Harsh, harrowing but hopeful, this searingly honest account of motherhood through alcoholism & illness took me right into Yaya & Tommy's struggle for the life they deserve. Five stars, poetically & bravely written with no sugar. Raw & needs to be read.

Being Tommy's mother is too much for Sonya. Too much love, too much fear, too much longing for the cool wine she gulps from the bottle each night. Because Sonya is burning the fish fingers, and driving too fast, and swimming too far from the shore, and Tommy's life is in her hands. Once there was the thrill of a London stage, a glowing acting career, fast cars, handsome men. But now there are blackouts and bare cupboards, and her estranged father showing up uninvited.

This book is so emotion filled, you genuinely feel the pain and hurt on each page. You feel enraged and yet sad at the same time for Sonya. The book is handled very well, be warned it is not a light read and may be traumatic or a trigger for some people.

A moving account of one woman’s journey through depression and trauma from losing her mother at a young age to being a mother herself. Through the eyes of busy bodies and bystanders Sonya is reckless, neglects herself and is unstable, lacking the moral duty to care for her child. However Sonya loves her son and wants him to feel free from the shackles of the establishment. Under the influence of alcohol Sonya has no awareness of what affect she is having on the people who care about her and her son. It all comes to a head and the recovery is forced to begin, will she relapse? will her son grow up without her? Can she mend her relationships? What will life have in store next?
This book is a view of personal addiction and damage with the hope of changing. Gripping story.
Thank you NetGalley for the copy of the book.

Sonya doesn’t function well these days, and her four-year-old son Tommy isn’t old enough yet to safely fend for himself or the family rescue dog Herbie. At best days are a haze, while others are blank for Sonya. When the story begins, Sonya is still spiralling down, but she isn’t far from rock bottom. The three of them, live on a sparse diet of fish fingers and beans, with Tommy being small for his age and underweight. Sonya gets a wake-up call one day when she realises she has stepped over the line.


Sonya is a complex character whose mind you live in for most of the book. As a reader, you see the world how she sees it, paranoid and impulsive. Sonya is determined to give her son a good childhood but with ideas that make you hold your breath. Tommy is such a sweet child, and like any four-year-old does what his mummy tells him because she is his mum, faithful and obedient like Herbie.

Like so many addicts, Sonya is facing addiction and bringing a child up by herself, as her family have turned their backs on her. It is a gripping story, harrowing and raw that isn’t just seen by people on the outside looking in, but from Sonya, as she sees her life from both sides of the bottle.


Written with heart, this is an exceptional story that may help people see how an addict’s life is from the inside out. Addiction isn’t a choice, it happens to so many people from all walks of life. I hope this story helps people understand a little more.


I wish to thank Net Galley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.

Tommy loves his mother Sonya - or Yaya, as he calls her - their rescue dog, Herbie and their new orange kitten, Marmie. Sonya loves them too, but she also loves the 'white witch,' - the cool bottles of Pinot Grigio that she either buys or shoplifts from the supermarket and downs in front of the TV while trying, and failing, to look after her little family and reliving her glory days as an actress, where her febrile temperament found a more meaningful outlet - without it, she is struggling to complete the most menial tasks and provide any sense of boundaries for her son. With a sense of danger reminiscent of 'Room,' this isn't a book for the fainthearted, and even those used to stronger stuff may struggle with scenes of animal and child neglect. However, Sonya is a captivating character and staying with her bruised, brilliant voice will reap rewards, as she works to turn her life around. If you liked Shuggie Bain, or were lucky enough to catch the 2015 rehab drama People, Places, Things from the National Theatre, this is definitely for you - and a great addition to the growing canon of meaningful literature about women and addiction.

Having recently read and reviewed last year's Booker Prize winner, Shuggie Bain, I thought I might have had my fill of books about drunk mothers but Lisa Harding's novel, 'Bright Burning Things' took a rather different approach to the issues. Admittedly, it's a bit less tricky to handle alcoholism if you're not so poor that you're robbing the electricity meter, but life's not easy for a once-beautiful, once-talented ex-actress who is down on her uppers. Sonya is a single mother living with her 4-year-old son Tommy and their giant shaggy dog, Herbie. When times are good, it's lots of fun; feeding the ducks and swimming in the sea in their underwear. But when they're not so good, Sonya's just longing to get home to ease the pain and self-doubt of motherhood with the fairy that inhabits the white wine bottles in the fridge.

After some cringe-inducing events in a local pizza takeaway, or in the house of a nosy neighbour, it's clear that an intervention needs to be made and Sonya's (far from perfect) father steps in to send her to a 3 month rehab with the nuns and to 'take care' of Tommy and Herbie - in that way where care is far from caring.

If Sonya can get herself back together, there's a chance to win back her family - but when it's an unfair fight between the fairy in the bottle and the love in her heart, it's not at all clear which way things will go. Throw in a good-looking but rather 'superior' therapist who's playing well outside the rules, and Sonya will be fighting for more than just her survival.

It's good. Very good. The start was a bit on the slow side but it soon got going. The author resisted the temptation to shovel on the overly mortifying events of life as a drunk. She didn't need to put Sonya twitching in a gutter with her skirt disarrayed to make the point that things had gone way too far (so thankfully we avoided that sort of exploitation of the weak). She gave Sonya a fair crack at putting herself back together and winning back those she cared for, as well as introducing a hefty dose of post-rehab peril to keep us guessing.

I read an uncorrected proof - thank you to Netgalley and the publishers - so I can't be sure about some of the odd layout things in my ebook. I do suspect though that it was a conscious 'tool' to give everybody who wasn't in Sonya's inner circle a name that didn't start with a capital. It was odd - but seemed to be consistently odd. Having just read another book in which the author consistently referred to her abuser by his full name at all times, I wondered if this was another way of signalling 'outsiderness' or something similar.

There are hints of Marion Keyes' 'Rachel's Holiday' in this book - but it doesn't have the humour of that much earlier rehab tale. That's probably a good thing. Getting off any addiction isn't a place for too much humour. Instead, we have a touching tale of a mother's love against her own self=doubt, and an interesting examination of the tools and techniques of rehab.

Highly recommended.

I got Bright Burning Things by Lisa Harding from NetGalley for a Fair and Honest review

Bright Burning thing tells the story of single mother Sonya and her 4 year old son who live in Ireland. Spending time going to the beach with their dog herbie, there is only one major problem in their lives and that is Sonya is an Alcoholic.

Bright Burning Things, is one of the best stories I have read in a while, as it tells the story of a single parent who is an alcoholic and her struggles in dealing with the issues raised by this.

While Sonya is judged in the story by individual characters but never by the writer Lisa Harding, in fact as the story is mainly told through the perspective of the young mother, it is written with kindness and sympathy.

This gives you an emotional connection, but allows the reader to get into the mind of sonya. To show how alcohol takes over her life as a whole but very intensely at the moments when all she can think of is having a drink.

There were a number of other people in the story from a nosey neighbour, a man who helps her when she is buying pizza’s to her father and stepmother who all have an effect on sonya throughout the novel.

Sonya’s family consists of Tommy, a wonderful boy who seems to take his unregulated life in his stride, as well as herbie the loveable dog. Who seems to know there are times when Tommy needs protecting.

All in all this was an emotional story which is an emotional story and at times i think will be difficult for some readers to read, however i would Highly recommend Bright Burning Things buy Lisa Harding being added to your to be read pile.

Bright Burning Things by Lisa Harding.
This novel is a little bit special. It deals with alcoholism, child & animal neglect, grief and love. It is not an easy read as Sonya is on a course of self destruction brought on from never getting over the death of her mother and her almost obsession with her son Tommy but it is a beautiful, harrowing and hopeful book.

Sonya is a single mum to Tommy, but it is all too much for her so she finds her own kind of solace. She finds that solace in the wine that she drinks straight from the bottle each night. She is trying so hard, too hard at times, she burns the fish fingers, drives too fast, swims too far out, forgets to pay for all of her shopping.
She yearns for her younger days, the thrill of a London stage, a glowing acting career, fast cars, handsome men. But now there are blackouts and bare cupboards, she sometimes forgets that Tommy’s life is in her hands.
Then her estranged father shows up uninvited and there’s also Mrs O’Malley spying from across the road. They encourage her to turn her life around, she knows that if she doesn’t, she could lose Tommy forever.

This is written in the first person and we are taken on Sonya’s rollercoaster of emotions, sometimes scarily high, other times really low. This is a really good, edge of the seat, just one more page read and so well written.

There are a lot of trigger points and topical issues within this book.

A well deserved 5 stars from me.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an advance review copy of Bright burning things in return for an honest review.

Addiction and more specifically alcoholism is the subject matter for Lisa Harding’s second novel Bright Burning Things. Sonya, a once aspiring actress is living in Dublin with her four year old son Tommy and rescue dog Herbie, estranged from her father and dealing with unresolved issues arising from the death of her mother when she was a young girl. Barely functioning on a day to day level, with no obvious means of financial or emotional support you are automatically blinded by the love Sonya feels for her little boy but theirs is a chaotic, haphazard lifestyle, governed by poverty and of course Sonya’s first and foremost love of the demon drink. There’s only the beady, judgemental eyes of elderly neighbour Mrs O’Malley watching over these two, ready and willing to intervene should Sonya’s behaviour spiral even further out of control which as you soon realise can only be a matter of time. This novel is a candid and heart wrenching account of Sonya’s battle with her addiction, her struggle through rehabilitation towards sobriety and her fight to retain custody of Tommy. Every emotion from anger to sadness to helplessness and frustration is invoked as you inhabit Sonya and Tommy’s dysfunctional and isolated world.

Sonya, Tommy and beloved rescue dog Herbie form a tight unit of three, excluding any outsiders who would love to pry into their lives and cast judgement upon this mother’s parenting style. As they roam the beaches, swim in the sea and take some hair raising rides through their locality, you wonder for how long Sonya can keep the up pretence that all is well. Subsisting on a diet of ice cream, orange food including a lot of burnt fish fingers and pizza their lifestyle is bewildering and frightening yet normal from the perspective of Tommy who knows no different. Perhaps this is one of the most saddening aspects of this novel. Even at his tender age you can see the coping mechanisms Tommy adopts to deal with the environment he’s in, the ways he tries to shield himself from images of his mother he’d rather not see, the bad fairy’s presence all too familiar. No child should find themselves in a situation where the parenting roles are reversed and although their relationship is far from normal theres no denying the bond that exists between them. You don’t need to visualise what a rollercoaster of a ride it must be living with an alcoholic veering from varying degrees of intoxication to complete blackout since the author does that for you with prose that is illuminating and shocking. She affords you a glimpse into the rather hallucinatory universe Sonya enters every time she opens a bottle, glugging its contents, transforming herself into a scary bad fairy, unleashing the demons within her. The power and pull of the drink is undeniable, a force that renders Sonya helpless. There’s a horrifying clarity to these scenes depicting the impact of Sonya’s drinking on her relationship with Tommy from which Sonya is immune until matters are finally taken out of her hands. If I’m honest this is a novel that has the power to reduce you to a blubbering mess and leave you as broken as both mother and son so be warned!

I felt I could never quite grasp the true character of Sonya with her identity hidden by the cloak of alcoholism; she’s as slippery as an eel. As a former actress she plays her parts well (up to a point!) in terms of a functioning parent and one that intends to remain sober and be the kind of mother to her son that society dictates but the road to sobriety is a never ending one. I wondered how long it would take for the mask to slip even as she enters a new stage in her life as a recovering alcoholic, presumably her triggers for this disease never properly dealt with. Her relationship with her father is a complex one and one that definitely needs addressing going forwards.

I didn’t find this an easy read; it’s harrowing and it’s unfiltered and as a reader you don’t know who to feel more sorry for. Sonya in the throes of her addiction which threatens to destroy the only part of her life that’s worth living for or Tommy who has no choice but to witness his own mother’s self destruction?
I’ve recently read another brilliant novel about addiction called King of Rabbits which focuses more on the perspective of the child living within the same kind of chaotic environment that little Tommy is brought up in so for me it was interesting to read a fictional account of addiction written from the addict’s perspective. Sonya’s struggles fighting her battle with the drink in conjunction with her parenting of Tommy is fundamental to the mother/son relationship dynamic and one of the most striking aspects of this novel. Does love conquer all? Not if alcohol remains the number one priority, as the author is at pains to point out, this complex disease has a life and stranglehold all of its own over anyone who falls within its clutches. Ultimately this is a storyline that has no neat ending. My thanks as always to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read.

If you have ever wanted to even imagine what fighting addition must be like, I think this book is it. If you are a family member or close friend of someone who has gone through this or is going through it, it will probably be too close to home. Powerful stuff, but very depressing.

Sonya is an actress who gave up work to become a full time mum, and life is difficult. When it all gets too much, it takes outside interference to make Sonya realise that she needs help.

This is a powerful story and very well told. I don’t think that to say I enjoyed the book is the right way of explaining how I felt about it. It is certainly thought provoking and does make one vacillate throughout. I was quite worn out towards the end!

The ending was quite abrupt and did leave the reader questioning what happened to them all.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc.

Sonya is hurtling towards self destruction as her addiction to alcohol impacts not only her life but that of her adored 4 year old son Tommy and beloved dog Herbie. The story is written through Sonya's eyes and the style of writing reflects the chaos going on within her mind..
As events come to a head, Sonya winds up in rehab. Initially she is reluctant to engage but gradually she succombs to a voyage of self discovery. She learns how to silence her inner demons and confront the reality of her life.
The reader cannot help but will Sonya on, through her reconciliation with Tommy as she learns to navigate daily life, parenthood and relationships through sober eyes.
An honest and interesting account of the journey through addiction.

Being Tommy's mother is too much for Sonya.

Too much love, too much fear, too much longing for the cool wine she gulps from the bottle each night. Because Sonya is burning the fish fingers, and driving too fast, and swimming too far from the shore, and Tommy's life is in her hands.

Once there was the thrill of a London stage, a glowing acting career, fast cars, handsome men. But now there are blackouts and bare cupboards, and her estranged father showing up uninvited. There is Mrs O'Malley spying from across the road. There is the risk of losing Tommy - forever.

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Perhaps I'm being unfair in just giving this book 2 stars, it's beautifully written and the story flows along easily but I just didn't enjoy it. Too many relationship issues unresolved - her father, Mrs O'Malley, David her "therapist"- whilst Sonya continues on her path to either destruction (and loss of her son) or sobriety.

Her earlier life as an actress was referenced but not really explored, the same with her estrangement from her father and the death of her mother.

Overall I felt unsatisfied.

I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Bright Burning Things is the story of a single mother who is battling addiction and is trying to take back control of her life. I found it a quick but difficult read as it was very emotional and I feel extremely true to life.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC.

Bright Burning Things is a novel about a young mum battling addiction issues. She is a single mother to a young son and when she is threatened that he's going to be taken away from her, she seeks help at a residential facility. I've seen some recommendations comparing Bright Burning Things to other bestsellers and I think that maybe set my expectations a little too high. This is an ok read, and it didn't take me long to get through it. It's quite a sad story but I didn't find that it really gripped my attention.

A constellation of :bright, burning moments

Sonya’s life is not rosy: she is a single mother on benefits, abandoned by the father of her child, and an actress who is not acting anymore. She has a history of abusive relationships, a judgmental, absent father, a nasty stepmother and now prying neighbours to deal with. She also lives for her child, with whom she has the most tender relationship. But the fact that she drowns her fear and insecurities in alcohol makes her dangerous and leads her to rehab. Once out, abusive people have not changed, her son has been estranged from her, and it is not easy to find a valid belief system to sustain sobriety. That’s when the real challenge begins.

I don’t know if I can do justice to Sonya’s wonderful, captivating voice. Her gripping account, her emotional turmoil, her rage and her way to see things ring true and authentic; her self-scrutiny honest, devoid of self-indulgence, and often brimming with humour. Some moments in the narration are heartbreaking, other sheer tenderness and filled with a beautiful sense of wonder: the relationship with her son and shaggy dog is one of the most endearing things I have read about recently. A real page-turner for me, a constellation of “bright, burning” moments.

I am grateful to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sonya is ex actress struggling with an alcohol addiction whilst looking after her 4 year old son, Tommy. It's not an easy read as we watch her spiral out of control forgetting to feed or dress her son as her focus is her next drink, but felt it portrayed the chaotic lifestyle well of someone with an addiction.

Sonya epitomizes the out of work actress with a few highlights in her early career, ricocheting through life believing she could have been a star given a chance. Her spiraling moods and addictive behavior make compulsive reading, not least in your desire for her child to reach a point of safety, with (preferably) or without her.
Following her hoped for recovery in a clinic she seems to almost get a handle on things but then falls back on acting her way through instead of really seeking the truth about herself. Not much is really revealed of her past until the battle to get her child back out of the system and into her home, when it comes to light that her problems are rooted at least part in family.
I found her extremely difficult to like although the glimpses of her love for her child make her easier to empathize with, as does her struggle to get the creeps out of her life and forge forward to a better future.

This was certainly a thought-provoking read in the style of a stream of consciousness and first-person narrative, which deals with mental instability in a profound way.

Unfortunately, I was given a pdf file, which doesn't read well on a Kindle, and there were typos and errors, however, I'm told this version is a rough cut of the final product, but still, it was a powerful story.

Sonya suffers from addiction and mental issues that appear to be rooted in her past, although that remains a mystery. Those who surround her are not likeable characters, except for Tommy, who is also a sympathetic character. Themes of insanity, love, betrayal, jealousy, addiction, and many more, give this story much depth and Sonya's 'voice' is a mix of crazy, desperation and confusion - I couldn't help but feel sorry for her life, whilst despising those who used and abused her. David was creepy in the extreme.

Her relationships were certainly complex but her love for her son was in no doubt - each on the fringes of what is deemed 'normal', whatever that is.

This was a disturbing and maddening read but, I imagine, will forever stay in my mind.

Recommended, but not an easy read because of the subject matter.