Such an interesting, clever read. Told through the medium of food – and dialogue – this is the story of Piglet, whose wedding day to Kit is almost there. Food is important: Piglet, a childhood name, will have a nosey in your trolley when at the supermarket. Her upcoming wedding is something about which she delights, it giving her the chance to reinvent herself, almost as if what had previously happened was just in her imagination. However, she finds out an awful truth about Kit and things begin to crumble. Will she follow the rules, just as she would a recipe, or divert from what is expected? I love books where the main characters aren’t particularly likeable, and Piglet is that. On the surface, it’s a relationship-based novel, and it is, but it equally deals with relationships around food and body image.

I found this bizarre and uncomfortable.
Piglet, the wife-to-be, discovers her future husband has done something unforgivable. Nevertheless, her insecurities about class, money and social standing seem to push her to continue the pursuit of the wedding and marriage to this man.

Piglet was a great idea and very well executed.

The book is laid out as a countdown to Piglet and Kit's wedding day. They are very much in love and sickeningly smug with it, fully aware of their luck and how they must appear to their friends and family. The book opens with them moving into their new home, planning a dinner party for their closest friends, utterly secure and confident in their life choices.

Kit comes from a comfortable middle class academic background, his family live in a big house in Oxford, shop at Waitrose, his mum has a personal trainer - and Piglet has worked hard to fit in with her new in-laws.

Her own family in Derby is more working class and very unlike Kit's family in almost every way. Piglet feels the difference between the two so keenly.

One of the stand-out elements of the book is the way in which Piglet tries to negotiate the chasm between the two families as well as working out her own status and how she feels about everything. Her thoughts and dilemmas are exquisitely handled with the quiet embarrassment Piglet feels towards her family shining off the page, whilst they are trying to show their love and support as best they can, albeit clumsily. At the same time, Kit's family are making decisions for everyone, confidently assured in their right to do so.

Piglet is so happy to be getting married to Kit; she is going to make the wedding cake (croquembouche for everyone); the wedding plans are all in hand, literally nothing can derail this. Until something derails it... Kit confesses to something a fortnight before their wedding; is it going to be the end of everything that Piglet has worked so hard for or can they move past it together.

The tension between Piglet and Kit was palpable and painful, she has invested everything into their lives together and stands to lose it all if she loses faith in Kit and their future together. I loved how the author made us feel everything that Piglet was feeling, we stood in her shoes and felt the anguish with her.

Piglet is an assured debut novel which will appeal widely. Lottie Hazell is a skilful and talented author with a bright future ahead of her and I am glad to have read her first novel so that I can follow her journey.

I’ve seen enough episodes of Bake Off The Professionals to know that the moment the word croquembouche was mentioned, everything was headed for disaster in this book.



Sometimes there are incredibly vivid passages, while other details are purposely left hazy. But like a good sauce, everything is well balanced in this book.

The tension of inevitably collapsing cakes and culinary disasters are the draw behind a whole host of TV shows and, in the same way, you can’t tear yourself away from watching everything fall apart in slow motion.



For me, Piglet was a fable about the obsessive pursuit of perfection and the complex relationships of family, friendships and, of course, food.

I found this to be really rather strange, but oddly compelling. I loved reading the culinary descriptions, they were extremely visceral and hunger invoking. This is probably not a book I’d recommend to anyone on a diet.
But the character of Piglet was a difficult one for me to understand, apart from our mutual love of food. I should probably count myself lucky.
I think this is going to be a really popular book, but it wasn’t really my taste.

“There were some things you could not tell your family. She knew that truths, once spoken, had the power to return her to them.”

Lottie Hazell’s debut is based on a women who has answered to her childhood name of Piglet her entire life. She is an up and coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she has close friends, loyal family and a handsome fiancé Kit. His family are upper class and despite the obvious divide Kit adores Piglet. However two weeks before their wedding Kit confesses to a betrayal that sets things in motion that can’t be changed. Piglet finds herself hungry. They decide to move forward with he wedding, the closer they get to date the more Piglet’s hunger grows and she begins to spiral and question everything.

This was such an unusual novel. It paints the picture in a clever way of when a person sticks with pressures and expectations to please everyone else meanwhile living a miserable life behind closed doors.

The betrayal although told to Piglet by Kit, it’s never voiced in an obvious way. Once its revealed the reader through Piglet’s point of view pieces together the enormity of the betrayal and the affect it’s having on her.

I liked this unusual point of view. As Piglet is a cook book editor, the story is mostly told with very descriptive paragraphs on recipes and food. It sounds odd but it works in telling this tale. There is one particular scene that hits the nail on the head regarding the pressures Piglet is under about a life she had planned that is spiralling into something else, it’s told through the assembly of a dessert which is unusual but perfect metaphor for a ticking time bomb.

This was an unusual but interesting read.

When I first saw this book advertised, the title attracted me to the blurb and that was enough to have me clicking 'request'. I like books that are set very much in the real world with real people problems waiting to be solved.

When I started reading it, the plot engaged me straight away (the 'he told her on the 13th day before the wedding' was such a good hook - and isn't a spoiler as it comes very early on in the story) but I had an issue with the naming of the main character. It was clearly done with great clarity of thought by the author and it wasn't Hazell I had a problem with, it was the characters themselves. It was such a horrible nickname to bestow upon someone they supposedly cared for that I found it quite disturbing and it turned me against Piglet's family from the beginning. We then discover the origins of the name and it is heartbreaking for so many reasons. Later on in the book comes the scene in the wedding shop and I was apoplectic. There is no wonder that Piglet is the way she is and makes (what I consider to be) all the wrong decisions in her life.

Her response to stress is extreme and might come across to some as completely unrealistic, but I could completely relate to it. I haven't had a healthy relationship with food since becoming anorexic in my mid-teens and I swing between wanting to eat nothing and everything. Losing weight is a constant battle trying to balance my natural reaction to just stop eating with the awareness that isn't healthy for me and is a poor example to my children. When life gets stressful, eating is the one thing I can definitely control and whichever direction I go in, I have had to train myself to listen to the voice in my head telling me not to go to extremes. Therefore, I completely sympathised with Piglet in this. The pressure she is under from her family and herself would overwhelm anyone, let alone someone already trying to plan a wedding and then when a relationship crisis is thrown into the mix, there's no wonder she struggles to cope!

At times, this isn't an easy read because Piglet deserves so much better from life than she believes she does. Thank goodness for her friend, Margot and in the end, even her family had redeemed themselves slightly in my eyes.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the ARC.

This started off well but I sadly got bored about the 40-50% mark. I was kept invested by the premise that we would find out what Kit had done but when I passed 50%, 60%, 70% and we still hadn't been told, I lost interest. There was no real plot apart from the lead up and day of the wedding. I thought more focus would have been put on the eating disorder element but this was only a sideline in the end.

There also seemed to be ridiculously lengthy descriptions of things - around 5 pages of Piglet putting together the cake in the morning and about the same amount of detail when putting on the dress which I thought was too much. Sorry unfortunately this book wasn't for me!

I’m sorry to say, this one, unfortunately wasn’t for me. I really don’t like leaving negative feedback as the author has put their heart and soul into writing - I would never be able to do what they do . I found this to be an uncomfortable read and I found I didn’t really care about piglet and ended up skim reading till I gave up in the end.
Just because it wasn’t for me, doesn’t mean it’s not somebody else’s cup of tea.

This started OK but I had more and more issues with it as the story unfolded. Piglet, so-called because she ate a lot when she was younger to cover up her sister‘s eating disorder, is still a binge-eater but the book skims over this. Her fiancé reveals a terrible secret just days before their wedding but we never find out what it is.

All of the characters are obnoxious (other than the best friend) and sometimes this works in books but in this case it didn‘t. I‘m sure I‘m not the target market for another #millennialsnotcommunicating book though!

2.5 stars rounded up to 3

Loved the writing in this one, sparse but so evocative and the tension ramps up making for a fantastic read.

📖 Piglet
🖊️ Lottie Hazell
🌟 3/5

“𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘳è𝘮𝘦 𝘱â𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪è𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦; 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦, 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦?”

🐷 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗳𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
🐷 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻
🐷 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀 & 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲
🐷 𝗟𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗱
🐷 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗳𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this as much as I hoped I would. Whilst the writing was good and it was so easy to become immersed into the emotionally provocative storytelling, the actual main character didn’t appear as particularly likable to me at all, and I felt that her character arc wasn’t an element of this book that felt satisfying to me.

The story itself feels as though it’s told via many detailed descriptions of food and cooking: the prep, the textures, the scent, the heat, the taste… it was so very realistic. Much to my shame, the descriptions of the binge eating made me feel a bit nauseous to be honest.

What I did love were the complex family dynamics that Piglet had with her family, her fiancés family, and even with herself. I really enjoyed the exploration of greed, social class, public image and the posturing that it’s often hand in hand with. It was clever, sometimes witty, dark, and grounded.

- 𝒦𝒶𝓎𝓁𝑒𝒾𝑔𝒽 𝓍

The main character’s family call her ‘Piglet’, a cruel nod to her childhood eating, linked inextricably to her sister’s eating disorder. Much like ‘Woman Eating’, ‘A Certain Hunger’, or ‘Supper Club’, ‘Piglet’ is preoccupied with what it means to be satiated as a woman - how much can be consumed, how much a body can hold, and what hunger really feels like. Throughout the book, Piglet imagines her family’s approving words over her cooking, which never come.

Her name changes throughout, as well, as her sense of herself shifts. The book does a great job of portraying a character leaving behind her upbringing, seeking entrance to a new class and wealth system, while her family doesn’t truly understand her and her in-laws don’t truly accept her. I loved the presentation of class and food throughout, and found Piglet’s friends and family compelling and realistic, but I wasn’t very invested in her relationship with her fiance, which drives a lot of the plot, and so felt less moved by the ending than I might have been. I really enjoyed this book, but for me it wasn’t unique enough alongside the other books on similar themes.

This was a great book, but the disintegration of the life that had been so carefully built was an uncomfortable read. Well written and difficult to put down.
Thanks to Netgalley.

Piglet tells the story of a woman who is living in premarital, domestic bliss with her fiancé Kit, counting down the days to their wedding. However, when Kit shatters the blissful illusion she has so carefully created for herself and others by revealing a terrible secret, Piglet begins to self sabotage by eating and eating, trying to fill a hunger and a hollowness within herself that cannot be filled.

*minor spoilers ahead*

I read this novel in pretty much one sitting, consuming it in much the same way Piglet excessively consumes food to deal with her imagined perfect life unravelling. The whole book was well paced, fraught with tension and suspense and peppered with drawn out, detailed scenes of Piglet cooking and eating which veer between the sensuous and the grotesque, and which the reader observes in almost sickening fascination. The elaborate, measured moments such as Piglet putting together her wedding cake, and her family trying to squeeze her into her wedding dress, contrast the general fast pace of the rest of the novel, and perfectly encapsulate the intensity and suspense building towards the climax of the wedding, as well as conveying the fragility of Piglet's mental state, her decisions, and her relationships. Piglet's obsession with food and the vivid, rich descriptions of her cooking portray the way she uses her relationship with food as a metaphor for the satisfaction she gleans and attempts to recreate in her life.

Piglet is the perfect messy, complex protagonist, reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh's characters; a self loathing, sometimes unlikeable, utterly visceral female character whose vulnerability the reader can't help but sympathise with. Her chaotic and horrifying breakdown is engrossing, and the reader can't help but cheer her on as she finally takes control (albeit in a hysterical, manic way).

The ending is deeply satisfying, with a typical, loving description of her preparing dinner for herself, but without the intensity and stress of previous similar moments. In this scene, she is peaceful and allowing herself to indulge, finally feeling a sense of satisfaction and fullness, having taken control of her life and giving up the idealistic but superficial lifestyle and relationship she had been pursuing.

While many readers dislike the way Hazell withholds the nature of Kit's secret, I think this adds to the intensity of the novel and acts as a driving force for Piglet's undoing and the chaos that unfolds. This structural choice defies convention and makes for a far more interesting read, allowing the reader to speculate. Although, I will concede a little more background context to Piglet's history with her eating disorder and the reasons for it would have provided more clarity for her decisions. However, this novel is a raw, compulsive story of desire, class commentary, family, relationships, and self-image, with the most palpable prose and delicious symbolism and imagery.

Thank to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

It has been a while since I finished a book in two sittings but I was glued to my kindle while reading Piglet! She was such an interesting main character who I wanted to hug but also shake sense into. I loved the writing style, it was clever and felt fresh. I also felt the class divide between Piglet and Kit’s parents was an interesting element too. I rated this 3.5 initially but, I’ve struggled to get it out my mind since I finished so it’s a solid 4 now.

This was a very uncomfortable read which some readers might find triggering. The heroine is nicknamed Piglet and has a difficult relationship with food going back to her childhood. She is now working in her dream job in food publishing and is about to marry her dream man when he shares a terrible secret with her shortly before the big day. This creates a cascade of self sabotage which, whilst well observed and beautifully written, is difficult to read from an emotional perspective. Whilst I admired the story telling, this was not a book that I enjoyed.

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

I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy this book because, however hard I tried, I could feel no empathy for the main character. Either before or after Piglet’s world began to crumble. In the end I even became fed up with the endless descriptions of cooking and food, and skim read the last quarter or so of the book. Although I understood (most of) Piglet’s emotional drivers, her resulting behaviours did not make for an enjoyable book. I’m sure that was the point, but I prefer my reading to be pleasurable. Good ending though.

I actually had real difficulty in putting this down. It's really well written and the descriptions of food and eating are so vivid. Sensuous almost bordering on the obscene at times - Nigella in book form - and I loved it

Piglet's perfect wedding to her perfect groom is threatened when he tells her a secret just days before the wedding, Piglet has to decide what to do. Give up the life she has craved or leave him and move on.

Though I’m not sure I particularly liked Piglet, I definitely was fascinated by her and the choices that she made and the kind of life she was chasing. As her character developed I did come to feel sympathy for her and a greater understanding of why she felt so driven to achieve the kind of lifestyle she craves almost as much as food.

I actually found this to be such a tense read! I like that we never fully know what her finance Kit has done. Piglet's reasons for her own behaviour and her childhood issues are touched on but never fully explored leaving the reader to fill in the blanks and speculate.

A really enjoyable and, for me, quick read that will have you raiding your cupboards

Thanks to Random House & Netgalley for the chance to read an early copy

I finished Piglet a couple of weeks ago and I still can’t fully decide whether I thought it was brilliant or bizarre… very possibly both?

Piglet, a very complex character battling an eating disorder, is due to get married to Kit and soon they will live a life full of dinner parties and perfect wedded bliss that Piglet never imagined would be her destiny. However, Kit unwittingly reveals a secret to Piglet a mere 13 days before the day of their nuptials, which throws everything up in the air.

So this book had SO MUCH potential and for the most part, it was realised. I think the author is extremely talented in the very unique way she has written this story, I was kept very much intrigued from chapter to chapter. But holy mother of god, would it have killed her to have let the reader know what exactly Kit’s secret was and where Piglet’s issues stemmed from. I do believe both of these plot holes were purposely left open to interpretation and I have my theories but I would have felt so much more satisfied with definitive answers.

I think 3 stars is an apt rating for me as I can’t deny that I was completely enthralled and the descriptions of the food were divine but the lack of clarity on the main themes of the story bothered me too much!

Thank you Random House UK & Netgalley for an E-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.