book. The characters could have as well been talking about how annoying it is when you forget to water your plants and they die on you. I’m still baffled by the vegan-hatred in Olive; was it a method to make the reader feel more connected to the characters in case they also hate vegans? Was it a way to showcase how mean the characters are? I honestly don’t know.

Overall, Olive promises a lot but doesn’t deliver. I found multiple scenes that made me wince with second-hand embarrassment, and I couldn’t relate to the characters. I was so excited for a book with rep on being childfree that I probably went in with unrealistic expectations 😓

But despite of all that, it is still the only book I know that provides a discussion on having children, being childfree and struggling with being childless. Here’s to hoping we get more of those books!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for this arc. I’ve heard good things about Olive by Emma Cannon on social media, also the yellow cover is so warm and inviting, so I was excited to read this. This explores the life of Olivia, a 33-year old woman who breaks up with her long-term boyfriend because she doesn’t want to have children but he does. I’m a 31-year old woman, who also doesn’t want children either, so this was a book that greatly intrigued me, and I overall I found this to be a soul sister of a read that made me feel less alone about my decisions.

The story opens with an article written by Olive followed by a past scene in 2008. Olive has just graduated university and is moving out from her house-share, where she’s been living with her three best friends. She’s know these girls since secondary school, when they become friends and their relationship evolved into a tighter and more closer relationship. Throughout the novel we get flashbacks to their happier moments when the four would holiday together annually and have monthly dinners at the same restaurant, so they remain involved in each other’s lives. These past chapters contrasts with the main storyline. Olivia is now 33-years old and a writer for an online magazine. Professionally she’s doing well but personally she’s an emotional mess: she’s broken up with her boyfriend of nine years. He wants children, she doesn’t. Her decision to live without having children is put under the strain as is her friendship when her best friends all get consumed by their own children. We have:
* Bea who always she knew she wanted children. A maternal and warm friend who wants to cuddle everyone and take care of them. She has three children of her own. She’s the one Olive felt closest to but finds herself feeling jealous that Bea now has her own thing with Cecily and feels left out.
* Cecily who’s pregnant with her first baby, and has bonded with Bea.
* Isla, who’s suffered from endometriosis and is struggling through rounds of IVFs. When she finds getting pregnant difficult she struggles to be around Bea and Cecily seeing them procreate easily and finds Olive’s decision to not have children selfish, negative and off-putting.
The story, narrated in first person, follows Olive and the change in her friendship, as her friends are consumed by domestic problems and have less time for her, and how alone she feels in her decision to be childless. Her editor assigns her an article based on how difficult millennials are finding becoming parents due to financial issues, which leads Olive to look at being childfree through a much more critical eye and she attends workshops. Olive also has an adorable friendship with her elderly neighbour Dorothy.
Mainly though this is a book about four women going through different things in their lives and follows how they overcome them and become better people. It’s an endurance and celebration of female friendship. As someone says in the book, “Our life decisions don’t have to be identical.” Another quote I loved is how once we die all that is left of us isn’t just our children, it’s all the memories people have of us and the small ways we’ve impacted the world and helped others. There’s many ways to live a fulfilled life and that’s subjective and different for everyone.
This is an absolutely beautiful book, so tenderly written and observed with nuance and respects the different women and their decisions. The prose is filled with stunning quotes. It’s 5/5.

This was a very readable book about a topic that isn’t often discussed - the fact that a woman can choose not to have children,
The story concentrated on Olive’s friendship with three other women and the implications that making a decision to not have a child can have on an individual and the effect it has on their relationships with those around them.
I thought it was well written and accessible to a wide variety of readers and would recommend it as a good read from this debut novelist.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Motherhood is a thorny issue for many women, and particularly those those of us in our thirties who are aware of our ticking biological clock. Gannon's novel is a sensitive and timely exploration of the issues around motherhood, especially for women who are are considering or have already made their decision not to have children. How do you cope with the constant assurances that you will 'change your mind'? How do you navigate relationships with friends or family who don't understand your choice or are struggling with their own fertility dilemmas? Gannon's representation of the complexities of female friendship is also very well-handled and realistic. A great read.

Olive from Emma Gannon is an intriguing read. I loved how she tackled this head on - the assumption that women will want children, and if they don't... the assumption that they'll change their mind at some point [insert eye roll here]. Ultimately this is about respecting the right to choose the direction of our lives - without judgement.

Wasn't quite for me, unfortunately. I found the book relatable at parts, but I didn't connect with the characters, and found the relationships quite straining. It wasn't bad at all, just not what I wanted from it.