Many thanks to HQ for the ARC of Pizza Girl, I took some time off reading and even longer off reviewing but here’s a few thoughts on this book.

I can, especially with shorter YA books, sit down and devour it in one sitting. With this book I did have to take a bit of a break and come back to it, mainly because, to me, the subject matter was quite disturbing.

I admire the way that the book was written, it’s a very skilful 3rd person eye on the unfolding events that leave you thinking you know what is going on and then suddenly realise you have no clue at all. And it’s not just that, the general quality of writing is great.

However, I couldn’t quite get on board with the storyline for some reason that I’m struggling to pinpoint right now. It’s something that I can truly imagine happening which is almost the scariest thing, but also, saddening to think about.

In summary, good book, just not for me. It’s not you. It’s me!

An unusual read, different to anything I've read before. Emotional, but heartfelt, the story of Pizza Girl and her struggle with grief, life, pregnancy and family was really captivating.

I went into this book thinking it would be a sort of feel good read but boy was I wrong!
Initially I found it slow but reviews had said stick with it and I'm glad I did. The protagonist didn't excite me at all at first, a complex complicated character who seemed angry with life but we discover the reasons behind her traits and what evolves is a heart warming, funny, dark, original sort of coming of age story. It's a short book but it is very well written and I could easily have read more .
Thank you Netgalley and HQ for this copy.

The book is not funny or enjoyable. I had hoped the main character would have the ability or courage to make some positive changes in her situation but remained stuck in her unhappy circumstances. In the time of COVID, I wished I hadn’t spent my time reading about a pregnant, alcoholic closeted teenager. Needed something happier or more gripping, this was just sad.

This book was well written and featured an understandably flawed leading character who you could easily empathise with. The way in which the story was narrated throughout added some interesting insights into events and situations that arose throughout.

I did find the pace of this book to be rather slow at times, with little happening that really captured my interest.

Unsurprisingly, this book is about a girl who delivers pizza. She’s 18 and pregnant and becomes weirdly obsessed with a customer called Jenny.

She constantly fantasises and obsesses over Jenny and her ponytail, ignoring her mum and boyfriend who seem nice and caring. She’s only known Jenny for a short period of time and if I was Jenny I’d be very worried about her stalker like behaviour.

I found the story to be boring, not much really happens and the main character is very unlikeable. The characters are all so underdeveloped and flat.

The pizza girl’s name isn’t revealed until the end of the book but I wasn’t that interested and it seemed a bit pointless.

The story didn’t flow and I found the narrative quite choppy. Perhaps this was meant to reflect the point of view of pizza girl, I’m not sure.

I was glad to finish it and it really dragged, even though it’s quite a short book.

This one wasn’t for me at all.

Thanks to NetGalley and HQ Harper Collins for a copy for review.

Not sure what I read when I finished reading this... Can only say it left me with a feeling of discomfort, an unease about this story which is supposed to be enjoyable, yet has a heroine who is almost completely unlikable? Even per teenage hormonal standards, she is over the top and way too flippant and careless. Maybe an 18-yr-old reading this could understand, but as an adult, this just rankled the wrong way and didn't feel endearing or even sympathetic at all

My complete and utter ignorance about this novel going into it completely kicked me in the butt here - I didn't evne read the blurb. A request off of Netgalley months ago that I've finally gotten around to reading. This was a surprisingly emotive novel about growing up, and wow did it completely resonate with me.

WE follow our predominately unnamed main character, who is desperately lost, pregnant and eighteen - navigating through a turbulent childhood and questioning everything, which leads her to beocming obsessed with a woman that she delivers too - earning the moniker 'Pizza Girl'.
I can easily say that this was a hard hitter - surprisingly dark, completely complex and utterly heart-breaking.
She's meandering through life, jaded from her relationship with her father, she's discovered there are no answers to life's great questions. She is so in need of someone to tell her what to do and who to be - to tell her that they see her and understand what she's going through.
And I've been there - in some way or another I reckon we all have in some regard - everyone telling you their big future plans and dreams whilst you don't have a clue. You simultaneously want everyone to just leave you alone, but also yell that they know something is wrong.
The ultimate conumdrum that again, there is no answer to.

The lack of identity given to the main character really helps amplify how she feels completely overridden by the fact that she's pregnant, that that is her identity nowand she completely ceases to be. Something that pregnant woman constantly struggle with.

Overall, this book really resonated with me and truly surprised me in the most powerful way. I will definitely be looking at other works by the writer, who really captures the nuanced and messy emotions of humans.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for review (Round up to 3.5 *s)
Well written with an understandably and empathetically flawed main character and narrator - with a voice that's full of wry observations and interesting descriptions - ruminating on how a loving support network can feel smothering, and how you can still feel lonely & feel compelled to escape into destructive behaviour despite it.
Sadly, for such a short book, the pace, for me, started to drag about half way through, but I would still recommend giving it a look.

Pizza Girl is the debut novel from Los Angeles based author Jean Kyoung Frazier from HQ Stories.

Eighteen years old and pregnant, this pizza girl is struggling. Her boyfriend is a loving, caring ball of perfection and her mum’s supporting them every step of the way…and it’s suffocating her. Didn’t her mum think she could achieve more than being a pregnant teenager? Why wasn’t she raging, why wasn’t she accusing her of throwing her life away like a mum that actually cared?

Life regains some sort of meaning when she gets an unusual pizza request, and upon delivery, she meets a woman who immediately captures her attention. At first, it’s simple admiration, but the more they talk and the more orders she delivers, the further pizza girl falls into an obsession with this older lady who needs her help.

Pizza Girl is a short novel, packed with emotional punch. Although you don’t learn pizza girls’s name until the end of the book, I fell in love with her very quickly. She’s not the classic ‘likeable’ lead. She’s brutally cold with her boyfriend, barely sees her mother as a person and feels a complete disconnect from the baby that’s growing inside of her. However, there’s a reason. Pizza girl is terrified of becoming her father, the alcoholic that was found dead at the side of the train tracks by a complete stranger. Some of the most evocative parts of this novel are when she reminisces on her childhood and how she had to manage her dad when he was drinking. If you don’t get chin wobbly when she remembers when he picks her up and tells her they’re going to Disneyland, you’re an absolute monster.

The end of Pizza Girl (no spoilers) really took me by surprise and I was genuinely gripped as I couldn’t begin to guess where it was going as it came as such a curveball. I really enjoy reading complicated female characters, and it’s a testament to Jean Kyoung Frazier’s incredible writing that she crafted someone with such depth in such a short amount of time. I adored Pizza Girl and raced through it in two sittings; now I just wish I’d paced myself so it lasted longer!

"Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl, our dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She’s grieving the death of her father, avoiding her loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future."

Here for flawed women, here for easy reads, here for this.

Pizza Girl tells the story of an unnamed eighteen-year-old pregnant pizza delivery girl who is a Korean immigrant living with her boyfriend Billy and her mum in their Los Angeles home. Working at Eddie's Pizza Parlour, she meets Jenny Hauser who hails from Nebraska. New to the neighbourhood, Jenny is a stay-at-home mum to her pickle-topped, pizza-loving, awkward son, Adam. Our pizza delivery girl is the protagonist who develops an obsession for Jenny and the two women form a strange and complicated relationship.

A heartfelt, funny, and tragic tale, I appreciated the way that Jean Kyoung Frazier showed her protagonist’s emotions of discomfort, frustration and annoyance with her mother and boyfriend. The author constructed our protagonist in a vein that made her struggles feel earnest and believable. For his part, Billy was sensitive and kind. The novel explored all different forms of relationships, friendships, intimacy and angst, and themes of depression and addiction were also in the agglomeration.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Pizza Girl for its darkness, humour and originality.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from HQ via NetGalley and this review is my unbiased opinion.

Pizza Girl is a story of obsession, sexuality and identity. Although I found it an easy, quick read, there was so much packed into this novel and it is definitely something I will pick up again in the future and recommend to friends.

I was super intrigued by both the premise and cover design of Pizza Girl and found myself pleasantly surprised by the way in which the narrative spun out.

On the surface, it’s a look at the life of a seemingly nameless Korean-American teen working at a pizza shop during her pregnancy who finds herself developing a spiralling obsession with a local regular. However, the book really feels like an insular and nuanced coming of age story; the character of Jenny, the object of PG’s projections, is intentionally somewhat secondary to the story of PG’s internal grappling with grief, her relationship with her parents, her lack of direction and her denial about her growing commitment to her boyfriend and unborn child.

I found Pizza Girl a very endearing protagonist for all my favourite reasons: witty and relatable yet complex and contradictory, occasionally inscrutable and frustrating. The author has such an masterful grasp on imagery and inner monologue and has created a gripping depiction of a girl who feels that she has lost control of her life and is growingly incapacitated by her circumstances, with this culminating in her unhealthy attachment to Jenny and all she perceives her to represent. Jenny is an intriguing character in her own right too, providing a parallel to PG as a woman chafing against the confines of her identity as a woman, wife and mother whilst approaching middle age.

My only problem was that I did wish that we spent more time with secondary characters like Billy and PG’s mother, but this was predominantly just because I enjoyed the writing so much that I wanted more of it. Tonally, I appreciated the way in which the intermittent flashes of personal history granted a vibrancy and immediacy to PG’s voice, and the characterisation of the secondary characters still felt convincing whilst echoing PG’s own unwillingness to dwell on certain aspects of her life. However, I would have loved to gain more insight into areas like her mother's relationship with America, PG's relationships with her colleagues and Jenny's relationship with her son.

Pizza Girl is a character that'll stay with me for a while, and I would definitely recommend her story.

"I'm never actually small. But like when you're in a people-packed space and there's not a single face that looks at you for longer than a second - it's not invisibility, it's worse, they see you, they just have already decided in that second that there's nothing about you that's worth knowing, that kind of small."

Pizza Girl, our unnamed protagonist, is eighteen years old, pregnant and working as a pizza delivery girl. She is completely in denial about her situation and the future, avoiding her mother and boyfriend whilst also grieving the death of her father.

One day Jenny, a stay-at-home mum rings the pizza place and asks for a pepperoni and pickle pizza because it's the only thing that will cheer her son up. As Jenny becomes a regular, they begin to bond over motherhood and Pizza Girl becomes obsessed with Jenny.

As tension builds, the relationship between Pizza Girl and Jenny becomes very complicated and their friendship will be put to the test, with potentially devastating consequences. This debut novel covers many topics from race, class and family to grief, love and sex. Pizza Girl is short but sweet - a slow burner but definitely one to stick with. It had me racing through the last chapter. Definitely recommend!

I have to admit that this book was not what I thought it would be.
The story is about a teenage American-Korean girl who finds herself pregnant by her "perfect" boyfriend. Her mom - wanting the American Dream - is delighted, our protagonist less so. Working a dead-end job as a Pizza Delivery girl, everything is tedious until she delivers an unusual pizza to a "perfect" stranger, with whom she becomes obsessed.
I struggled a bit with the start, but now really that it was to show the monotony of our lead-characters life. I have to admit that I didn't warm to any of the characters particularly - lead charactor too self-obsessed and mopey, boyfriend too intense, Jenny (stranger) just a but too "zany" but I did thoroughly enjoy the story and found it an absolute page turner - the build up to the crescendo kept me hooked. i didn't find the section between this and the end of the book satisfying but in a way, that has meant the book has stayed with me - a little frustrating but definitely one where I've imagined what happened next (something I used to do a lot of at the end of a book but less so now!)
I'd be keen to read future releases by Jean Kyoung Frazier as I liked her style of writing but I would hope the characters would potentially be a little less formulaic.

Overall, I would recommend this book and I think it is one where I will go back and read again.

Maladjustment, pregnancy, obsession - in one young woman.

I did read and enjoy Convenience Store Woman, and I can understand the comparison. Reflective but dysfunction woman stuck in a rut of her own making, with issues to resolve and a lack of options.

The eponymous Pizza Girl (we only find out her name later in the book) is eighteen, living with her mum and boyfriend, and recently found out she is pregnant. She works in a pizza delivery shop, and is less than delighted at her situation. Her mother though, an immigrant who seems content with her narrow world, and loving boyfriend, with prospects he hasn't fulfilled, are both delighted and already planned her future for her.

A new customer gives Pizza Girl a different perspective on things, a newly-resident exhausted mother with a son in need of a particular pizza. She cultivates a friendship with Jenny, to the detriment of her own family. Still trying to come to terms with the death of her own less-than-perfect father, she becomes obsessed with Jenny as she ponders yet tries to ignore her own future.

While I did enjoy the read, I also found it quite disconsolate and bleak. It's no fairytale. I did like Pizza Girl's world, her boyfriend and mother felt like real people, with their own flaws but also a lot of traits I could appreciate and even admire.

A real-life character, with real-life problems. Not a summer beach that'll have you chortling. There are some rather dark parts but it's never less than honest.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy.

This book is weird, not like anything I've ever read before but I loved it! It's a relatively short book, only 12 chapters, not a lot actually happens but I just wanted to keep reading - the sign of a well written book!

Our unnamed protagonist "Pizza Girl" is 18 years old, pregnant and works at Eddie's Pizza Place. One Wednesday, she gets a call at work from a lady called Jenny Hauser who is desperate for a pepperoni and pickle pizza as it was her son's favourite from back home. They'd only just moved to Los Angeles and she wanted something familiar for him.

Even though it isn't on the menu, Pizza Girl buys pickles from the grocery store to have it made specially then delivers it to Jenny. Jenny places the same order every Wednesday. Pizza Girl then becomes obsessed and infatuated with Jenny.

I think I would classify this book as a bildungsroman. We learn that Pizza Girl lives with her mother who originally came to the USA from Seoul and her boyfriend (and the father of her unborn baby) Billy. Her father has passed away and although he was a drunk who she didn't have a great relationship with, it is obvious that his death has greatly affected her.

It shows the struggles that she is going through and I don't think she is a very likable character. It is odd for me to give as many as four stars to a book with an unlikable main character but this book has confused every part of me. I loved it.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this.

However, I really couldn't get into this and couldn't get passed 25%. It just didn't seem to be going anywhere and the main character (I don't know what her name is) seemed to be really confused about all her relationships but weirdly bonds with a woman who called the pizzeria she works for for a pepperoni and pickle pizza.

I couldn't bond with the character and the writing style wasn't for me.

Very sorry...really didn’t enjoy reading this novel and had to grit my teeth and finish it before submitting this review. I found the story line went nowhere and I did not warm to any of the characters, such a shame, I wanted to like it as it appeared to be a little different.....many thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read it for an honest review.