Amy and Lan is a novel about two friends as they grow up on the farm their families share, facing the realities of not only rural life, but also adult actions. Amy and Lan live at Frith, a rural farm that their parents, who are best friends, own, and are slowly trying to learn how to make it a proper farm. Mostly free to do what they want, Amy and Lan live wildly, except when they have to go to school, as the oldest on the children at Frith. But lingering secrets and betrayal on the part of the adults threatens their rural life as the friends get older.

This book combines a simple plotline, which could almost be from a children's book without the swearing, with a slightly more gritty undertone of the realities of farm life, especially in terms of money and making things work. Told from Amy and Lan's perspective, alternating, across a number of years as they grow up from children to young teenagers, a lot of what it there is unsaid or hinted towards, with the children's perspectives mostly focused on what impacts them or major drama. There's something gripping in the way they grow to understand more, but also live shielded from a lot of the world, though the focus isn't really on the 'look at these weird children who don't know the modern world', but instead on how much of a paradise the farm is to them, and their families' connected way of life.

The narrative is mostly driven by farm life, childhood drama, and the bubbling undercurrent of the adults' lives, and because of this, I was surprised to be so drawn into the book. I liked the way that neither Amy nor Lan saw the repercussions of a lot of the things that happened, shielded from some of the harshness truths that you know must've occurred, so they both keep an image of Frith that mostly stays intact until later in the book. However, the children's perspectives and general narrative did mean that I finished the book slightly confused that it wasn't a children's book with a lot of swearing and occasional things that wouldn't be included for younger readers.

I enjoyed Amy and Lan and I found the ending very sad, especially in the way it depicts how children are subjected to adult actions and decisions in ways that can tear their world apart, even when it is best for the adults. The simplicity of the narrative made it surprisingly engaging, though from the blurb I expected the adult drama to perhaps be more complex.

Loved this read, very powerful.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

I’ve never read any books by Sadie Jones before but I will be looking to do so after reading this one.
The story spans a period of time at the communal smallholding of Frith, where 3 families and some single people set down roots and try and make a going concern of the land and the livestock. Their ideas about how to do this differ, but disagreements are rarely harsh ones and from the outside it all looks idyllic, if hard work.
However, human nature being what it is, two of the adults aren’t happy and seek solace in each other. What sets this apart from a romantic potboiler of a family saga is the way the events unfold through the eyes of two of the children, Amy and Lan, The betrayal round the corner takes its time to be revealed and for most of the book the reader is treated to their musings on the daily workings of the smallholding - what they think of the other children, the nature of farming in the area as seen from Boring Colin, BoneEyes et al. It’s charming and wry but never pulls away from the reality of animal husbandry and the sheer hard graft needed.
The end pans out into a wider view of what it’s like to be a child at the mercy of adult decisions and is very poignant.

This book had a brutal rawness and realness to it and was told in a really gentle and beautiful way. It was well written with a good storyline and well devloped and heartbreakingly real characters. I really enjoyed this book.

A gentle telling of the harsh realities of a country life and the equally harsh realities of the adult world, filtered through the lens of young children. Yet in some ways that makes it all the more realistic?, more brutal? as you see straight to the core impact of everyday life and decisions.

This is a storey of three families who move to a farm together. The story is told by Lan and Amy from when they are seven years old. A child's perspective is so different and innocent from an adults. The three families create separate accommodations but the land is used as a commune.
Time passes and Lan and Amy's views change as they grow, however they choose to see things the same.
They do not want things to change even though they do.

This reminded me a bit of 'The Go-Between': a story told by children who don't understand what's happening amongst the adults surrounding them. Jones does a fine job of catching the voices of Amy and Lan who are just seven when the book opens, coming up to adolescence as it closes - but their voices do merge together so that, technically, we cannot tell them apart.

There's a similar issue in that the adults are not clearly portrayed: I think some of this is that the child's view does, to some extent, see them as a group of 'grown-ups' but the lack of easy differentiation rather undermines the emotional experience of the reader.

On one hand this is a mundane story of growing up and being initiated into the puzzling world of adulthood; on the other it has an almost mythic dimension - the Edenic view of Frith from Amy and Lan's perspective (despite all the blood, poo, and death that farming involves), and the final expulsion into something more adult.

Jones has some fun with the idea of the rural idyll which she undercuts with some glee, and there's a vividness in the writing that puts us there. I like the mix of the inconsequential and the significant, but this feels a little dialed down from Jones' more emotionally devastating books like The Outcast and Small Wars.