Great book, enjoyed it over the Christmas holidays!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

The blurb - It all starts on New Year's Eve. A night that has to be a success, whatever the cost. For Joni and her friends, it'll be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour of any other, but by sunrise they'll be dealing with something darker than the usual post-party comedown.

Not that they let this stand in their way. For this is their year to revel in all that the playground of London has to offer: sneaking into places they shouldn't, breaking every rule, falling in love with the wrong people. All the while avoiding one undeniable truth: it's not if the party ends, it's how.

My review- for me this book completely summed up the feeling of being in your 20s, friends, parties, relationships, booze - 'what are you going to do with your life' angst and I felt a mix of happiness that Im past that and sadness that its all over and Im more of the parents' ages now. The friendships and relationships between them are brilliantly portrayed, their past histories trail behind them as they move on in life. I would recommend it to readers in their 20s/ 30s who will probably find a lot to connect with.

Thanks so much to Tinder Press for letting me read Just for Today by Nell Hudson! This is an incredibly readable and thoroughly enjoyable year in the life of Joni – nanny, aspiring writer, north London dweller – and her close-knit, effervescent group of friends. They drink too much and take drugs too often and spend their weekends behaving in ways they sometimes regret. To begin with, I found this quite posturing and artificial – they're really much more normal than the marketing suggests – but as time went on, I found myself really enjoying the genuine friendships, the characterisation, the sense of London as a lifelong home and not just somewhere that people in their 20s and 30s pass through. The genre of young women struggling with their 20s is an overdone one, but this felt refreshing and interesting and authentic. I did want more of a sense of the past – particularly some elements of the friendship shared between Joni and Dyl – and some elements and characters were a bit muddled. But otherwise I'd definitely recommend this. I read it in a day!

Just For Today
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blurb

It all starts on New Year's Eve. A night that has to be a success, whatever the cost. For Joni and her friends, it'll be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour of any other, but by sunrise they'll be dealing with something darker than the usual post-party comedown. 

Not that they let this stand in their way. For this is their year to revel in all that the playground of London has to offer: sneaking into places they shouldn't, breaking every rule, falling in love with the wrong people. All the while avoiding one undeniable truth: it's not if the party ends, it's how.

While I’m probably not the book’s target audience (being a 40 something single mum from Folkestone 😆) I got super invested in the lives of Joni and her achingly cool friends.

It reminded me a bit of Sally Rooney but in my opinion much better! This is a fantastically written, entertaining and raw debut and will be looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next.

Just For Today is the really rather stunning debut from Nell Hudson. Whilst this is a story of lives lived to excess, for all its glamour it is also quietly devastating. I was drawn immediately into Joni’s world and found it very hard to put this book down.

Just For Today begins on New Years Eve, a night full of promise and expectations that has to be a success. For Joni and her friends, it should be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour they could hope for. Yet by sunrise they’ll be dealing with something much darker than their usual post-party comedown. Despite all this, the group doesn’t want to let anything stand in their way. This is their year to revel in the playground of London. They’ll sneak into places they shouldn’t, break all the rules and fall for all the wrong people. Yet at some point the party must end, the question is how?

None of the characters in Just For Today are especially likeable in the traditional sense but they are so compelling to read about. In many ways Joni, the central protagonist, seems so lost, holding on to others in order to save herself from having to stop and think about what she really wants - much like what tourist assumed of her through her art preferences in the gallery. The whole group loves to party, living their life from one social event to the next. Whilst some are ‘adulting’ more than Joni and finding more of a balance they all still ascribe to the work hard, play harder outlook.

I really enjoyed the different relationships explored in the book. The relationships between long time best friends Joni and Dyl was very special, and yet as broken as it was beautiful. I loved the more grounding relationship Joni had with her landlady Fiona and the ones she shared with the children she nannied for. The way the whole friendship group came together worked very well too.

The novel is billed as being a story of loss of innocence and yet I don’t necessarily agree with that. It seems not so much a loss of innocence as it is an understanding of the loss of believing life can be lived without consequence. There is no innocence as such to be lost here, their hard partying is full of drink, drugs and sex, but rather they come to the realisation that there are reverberating impacts to these actions and lifestyles choices. My heart broke when the meaning behind the title is explained towards to end of the book.

Overall a very compelling read and one I’d highly recommend.

Joni is in her mid-twenties, living in London and working as a nanny while she tries to fulfil her dream of being a writer. She has a close band of friends which includes her childhood friend Dyl. Their life seems relatively privileged and carefree, full of partying and little in the way of responsibility. The end of a party on New Year’s Eve changes that and we follow Joni for the rest of that year as she struggles to face up to life and buries her head in the sand until she can’t any longer. This is a really solid debut from Nell Hudson and will resonate with anyone in their twenties living in London.

All Joni wanted since she was a teenager, was to be Henry's girlfriend. It seems she wanted it so much that she's ready to overlook way too many problematic behaviours.

"Just for Today" by Nell Hudson is a novel about a young woman, written from first person perspective, who on the surface has it too easy. She's easy to dislike: doesn't seem to care about "adulting", seeks validation in the eyes of her male partners, parties a lot, lies a little. Many difficult experiences seem to slide off her with very little emotional impact. In some cases, she chooses to look the other way, not to burst the bubble she created in her head, and face reality.

In the copy, we read that it's a book about the end of innocence. I would argue, the innocence was actually never there. For me "Just for Today" is about facing life's curveballs when one is not ready or equipped to face them, for many different reasons. The characters in this novel are everything but innocent. Maybe this is what makes this story so compelling and believable. This, and the fact that it doesn't transform into a cautionary tale about doing drugs, drinking and partying too much.

Love a good mystery type life action story and I knew right away from the first sentence I would enjoy this. I was gripped by every chapter.

Brilliant… gripping and addictive, it will pull you in from the first page… A must-read.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Recommend