I started this book thinking it was really taking it's time to get going but it was like that up to the page where I'm really sorry but I had to give up.
It just wasn't my type of book but I really tried!.
Thanks to Netgalley for the free ARC book for an honest review

SPOILER FREE REVIEW!
Many thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins UK, Harper Fiction, for the free advanced copy in return for an honest review.
I don’t know what I was expecting but this story was completely different from anything I’ve read before. In some ways it was difficult to get used to as there were no quotation marks around any of the speech. After getting used to that the story is slow whilst you get deep into the main character of Freckles, Allegra Bird.
She’s not a typical main character who somehow gets everything right, she makes mistakes and is not a people person. This was a refreshing change in my opinion.
I loved the settings in Ireland, the descriptions of the islands, where she grew up. I loved the relationship between Freckles and her Dad. The ending was… different, again refreshing, but I don’t want to give anything away. I would give this 3 and a half stars honestly, an enjoyable read once you get used to the writing style. Well worth a read.

I enjoyed this book. It follows Allegra aka Freckles a rookie traffic warden just moved to Dublin. It charts her scrapes and missteps, as she looks for meaning of who she is as described by the five people she spends most time with. It turns out that the answers were under her nose all the time…

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This story is about Allegra. Allegra is very proud to be a traffic warden and takes her job very seriously. One day after issuing an arrogant young man a ticket he tells her that she is the average of the five people that she spends the most time with. It was not meant as a compliment and Allegra takes this comment to heart. She decides that she is going to find her five people.

It took me a little while before I got into this story. I enjoyed the range of different characters in this book. Although Allegra didn’t always make the best decisions I was always on her side. I was really glad that Cecilia didn’t go down the obvious route with one part of the story. I thought that the ending was a bit cheesy though and wished it was slightly different. Overall it was a good thought provoking read.

I really enjoyed this uplifting book. You go on a journey with Allegra Bird AKA Freckles to find her 5 people. ‘You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with’, it definitely made me think about who my 5 people are!

Cecelia Ahern has the power to reinvent herself as an author over and over again. Her earlier books were amusing and romantic, then came her dystopian YA novels which were fantastic, followed by Roar which was different again, strong and meaningful.

Freckles' life changes when a stranger says to her that "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with" which leads her to ask the question she’s been avoiding for so long: who are the people who made her the way she is? And who are the five people who can shape and determine her future?

Freckles has a slow start and I'm still not sure about the narrative style, I find the "stream of consciousness" style of writing with no speech marks and abrupt sentences quite hard to get into but as the novel progressed I found myself noticing this less and less. Until Allegra went home to visit her father I found her very unlikeable but then a new Allegra emerged as the story evolved and it just got better and better. Her growing relationship with Tristan was lovely and as her true five people emerged it moved towards a beautiful conclusion. An excellent read.

I’m a big fan of this author. I have read every book she has written. I’m sorry but I just couldn’t get into this book, I found it dragged on and I didn’t find the characters relatable.

Many thanks to netgalley and Cecelia Ahern for the advanced copy of this book. I agreed to give my unbiased opinion voluntarily.

I was so excited to read this after grabbing it off Netgalley as I love Cecilia Ahern books but this one didn't work for me. Took me ages to get into it and I wasn't excited to pick it back up. I did manage to finish it. Thank you for the chance to read.

“Human interaction is often like a dance I can’t catch the rhythm to”.

Freckles is a beautiful tale of Allegra Bird, fondly nicknamed Freckles by her childhood classmates. On a pursuit to find her mother, she works as a parking warden in Dublin, far from her humble beginnings. There, during a heated dispute, she learns the Jim Rohn quote that "we are the product of our 5 closest friends” and seeks to work out who these people are in her life and by extension, who she is.

The story is simple but effective. It’s of a woman searching looking for others and who finds herself in the process. She learns and relearns everything she thinks she knows about people and about herself. A couple of her personality traits don't match up, leaving her character difficult to read. Loosely, I would compare her loosely to Eleanor Oliphant.

The writing is beautiful and descriptive with the occasional Irish phrase dotted between paragraphs. The reader is invited into Dublin and the surrounding countryside to accompany Allegra on her journey. The story is an upbeat fictional tale that reminds us we have the power to grow and change, swapping our shells like a hermit crab when we’ve outgrown our surroundings.

The tale is predictable and heart-warming, with a couple of subplots that remain unanswered or left to the reader to conclude. I prefer completed novels with no loose ties, but I can't fault the overall delivery and message.

It took me a chapter or two to get into the book but once I did I was wholeheartedly invested. The ending is absolutely brilliant and something I’ll remember for a good while.

I took a while to warm up to this story which I haven’t found with the authors previous books. However, once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed the rich portrayal of a complex character who finds social norms a bit confusing. The development of the story was engaging and by the end, I was cheering for Allegra in awe of her resilience and persistence.

Allegra Bird is a parking warden in her small community, and she is precise down to the second. Her walk to work coincides with other residents' daily routines so reliably that she, and you, can literally count on it.

One day, an angry recipient of one of her citations tells her that she is “the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This, more than anything anyone else has said, gets to her.

But who are those five people? Her loving Pops, who is back in her hometown missing her terribly, for sure, but who else? That's what Allegra and we readers spend the rest of the book finding out. In the meantime, we meet a fascinating group of odd ducks, decent sorts and bad lots. I kept getting turned around by people I thought were one thing and ended up being something quite different.

Initially, I didn't care for Allegra, and I didn't quite understand what she was about. I'm not averse to an unlikeable character, but that wasn't the problem. Allegra has problems, and she's working them out. I'm along for that ride and I like it. However, there was an extraneous preface regarding her school days and an activity she engaged in that I don't think added to the plot, and, in fact, made it harder to get into the story properly. It seems to have been forgotten as a plot point, too – so much so that when it is mentioned again near the end of the book, it took me a few beats to remember it. That's the only reason for four stars rather than five.

Cecelia Ahern is such a reliable purveyor of good storytelling and she always provides lovely sense of place. She is one of a very short list of authors whose books I watch for like a child at Christmas. Yes, Freckles, had a bit of a false start for me, but once it got going, I couldn't put it down. I loved Allegra by the end, and her Pops, and so many others. Closing the book after the last page was like having to say goodbye to dear friends.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publishers and Ms. Ahern for letting me read Freckles in exchange for my honest review.

I had not read any of Cecelia Ahern's books before but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Allegra is trying to connect with her mother who gave her up at birth and is also on a search for the five people who have the most influence on her life. She makes really bad choices and gets herself into cringingly embarrassing situations, which are told with a dry sense of humour. The supporting characters are all quirky in their own way. Really enjoyable.

Freckles take the story of Allegra who thrives at boarding school because of its discipline, schedules, order and routine. 

But the adult world seems to baffle her. She describes "human interaction is often like a dance. I can't catch the rhythm". She has been turned down when she applied to the garda, the reason  cited as "non-verbal malfunction". So takes the next best thing, in her eyes. Which is becoming a parking warden, with all the rules and regulations that come with it. But she moves away from her childhood home and friends to settle in Malahide, which is a affluent coastal settlement in Fengal County Dublin. There she claims she is not setting foot back on the island, Valenia, where she grew up on until "I've done what I was supposed to do ". You are left guessing what this is for quite some time. 

During her time in Dublin she befriends a guy call Tristan or Rooster a yellow Ferrari driver who she meets under strange circumstances! He explains to her the 'five people theory', it states that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. As these are the people you choose to surround yourself with and they have the power to shape you.

So then Allegra sets off on a journey to discover her previous and present five. The story of curious characters ensues, we meet Spanner, the coffee shop owner, Paddy the fellow parking warden, Genevieve the life drawing teacher, Becky and Dannach her landlords and not forgetting Pops.

This is a very endearing tail of someone who like me, is on the spectrum but it's great because there is no direct reference to that facet of her, just LOTS of hints that do not detract from the story itself: "I don't get humans"! I don't think you have to understand autism to 'get' this book. It's just a very sweet story about a girl trying to discover who she is, I can't recomend this book hightly enough!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

All emotions erupt towards the end of this story in a revelation of clarity and wonder. For most of the book, despite moments of bravado and humour, I felt the desolate sadness of Allegra. Personally, I struggled a little with the presentation of text without speech, confusing the tense and voice at times. However, by the end, I applauded the characters and their resilience.

As always with Cecelia Ahern books, her accomplished penmanship keeps you hooked on the story and makes the reading enjoyable. I loved the premise that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and this certainly gets you reevaluating your own life choices.

I terms of the story itself, I’m not too keen on how Allegra is portrayed - her personality (or lack of) felt very detached and completely unemotional - she also doesn’t relate well to other people - kind of makes her seem like she has the characteristics of an autistic spectrum disorder. I also didn’t like the lack of speech marks in the text, so I’m certainly hoping that trend doesn’t catch on!

Cecelia Ahern is one of my favourite Authors, so I was absolutely thrilled to receive an advance copy of her next book - HUGE thanks to HarperCollins and NetGallery for this opportunity.

I read this ARC for an honest review
All thoughts and opinions are mine

I love this author and was thrilled to get the opportunity to read this

An unusual premise - I found this book intriguing and not in the least bit predictable

Really enjoyed the characters and loved the way the book was written

If you love your chick lit, this one's a good one

I found this book both unsettling and enjoyable at the same time. Reading something which so clearly describes a character struggling with social norms and life in general was not comfortable but for the most part it was portrayed in a considerate way. I wanted to believe in the character and see how her story evolved although I felt that some elements were a little jarring.

Quite an unusual read. The story of an Irish girl brought up by her father on a small island on the west coast, her mother having abandoned her immediately after giving birth.
The story is of her quest to find her mother along with trying to improve her lot.
After joining up as a traffic warden on the outskirts of Dublin, she comes into contact with a number of people who change her life without her realising it.

An interesting premise - you are the average of the five people you spend most time with - Freckles follows the story of Allegra as she tries to work out who her 5 are. An easy read though I did find the first half of the book a little slow. Will get you thinking about who your five might be !