I love a dual timeline.
I knew I was going to love this.

Two stories, two women, the same town.

Lydia is an ex-popstar who moves in with her old band mate and old rivalries and bitterness and history occurs.

And Joyce lives with her Mum, with identify haircuts and outfits and a house full of dolls.

As the book went on, I found myself much more interested in Joyce’s story and not caring about Lydia’s. I wish there had been more Joyce.

I really liked the character of Lo but she felt towards the end too much like a stereotype to say something and I found it a bit too heavy handed.

But Joyce was so well-realised, I loved the details of her life with her mum. I also loved the realistic seaside-town-on-hard-times setting.

This was so fun.

this one is for the girlies with complicated mother-daughter relationships and men trauma so i feel catered to

an excruciating (positive) look into overbearing mothers, the lifelong ramifications of sexualisation & abuse at a young age alongside feeling generally lost as an adult

while i do wish there was more plot (as in i was waiting for some huge climactic event i don’t feel i got) i have to give rose ruane her flowers for writing one of the most unflinching & accurate accounts of what it’s like to emotionally deal with being assaulted when you can’t even admit to yourself that maybe ambivalence is not consent. it got genuinely difficult to read at points and i think that’s testimony to how accurate it is.

reading about joyce on the flip side was also excruciating because i really genuinely could not stand her mother for the majority of the book until i realised that a lot of her actions are just reactions to her own life when she was younger. i will say i didn’t enjoy the big “twist” with this half of the story and found it to be almost a cop-out.

would be super intrigued about future releases. thank you to netgalley & the publisher for the ARC!

What a strange, tantalizing creature of a book. By my own admittance it took me a little while to get into the rhythm of this work but once I found it I found myself devouring the text. The narrative is centered around two middle aged women, Joyce and Lydia, who have both spent their lives in submission ( and indeed in some ways subjugation) to others. There is something almost horror-esque to the story as it unfolds. The insidious way Joyce is forced to live as a mirror to her mother, the way that Lydia is pushed into examining her own life after a self-serving apology...which later looks almost like part of a publicity stunt and a deep invasion of her privacy...which of course she then goes on to commit herself.
The town itself reads like a character, providing an eerie and indeed at times disturbing backdrop to both past and present versions of these women's lives. The book is filled with subtle under-currents and clever coverage of topics such as toxic masculinity, indeed the toxic feminine (I'm looking at you Betty), what it means to age as a woman and indeed what it mean to try and give your life a meaning when you've not held the reigns before.
The writing itself is poetic and lyrical, occasionally reading like a fever dream (I'm thinking of the bird watcher's hut incident in particular) and I love all the quiet ways these women's lives are intersecting and the don't even know it. The characters are often, quite frankly ghastly but I think that was one of the reason's I couldn't look away. She captures human existence so well, in all its versions.
For me a very solid read, I deeply enjoyed the slow build of the book and how Ruane was able to put some many relationships under the micro-scope to see right to the heart of them. A very interesting and darkly funny read.

It’s the way this book is so TTPD coded omg. It goes in depth into both Lydia’s and Joyce’s loneliness and lack of meaning to their lives. At its core, this is a coming-of-age story of two middle aged women who are simply lost in their lives, trying to find who they are without the influence of others, and I ate it up. I think it was the perfect length and anything longer would’ve just dragged. I did expect something a little crazier for the climax (murder), especially considering how slow the rest of the book was, building up all until the end. You could truly feel the atmosphere of this small town, it was just SO clear in my head how the wind felt, what the buildings looked like, etc. Nothing happened and yet I was fascinated and couldn’t stop myself from reading it. 4.25⭐️

Absolutely adored this with my whole heart. The language is poetic, the setting beautifully drawn and the characters all so lovingly created. I thought it was wonderful.

I’m not sure what to make of this book. The writing is almost poetic in places but it feels like the author is trying too hard with her descriptions sometimes. The overall feeling I got was of bleakness and hopelessness and how damaged people were. The concept is a good one but I found the execution disappointing.

There is so much in this book. To start, the town itself is a character of its own. The first few pages described it so clearly. I knew exactly the kind of place it was.
The writing style was interesting, quite descriptive and often funny.
There are two main characters Lydia and Joyce. Their stories are told with a cast of others that fill in some of the gaps and help round them out.
There aren't many men in the book but one of the themes is around how men treat women. How the characters have been affected by that and how they are coming into their own in later life.
I thought this was a great read.

I think I'd like to read this book again straight away (and I would if I hadn't got tons of other things to read). I was feeling a bit let down by this book until the last quarter and then I realised I'd been reading it all wrong. It's not the first time I've had preconceptions and missed the whole point of a book. It probably won't be the last.

So the book follows two women - Joyce who is headed for an entire lifetime of subjugation under her mother's suffocating presence; and Lydia who is struggling to find her place in the world after a failed career in a band and a less than stellar job as a freelancer.

Joyce wants more out of life than existing in a pokey flat with her mother and Lydia, newly reunited with her best friend, Pan, and Pan's daughter, Lol, is trying to understand why the man who abused her gets to say sorry and walk away.

Two women whose unsatisfying lives intersect for one stunning moment. But what will come next?

As I said I read this book all wrong. I should have luxuriated in the slow build up of pressure instead of wondering when that one moment would arrive. Hence I'd like to read it again and soon. Rose Ruane writes characters very well and she captures the pathos and ennui of the situation and town very clearly.

There are difficult subjects to navigate but nothing feels sensational or overdone. Both women are clearly in need of some love and care and I felt sympathy for Joyce and Lydia but also for all the other characters whose lives weren't all they wanted them to be but were still hopeful.

Highly recommended. A gentle but effective novel.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Little, Brown for the advance review copy.

Birding is so superbly written with humour that is wickedly dark at times but with a raw and honest edge that probes around very bleak topics with the disbelief and almost bonhomie of characters losing their grip on what is going on for them.
Although both Lydia and Joyce live in the same, rundown, depressing seaside town they don't really meet, but both of them have lives that are troubling and this book follows events that bring revelations and life-altering realisations.
At times this is really quite harrowing to read as you bear witness to abuse, manipulation and conflict that is wincingly painful but you see things from various perspectives, and the insight always awards glimmers of home, of change and transformation.
I don't think I've read a book so compellingly accurate about complex and codependent mother -daughter relationships as this one, and the very difficult balance of being in a caring role and trying to also parent through trauma. It is a fantastic book.

DNF - I think this was the case of wrong reader; I ;love the cover art for this book & the synopsis sounded like my cup of the but, it turns out we weren't well paired.

There are glimpses of the book this could have been, of one I’d want to read. But for the most part, I was bored. Grey gardens meets Eleanor Oliphant, meh.

Possible spoilers


I enjoyed this one.
Two damaged women of similar ages, with completely different backgrounds, each trapped in their lives.
It felt very much two books for price of one, as the stories were so self contained.
I couldn't help but feel for stifled , trapped Joyce, because as much as I love to read about a toxic mother, you can imagine the reality!

There were some touching moments, mostly with Lol I felt.

Left me feeling a bit sad, and a bit hopeful. And a book that leaves you feeling anything is usually good.

I really enjoyed this book. I knew from the blurb it was definitely a book I would enjoy reading and connect with. Anything seasidey is right up my street

Joyce and Lydia have had very different lives. But what they share is the untangling of a damaged past in the hope for a better future.

Normally, they may never have met. But their lives are set on a collision course...

Very excited to acquire and share my thoughts on this book with readers! Thank you very much for the opportunity and please watch this space for a full review upon completion.