Anna is studying to be an opera singer in a cutthroat conservatory, full of better off, highly competitive students. She is living in London without enough money and she is floundering. Then she meets Max who is older, rich and attracted to her. But is he serious about her? This engaging novel about power imbalances in relationships, struggling to be creative without money or a supportive family, shows us someone with a real talent but also a dangerously fragile sense of self. Perceptive and well observed.

Anna is a student opera singer - she meets Max, a wealthy, older “City” type and the book charts her life and their relationship.
I had a strange start to reading this book. I just couldn’t get into it - in fact I started it 3 times before I “got” it. I just wasn’t ready for another tortured, young artist trying to find herself BUT the book is so much more than that!
It looks at power and control - as well as family, friendships, career, sex and money. The writing is so sharp and I came to love the flawed, unreliable narrator, Anna. The dynamics of her toxic relationship with Max were interesting and the details of life as an aspiring opera singer were fascinating.
So, after a shaky start on my part, I really enjoyed it!
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp

An aspiring opera singer Anna attends a Conservatory in London and embarks on a relationship with Max who is older and working in finance in the City. The ups and downs of their relationship are set against a backdrop of her fledgling career, part time job as a jazz singer, friendships and the family she has left behind.

This book was a real page turner and I was fascinated by the opera world and Anna's background, her mother in particular. I felt extremely stressed by her relationship with Max and found lots of it to be uncomfortable reading, toxic, controlling etc. I guess that's how well the author brought Anna's world to life - the writing was excellent and the characters so real. Not sure about the ending but no spoilers!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp
Pub Date 3rd Feb 2022
Anna struggles to afford life in London as she trains to be a singer. During the day, she vies to succeed against her course mates with their discreet but inexhaustible streams of cultural capital and money. In the evening, she sings jazz at a bar in the City to make ends meet.
There, she meets Max, a financier fourteen years older than her. Throughout one winter, Anna’s intoxication oscillates between her hard-won moments on stage, where she can zip herself into the skin of her characters, and nights spent with Max in his glass-walled flat overlooking the City.
But Anna’s fledgling career demands her undivided attention, and increasingly – whether he necessarily wills it or not – so does Max.
A Very Nice Girl is a good debut novel. However, it did not blow me away. It was not a unique plot; however, I feel it had promise. I will be interested in seeing what Imogen releases next.
I want to thank NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and the author Imogen Crisp for a pre-publication copy to review.

I was very intrigued by the synopsis when I saw it on NetGalley, I suspect, in hindsight that I am not the target reader demographic.

This was a solid debut from a new author, and there were parts of it that I liked. At its heart, 'A Very Nice Girl' is a coming-of-age tale, with a (somewhat) unreliable narrator. Said narrator, Anna, a young opera singer who engages in a toxic relationship with an older, often manipulative man, though she is far from the titular 'very nice girl' either. Contrary to how it was billed, I didn't find it particularly groundbreaking. The prose kept me engaged, although there were deliberate punctuation quirks that I personally didn't care for. I can see why these might put other readers off, but I was able to get through the book fine (if a bit annoyed).

My biggest issue was that Anna frustrated me. A lot. I couldn't really connect with her as a character, and her complaints about how expensive it was to be a student (in London of all places) seemed naive at best. I did enjoy her friendship with Laurie, but her relationship with Max just left me exhausted. Ultimately, I didn't particularly care about any of the characters or feel any resolution after reading it, which, while I guess that's how real life is, I would have preferred a much more solid conclusion to the story. I think this is one of those books that you're either going to love or be frustrated with, and I was, unfortunately, in the latter.

I still think the author shows promise and perhaps this just wasn't for me.

*Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to leave an honest review*

I will upload my review on Amazon UK once the book is published. Many thanks again

I really liked the premise of this book however the formatting of the kindle edition made it so hard to read! There were random letters and numbers scattered throughout the text as well as weird page breaks which made it so hard to read and was really frustrating.
The story was SO good though and I loved it, it made me push through the really bad formatting and thankfully was a story I loved! Perfect for all the millennial and messy girl fiction lovers

This is a book is a coming of age story, targeted for a quite young audience, let's say around early/mid 20s.

The prose is really beautiful and sharp, with short chapter that keeps the attention alive. I've found this to be a very good, witty debut novel, with deep exploration into contemporary subjects and toxic relationships.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read it in the last 48 hours, including a midnight binge when I couldn’t sleep. I spoke last week about my love for specificity in the books I read, and this book continues that trend. This is being marketed as a coming of age story in the vein of Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperation & Daisy Le Farge’s Paul, both books I loved but fail to see many similarities except for the gender of the author and their protagonists. There is something to be said about the way all these stories are lumped together as one, as if troubling relationships are only plot points to dissect.

Yes, there’s a toxic not entirely consensual relationship that makes up part of this story, which is where the comparisons are being drawn, however this focuses less so on the two characters in the relationship and more on the growing of a young woman into herself, learning what it is she can and cannot except, and the differences between theoretical boundaries, and their actualisation. Alongside the troublesome relationship, this story focuses on Opera singing. Yes, really.

The main character is an elite program for Opera training on a scholarship, reckoning with imposter syndrome and classism whilst deciding if pursuing the arts is really a career anyway. Crimp herself spent some time training in a similar environment, and it felt like (as someone who has sat through a couple of operas but never sung a note) like the attention to detail proved the author's knowledge of the subject. I loved its conversations on commitment to training at an elite level, the work life balance when your voice box is your future career and the pompous nature of youth trying to find their way.

If the ‘target audience’ for this book is twenty-something women then I’m definitely not it but enjoyed this book very much and found it better than several others in the same mould (and there are many). Effective mix of cynicism, despair and vulnerability - I highlighted many passages for the depth of insight. I thought there was more nuance to the character of Max and it felt like tensions/questions were being set up leading somewhere more interesting than the actual end point. Otherwise it’d have been a 5* read.

This story is a twist on the “college novel” type of plot, as we have a young girl coming to town to study at the conservatory. Insecurity, feeling disadvantaged, wrong relationships, some humour here and there but the writing style is not always brilliant. I felt as if I had read it before, which is not great at 300+ pages. Ir is a genre with an established plot that certainly appeals to many readers younger than myself. I found her different from Rooney as her social criticism is more profound, and I would recommend it to readers who recently loved Louise Nealon and Megan Nolan.

Thanks to the publisher for an arc of thisd book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A very accomplished debut with a sympathetic and likable protagonist.
I've scored it three not four because I think I'm a bit old for the target market, younger me would have given it five!

Fiercely intoxicating, this novel is the debut not to miss in 2022. Imogen Crimp will not disappoint in this beautiful and heartbreaking tale.

A brilliant read with tender and nuanced writing, and short chapters that kept me engaged.

Struggling artist Anna is supported by an older man, so interestingly explored so you never knew whether or not to trust him, I was always waiting for him to do something awful.. but I loved how the narrative was more focused on Annas story, and how she emerged from this all consuming relationship & lifestyle into a much better situation..

Comparable to another ARC i've recently read - Cleopatra & Frankenstein by Coco Mellors if you are looking for similar reads.

A very nice girl follows Anna who is starting out as an opera singer, and Max, who she is seeing - somewhat emotionally unavailable. There were definite Sally Rooney vibes and this is a great debut novel, however I don't think the writing style was for me. I felt it lacked character depth (I also find this with Sally Rooney books) but understand why other readers would probably argue it is very profound and deep.


Whilst I may not be the targer audience - thank you for the the chance to read this ARC! :~)

Anna is at the conservatory in London training to be an opera singer . Lots of descriptions of the auditions, rehearsals and the other worldly life of a student in this establishment. The lack of money, paying for tuition and auditions, her life in London in unusual flat shares and in jobs needed to keep body and soul together. Then she meets a man and everything changes.
It took me a while to get used to the writing style in this book. At times the self absorption of the conservatory students and the expectations of the culture drag on a little too long. The relationships between Anna and others are told from her perspective and full of her soul searching. As the book progressed, I got to like it better and the events of her life kept my interest more. About half way I was thinking of giving this book 3 stars, by the end I think it is worth 4 . Not an easy read, but worth carrying on with.
Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

It took me a while to get into this. However, having persevered, the story repaid itself many times over. So many contemporary issues were explored, so well. Friendship, family , relationships, career, aspirations and love. Anna as the central character was hugely empathetic. Max, we were never too sure about but always wanted him to be a hero. Many insights into the early career of an opera singer only served to enlighten us to the hard work each performer had to undertake just to get onto the first rung. A very good read.

A Very Nice Girl offers an exquisitely nuanced exploration of love, sex, friendship, money and power seen through the prism of the relationship between Anna, a young woman training to be an opera singer, and Max, an older and wealthier man she meets in a bar one night.

Comparisons with Sally Rooney are both inevitable and justified - there is a similarly intense focus on the power dynamics within young adults' relationships and many of the characters belong to a similarly artistic-intellectual milieu - but there is plenty that is original and refreshing in Crimp's writing. In particular, I loved Imogen Crimp's evocation of the opera world in all its exhilaration and brutality, which she knows first-hand having trained at a conservatoire herself. Anna must navigate a culture which immediately pounces on any display of weakness, and where her voice must withstand ever-present physical and psychological threats. I was totally caught up in Anna's determination to succeed and her growing sense of fragility and panic, and the descriptions of her singing where some of the best passages in the book. Crimp is also very good on what it means to be an outsider in a setting like this: Anna comes from a much more provincial background than most of the other singers on her course, and receives limited sympathy for the financial struggles she faces in a profession where she often needs to pay rather than be paid to work.

The central relationship between Anna and Max had the potential to become clichéd but remains complex and unpredictable. Max remains an enigmatic figure, both to Anna and to us, but we see his effect on Anna as she tries to work out what she wants from this relationship and what Max is offering her. Anna's other relationships - especially with her flatmate Laurie and with her parents - are also very well drawn; Laurie is a particularly brilliant creation, delightful and infuriating in equal parts.

The narrative voice is highly engaging - at times wry and detached, and elsewhere intimate and confessional. I found the novel gripping but also very cleverly structured, as Anna is often in denial about her relationship with Max and has to revisit memories to make sense of them.

Overall, this is a superb debut novel. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!

Sadly not as good a read as I was hoping. The storyline of a 20 something in London and the emotionally unavailable man she falls for, along with the requisite opinionated girly flat mates, felt slightly like a story that’s been done to death. There were some insights that I did relate to, and the question marks it raised about who actually was at fault and how do people find themselves in toxic relationships- and remove themselves from those situations - felt relevant. There were also a few nice laughs along the way.

However, the writing was a bit stagnant for me, I never felt like I really got to the heart of the characters as I was being told about them, rather than hearing their actual voices. Perhaps just a style that doesn’t work for me and others will enjoy it more.

<i>A Very Nice Girl</i> by Imogen Crimp is an accomplished debut about not being very confident in who you are and where you stand, and what happens when you enter into a relationship where the balance of power is not skewed in your favor.

Anna is a young, aspiring opera singer at a conservatory in London. She never seems to have enough money nor talent or grit to make it on the cutthroat opera scene, and she scrapes by by singing jazz on the side at a bar with a swanky clientele, while renting a dank room from a stingy couple together with a friend. One night she meets Max, an older man who works in investment banking (or some other interchangeable job in finance) and an instant attraction forms. As Anna enters into what is a relationship in all but name, the reader can only stand by and watch as she, little by little, begins to lose herself.

<i>A Very Nice Girl</i> is a well-written and clever novel that explores the potent combination of people pleasing and power-imbalances in relationships, whose effects are only made worse when combined with the searching for self that often happens in your 20s. The anxiety, lack of control, loss of self and direction that Anna experiences is so convincingly portrayed, I found myself dragged into the same spiral of feelings. I, for one, wasn't bothered by the lack of quotation marks and found that the narration, which becomes increasingly unreliable, has a real drive and tension to it that propels the book forward every time you pick it up. I was also quite impressed by the use of opera throughout the novel, as it is never simply used as a background to make Anna more interesting or "different". Instead, it runs parallell to Anna's story and is skilfully employed to complement and portray the emotions that Anna experiences.

The problem, perhaps, is that I didn't always feel like picking it up, mainly because I don't particularly feel drawn to reading about the world it portrays: a white working class woman aspiring to traditional forms of success in white, affluent circles of London. I also found that though Crimp offers some really sharp and witty analysis of middle-class, privileged Londonders, it sometimes felt like she chose the easiest victims - millennial women - to poke fun at, and didn't give their persective and politics any credibility. These background characters were not treated with the nuance that they might have deserved and where there simply for comic relief.

With that said, I thought the topic was relatively well handled. I particularly enjoyed how Max remains a grey character through-out. It would have been so easy to decide to portray him as a chauvanistic, manipulating and controlling mid-life crisis cliché, but instead, it's not always clear that he is to blame. This makes for a subtle exploration of how women are conditioned to be pleasing and obliging. It is clear that though Anna suffers from the consequences of the relationship, she is happy to make choices geered towards pleasing and meeting Max's needs, instead of her own, partly because she hasn't figured those out yet. But it is also clear that this gradually causes her to lose her self, and perhaps also her self-worth.

I found the ending a bit rushed and perhaps unrealistic but I can't say too much about that without spoiling it. On the whole, however, this was a very strong novel with some subtle and some not-so-subtle commentary on class, gaslighting, feminism, and identity.

I'd highly recommend this book if you enjoy reading about these topics in the novel format, if you don't mind an unlikeable and frustrating main character, and if you want a nuanced depiction of power and relationships which doesn't offer any clear answers.

(This review is based on the ARC and might not fully reflect the finished manuscript.)

I really wanted to love this but there was something I didn't enjoy so much, though I can't put my finger on what, possibly the innocence (or my perceived innocence) of the main character. She's likeable and there are some relatable moments though. Also there was something off about the writing style but that's totally a personal preference, perhaps a bit repetitive and rambly. Overall I did enjoy it, it's an insight into a different type of relationship dynamic and life and the consequences that that kind of relationship leads to, but for me was let down by the points above.