This is a story that is told over a five year period. The story is told from dual perspectives in alternating chapters. It is very well written and atmospheric

I follow a lot of people on Instagram who have made a move to the countryside, after living in cities, and I identify with them in as much as we moved from suburbia to a small village and our lives are very different. We have rescue chickens and have had to get used to things like remembering to order heating oil and logs, and we have a pile of sandbags round the side of the house in case of flooding. But although we don’t have Deliveroo, we still get Tesco deliveries! And we can walk to the pub! So it’s not like we’re off grid or living like Grizzly Adams!

I do look at some of these people on Instagram and wonder what the reality is actually like. I doubt they hop out of bed laughing and smiling when it’s pouring with rain outside when they’ve got to muck out whatever animals they have. And I know from experience that four dogs and rain equals washing the floor all the time, and washing dog blankets all the time, so that we don’t get lost in a mountain of dog hair. So I’m sure their quaint little cottages and their rambling farmhouses aren’t spick and span all the time.

So I was really hoping that this novel following three families as they live their new life on a farm would be realistic and not the countryside seen through rose-tinted glasses. And it doesn’t shy away from the dirt and the smells and the economic truths of a life like this. The realities of life – and death – are here, seen through the eyes of Amy and Lan, as they tackle the already difficult path from being innocent and carefree seven-year-olds to twelve-year-olds with all the pressures of social media and secondary school.

And the relationships between the adults are fraught too, with the pressures of making money without ‘selling out’, and the irritations that come with living and working with the same people day in and day out.

The farm itself feels almost like a character, and the descriptions of the land, the seasons, the animals are beautifully done. The realities of life for farmers are also touched upon, and issues such as the ethics of meat eating, and the raising of livestock are dealt with honestly too, with Lan feeling remorse and confusion – he loves Vita the turkey, but he also loves Christmas dinner. He loves the cute little piglets, that free range in the forests and the friendly goats. But money needs to be made, and food put on the table.

Amy and Lan live with vibrancy, joy, and deep emotions, the way that only children can. As adults reading this novel, we know before the children do what is happening with their parents, which increases our sympathy for Amy and Lan, and we care about what will happen when reality hits. And when it does, goodness, there is such emotion – I actually cried at the end of this novel, it is so well written, so poignant.

Heartfelt, warm, genuine, funny and sad, this was one of those novels that I didn’t want to end.

This is a coming of age novel, narrated by Amy and Lan. They and their families reside on a communal farm.

Three families had decided to give up city living and have rented a farm in the countryside. It's idyllic looking after their pigs, goats, chickens, dogs, cats and an orphaned cow.

Unfortunately when the world of the grown ups impact on the children's, their lives will never be the same again.

I couldn't put this beautifully written book down, by the end of this I felt like I knew Amy and Lan and wanted to be a part of their wonderful farm.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Amy and Lan are two 7 year olds living on a rural commune. They narrate this story from their perspective and describe their lives and families. Life is hard and they are given the freedom of the farm with few boundaries.
I have enjoyed all Sadie Jones’s books so far, but did struggle with this one. It has a gentle pace but I didn’t invest in the characters as I usually do with her books.

This is a beauty of a book!
Narrated over a five year span from the point of two children, Amy and Lan.
They’re two of the children at Frith Farm, a small-holding bought by three families as an attempt to escape from the stresses of urban life and live as self-sufficiently as possible.
Amy is daughter of Adam and Harriet. Lan is son of Gail and step-son of Jim. The other family are The Hodges, plus Finbar (a loner who is bi-polar) and Em (a newly divorced friend of the adults).
The children at Frith live an essentially joyous and carefree life. It’s clear that the ‘project’ benefits them more than the adults. That is, until the adults start to muck things up with their messy relationships.
I think this book is a perfect illustration of the Urbanites view of ‘living their best lives’ in the country. For the most part, country living does afford a large part of what the Urbanites are seeking to escape. That is, when they don’t try and mould their ideas of rural life too far away from the natural way of things.
This is best illustrated by the guests to the holiday cottage. To them, everything is ‘just wonderful’ until their rose-tinted view of the country is smeared by the realities of farming and nature. They want their children to experience such a life, but in micro-managed, proscribed doses. The children at Frith Farm are just ‘too feral’ for them.
And that’s why Amy and Lan are such great characters. They are essentially feral and free and will ultimately learn more about life living at Frith than they would at any school.
They learn so much about the basics of life (the good and the bad) - birth, survival and death through the animals and life on the farm.
But they also learn that adult human relationships are seriously flawed. And from their viewpoint, quite stupid in certain ways.
Read this book! It’s far more complex than just being a ‘coming of age’ story.

I really enjoyed this heart-rending book. The story was told so sensitively and with such pathos, I couldn’t bear to come to the end. Outstanding.

Quite an underwhelming story of a childhood in the countryside that I found quite hard to get into. Lovely language but just not gripping enough to get through.

I was really looking forward to reading Amy and Lan after having read and really enjoyed Sadie Jones’ previous book The Snakes. I now realise that I have more books by the author to read (a 2023 challenge, perhaps?!), because if Amy and Lan and The Snakes are anything to go by, I’ll love them.

Amy and Lan have what appears to be the perfect childhood. They live on a small farm with their families and friends, and are striving for self-sufficiency. The children are left to run free, playing with axes, climbing on haystacks, and playing in woodland. There’s the odd bit of helping on the farm as well. It’s idyllic, and I loved reading about it.

The only “Spanners” in the works are their parents. The problem with living and working in such close proximity is that old saying “familiarity breeds contempt”. Well, in this case, it breeds contempt, dissatisfaction and marital strife. The children probably come off worse when their parents start to argue. And their lives begin to change.

This is such a touching, funny, emotional book - Amy and Lan’s relationship especially. But relationships change, especially when little girls and boys grow up, and Lan describes these changes so well.

This doesn’t read like a children’s book, even thought the main characters are children. They are in an adults world that impacts on them to a life-changing extent.

Highly recommended.

I've so enjoyed a few of this authors previous books, finding her last one, The Snakes, absolutely mesmerising, so when I saw this new one was coming out I was really looking forward to it. I nearly missed it as I didn't see much of a lead up to it. However this one wasn't for me. I will admit I haven't finished it and left it this long to review thinking it was wrong book wrong time and I would pick it up again but that just hasn't happened. I found it difficult to connect much with any of the characters , seemed to jump around a lot at the beginning, so I couldn't settle with the storyline. Couldn't quite get what the story was really about and just found it all to slow. Therefore With the lack of character connection I just couldn't keep engaged enough to carry on to the end. A shame but this one just wasn't for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Sadie Jones does an amazing job of evoking the feeling of childhood in this novel. The kind of childhood Amy and Lan have seems to be pretty much the dream, at least until the latter events of the novel. And the underlying adult plot was done so well, exactly how children would experience that kind of event. It's also a love letter to childhood friendship and how intense and all-encompassing close friendships are at that age. I really enjoyed it and will definitely look out for Jones' books in the future.

A delightful book told through the eyes of two children from different families who grow up together. The setting is a ramshackle farm that their families share with other families and individuals, and as the story develops, so do the tensions between families, as inevitably they would. Amy and Lan have an idyllic childhood, running free and doing all the things that used to be part of the lives of children, but in our risk averse society no longer are. The children’s voices were occasionally a little difficult to differentiate, but in a way this made them more convincing, as they were brought up in such a similar manner, it was not surprising that they too would be similar. The characters are very well drawn, adults and children, and the settings are a real reflection of farming life. Were it not for the occasional confusion, this would have been a 5* read - a delightful and moving book nonetheless.

Amy and Lan are best friends who live on a small holding in the country. Their families clubbed together to leave the rat race and try self-sufficiency, rebuilding cottages and barns and raising goats and chickens. It is an idyllic life for the two, living as they please, not over-supervised and loving life. However as Amy and Lan grow older they realise that there are prices to pay.
Jones writes really well and this is no exception. Underneath the bucolic idyll there are hints of what is to come. Written from the perspective of the children the inevitable outcome is flagged up and its impact is handled sensitively and realistically. A mature and strong novel.

A charming story of families coming together to buy and run a farm, written from the perspective of two children from two connected families. The perceptiveness of the children as they observe the adult lives around them is well written and feels authentic but I had difficulty distinguishing between the two voices at times.

With thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an opportunity to read and review.

I was expecting much more than this book gave me. The. Lumber was so tempting but in reality it was quite an ordinary story without much of the entertainment I was expecting.

Gorgeous book. Clever and witty portrait of a certain class of Brits in a certain phase of the 21st century, delightfully told through the (often savage, always perceptive) eyes of two young children growing up on a farm. I felt totally immersed in their world, riding the highs and lows with them, and found the kids' POV extremely skilfully told - the way family loyalties, in-jokes, traditions, habits, emotions, are felt within a 7 year old's mind and how they can't always process these feelings and the ways they can come out instead. It really took me back in a very authentic way! The ending was unexpectedly heart-wrenching but at the same time, made an evocative point about stability, change, and growing up. Really delightful, highly recommended. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read.

Amy Connell and Lan Honey live on Frith Farm, an idyllic retreat, where their childhood days play out, their halcyon days. The days, months and years creep quickly past, and what seemed idyllic is slowly revealed to be cracked, with the outside world slowly encroaching. As this fine novel progresses, so do the changes.

Sadie Jones perfectly captures the voice of childhood in this novel. Though both Amy and Lan's voices seem similar - one would expect this from two people whose lives are so closely entwined. The supporting cast of characters are also finely drawn.

I enjoyed this novel very much. Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

Amy and Lan - Sadie Jones

Amy and Lan is a coming of age story about two friends who live on a homestead in the UK. Amy and Lans parents both decided to leave city life and be as self-sufficient as possible. The short novel is narrated by both characters, allowing us to see their world from two slightly different perspectives. We also follow them throughout their childhood into young adult hood, until one of them has to leave the farm.

I really enjoyed the ease of this book, it was just a really lovely story about coming of age but in a different setting to most coming of age books. Although not from a self-sufficient farm, I also grew up in the countryside and spent most of my childhood running around in fields and through the forest instead of using technology. They were definitely some of my happiest days, and living in London now the countryside is definitely something I miss. I also love how the storyline didn't shy away from some more complex topics that occur in family life, especially in a family that combines 4 different groups of people.

I'd definitely recommend this one for a light hearted coming of age tale that either introduces you to childhood in the countryside or allows you to reminsice.

Thanks @netgalley @that_sadie_jones and @vintagebooks for the proof copy

Go grab yourself a copy! Out now!!

Amy and Lan, 7 years old, are having an idyllic childhood on a communal farm deep in the countryside, where they are left mainly to their own devices while the adults get on with their own increasingly fraught lives until everything inevitably finally falls apart. It’s quite a mundane and unoriginal story and a fairly routine coming-of-age narrative. We see everything from the children’s perspective and of course their comprehension is that of children, so although we get hints of what is going on with the grown-ups we never get the adults’ perspective which I found distanced me from their troubles. They all seemed to be types rather than fully rounded characters. Farm life is vividly and realistically portrayed and Jones avoids romanticising country life but it all felt inconsequential to me, and certainly not “fabulously funny and heart-rendingly sad” as the Guardian describes the novel. It’s a pleasant enough read but left me underwhelmed and certainly not as enchanted as many other reviewers have been.

How do you know when you’ve really loved a book? You can’t bear to be away from it, you want to read it at every opportunity and when you’re finished, you’re bereft.

I sat for ages dwelling on Amy & Lan when I finished it, sort of marinating in it, not wanting to move past it. It was an unexpected gem, not one I’d seen a lot of hype about (or any reviews of) but I’m so glad I read it.

Amy & Lan is a story told through the eyes of two children whose families move to Frith, a rural farm in the English countryside which they set up as a commune of sorts with a third family and a couple of stragglers.

Amy and Lan narrate the story in alternate chapters, capturing perfectly the cut and thrust of farm life and the experimental chaos of former city dwellers living off the fat of the land.

The ecstasy of outdoor life, the freedom and innocence of childhood and the canny awareness of children as to what adults are feeling and getting up to, is captured so perfectly, as is the easy companionship between the two friends, who are two halves of the same whole to the point where the voices almost overlap as you’re reading.

The story itself is quite gripping and very subtly told by the children. The maelstrom of the commune is depicted vividly and an uneasy feeling over the direction things are taking is hard to shake off as you’re reading.

Amy & Lan is evocative and gentle and beguiling and sad and I loved everything about it. I see it being a contender for prizes (Sadie Jones has previously been shortlisted for the Orange Prize (now the WP) for The Outcast, and won the Costa Book Award for it - I only realised when I finished this one that I’ve read it). I see that Amy & Lan has also been selected as a Guardian and Evening Standard Summer Read for 2022.

A book hangover has already set in, it gave me that special feeling. Bravo Sadie Jones. 5/5⭐️

This is an unusual, highly original book. It tells the story, over a period of time of a group of friends who move into a shared, collective group of properties, through the eyes and ears of two young children, Amy and Lan. They describe events, perceptions and relationships in an insightful way. It is gripping, emotional and highly addictive. Sadie Jones never fails to delight