Absolutely stunning book. The cover is beautiful. The story is beautiful. Layout is beautiful! It's leaves a mark on your memory. My first ever verse novel and won't be my last now.

I am a big fan of Sarah Crossan’s books for younger readers and I was very intrigued to read her first book for adults. Written in verse like her previous work, it tells the story of Ana and her affair with Connor, and how she deals with his sudden and unexpected death.

It was incredibly well written, and very interesting, but I found it very difficult to root for any of the characters. Although they never try to justify the affair they were still all very unlikable people which coloured my enjoyment.

(Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review)

I'm a big fan of Sarah Crossan's writing and I have a growing collection of her books on my shelf. While I did enjoy elements of this one, especially how everything wrapped up in the last 15% or so, I didn't enjoy this book as much.

I think it's mostly down to the story not really being my thing. I love to be able to relate in some way to the characters in a book, but as a single 26-year-old who has no experience of marriage and especially not with having an affair during a marriage, I couldn't really engage with the story. I also felt nothing towards the characters and didn't care about any of them.

That's not to say that I completely hated this. There were times early on when I wondered if I'd DNF it, but I carried on and I think the payoff was worth sticking with it.

Great writing as usual from Sarah Crossan and I'm always in awe of how well she crafts such emotional stories completely in verse — but this one just wasn't really for me. :)

Ana has had (another) argument with her lover and is waiting to see who will give in first when she receives a phone call from his wife. She simply cannot believe the news, but remains thoroughly professional throughout, acting as she does as his solicitor and executor. At first she appears to be getting on with work, although breaking up inside. But then she uses her position to find out more details of Callum’s life to feed her hunger and loss. All the while, never mentioning to his wife her true feelings. At this stage I feel completely sorry for Ana having to go through this, unable to confide in anyone. But more details of Ana’s life emerge and we find out she is hard and manipulative, crossed with that empathy she does still evoke.
The free verse format is ideal as no word is wasted and it emphasises the hurt which Ana genuinely suffers. The ending is what Ana deserves, whilst the wife also gets her share of credit.

This book hooked me from the start - I can relate to the erratic style of thoughts that Ana has, and how her brain works. It drew me in, her feelings, her worries and thoughts. It is a sad story, and I felt sorry for her despite the plotline and what she did. I loved it and wish it could have lasted longer. Wonderful book!

My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for my ecopy of Here is the Beehive. I have never come across previous works by Sarah Crossan and her writing style is quite unique and took me a few pages to get into the flow.

This is a tale of how the drudgery of motherhood and mundane marriage left Ana wide open for an obsessive, compulsive love affair which leaves her at an absolute loss when her lover suddenly dies. No-one is able to recognise her grief because of course her affair was a secret, therefore Ana bares her soul, warts and all to the reader.

A very moving story that leaves you wanting to shake Ana until she realises just how much she stood to lose as it's clear that Connor had no intention of leaving his wife, who as Ana gets to know her proves to be not the unlovable, cold woman she had hoped she was pitted against.

Whilst having very much enjoyed this book, had I come across it in a bookshop the title and the cover would have meant I would have passed it by as neither appeal.

#edit I have come back to this review because I have since listened to the audiobook read by the author and I think I enjoyed it as much as reading it myself, if not more so.

Loved the description, loved the cover but hated the way it was presented, as if it were poetry. It could have been the best book in the world but I just can’t get beyond the jerky, disjointed style. I can see other people loved it but sorry to say I just found it pretentious and can no longer continue reading it.

Here is the Beehive is the latest from Sarah Crossan and it's not a surprise to see: it's bloody brilliant.

To steal from the blurb. A good book from Crossan?

"It happened,
again."

Here is the Beehive
Sarah Crossan
Bloomsbury Circus, £12.99

WRITTEN in poetic yet spare prose and starkly down to earth, this intriguing modern novel turns an unflinching lens on marriage in trouble and the struggle to grieve a hidden love affair when disaster strikes. It captures with seeming effortlessness and succinctness the essence of a whole gamut of emotions, from yearning, desire and joy to ennui, jealousy, fear and pain of loss.

Review published in Human Givens, 2020, vol 27, no 2, p55

Here Is The Beehive is a powerful little tale that certainly packs a punch, but is let down by the way the story is told in many ways. Whilst the free-flow poetry made for some beautiful writing, it also made it difficult to really engage with any of the secondary characters and made the shifts from past to present and back again difficult to keep track of.

Ana is The Other Woman. She has been having an affair with Connor for years without either of their respective partners discovering their secret. But when Connor dies suddenly, there is no-one for Ana to share her grief, pain and shame with. You get flashes of thoughts, feelings and memory through verse as everything she has built her life around dissolves in an instance.

Strangely, whilst Ana is not a sympathetic character, I couldn't help but feel for her. But this was partly because all of the other characters in the tale are seen though her eyes and not really fleshed out. Even her husband and children are more like incidentals than real characters. Her relationship with Connor and her lonely grief is the focus of the tale, with little else really getting a look in.

Crossan's writing is evocative and powerful though and I really felt the emotion leeching through the page at me. Ana's bitterness at being second place is tangible, her frustration that Connor won't leave his wife marked. And her grief, anger and shame all resound in very few words.

I will say that the shifting time frames between present and past were confusing as there was little to break them up in terms of formatting. It may have worked better if each section was framed as an individual chapter, although I can see that might have broken the flow too much.

I also felt the ending was rather too sudden. There is little closure, it just... ends. Perhaps that was deliberate, but it didn't quite sit right with me.

So in all, this has some beautiful language and I felt Crossan did a fantastic job at exploring the emotions of The Other Woman. But the lack of character development, confusing leaps between past and present and sudden ending left me somewhat disappointed.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my free review copy of this title.

How do you begin grieving for someone you weren't supposed to love? Sarah Crossan addresses this heartbreaking question with unflinching honesty through her beautiful writing. She perfectly captures the sense of loss and longing. "Here Is The Beehive" tackles a subject seldom discussed but which undoubtedly impacts a significant number of people. If, for whatever reason, you've ever loved someone you shouldn't (and who hasn't?) then this book will resonate with you and leave you feeling a little bit raw and a big bit seen.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, and the author Sarah Crossan.
This was a really refreshing! I enjoyed the unusual format and style, which meant that the story was engaging and easy to read.
Crossan vividly portrays the trauma and anguish of Ana, the main character, and the hopelessness of her situation.
Something different, 4 stars.

DNF. I couldn't connect with this book at all and found it really hard to get into. I had high hopes for this, which is a shame.

Book Review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Here Is The Beehive by Sarah Crossan

This book for me was simply outstanding.
Written in verse, it is a such a beautiful yet incredibly intense read...
You will struggle to set it aside once you start it.
We meet Ana Kelly, an estate lawyer, married with children. Not a happy marriage I would suspect or maybe it has just gone stale.
Ana has been having an affair with the last number of years.
One day while working, a telephone call is put through to her. It is from a woman by the name of Rebecca whose husband has just been killed and Ana soon discovers it is Connor, the man she has been having an affair with.
What happens after that is one womans struggle to comprehend what has happened and to grieve for someone who shouldn’t have been in her life but was.
She is undoubtedly in pain and doesn’t have anyone to talk to. The only person who knew of the affair was Connor’s best friend Mark and he has his own struggles and doesn’t seem to be in a position to offer any help to Ana.
Author Sarah Crossan showed me through her pages, the utter pain and devastation of losing someone who you have had a secret relationship with. The loneliness of it and the questioning afterwards of what you really had together.
I didn’t particularly take to any of the characters in this book, there didn’t seem to be anything to like about them. What is powerful about this story is the raw pain of losing someone who you think doesn’t matter because it is an affair and not your real life but behind it all means more to you that you were ready to admit.
Grief is so traumatic in itself but maybe more so when it has to be done in secret.
So many questions with so few answers.
A little like being on the outside of something looking in…
For me there couldn’t have been any ending more fitting for this book than what it was.
A fantastic read with so much emotion wrapped up in the pages.
Well worth your time…

This is the first book I've read by Sarah Crossan and I requested it as I had heard such great things about it. It truly was unlike everything I'd ever read before and it really did take me some time to get into the style of writing. I very nearly gave up as it just wasn't working for me but I'm so glad I didn't! The story itself was so well constructed and really shows the pain and heartache of illicit relationships. Very thought provoking and not what I was expecting. I wasn't a fan of the style of writing but it was a great story.

Here is the Beehive is another stunning novel in verse from Sarah Crosson, though this is her first for adults. I am already a fan of her novels for teenagers,and love how she uses verse to tackle difficult topics. This form has two contradictory sounding, but ultimately really complimentary effects: it can be a way to look at topics in an unusual and more complex way, adding layers of understanding and meaning to the story, and while doing that also makes for an acessible and quick read.

This novel is narrated by Ana, who is grieving but can't tell anyone about it. She had been having an affair with Connor for three years, up until his sudden death. She is completely afloat, trying to process having lost someone she wasn't supposed to have,and keeping it a secret from her husband and family, and when her job as Connor's family solicitor offers her a chance to learn more about his life and his perfect sounding wife, Rebecca, she jumps at it.

The relationship between Ana and Rebecca is probably the most interesting in the book. The novel centers around obsession, and while it's clear from the start that Ana was obsessed with Conor, she also by extension was obsessed with Rebecca, and who the two women were in relationship to each other. When she was with Connor, it was never enough that they were together, she needed to know how she measured up to his wife, to know what she would do or think.

Crosson doesn't make moral judgements on her characters. I didn't agree with a lot of what Ana did or how she acted towards her family but I appreciated a novel presenting her to me without judgement, which encourages me as a reader to do the same. Here Is the Beehive is the story of a complex relationship, and of complex characters, and Crosson's approach really lends itself to this sort of story. Because a verse novel has less words than a traditional one, we might be lulled into thinking we don't get to know the characters. We don't get quite as much information handed to us, but we are given exactly what we need to figure it out, and in a way Crossan cuts through all the fat to get right to the heart of the matter. She is one of those authors that I just know will deliver a great book everytime, and Here is the Beehive makes me excited for more of her adult fiction.

Here Is The Beehive is a novel by Sarah Crossan which tells the story of an affair between Ana and Connor. It is told from the perspective of Ana in the weeks and months following Connor’s death and follows her as she tries to come to terms with her grief when no-one around her knows what she is going through. As the story develops she becomes intent on becoming acquainted with and closer to Rebecca, Connor’s wife which makes for an uncomfortable and heartbreaking but compelling read.

I devoured this book in a day and was hooked from the first few pages. It is told through fragmented memories and present events, full of emotion, Ana swings between self-doubt, guilt, misery and anger but it is incredibly clear throughout the love she felt for Connor, despite not always liking him and the situation she finds herself in.

I really enjoyed this book although I understand the subject matter may be sensitive to some, and would love to read more of Sarah Crossan’s work. Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd for an ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley for my arc of this book.
I read the blurb for this book and absolutely fell in love with the cover which is why it was added to my Netgalley reads.
It wasnt until I started reading it and then looked the book up that I realised it was all written in verse. Which did put me off, as the words just didnt flow on the page.
Secondly, I did not like Ana, the main voice or any of the other characters in their lives! They were all miserable and Ana spent the whole time moaning and with the poor me attitude throughout the whole book. Ana was too much of a stalker and completely obsessed with the life of Connor she became a completely abnormal person, I wanted to feel sorry for her for what she was going through but i just couldn't, she brought a lot of it on herself!
It was hard to keep up with the story as it flicked from one timeline to another without any notice or update about when it was or what was going on.
It wasnt an enjoyable read for me at all I'm afraid and I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, even though I always do!!

This is not to be missed. Lyrical, beautiful writing sensitively portraying themes of loss and obsession, absorbing and astutely aware of the power of each carefully chosen word. An adult novel from a highly acclaimed Young Adult writer.

I really wanted to like this book more as the synopsis sounded right up my street. I think if i'm honest the style of writing just didn't work for me as it is partly written in verse which just felt like a waste. The story has great promise but was lacking depth and I couldn't warm to the protagonist.