A very descriptive book just don’t read it if your hungry! Fun book which is quirky.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

This is a novel that I would never normally pick up, I usually like thrillers but when I read the blurb of this novel I was intrigued.

We meet main character Piglet, she was given this awful name whilst she was younger and she has never managed to shake it off. She is set to marry Kit and 2 weeks before their marriage, Kit comes clean about something.

Piglet and Kit decide to carry on with the wedding and this is when we really sort of get to know Piglet. She is an assistant to a cookbook editor and the novel is filled with delicious foods that will make you want to go and grab a snack...or three.

There is so much going on within this novel and I think author Lottie Hazell weaved a very good and interesting novel.

I found some aspects really emotional and others extremely and yet darkly funny. I have never read a book quite like this one.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

There are quite a lot of novels published these days that tell their stories in different ways. This book is told through dialogue, and descriptions of food that "piglet", her childhood nickname, is planning on cooking. The food writing is outstanding. I have never read step by step instructions on the construction of elaborate feasts that come so alive on the page. Every morsel Piglet was planning to make, I wanted to eat. The story is good - and compelling, but it is the food that turns this into a page turner.

A young woman battles to gain a sense of control when faced with a major life disruption. The book flits along the edges fairy tale and body horror but doesn't cross the line. I expected a more intense experience. Instead, it is a more about descending into disordered eating as a way of exploring unsatisfied desires. I think it could have been bolder in examining that internal chaos but it was solidly written.

What a tense, gripping read. It was easy to get sucked into Piglet’s mania and self-destruction once her fiancé reveals an unforgiveable secret (one that the reader never finds out which just adds to the tension as the reader’s imagination can imagine the worst possible act that he has committed without ever having it revealed). The descriptions of food started to make me feel queasy in the end once Piglet started to lose control on what was happening to her wedding and marriage plans, it was incredibly well written, and the pacing was great.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I read the whole thing and in the end was disappointed. I kept thinking I'd missed something along the way and went back to check a few times but still didn't get it. I enjoyed the croquembouche scenarios and the waiter and waitress in the marquee were the best characters.

Utterly unputdownable wedding-food-family drama.

This was fascinating, horrific, tense and made me very, very hungry.

I don't have the best relationship with food, I'm aware of this. As many of us find, food can be used to console us, to heighten moments of joy, be a shared or lonely experience, make us feel our worst selves, be a crutch or an obsession.

This skilfully weaves one woman's love and need for food with a life crisis. Piglet (real name only mentioned once) is a young woman on the cusp of achieving everyone's dream - a successful job (in the food industry), a new home with her partner, and an upcoming wedding day with a wealthy, handsome fiancé. She's even planning on making her own wedding cake.

But it all begins to unravel when Piglet's fiancé Kit reveals to her a dark secret mere days before the nuptials. Will Piglet carry on and still marry him?

This novel is SO TENSE as our protagonist and author holds this secret to their narratorial chests. Piglet pours her energy and despair into cooking and eating. The wedding day approaches but the reader just simply does not know how it is going to end.

For a book about a never-revealed secret and a wedding cake, this is unbelievably hard to put down. As the time ticks down to the wedding, and Piglet's heavily pregnant best friend is told, as she loses control at work, as her family arrive... the cake and the marriage dangle before our eyes.

And the cake is amazing. I'm not a cook myself but adored the descriptions of Piglet baking, of the meals she makes, it's at the heart of both the book and Piglet herself. There is so much metaphor in her dress fitting, her need to fill herself, her desire to create exquisite delicacies for herself and others to gorge on.

I want to read this again. Though I felt such frustration at not knowing exactly what Kit had done, it didn't take away from our unusual story, heroine and conclusion. Deeper than I was expecting.

With excellent side characters - Piglet's parents and sister, her best friend, Kit's family - this was a great drama that felt visual as well as olfactory.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

This is a strange but beautifully written story that I felt left me with more questions than answers. It's a story of "Piglet" a young woman who is striving to find her place in the world - she thinks she has found it with her Fiance, escaping her working class family to his richer family. 13 days before their wedding he confesses something to her that throws her world upside down and she then has to decide if the life she thinks she wants is worth it.

Definitely worth reading.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read Piglet.

Happy publication day to Piglet!!🐷🍩

We join Piglet in the run up to her wedding - everything is going great, her job is looking at promoting her, her soon-to-be-husband seems fantastic, they’ve just bought a house together. Honestly, it’s easy to feel a little jealous of her at the start. She’s an Editor for cookery books and the entire novel is filled with all her fantastic cooking and hosting. The premise seems simple: Piglet will marry, get promoted, and be content.

A few weeks before thier wedding, Kit tells Piglet something life-changing. The nature of his confession is never revealed to us - we assume it’s an affair, but we can’t be sure. We see Piglet fall apart in the run up to her wedding, question her support systems, and turn to her comfort, food.

The entire novel is narrated almost entirely through descriptions of food and dialogue - it’s not something I think I would normally enjoy, but Piglet is the most lovable character. I think you get an immediate sense of her struggles, her faltering support system and the choices she has to make to keep her life on track. We watch her crumble but there is so much hope in her crumbling - the novel leaves Piglet at a point of uncertainty after her wedding, and how she will patch herself up isn’t something we’re sure of. I love how small details of relationships creep into this novel, how so much is left unsaid but it doesn’t matter. I personally think that even if Kit hadn’t made his confession, Piglet would’ve still been broken by the pressures she’d been putting on herself, she just had an unfortunate drive toward that eventual break.

I’d love to know your thoughts on Piglet, what do you think Kit’s confession was? An affair, or something much more sinister?

I was sent a copy of Piglet by Lottie Hazell to read and review by NetGalley. I wasn’t totally sure about this novel to begin with. I’m not sure what I was expecting and it took a while to get into, with a little bit of confusion in the early chapters. Once I got settled into reading I could hardly put it down. The further into the book I got the more invested I became and the story really picked up pace. I would advise any reader with doubts about continuing to the end of the book to do so, it is well worth it in the end!

This is a fast read and a promising debut, but I couldn't totally believe in the story. I understand Piglet's class, body and food issues, but her struggle about her coming marriage didn't really convince me. I would be interested in reading Hazell's next novel though.
Thank you Transworld and Netgalley for the ARC.

The book starts the summer before Piglet is due to marry Kit. Piglet is a childhood nickname (and one we use for our own kids!) and you don’t find out her real name until the very end. Piglet has escaped her suburban upbringing in Derby (she is very disparaging about Derby – which made me quite defensive, as I like it!) to move to Oxford (via London) to marry ‘upwards’. Kit and her future in laws are definitely a few rungs up the social mobility ladder than Piglet’s folks – and she is fully embracing her new life (where Vienetta would only be served ironically!)

Each chapter is counting down to the wedding – and just less than a fortnight to go before the wedding, Kit reveals a secret to Piglet. However, you don’t know what this secret is. I kept expecting it to be revealed – but it isn’t – and thus it’s really difficult to know how to process Piglet’s reaction. Is she over or under reacting??

The writing of the book is excellent – particularly the cooking and food aspects – they were incredibly evocative – and made me very hungry!! As well as the wedding – there are other things discussed – disordered eating, body image, friendships, family shame, keeping up appearances etc etc. But I’m still not really sure what I felt about the book. I didn’t particularly warm to Piglet or Kit – so was neither ‘team’. It just left more questions than answers. But it is very original – and the questions it generates will no doubt make it a winner for book club discussions!

A thank you to the publishers and Net Galley for my ARC. Piglet is out on the 25th January 2024

I really enjoyed Lottie Hazell’s writing style in particular her descriptions and I managed to finish this book in two sittings.

However, the actual story was a bit flat for me and I can’t lie, it was frustrating never finding out what Kit had done.

A solid book but one I will probably forget quite quickly unfortunately!

Even weeks after finishing this book I still don't know what to make of it. What the point of it was. Or even whether there was a point. I know I was upset and maybe offended by a lot of what I read. Maybe THAT's the point. I know it will make for a brilliantly controversial reading club selection for anyone brave enough to suggest it.
Yes there were things I enjoyed. I wouldn't have carried on reading if there wasn't. There were a few hard hitting poignant topics covered, and covered well. And I really didn't like Piglet, but that doesn't always matter.
But mostly I guess I feel let down cos I didn't get the answers that I wanted. A certain something was left unsaid. Unexplained. So I am not even sure I had enough evidence to make any conclusions about what the book meant to me, and how I felt about it. Apart from cheated.
But maybe THAT's the point... Dunno. Not gonna waste any more time thinking about it.
That said, many others have loved it... So who am I to judge...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Quirky title and hoped it would as good as it sounded. In fact, it was amazing. A lovely read for those winter nights. Thank you for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I absolutely loved this - I found it difficult to put down at times because Piglet's story rang so true. Having got married myself within the last year, I can't even imagine how I would handle being in Piglet's situation. This is really a story about not settling and knowing your own worth, set against two things that classically define women - the wedding industry and food. We never find out what Kit actually did, though we can assume it was something like an affair, but this strengthens the narrative as it actually doesn't matter what Kit did - it's really about Piglet finding her own voice. While there was quite a lot of classism that sometimes rang a bit false (as someone who grew up in Derby I didn't appreciate the constant slamming of it!) it was in service to the story, and at the end of the day Piglet wasn't perfect - she just needed to know she was good enough not to have to settle.

A bit of a strange one. Piglet is getting married to Kit in October. His parents are paying for everything apart from her dress, which her parents are paying for.
Thirteen days before the wedding he drops a bombshell on her and she has to decide whether or not to go through with the wedding. One week before the wedding at her final dressing fitting, her maid of honour goes into labour and says that she can no longer come to the wedding.
As Piglets life falls apart she carries on with the preparations but you wonder if she is going to go through with it.

Lottie Hazell's debut novel 'Piglet' is an engaging tale of love, culinary passion, and personal struggle. The story revolves around Piglet, a food enthusiast, who faces a major dilemma just days before her wedding to Kit. However, the plot takes a dramatic turn when Kit reveals a secret, forcing Piglet to choose between the life she thought she wanted and what truly matters to her. The novel shines in its portrayal of food not just as a hobby but as a reflection of Piglet's identity and desires.

What makes 'Piglet' compelling is Hazell's ability to capture the protagonist's internal conflict and rage in a relatable way. The narrative is straightforward and engaging, balancing culinary descriptions with the emotional depth of Piglet's journey towards self-discovery. This book, with its mix of food, romance, and drama, deserves a 4.5-star rating. It's a great read for anyone who enjoys stories about personal growth and making tough life choices.

This has been one of those books that I’ve just not been able to put down, so compelling is Piglet’s story and the countdown to her wedding. The perfect life: a house in Oxford, a well to do fiancé and his family who couldn’t be further away from her northern upbringing, a dream job in food publishing, amazing friends. What could possibly go wrong for Piglet? But a confession of betrayal from fiancé Kit turns all of Piglet’s ideal life upside down. Through her obsession for food, both creative and emotional, Piglet strives to find her way through and for me this relationship with food acted as a metaphor for her struggling to understand her own real desires and to regain control of her own life and destiny. I thought the writing was superb, especially the cooking scenes, full of such richly evocative descriptions, the sense of pathos and the dark humour running almost as an undercurrent throughout. A very clever debut novel that will certainly make you think twice about how women are perceived in society even today.
With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Random House UK, Transworld for an arc in exchange for a review.

I finished reading this a few days ago and needed time to process it before I could think about starting a review. Some of the themes hit close to home for me personally, and I also think I was trying to figure out if I had enjoyed it or not - this is a story that you primarily witness, and it's really important to witness it, but it made it seem wrong to admit that I had enjoyed witnessing raw female rage and a life falling apart whilst the people who are supposed to love and protect you stand by and worry more about what others will think than what you need from them (with the exception of the glorious Margot and, surprisingly, Darren) in this moment.

Every word in this book is carefully chosen and the effect is a visceral experience that is vividly visual - I felt like a voyeur, watching all this unroll through a window. The cooking and eating passages (of which there are many, food is central theme) are relatable and uncomfortable at the same time. Lottie Hazell really nails the relationship that so many women have with food, how they define themselves by what they eat, when/where they eat it, and how much of it they eat. Food is both a reward and a consolation. I felt that food also acted a great vehicle for ramping tension - I thought I might pass out reading the wedding morning croquembouche-making scene!

There is a situation that arises to unleash all of Piglet's rage - she is betrayed by her husband-to-be, but we never find out the nature of the betrayal. My view of this writing decision is that the specific betrayal isn't important and that the meticulous curation of a perceived life that Piglet had crafted was always going to implode at some point and the rage was always going to consume her and need an outlet. It forced her to see the difference between what she thought she wanted and what she actually would go to lengths to protect when the chips were down.

The aftermath almost seems cathartic, like maybe Piglet will have a better sense of who she is from her own beliefs rather than who she thinks society is showing her she is or what kind of life she deserves - it's only at the end of the book that we learn her actual name rather than only seeing her through the lens of the god-awful moniker thrust on her by her family and I hope this is a sign of her taking some control back.

This book shows the characters warts and all. No-one comes out of it well, it shows an honest view of the things that we try and hide from public knowledge...but that makes it a better book, in my opinion. I'm fine with not completely liking literary characters, it doesn't impact my enjoyment of a book.

And I thoroughly enjoyed this unforgettable book