I love being given the opportunity to update our school library which is a unique space for both senior students and staff to access high quality literature. This is definitely a must-buy. It kept me absolutely gripped from cover to cover and is exactly the kind of read that just flies off the shelves. It has exactly the right combination of credible characters and a compelling plot thatI just could not put down. This is a great read that I couldn't stop thinking about and it made for a hugely satisfying read. I'm definitely going to order a copy and think it will immediately become a popular addition to our fiction shelves. 10/10 would absolutely recommend.

The trials and tribulations of a young woman trying to make it in journalism without going broke or mad. (Good luck with that.)

Careering is well written and a terrifying insight into the realities of life in your 20s, but i generally found the book slightly too negative for me personally.

A really interesting premise - fast and easy to read, likeable characters and fun story.
Careering - 3 stars,

Careering by Daisy Buchanan is an up-to-the-minute dissection of what it means to be a woman in the modern workplace. Imogen is a 26-year-old intern with a sex blog on the side trying to secure a paid job at a magazine where she is managed by Harri, who is in her late 40s and has recently been passed over for a promotion as editor-in-chief. Although the parts about Imogen were more interesting than Harri’s perspective, Careering is a sharply observed morality tale about unhealthy work/life balance. The ending is cheesy but with a necessary message that a person’s sense of self-worth shouldn’t be dependent on the outward appearance of their career “success”. If this book makes someone think twice about pursuing a career in the creative industries then it’s probably done its job (excuse the pun…)

careering (verb)
1. working endlessly for a job you used to love and now resent entirely
2. knowing that a little of your soul is inextricably tied to the work you do
3. moving in a way that feels out of control

There's a fine line between on the right track and coming off the rails.

Hilariously funny, filled with heart and whit.
I love Daisy and everything she writes.

I really enjoyed Careering and liked the way the author explored the toxic relationships people have with their jobs.
It’s easily readable and very relatable (hello imposter syndrome) I liked how Daisy explored the workplace through two different generations, from affluent 50 something Harri to skint intern Imogen. It was interesting how different their lives were but how similar their thoughts could be!

If you enjoy contemporary fiction with a focus on the workplace in the magazine industry, this one is for you! I can’t wait to read Insatiable!!

Daisy Buchanan is quickly becoming one of my must read authors.
This is distinctly less dirty than Insatiable, with a focus on women finding their way in their careers and work but is every bit as fascinating and readable. It's also, in true Daisy style, laugh out loud funny.

This book often changed from third to first person POV and back again, which kind of disrupted the flow for me. I loved Daisy's non fiction book about her and her sisters but this one just didn't hit as well for me.

Brilliant, funny and brutal.
This feels sort of like The Devil wlWears Prada but for real slightly imperfect women, not glossy Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.

I can totally relate with the idea of having a toxic relationship with your job and this book which captured the experiences of two women at different stages of their careers spoke to me so much. Harri and Imogen just seem so real and like so many women I know or wish I knew. I 100% recommend this.

This was not my kind of book. The cover page led me a little astray, and I thought I'd be getting something different.
The story is quite good in its way, but the style and the end result are not something I usually enjoy. The blurb does not talk about the kind of writing that our lead protagonist does and that her voice is of discovering her sex life and related adventures.
Harri has almost the same page time, but her voice does not come over as strong as that of Imogen. Harri's family life and her realizations were touching to read and felt real. She is older and reaching a fork in the road. Imogen was realistic too, but she was too unfocused to be appreciated in this format.
Harri is the boss who runs a tight ship. She thinks she is all set to get the big promotion when they tell her to take a new direction. It seems like sabotage from the very beginning, which is why mentioning it here does not seem to be much of a spoiler.
Imogen had a horrid family life, and she is drifting apart from her only good friend. Her emotional situation is pretty stark, and it comes through quite vividly.
This is one of those books where I would say the writing was good and served its purpose, but I am not its intended audience.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

This is my first time reading Daisy Buchanan's work and to be honest I'm impressed with the plot and overall theme. Career for an experienced hire, Harri, and a broke struggling freshly graduated Imogen, is really different. The multiple POVs really work here as I can see the two different mindsets when the povs changed.

Really really fresh and would find and read more Daisy's work!

Amazingly witty and poignant book. My highlighter was so busy because nearly every other sentence was something I identified with. I did warm to Imogen faster than Harri, but they were both such well-rounded and interesting characters. I’m so excited to read more of Daisy Buchanan’s work in the future; she’s quickly becoming a favourite!

Old and new media collide in a way everyone who's worked at a magazine in the past 20 years will recognise.

This was a fun novel following two women - Harri, in her late forties, an accomplished editor; and Imogen, in her late twenties, a sex blogger and intern at the same magazine Harri works at. They both end up in a new online publication, Harri as the editor-in-chief, tied by budgets and rules from "above", and Imogen trying to make a name for herself to finally secure a permanent job. The book follows them at the same place but at different stages in their career, as one navigates being a widow, wanting to do her own thing and pursuing her own ambitions, while the other dreams of getting started, succeeding, and sees her friendships implode.
It was fun... reasonably well-written, including the sex scenes supposedly written by Imogen, but ultimately it won't be a very memorable book for me - too similar to many other light fun books about work, getting settled, being envious and navigating life as a millenial.

Careering by Daisy Buchanan was a really fun read, which I’m sure plenty of 20 and 30-something year old women particularly will really identify with.

Witty, funny and pretty sexy in parts, there’s plenty of NSFW content in this workplace-set contemporary novel. I really enjoyed learning more about the world of media (and being very glad that it wasn’t my chosen career path!).

Imogen and Harri are very different characters but, I think, equally likeable and I definitely found myself hoping everything would work out for them in the end.

With thanks to Sphere for gifting me a digital copy to review.

This made me incredibly anxious while reading (which I’m finding is far too easy to do). Imogen is a sex blogger who has done a series of unpaid internships and juggling waitressing jobs while trying to make it in the world of media. After landing a job as a writer for a new start-up she thinks this is finally it, she’s now successful and has everything she’s ever wanted. What follows is an examination on the stress and grind of the working world. Reading of Imogen’s experiences is utterly shocking, I was honestly waiting for the moment that she would collapse from the amount of stress that she was under. Her entire physical and emotion wellbeing suffers due to the pressures of work, and I don’t think that is a rare occurrence in today’s world.

On the other hand we have Harriet, Imogen’s boss. From the outside anyone would think that Harriet has a perfect life with a wonderful glamourous career. However, she’s under another set of pressures trying to achieve insurmountable goals. With her life devoted to work, we soon learn that work has become a coping mechanism for her grief. As her bosses begin to add on more and more demands, Harriet starts to morph into a woman she doesn’t recognise. I felt that I connected more with Imogen’s story, possibly due to my age and having been in situations where I’ve had to struggle to get my dream job.

Thankfully the humour and sharp wit cuts through the heavier sections, and honestly there are some incredibly funny bits that left me laughing in hysterics. This book really questions how hard do people work for the dream job, especially when the dream doesn’t turn out to be as good as they thought. As well we look at how much people are willing to sacrifice for that job. Imogen sacrifices her wellbeing and her sense of self. This was a book that hit too close to home at times, but one that is very apt for many people working towards their dream jobs.

On the surface, this is a light read but the more I think about it, Careering is quite a hard hitting book about how much people are expected to give up for their ideal creative job, and how much they are used as replaceable labour without a second thought. Its similar to 'Insatiable' in that regard, but in other ways is a very different book.
In Careering, Imogen is utterly desperate to break into female magazine journalism, with a job working at Panache as her ultimate end goal. She works every internship and free placement that she can find to try and get a foot in the door, all the while also working in pubs and other low paid work. She also finds time to write her own blog about sexual experiences and desires, and it is the blog that actually helps her get a paid role on a new publication, aimed at 'The Girl'.
Full time magazine work isn't the dream that Imogen expected it to be, she is still negotiating constant demands for fresh ideas from her boss Harri. other wannabe journalists are snipping at her heels, she is handling toxic friendships in the office, the impact that the continual stress has on her self-worth, her personal relationships, her friendships and much more. You can tell that the book has come from some hard won experience for the author, and I am glad that she has made it out of the other side.
Thanks for writing it

Imogen Mounce is doing her dream job, after previously working various odd jobs with minimum wages in order to get the privilege of working for free as a content writer at a prestigious magazine in London. At the age of 26, she is finally able to earn money for herself by doing something that she loves: writing. The first piece that she wrote for her dream job, which happens to be about a threesome that she once had, landed high ad revenue for the web media that hires her and catapulted her career to the point that he got interviewed on telly with high profile people. Yet the more she got invested in her career and produced more achievements, the more she feels the emptiness of meeting the company’s demands. But Imogen later asks herself, “Who is stupid enough to get themselves fired from their dream job? Funny dream, though. Being stressed, anxious and frightened all the time. Dreams aren’t supposed to cause chest pains. Dreams shouldn’t make you sick.”

At the same time, Harriet Kemp, Imogen’s immediate boss, finds herself baffled after not being picked as the editor-in-chief for the magazine to which she has been dedicating herself in the past decade. Instead of getting a new designation as the editor-in-chief, she was ‘exiled’ to lead a new web media, The Know, that the company just started. Imogen’s initial writing piece about the threesome brings much attention and traffic to the web. With the initial success, requests started to come from companies looking for more partnerships. At the same time, the company’s managers also imposed high demands on her to increase revenue and set up new targets to topple the initial success of The Know. Harrie unconsciously stops becoming herself, imposing impossible targets herself on Imogen and other staff that she manages. She asks herself, “Still, feelings aren’t facts, are they?”

Careering is a story about millennials. The long commute hours, the restlessness of settling down without fulfilling ambitious career goals while still being in the 20s, and the transformation of career from something to earn wages into something that defines our public persona. Imogen finds herself wanting to be successful by getting hired by the prestigious magazine which she considers her ‘dream job’. The reality is not as easy as what the media portrays of her. She has to face the difficulties of dealing with a difficult superior, Harrie, who herself turns difficult due to the impossible targets imposed by her superior. The dual points of view of both Imogen and Harrie in this story help to portray the complexities of modern life and it shows the wisdom that sometimes the problems don’t begin with ourselves.

For a while, Imogen confused success with self-esteem. She finds herself questioning her values as a person, and unconsciously I also found myself asking the very same question that Imogen asked: what defines me as an individual? Sometimes we unconsciously set it in default mode to begin explaining ourselves by first highlighting our professional endeavours (for those already working), or our educational backgrounds (for university students). Career might have become something that defines us, although there have also been some alternative movements such as the passion economy, as advocated by Adam Davidson in his book The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century. Can we be, for example, social media influencers or YouTubers and publish content while still earning our incomes and fulfilling our passions as individuals? Seeing Imogen’s case, it seems like a case study advocating the passion economy to move from big industry to individualised platforms with smaller but loyal followers as the recipe for success. But how do we define success itself in our increasingly polarised world? Some might say, the number of followers, content engagement, and other such terms that did not exist in the previous decade. I find myself asking this very question along the way of reading it.

Is careering still the way to go for millennials? Daisy Buchanan in her witty and emotional story might be telling us that career is not something that defines us as a person. Each person has their own values and is worthy of love and respect regardless of what they do in life. I probably like the way Dutch people answer with their hobbies first when asked “What are you up to?” instead of highlighting career achievements. And I think this story would be a remedy, as written on the dedication page, for every person who asked if they should quit their job.

My high expectations did a disservice to this book, as it very tragically failed to meet them. I think if you're a fan of this trend of millennial girlboss trying to make it in a rough world when the city and capitalism and modernity are eating you up one bite at a time and crushing your soul little by little, this does deliver all of the beats you'd expect from that kind of story. Why I thought it'd give me so much more than that? Who's to say. Alas, deliver it did not. I can see many people enjoying this book, which is valid, but I wanted to love it and that I did not.