I’m a Claire North fan so was excited to see that she was releasing this novella. I find that her books always have a great premise and have thoroughly enjoyed all of her previous works that I’ve read.

Sweet Harmony is set in a world where humans can purchase nanos to “upgrade” their bodies. Want to be slimmer? Want to avoid the after effects of drink and drugs? Want a more dazzling smile? There’s a nano programme for each of those.....for a price.

We follow Harmony through her journey with nanos, from minor upgrades to peer pressure led additions and the associated financial burdens that come with it. The nano programmes give Harmony many advantages in life and love but what happens when the cost outweighs her means?

This was a great, dark exploration of our obsession with perfection and what lengths we will go to to achieve it. The constant comparison with others, as is rampant in our social media driven lives, is also a big factor in Harmony’s decision making, as well as the influence of a toxic relationship.

This would be a great, quick read for fans of Black Mirror. In fact, there was an intended collection of Black Mirror short stories that got shelved a while ago, which the author was slated to be involved with. I’ve not seen anything to confirm online but wouldn’t be surprised if this novella originally set out for that purpose.

I think this one will be on my mind for a while to come, it was really well written and the nanos were such an interesting idea. What would you get if we could really get them? Hmm......

Short but bittersweet, this heartbreaking story of one woman's battle with addiction was a real tear jerker.
Set in a future where nano technology is big business, and there's an upgrade for nigh on everything, it's hard to know where to draw the line.
Lots of parallels with our current social media driven world, where image can be perceived to be all too important.

In Sweet Harmony North has created a monster, a monster I initially felt some empathy for but who - ultimately - learns nothing from her situation.
A succinct yet damning indictment of our obsession with youth, physical health and the ‘quick fix’ solution. Sweet Harmony tells the story of one very normal woman living in a world where everything can be fixed...at a price.
Harmony has upgrade after upgrade to keep her body looking its best. Nothing needs to be worked at in the traditional sense and all is good, if you can pay for it. Our only clue that something is not right is that Harmony has a spot...and before we know it we see the full truth of her situation exposed.
Faced with spiralling debt we see Harmony slowly shutting down. Around her, difficult choices have to be made. The reaction to her plight when she shares it shows the casual callousness that we seem to take for granted in so many circumstances.
Until the closing stages part of me felt Harmony was a victim, and I felt sympathy of sorts for her predicament. However, the decision she makes at the end made me feel that she was rather more complicit in her demise than I’d been prepared to accept. I closed the story feeling somewhat tainted, angry that such a situation could come about but also miserable to recognise so much of the mindset prevalent in the book as being all around us now.
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this prior to publication.

The novella length suits this one. It has a simple and direct fable-like quality, and like a fable it uses the specific to highlight the general. For a short book, there’s a lot to unpack here - it touches on consumerism, our basic dissatisfaction with what we have versus what we want, abusive partners, relationships with our parents, and more.
It’s a smooth and easy read that will pull you in easily. For all that, though, it feels very linear, and there are no real surprises. Her first few novels left me thinking Claire North had a great book in her, but the next couple made me doubt that. Sweet Harmony isn’t that great book, but it has smoothed out her wobble.

Sweet Harmony by Clair North
I rate this novella 4 stars
Meet Harmony,she longs for the perfect life.........partner,job,health and body.And she can have it all but at what price! Everyone can upgrade their basic nano package with a simple in app monthly purchase. But what happens when you enhance everything? Does perfection bring you happiness and how do you cope if it’s all taken away.
An unsettling dark read......is this what the future holds for us all.
I whizzed through this l just couldn’t put it down! If you like Black Mirror this is a must read,highly recommended
With thanks to Netgalley,the publisher and the Author for my chance to read this book.

I was really pleased to discover that Claire North had written a new title. Everything of hers I've read so far has been insightful, intelligent and hugely enjoyable.

Sweet Harmony is no exception: though a shorter novella than her standard books, it packs a punch in its exploration of human nature through a slightly dystopian setting in the near future.

The plot centers around Harmony: a young woman dissatisfied with her appearance and her life, who chooses to seek assistance from"nanos": a new technology to physically aid and enhance our bodies. The plot shifts between the recent past and the present, in which Harmony is in debt, and unable to continue payments for her nano packages. We learn how Harmony found herself in this situation: her dissatisfaction that her "plain" physical appearance proved a barrier to her career; the abusive relationship which led to a breakdown... It reads like an episode of the TV series, Black Mirror, in which every word and sentence is perfectly chosen for maximum impact.

Claire North is a master storyteller who, in my opinion, is not promoted anywhere near enough for her talent with the written word. If you haven't yet read any of her work, start with this as a short introduction, then follow up with one of her excellent novels (I'd suggest The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, or The Pursuit of William Abbey).

This is a difficult review - I was torn between DNFing the story because of the disgusting and difficult topics, and praising it because the author did such a remarkable job portraying a broken character and using such an effective prose to demonstrate the cause. The resulting three stars don't reflect my enjoyment of the story, which is nil-zero-nada, but admiration of the author's skill. The story would work better for less sensitive readers in happier times. But these Covid19 traumatized era full of depressions contrasts the story's harsh uses of shit, piss, puke, and pus with a failed mother-daughter relationship, technology abuse, and excessive indebtness. While the author shines in painting a realistic and believable picture of the protagonist, I constantly asked myself if I wanted to endure the confrontation with the predictable plot.

Readers who don't have problems with the gory details of the human body's fluids or psychological traumas will enjoy this SF persiflage.

I wish people were shouting from the rooftops about Claire North more: she's one of the most inventive speculative-fiction authors that we have writing today, and each of her novels strikes off in a different direction, rather than falling into a particular pigeonhole. Now a novella that's in Black Mirror territory: a near-future story exploring the 'what if?' implications of nanobots.

It's pretty bleak, although I don't mean that as a criticism. It swerves any temptation to wrap things up neatly in a happy ending (they are wrapped up neatly, but...) and throughout the book humankind in general doesn't come off that nicely – Harmony's mother aside, whose down-to-earth kindness offers an even sharper contrast to the awfulness of other characters.

It's unsettling, and left me with a bunch of thoughts rattling around my mind about what might happen if (when?) we really can sign up to subscription-based nanobot services to make us fit, beautiful and... well, I'm not sure 'happy' is the word... But I'm certainly happy to have read it.

I adore Claire North novels- there is always something thought provoking in these stories and Sweet Harmony is no different. Although I literally hated Harmony (she is a self narcissist with no impulse control or concept of how her decisions will bite her back) and for a lesser writer I would have put this one down without finishing. This story of how technology in the dystopian future has taken control of health using "nanos" purchased on eye wateringly expensive subscriptions is frankly terrifying and made powerful through the impact on actual individuals in the story. I can't stop thinking about the story, especially the end, and have recommended it to others, especially Black Mirror devotees.

Claire North, as I’ve discovered in previous literary encounters, doesn’t write books to comfort or reassure you. Or at least that’s the way it seems looking at things on a superficial level. Her 84K was a disturbing and wholly realistic twist on 1984, on a world of surveillance and enslavement to corporate interests with political power behind them and most recently the legacy of the horrors of colonialism were given a supernatural twist in The Pursuit of William Abbey.

You don’t have to look too far into the past or ahead into the near future to see that these ghosts of the past and the present circumstances point all too credibly towards an unpleasant and worrying future. The dangers of technology and artificial intelligence expanding beyond a level that we can control has however been thoroughly explored elsewhere in science-fiction, but Claire North has a unique take on it here in Sweet Harmony. Again, it’s not that reassuring an outlook, but perhaps there’s more here than it just being premonitory speculative vision of a dystopian future.

Harmony Meads is a successful young woman building an impressive career working for an estate agent. She’s beautiful, has everything going for her until the day that a spot appears on her chin. It might not sound like something life-changing, but In a world that not only values but expects perfection, this pimple is about to destroy her life. When you can have nano-bot implants that can sculpt and modify to not only achieve that kind of perfection but also protect and warn about serious health conditions, well… why wouldn’t you?

Well, clearly there are good reasons not to rely on nano-technology running around inside your body, where upgrades and ‘at your own risk’ body enhancements are easily and conveniently downloaded via the app on your mobile phone. You can probably guess that your online healthcare provider is going to be more interested in selling you additional services than looking after your personal best interests, their services stretching beyond basic healthcare to less essential modifications, but again, if inhibiting a blush reaction, improving a smile, perfecting stubble and enhancing sexual prowess helps build confidence to be a better person, well, again why wouldn’t you?

Needless to say, Claire North provides many good reasons why you shouldn’t trust technology in the hands of private health care providers, and inevitably North has a way of making this get very scary very quickly. And very real. Maybe the technology isn’t there yet, but the danger of unregulated medical services and private healthcare is already a growing reality and it’s not inconceivable that this could realistically go to this stage (if it isn’t already there to some extent). When it comes to scary advances in technology, what is often the underlying cause of the problem is the lack of human involvement, and we don’t need to look too far to see the amount of control that we hand over to corporations and algorithms.

Essentially this more than anything else is what Claire North is writing about in this short and perfectly proportioned novella, but more than just alerting us to the inevitable terrifying consequences of technology controlling our lives, North is actually reminding us that, at the moment, we still have some degree of control and need to make some careful choices now. Likewise, Sweet Harmony is not written to any standard SF plot to an inevitable outcome, but there is also very much human agency involved here in North’s writing, showing a deep understanding of human behaviours, weaknesses and insecurities that can make those choices more difficult than you think.

This book starts off as quite amusing as it tells the story of Harmony and her mishaps in a futuristic Bridget Jones kind of way but if you look past the humour deep down it is actually quite sad and very real! Scarily real! And a bit too close to the truth at times and on so many levels. This may be only a short story but it manages to make a big impact all the same and gives a glimpse into a possible future for us all.

Harmony is just like everyone else using nanos to make her life more perfect, dazzling smile, perfect body but then her body crashes after running too many upgrades...

I’ve been doing a lot of reading over the past few months. Short stories, long stories, pacey thrillers, you name it. Most of my reading choices go by whim, but, luckily, only a few disappointed me. I hope to read more exciting titles this year but I doubt more than one or two will top Sweet Harmony. It's perfect. And terrifying.

Harmony doesn't have hobbies or deep thoughts, but she has ambitions.

She is excited for the future; she has dreams, ambitions; she has chosen the house she’s going to buy when she’s got the money; she has chosen, if not the man she’ll marry, then certainly the car he’ll drive, and the white cashmere jumper he’ll wear on casual Sundays at garden parties.

In her timeline, not far in the future, everyone can pursue and attain perfection by upgrading their Nanos - apps controlling nanobots influencing and improving physiological and nervous functions. Possibilities are countless, as long as you can afford them. No More Dentists will keep your teeth white and your breath minty-fresh. Elevation, the ultimate pack for the sexual woman, will enhance your libido and bring your hormones into perfect balance. Powerful Poise develops a muscular definition combined with feminine sensuality, no training required. For £39.99 a month you'll get a perfect stubble and a further £82.99 will secure you the latest pheromone enhancement technology.

Successful people and aspiring professionals keep their Nanos up to date and always look for new improvements. Before they realize it, they start to spend staggering sums on continuous self-improvement. Healthcare providers feel morally and contractually obliged to ensure their clients' immunization packages remain functional even in times of financial strain. At the same time, they feel comfortable with disabling non-essential services (like smell or color-vision) until payment is received.

Sweet Harmony is a great study of perspective, ambition, privilege, and addiction – short chapters set in converging timelines present Harmony's path to a dire situation. There is a super great social commentary here as well as a deep and terrifying character study. It offers a scathing look at how well-meaning people can ruin themselves and their close ones.

Only a few models and actresses could pull off the naturalist’s look these days, and even then most fashion magazines tended to agree that while it was all very impressive and that, it wasn’t the choice of the true superstar. The trend-setting idols were the ones who were getting custom Nanos programmed directly by the health product designers; from the rock stars with the shimmer of scaled snakeskin translucence on their skin, through to the eagle-eyed, black-tongued bad boys of the studios, programmed to shock, surprise or just to have the perfect build for their next explosive blockbuster.
North's sobering take on the culture of debt and want-driven society terrifies because it's plausible and true. Tech companies base their marketing strategies on a deep understanding of consumers' fears and desires. Ultimately, though, people can only blame themselves for falling for it and for decisions they make. Harmony's emotional and financial struggles are heart-wrenching, but were they really undeserved?

Times being what they are, I should probably pick more optimistic titles. But I have no regrets. Claire North has mastered the novella format. In Sweet Harmony, every word counts, every scene serves a goal, and Harmony's decisions have a cost. North's take on nano-upgrades, a sense of identity, and addiction is terrifying, plausible, and in-depth. It's an outstanding book.

A short, tight, intense read. Sci-fi in a near future with nanotech used as easily as social media is right now. This is a wrenching look at the culture of desire and debt, and how it is shaped into the perfect honey trap. It packs a lot into a small space, meditating on how we value appearance and judge based on looks – and how this can lead to debt! – as well as a future version of digital affluence gap we’re silently all in the middle of now. Sobering and impactful.

Despite only being a short book, it certainly packed a lot of gut punches into it. We meet Harmony who has fallen a bit foul of technology. Actually, scratch that, she's fallen into an economic hole due to technology and it is starting to really affect her life. Rewind a bit and we see the spiral that she has got herself in. Let me start from the beginning. Technology is now medical. There are apps to enhance your skin - nano tech stuff - apps to keep your teeth looking good, prevent disease, maintain healthy weight, you get the picture. As with most things, there's a basic package that keeps you ticking along, immunisations etc etc, but then there are add ons (basic SKY, pus sports, plus cinema, plus kids kind of thing) each one adding to the overall cost but each one also bound by contract so you can't just press stop. Until that is, you go so far overdrawn that they are withdrawn from you suddenly and shockingly. And so we see Harmony as it all starts to fall away and then, in flashback, we see how she got herself into this mess in the first place...
It's food for thought and so very emotional in parts as I really felt for how Harmony got herself into this pickle in the first place. Following the herd and coerced and just wanting to be included. A bit of an eye opener for everyone who follows labels and does things to fit in. Luckily I never went down that rabbit hole but I know plenty that did...
All in all, a cracking read that really did resonate with me on many levels. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Había tenido una muy buena experiencia con mi última lectura de Claire North, así que esto, unido a la escasa longitud de Sweet Harmony hizo que me pusiera con ella de inmediato.

Nos encontramos ante una historia de ciencia ficción de futuro cercano, tan tan cercano, que podría estar a la vuelta de la esquina. Los nanobots han llegado a nuestras vidas para quedarse, con todo su paquete de funcionalidades que por un no muy módico precio pondrán a nuestra disposición todo lo que siempre hemos soñado. Comer sin engordar, músculos perfectamente tonificados, relaciones sexuales elevadas a la máxima potencia… todo maravilloso. Por un precio.
Asistiremos de la mano de North a la espiral descendente en la que se ve sumida la protagonista Harmony por su endeudamiento constante para poder pagar esos caros servicios que los nanobots le ofrecen. En este sentido, los saltos entre las dos líneas temporales de la historia están muy bien escogidos, para llevarnos desde el pináculo de su éxito social a las más profundas fosas de su desesperación. Resultan especialmente hipnóticas las imágenes de fiestas absurdas con desperdicio constante en busca de una emoción que los propios bots impiden alcanzar. ¿De qué sirve comer hasta reventar cuando nada será digerido? ¿Y drogarse o emborracharse cuando tus robots guardianes impiden cualquier desequilibrio corporal?
Lo que hace que la ciencia ficción de North sea tan relevante es su paralelismo con la situación real de muchísimas familias e individuos en el mundo actual, asfixiados por deudas que no son capaces de pagar y viviendo al día para mantener una apariencia de normalidad absurda, pura fachada.
Quizá por esa similitud con muchas situaciones conocidas, la novela corta tiene algo de moralina facilona que desmerece el conjunto de la lectura. No nos encontramos ante un relato de superación, pero el lector se encuentra en una posición de superioridad moral bastante artificial, en una especie de alejamiento de la realidad que hace que el libro no acabe de resultar eficaz. No sé si con otro desarrollo de los acontecimientos el resultado hubiera sido distinto y no por ello voy a dejar de leer la obra de North. Es solo que creo que la historia pudiera haber tenido más relevancia si hubiera decidido ir por otro camino.

Claire North is the master of the intriguing idea, planted into our otherwise normal world and interrogated from all angles (also, of glorious prose, believable characters and much else, which I'll come to in a moment). In her new novella, she steps a short way into the future of medicine and hypothesises the ability too use "naneites" - programme machines at the molecular level - to protect and preserve life, affect appearance and ability, modify mood and make many many other changes. ('Dazzling Smile - no more sad mornings!', 'Voice of an Angel - 96% agree that this is the perfect voice for the perfect woman!')

All for a price.

Harmony Meads, a 29 year old London estate agent, is 'beautiful, successful and fits in perfectly'. She's an enthusiastic user of these "upgrades" as it everyone in her office. They're all choices that she's made ('This is Harmony Meads, aged nineteen, making a choice about her body, her life') but choices have consequences whether from the side effects of programming glitches ('If you experience jaundice or liver failure, please contact your healthcare provider') to debt and enforcement action ('The upgrade was £17.99 a month for the initial twelve month contract, rising to £35 a month at the end of the introductory period...')

North's portrayal of Harmony as an anxious, aspirational twentysomething, spending money she doesn't have (there are always m ore credit cards) to secure a future away from '****ing Bracknell', to keep up with the team at work, to have a life, is touching and sad. This isn't an SF utopia or dystopia. It's recognisably our world - the train from Waterloo to Reading, overworked hospitals, social care stretched to its limits and, especially, advertising pushed at desperate people ('...at the end of the day, she wanted to be in control. She hit "buy". That was the beginning.') Harmony's life includes work pressures from a boss who sees having pretty people as part of the "brand", an abusive boyfriend and an elderly mother who wants the best for her daughter but whose tentative sympathy when everything goes wrong is unbearable.

The story shows us where Harmony is coming from, her hopes, desires and dream; the insidious spiral she's got into, having to scrimp and save to make minimal payments on all the upgrades she's taken out; and the spinning of her life into chaos when things go wrong, when she loses that control. The contracts Harmony's signed allow for punitive measures, withdrawing the benefits previously offered and then going further. In a nightmare of calls to customer service, attempts to scrape together money and to keep up appearances, we have a world that is so familiar, so close to our own - the knife-edge between keeping everything in the air and seeing those plates begin to smash on the ground. North's vision of just how this technology might be used and abused is deeply plausible because it's rotes in just how people currently suffer when they lose a grip, even for a moment on their lives.

As I've come to expect from this author, Sweet Harmony doesn't just deliver a scary and convincing near future but also glorious, on-point writing. North describes 'skin the colour of city sunset' and 'The smell after rain, when all things come back to life' or in hospital 'old men shuffling the lock-kneed two-step to their ends. Here's Harmony's friend Shelly. 'Her brilliant autumn-blonde hair flowed and curled around her face like frozen candlelight; her skin glowed like tungsten...' which is gorgeously vivid - but is then soured when we're informed that Shelly is so beautiful that 'all the boys assumed she was a tart, that there was no other reason to be that sensational save for the benefit of men...' In a world where you can constantly be upgraded, the neediness of those men, their desire to control women, assumes ever newer and crueller forms.

The upgrades have other insidious effects and throughout the book, North is picking away at how insidious it all is, how as well as the financial burden, life becomes a pretence with things we might take for granted (getting drunk) becoming just paid for options once one's life and responses are owned by a private corporation. There's a safety net where basic functions and health are still maintained but it's an affectless, joyless world lacking vibrancy and sensuality.

That's the world which, in some form, Harmony spends most of this book trying to escape from because in the end this isn't a book primarily about nightmare tech but about one life and the roots of her discontent and ruinous debt habit are human roots, in family, society and place. And in the poisonous relationships and work pattens she finds herself. It's all about choices, choices made in circumstances we can't control and which are therefore hardly choices at all - are they?

Strongly recommended.

An absolutely outstanding and unique story. I love when I find one of those. Fantastic. Highly recommended xx

This has to be the most gut punching story I've read this year.

I am in awe of the authors talent, there is so much content packed into this story.

The characters and their relationships are so perfectly written. The standout, true to life relationship for me is the one between Harmony and her mother.

If you replace nano tech with clothes, beauty treatments / products, gambling, general shopping - everyone one of us either is Harmony or knows a Harmony and that is what makes the story so heart wrenching.

The nano tech described can only be a few years away from being a reality and that is both exciting and terrifying.

Overall there isn't a single wasted word and the whole thing just hangs together wonderfully.

spoiler alert ** This is one of those books that's a little bit frightening,because it seems like it could be reality in the not too distant future.
How instead of working on ourselves,we just pay for apps and upgrades to do the work for us.
Then,it's only a matter of time until it's out of control.
Harmony could be any of us,swept along with it all,and left bereft when it's all taken away.
I felt for her... and her mounting debt.
Believable,and coming all too soon I believe.
I'm going to spend a good while thinking what choices I would have made in her situation.