What a delightful read!

Welcome to Your Life begins when Serena walks out on her 10-year relationship on the morning of her wedding, realising they weren't right any more. So begins a new chapter in her life, of navigating dating (and dating apps), London living, a new job and being single - with the aid of two excellent friends (in fact, this was one of those rare books where I'd gladly spend a night at the pub with all three main ladies).

The premise of the books might be dates, but really this is as much about Serena's relationship with herself (and also, to some extent, London). It's also so refreshing to have not one but two fat/non-traditionally-hot lead characters rocking it and loving life. More of this please.

A great escapist and addictive read that was a lot of fun to read.

I absolutely loved ''Welcome to Your Life." I read it in one glorious gulp on NYD 2022 and it provided the perfect antidote to all of the 'New Year, New You' nonsense we're bombarded with at this time of year. It's a fantastic, feel good story about learning to love yourself, the power of friendship (and girly nights in with wine, and exercising because it makes you feel good, and creating something from scratch because you can, and dating hot cool men because fat people are hella attractive!) It's fun, it's sexy and you'll definitely walk away from it with a spring in your step. A truly fantastic entry to the RomCom literary scene.

I've really enjoyed Bethany's YA novels so was delighted that she'd moved into the adult arena!

I loved this book - you see the emerging confidence of a young woman who slowly is beginning to realise that she's the catch! I love reading about fat heroines, especially when the end of the story doesn't involve them losing a few stone and then miraculously 'everyone' loves them.

Bravo for a fat protagonist with a homemade leopard print coat! Let us see more of them!

Really brilliant and enjoyable read from an author I love. It feels like a really seamless transition to adult romance from YA and I love having positive fat girl representation. Better than all the books by the posh blonde horse girls of Twitter.

I was intrigued to read this because of its author, whose podcast I listen to and I’m a huge fan of her and her taste in literature. I’m afraid the book though didn’t like up to my expectations.

The story - our protagonist wakes up on the morning of her wedding day and decides to not get married. She detours on route to her wedding, and her finance, with whom she’s had a relationship for ten years is heartbroken. Conveniently her fun, black and bisexual or lesbian (I’m not sure which, but kudos for ticking the diversity boxes 🙄) friend, who’s also quite rich needs a flatmate, so our protagonist moves in with her in their Upper Holloway flat. Said friend also encourages her to sign up to dating apps, and the premise is 52 weeks, 52 dates.

My issues:
- I wasn’t sure why our protagonist decided to end her relationship with her finance. She woke up one morning and just decided to not get married, and her motivation for this wasn’t properly explained. It’s said in the blurb that she didn’t want to be in a pity relationship where the guy is with her because he feels sorry for her. I doubt any person would stay in a relationship because they feel sorry for the other person, especially our finance, who’s described as being a handsome fella. Surely, people are too selfish to be so altruistic. Well, at least in my experience. I’ve never come across a person who’s sadly stayed in a relationship because they felt sorry for the other person.
- Our protagonist says she hasn’t been single since her teens, as she was 18/19 when she met her boyfriend, and then they had a decade long relationship. So why the hurry to get into another relationship? Why not stay single and figure yourself out first? Especially as the reason for her refusal to get wed wasn’t explained properly.
- Self-esteem issues. It’s said the protagonist wasn’t a plus-size when she was young. It was gradually over the years she put weight on, but her boyfriend who became gorgeous and works out, didn’t have an issue with it. Surely they had sex during their relationship? So why suddenly all these insecurities? I mean here’s this stunning man in a relationship with you, even if he feels sorry for you, when he could’ve been sleeping with skinnier, young things. Isn’t that a sign he genuinely likes you? I couldn’t sympathise with this woman who seemed to have it all but chucked it away for no good reason 🤦🏻‍♀️
- Our protagonist judges other men, swiping left on them for superficial reasons then tries to portray that men won’t like cause she’s a plus-size. Honey, you’re a kettle that’s black 😏

There’s nothing empowering about this read. It follows a white, privileged woman, who’s narcissistic, and her dating woes. But the differing factor is that our protagonist is plus-sized. That aside, this was a vapid, but easy to fly through read. Like Emily in Paris. Trashy fun.

Thanks to the publisher for my eARC of this book. I really enjoyed this book. I got a lot from it and loved the characters, and especially the journey Serena went on. The take home message was great and I adored how much female friendship featured.

This read was enjoyable, with a satisfying ending, however I did find it slightly fat-phobic as there was a real focus on “my weight is a barrier” and Serena never really deals with this demon, which made it slightly repetitive. As a rom-com read however, there was plenty of hijinks and pitfalls to keep me reading and I really did want her to find a happy ever after

Full disclose, I am an enormous fan of Bethany’s and we follow each other on Twitter so I like to think we’re also best friends?

Romance novels are not my thing at all, but as soon as I heard Bethany was writing her first adult novel I knew I had to read it, regardless of genre.

Welcome to Your Life has an excellent premise - Serena is about to marry her boyfriend of 10 years when on the day of her wedding she realises it might be a mistake, and on her way to her wedding stops her taxi and finds herself jilting her Fiancè at the altar. What a blurb!

Welcome to your life is incredibly fun, exciting and genuinely gripping. I started it at 6.30pm on a Friday night, pyjamas on, glass of wine in hand, and emerged 3 hours later having hardly moved, with 85% of the book read.

It’s such a fun, joyful read which celebrates life and friendship, whilst also examining life and dating as an fat woman. I absolutely loved it.

Friends, it won't surprise you at all that I loved Bethany Rutter's forthcoming adult debut, publishing March 2022. I'm a big fan of her YA novels and her podcast with Alice Slater, #whatpageareyouon. Welcome to Your Life starts with Serena waking up on her wedding day and just knowing she isn't doing the right thing. After calling it off, she has to completely start over and moves to London for a new job and decided to turn her life around, dating for the first time in her adult life and trying to be more like her new friends.

I was afraid that the book would be too sad considering I wanted a light read, but I actually flew through it in one day when I was travelling. It takes a while to get going, probably because you're trying to catch up on Serena's life before this big decision to make sense of it. It certainly would have been an easier decision to paint her ex as abusive or a unfaithful, rather than the harder but very real feeling belief that he was someone she used to love but knew she couldn't marry. However, it flows seamlessly once she makes this decision.

I loved reading about Serena's new life so much, and her interior monologue as the book goes in is joyful and a pleasure to read. I was delighted when she found more confidence in herself, in dating but more generally in terms of body confidence and not hiding away or apologising for her fat body and instead embracing colour and fun clothes and things that make her body feel good. I personally was less concerned with the framing device of a date a week, which becomes less important as the book goes on, but I was just having such a good time with Serena at that point that I didn't care what she did, once I was allowed to keep reading along with her. I loved her friends Nicole and Lola and just wanted to keep reading about the three of them and their fab lives forever.

It's strange to read a perfect summer read in November, but I know this is book about falling in love with your life and yourself above all else, is one that people will want to pack in their suitcases next year!

A joy of a book to read, with characters you'll be rooting for and want to go drinking with. 'Welcome to Your Life' starts with Serena calling off her wedding at the last possible second, terrified that she's destined for a lifetime of 'meh', - there's nothing wrong with Alistair but he doesn't make her heart sing like it should. So instead of being a newly wed, she moves to London with an old friend and sets about finding who she is, curves and all. But is Alistair the best she could hope to attract? What has she done?
A funny, romantic, entertaining tale of accepting and embracing who you are and how fantastic life can be

It’s supposed to be the happiest day of Serena’s life - she’s marrying her partner of ten years, but at the last minute, she jumps ship, leaving Alistair at the altar. It’s an auspicious start to a rom-com, one we’re used to seeing from the jiltee’s perspective. But it’s a testament to the strength and warmth of Rutter’s writing that we don’t feel anything but sympathy for Serena. Shaken but sure she’s done the right thing, and leaving chaos in her wake, she dusts herself off, and moves to London, living with her hilarious and glamamours friend Lola and trying to date around - with extremely varied results.

I adored this book; it’s clever, full of heart and with an excellent message of self-love and resilience - Bethany Rutter excels at this kind of writing, as anyone who has read her earlier YA novels can attest to. Serena is a fantastic character, charming and self-effacing with an inner core of vulnerability that makes the reader immediately fall for her. She’s deeply relatable, too - I laughed out loud at her planning to eat 12 Babybels on an especially shit day. Her relationship with her weight is one that’s addressed with kindness and intelligence, showing this vulnerability without seeing Serena succumb to dieting or worse. She’s a cool, fat babe, and Welcome To Your Life is effectively her journey to realising that. With the help of another cool, fat babe who I want to be my best friend in real life. The friendships Serena builds up are nothing but kind, supportive and loving, which strikes an interesting balance with Serena’s well-meaning but slightly hapless family.

And the dates! Oh, the dates. I adored these - Serena is set a challenge of going on a date a week for a year, and she dates some supremely dreadful men. The men’s rights activist stood out to me, as did the comedian - these, you get the sense, are dates that could very much happen in the real world, and they are equal parts cringy and hilarious. However, in the midpoint of the book, things change for the better and we meet a bunch of hotter men. Rutter does a great job of creating a spark ebwteen these guys and her protagonist, and while the sex scenes are rare enough in this book, they are really well written, which is to say, very fire emoji.

This is an absolute delight of a book, funny and warm all the way through with a gorgeous core message and a band of wonderful characters. It tackles some tricky topics with a deftness and lightness that’s really commendable. I can’t wait to pre-order this one!

After leaving her groom on the wedding day, Serena is starting over. As she meets new friends and new men along the way, what will happen for her in the first year of her new life?

Great read

An absolutely charming book about losing yourself, finding yourself and learning to love yourself. Also much love for a fat protagonist. An excellent first adult novel from the brilliant YA author Bethany Rutter.

After ending a ten year relationship on her wedding day, this book is about a woman who decides to go on a date with a different man every week for a year. It's a bit predictable but a pleasant enough read and its nice to have a plus sized character as the romantic lead.

This is one of my favourite books I've read this year. It was exactly what I needed, I read it so quickly and loved every minute of it. So so good.

Welcome to Your Life or the Fat Girls Guide to Dating is about Serena who runs out on her supposedly perfect fiancée on the wedding day. What a thing to do, Even Serena can see how mental that is. After the shit hits the fan a very obliging and convenient friend hooks her up with a place to live and job in the big smoke and Serena sets about rebuilding her life and seeing if something better really is out there or if she chucked away her one chance at happiness. Fat girls should be allowed happiness too!
This was a pretty pleasant read and overall well balanced. The body positivity stuff wasn’t too preachy but it was all about loving oneself before one can love another and knowing you deserve that love. It was very on message which got slightly boring by the end as nothing much seemed to be happening plot wise. And there was bit of #metoo thrown in for good measure.

Having followed Bethany on social media for years and very much enjoying her take on the world, I knew I would enjoy her first foray into adult fiction.

The ‘52 dates in 52 weeks’ tag line doesn’t really do this book justice; it’s so much more than this mission statement suggests. Serena’s mindset evolves throughout the book and I think the reader is exposed to to new possibilities too, with a few stereotypes being smashed up.

Well done Bethany, I had a lovely time with this!

A quick and easy read! Loved the fact it was read in a sitting! I think the characters make this story along with the setting. Loved the fact that she ran away, and started her life again!

Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC of this book. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

Serena just goes to show you can be a plus size protagonist and not overtly fatphobic (I’m looking at one very specific YA novel here btw), and that she can still grow and emerge, confident and radiant at the end. The internalised fatphobia is with us all (that scene in the f-ing lift!!)

This is a story of a year of self care, of self discovery, of learning self worth, and it is DELIGHTFUL.

It starts off being typical 'protagonist sets herself a challenge' trope, but develops into so much more. The sub plots (CW toxic workplace / coercive behaviour), deepen the main plot, rather than detracts from it - it makes the story real, or rather, more believable - single women going on dates without safety concerns made this a little less believable in some instances (perhaps a me issue, not a book issue) - but this subplot allowed some reality to slip though. .

Bethany somehow crawled into my brain and wrote two amazing YA novels that teenage me needed. She has now, confidently, crawled into my brain and written the book that 37 year old desperately needed.

Thank you.

(Also, please let there be a sequel, please and thank you)

I wasn't sure what to expect from this as I hadn't read any of the author's YA books. However, she gives really great Twitter (including her own cute line of home made ceramic earrings) so I thought I'd give this a go, On the morning of her wedding, plus-size beauty Serena finds herself in a Harvester with a glass of wine and an ice-cream sundae. She doesn't know why but she can't go ahead with her wedding to Alastair. After a strong beginning, the next chapters were a bit repetitive with Serena repeatedly justifying her decision and saying she felt guilty for pages and pages. Thankfully, when she gets a new job copywriting for a jewellery business near Old Street, the narrative really picked up and I fell for Serena, her new friend Nicole and old mate Lola who help her forge her new life, have a lot of no-strings sex and make fierce plus-size dresses. I'd love to hang out with these women! Sadly they're not real, so I might buy some of Bethany's earrings in the meantime.