Despite some deep dark themes, I really enjoyed this book. Very well written, honest, wry and quite balanced memoir. Yes there was anger and some crazy stuff, but there was also common sense and warmth. Quite fascinating and quite the journey. Thank you for sharing and I highly recommend.

A wonderful book! I've never read such a warm, witty, self pitying, angry, tolerant, reasoned, crazy, human, humane memoir of scraping the depths and aiming for redemption before, and I doubt I will again
thank you to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book

This was a brilliant memoir about the struggles of addiction and religion. I really enjoyed this, it was just the right balance of comedic and serious which I think is great for books with such heavy topics.

This is a very well-written, easy to read memoir, despite the hard-hitting topics discussed in this book. It was extremely engaging and insightful and I would definitely recommend this book.

Fans of addiction memoirs will find a lot to enjoy here, as will those who like memoirs of people losing their religion - there seems to have been a recent trend for both of these types of memoir, so it seemed about time for someone to combine the two. I found this very readable, but finished Original Sins: An extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction feeling like it didn't really bring anything new to the table. The non-linear, fragmentary structure didn't entirely work for me either. I think many readers will love this, but it just left me cold.

A very powerful and gripping story that is difficult to read in some parts but worth sticking with. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Original Sins is a painfully comic and brave memoir about faith, loss and addiction.

Part of what makes Original Sins so engaging from the off (the prologue sees our protagonist, aged 30, frantically mainlining heroin at a funeral, not just any funeral mind, but that of a friend whose cause of death was an overdose) is how often Hill lets us see him in raw turmoil.

Hill bucks the trend of literary nonfiction by avoiding any digressions on waffling about other famous addicts or “studies have shown” commentary: instead, Hill, now almost 40, puts us in his headspace as he lived it, his 100% real-time torment.

Hill is a master of language, artfully structuring chapters built from engrossing scenes sustained primarily by realistic dialogue. He encounters so many predicaments (trying to blag his way through customs in Israel while carrying methadone!) that had Original Sins not been subtitled A Memoir; you might take it for fiction. Although if it were invented, you’d be raising an eyebrow at the plot.

How he first came to use heroin almost beggars belief; ditto that the savvy girlfriend he shares a flat with in London could leave him alone with her suitcase full of cash savings seems either obtusely nieve or ridiculous in the extreme.

Interestingly Hill doesn’t play a blame game, even if he suggests he was fundamentally scarred by his parents, themselves poisonously unhappy with each other. His father is a baptist minister whose fluency in the pulpit is both a source of childhood pride and then teenage scorn as he deflects his son’s increasingly insistent theological quizzing. Still more painful is the boy’s early sense of disappointing his mother, perpetually distressed by her four kids as she obsessively monitors their behaviour and how it may be viewed by the congregation, the family budget, as well as fretting over the ever-present threat of Satan.

While the topic of the unsettled childhood and addiction is hardly new, Hill’s memoir is well constructed and captures the nature of recovery as an ever-continuing journey.

A wonderful book! I've never read such a warm, witty, self pitying, angry, tolerant, reasoned, crazy, human, humane memoir of scraping the depths and aiming for redemption before, and I doubt I will again
thank you to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book

Original Sins by Matt Rowland Hill is a memoir about drug addiction and the experience of a religious upbringing.

This is an exceptionally well-written and heartfelt memoir. A very readable book written with humour and compassion by a likeable author. No holds barred.

An extraordinarily brave memoir about faith, loss and addiction. I will definitely recommend reading this one! It was well worth reading! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!

This was a really good read, it was poignant, thought provoking and raw. It was an indepth look at some hard hitting issues and I love that the author didn't shy away from the things that he felt needed to be spoken about. A great read.

Funny, rather disjointed book. Main themes: addiction, families, religion and masturbation! Addiction strand well told, less engaged with the others.

The author did an amazing job writing this book. Quite poignant, funny and deep in parts. It questions what we are made of and and how to accept it. The author goes through a journey of faith and addiction to spiral down deep only to emerge out of it with the answer to these questions above. Amazing book!