I was drawn to the cover of this book which made me request it, and the style of writing made it a quick read.
Unfortunately it was pretty slow and not a lot happened, which was disappointing after such a promising start.
Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for my digital copy in return for my honest review.

I read the whole of 'Pizza Girl' in a day and I don't really know what to say about this book.

I really liked how this book was written. It was so fast-paced and even though the chapters were quite long, I found that I was flying through them very quickly and had finished the book a lot faster than I had expected to.

I guess I felt a bit let down by this book. This is probably due to my own expectations that I put on it. But I just didn't care much for the characters or the overall story. I didn't like the main character and found her quite annoying, but sometimes she was a bit relatable and I did feel for her. Sometimes I did find myself worrying about her and wanting her to talk to someone about her probems. I didn't understand Jennie and why she would treat her eight year old son the way she did and how she would just leave him in the house on his own for hours. She was just kind of a terrible person. Jennie's son was the only character I felt sorry for during this book.

I genuinely don't know how I feel about this book. I didn't hate it but I also didn't love it and that is why I am giving it three stars as it is the only rating that seems right for this book. However I would read another one of Jean Kyoung Frazier's books if the story intrigued me as I did really like how fast paced the writing was.

Thank you to HQ for providing me with an advanced copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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.

Jane is 18 and pregnant and not excited about the prospect of becoming a mother. Her mother and boyfriend are overprotective and we get to learn about the problematic relationship she had with her alcoholic late father. We also explore the obsession that develops with Jenny, a customer of the pizza shop she works at who like pickles on her pizza.

Overall, I really loved this book and I look forward to reading more from this author.

18 and pregnant, our unnamed heroine is struggling under the weight of her overprotective mother and boyfriend. While working as a pizza delivery girl, she becomes infatuated with a regular customer, a single mum called Jenny. Some parts funny and some parts irrevocably strange, Pizza Girl is a young woman’s journey of self-discovery and learning to come to terms with the darkness of her past. Touching on race, motherhood and sexuality, it’s a tender and engaging read that will appeal to fans of Conversations With Friends and Convenience Store Woman.

I love Pizza, unfortunately I didn’t love this book.

Firstly, it’s slow, too slow. Nothing really happened until 67% of the way through and for me that’s just too long. And then nothing really happened after that either. There is a plot, of sorts, it’s just seems to be a bit of an afterthought. I wanted more depth, more feeling. I was reading the words but nothing was emoting me. I wanted to feel the obsession, the need Jane feels for Jenny, but it just wasn’t there for me personally. It all seemed a little watered down unfortunately. It’s a shame because, in general, the writing is very good. The characters are well written and believable. Perhaps I just like my books written darker than this has been?!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Pickles on a pizza? As in gherkins?!? I love pineapple on my pizza which is controversial in some people’s eyes but pickles are not for me… they don’t even belong on a fast food cheeseburger! But each to their own! OK OK I’ll stop obsessing about pickles…

But this is a story about obsession. Our #PizzaGirl is obsessed by Jenny, the mum desperate to help her son settle in a new town by getting him his favourite pizza… but that’s not so straightforward. Until she rings the right pizza shop with the right girl answering the phone. What ensues is a tale of two lonely souls connecting over a pizza box.

Our protagonist is a mixed up young woman with hormones raging, just trying to fit in life. Following the story in her muddled mind is an interesting one. At times I didn’t know what she was going to do next. Her relationships with her mum, boyfriend, work colleagues and Jenny are all so different but at points I could identify with each one in a way. 

This debut is very different to my usual read but it definitely made me stop and take notice. I’ll be interested to see what the author does next.

Bright fun cover.
I found this book interesting but struggled with Jane's conflicting personality traits. She finds it difficult to live in the moment with her adoring boyfriend and Father of her unborn baby.. Jane delivers a pizza to a lonely woman and becomes obsessed with her. She reflects on previous lesbian crushes and questions her sexuality.
Occasional light hearted interludes at Pizzeria which h keep you entertained.

Pizza Girl is a pregnant 18-years-old trapped in grief and nausea. When Jenny (older-than-her-mother, middle-age, married) calls to request a weird pizza, Pizza Girl decides to help her, and progress in developing an obsessive crush on her.

This book is very different from what I was expecting. I believed it was going to be a slow, paced narration when instead it reads as a character-driven psychological thriller. I'm using the word thriller to describe the agitation of Pizza Girl spirit, more than to pigeonhole this book as a thriller: the tone was sometimes thriller, the content is obviously more literary than genre fiction. It was an unusual coming-of-age story, where all the characters managed to surprise me, even the main character's mother.

Thank you to NetGalley and HQ for this copy of Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier.

Unfortunately, I gave up on this book at around 25%. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I disliked about this story but after several attempts to read, I concluded that it was time to give up. Whether it was the characters or the writing style, I’m still unsure.

To summarise what I read, it was about an 18-year-old who is ‘Pizza Girl’, she is pregnant but doesn’t seem to be happy about it despite full support of her boyfriend and mother. She had an alcoholic father who passed away and she manages to find secret alcohol he concealments and consumes it.

Pizza Girl delivers a pizza to a middle-aged woman for her fussy son, the pizza was exactly as she ordered – fancy that! Which lead to multiple deliveries to said woman and an obsession forming.

As I gave up on the book shortly after this, it would seem that Pizza Girl hasn’t dealt with the grief from losing her father, she is irresponsible and quite a brat. Just my opinion of course!

Surprisingly gripping for a narrative which spends a lot of its time inside a pizza takeout! I was utterly mesmerised by the relationship between Jane and Jenny, particularly the early moments of its development. Though I understand why some readers may not warm to protagonist Jane, I found her developing obsession with Jenny compelling, and had a lot of time for her, perhaps because the author is particularly good at presenting how small Jane's world is. I really related to the sense of being trapped inside a world you've created for yourself, but can't seem to get out of.

Jane's complicated relationship with her unborn baby was sensitively handled, as was her alcoholism, and I thought the close first-person narrative voice allowed for representation of a side we usually hear little of.

My enjoyment of the novella waned slightly as it reached its climactic event - I think I would have enjoyed a quieter, less eventful conclusion. But plenty to enjoy here, and a lovely little read.

3.5 *

'Pizza Girl' is eighteen, pregnant and working in her local pizza shop. She is confused about what she wants in life and is feeling lost. One day, whilst working, the mysterious Jenny comes in. The pair soon become friends and Pizza Girl becomes infatuated. However, she soon loses focus on what really is going on around her as she can only ever think about Jenny.

Okay, so this just missed the mark for me. I think this was supposed to be a coming of age story, showing teenage angst and not knowing where you're going in life but this really didn't have much plot?

I found our protagonist to be really unlikable and actually really selfish. She treats the people around her poorly and drinks alcohol throughout her pregnancy? I get this was supposed to be a link to her Father being an alcoholic but again this wasn't really explored.

Also, the ending felt like it spiralled out of control. It seemed to escalate from 0 to 100 in about five pages and I felt like a lot of stuff was chucked in for shock value.

Thank you to Netgalley and HQ for providing me with a copy to read.

Never judge a book by its cover! I somehow thought this would be a very fun and charming book but it turned out to be quite sad and frustrating. Definitely not my cup of tea
I felt like this book lacked self awareness and it didn't raise to its potential. In this day and age when people are bummed out, it's very easy to relate to a depressed character who makes bad decisions but in the same time, we know that reckless people do reckless things with serious consequences.
Our girl is pregnant at eighteen and unlike lots of other girls in her situation, she actually has support from her boyfriend and her mother but she only despise them for it. She just develops a strange obsession with a middle aged woman and throughout the entire book, we just wonder where it all came from.

This debut novel was on quite a few of the most anticipated reads of 2020 lists I perused earlier in the year, so I was very excited to read this one.

Our narrator is a pregnant 18-year-old who works as a pizza girl. She ends up becoming obsessed with a customer who relies on pickle covered pizzas to keep her son happy. The relationship starts with a kind gesture as no other pizza place sells pickle covered pizzas but turns in to one strange friendship between the two.

🍕

I love how the author showed Jane's more complicated and realistic emotions, her characterisation reminded me of Sayaka Murata. I didn't love the main protagonist but I'm definitely part of the gang that enjoys flawed characters.

This book was paced well and at just over 200 pages I thought the characters were developed enough in that relatively short space.

Overall a solid debut and I would definitely read more from this author.

3.5 ⭐

Thanks to Netgalley and HQ for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was hard and difficult to read, which is exactly as it should be when dealing with this kind of material: a young, pregnant, first generation Korean girl in the US experiencing a complete sense of dissociation from herself, her life and her family.

This is one of those books where so much is left unsaid that it's completely human. By that, I mean that the main character can't identify all the things that she's feeling and experiencing for the reader because she just doesn't know what they are yet. However, we can see. We know what's right and what's wrong for her, but that doesn't mean that she does.

I like that our Pizza Girl remains unidentified for most of the novel. For most of it, she isn't even sure of her own identity, so this works perfectly in with it. And that, although the support she gets from her mother and boyfriend appears to be exactly what anyone would want, it's also smothering and suffocating her - not that she's quite aware of this.

In particular, I loved our protagonist's increasing obsession with Jenny. There's a lot of things wrapped up in this - the question of whether she's actually bi, or queer - not something that she dwells on, but it seems like her boyfriend is perhaps her first male crush.

There's also the desire for a friend who feels things just as deeply or as keenly, or just feels at all. And then there's the need for a different kind of mother figure. Because she just doesn't realise that she's dissatisfied, and is fascinated by someone who she thinks is actually older than her mother.

Reading it, it's hard to tell how much of this infatuation is in Pizza Girl's head, and how much Jenny actually provides. Or perhaps that's the point - they're both searching for something but not quite the same thing, which makes Pizza Girl's own spiral out of control feel more ... logical. The main character's own mother is obsessed with being American, and Jenny may appear to be just that, but is also the slightly more broken America that the protagonist seeks and experiences.

There are so many other things to unpick that our protagonist is too young, too experienced, or to closed off to manage: grief over her father, a feeling of being smothered by her family, being a first generation Korean immigrant, what she is and isn't allowed to like, and especially fear over not really wanting a baby or to be pregnant, and fear of being more like her father than herself.
There's so much going on that she can't tease apart for herself, but it's so arresting to read between what she can and can't tell you herself.

This was a fun YA book about a young girl coming to terms with her pregnancy and the recent death of her alcoholic father.

She becomes obsessed with an older woman whom orders pizza from the place she works in. It follows her tough journey to accepting what has happened to her and what's going to happen when she has the baby

Was an enjoyable read

Thank you Netgalley and Publishers for the Arc

A quick read, it did pull me in, mostly because I needed to know if it actually led anywhere. I didn't feel it did. I felt sorry for the two teenagers - Jane (whose name we didn't learn until the end) who finds herself 18 and pregnant, and although she has a loving mum and boyfriend, feels rootless and has no idea where her life is going. Billy, her boyfriend, who she meets in grief counselling. A popular boy, and an orphan - he's clinging onto Jane's family as his own. If she hadn't been pregnant would they have stayed together? Billy should be at college, and I feel for him. A story of how life without plans can affect us all. One day, in her pizza delivery job, Jane encounters Jenny, a 40 year old mum trying to get used to life in a new neighbourhood. Jane projects fantasies onto their friendship and it all goes horribly wrong. Sad is the overwhelming feeling I was left with. #netgalley #pizzagirl

I read this for a blog tour.

This is a sad and slightly painful read, mimicking the despair and confusion a lot of us felt at 18, with a hundred options in front of us but no idea what to do.

The girl at the heart of this story has even fewer options though, she's pregnant, working in a pizza delivery job, living at home with her mum and boyfriend, utterly lost.

She just goes through the motions, never really coming to terms with her unresolved issues around her dad and his death, the situation she's in, or the life she thinks she should perhaps be trying to attain.

Her crush on a customer jolts her from her day to day and throws more confusing feelings into the mix.

Darkly funny, bathetic and ultimately redeeming, this is a short but sweet summer spent in the company of the anti-Juno - she doesn't have a plan.

This is going to be a short review as the book is only 208 pages. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like Pizza Girl. I also think it’s a hard one to review. Pizza Girl follows a pregnant 18 year old and is told in first person narrative, This instantly caught my attention as I love first person narratives, it’s incredibly interesting knowing exactly what goes through a characters head as they’re thinking it. Another think I liked was I found the protagonist unlikable, I don’t believe every protagonist should be likeable and I found this really refreshing.

Overall I found it an enjoyable read. I don’t know if this is own voices so I don’t feel like it’s my place to comment on the slurs as I know some have chosen to reclaim them.

I'm afraid I'm probably going to be the black sheep of the review family, I know the book has received a lot of praise and five star reviews but for me it just didn't quite make it.

One of the things I did like with this coming of age story was the contrast between an eighteen year old having mixed feelings about her pregnancy and a woman heading towards middle age who is a truly devoted mother. The obsessive behaviour of this teenager towards the older woman is almost like she has transferred her feelings for her baby to this stranger; thinking about her constantly etc.

However, I didn't feel that the story went much further than this. It lacked something for me. I didn't feel there was any character development, substance or much of a plot. I read the book hoping something "more" would happen, but it never did. I didn't feel an emotional connection to anyone. I had thought I would find Pizza Girl endearing and be rooting for her, but I just felt nothing towards at all.

I'm disappointed, I had had high hopes for this book and thought the synopsis sounded intriguing but unfortunately it wasn't for me.

what a wonderful debut this is. It gripped me from the start. I couldn't out it down. I could relate to Jane in parts and I think a character the reader can relate to is always a win. I thought this was an excellent book that was well plotted and well written. I look forward to reading more from Jean