Green Dot

Hera, an intelligent 24 year old with 3 arts degrees, is completely and utterly bored with her life until she starts a new job and becomes enamored with her much older (and much more married) colleague, Arthur. We follow along, from her perspective as she begins an affair with him, daydreams of a future with him and the consequences of their affair.

I genuinely loved this book. Going into it, I was pretty sure I could predict the ending (we all know how these stories go) but wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy it. However, I quickly found myself falling in love with Hera as a character, she is fantastically sarcastic and the deadpan, dark humor throughout this book really does make it a pleasure to read.

This is such a refreshing telling of a familiar story, one that gives Fleabag vibes and will keep you in that sweet spot between laughter and tears throughout.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC, one of the best I've had so far!

This was such a gem to find! I found Hera to be so relatable with her mid-20s crisis and entry to the job market. The mistress romance is nothing new, but Madeline Gray makes the trope be super refreshing. One of my top 2023 reads!

An absolute better of a book 5 stars excellent story that evoke such a wide range of emotions along with the tale. If you're thinking of an affair this lays it out shamelessly to be digested. Run, don't walk to read this.

It took me a while to get into this, and I didn’t immediately warm to the main character Hera. She’s a twenty-something workshy Australian who lives with her Dad. Eventually feeling she has no other choice she takes a job as an online content moderator in a small office. And there she comes alive, both in the novel and also for me. I really fell hard for her from this point on. She starts flirting with fellow worker Arthur and in time it developed into a full blown love affair.
And then Hera finds out he’s married.
brilliantly written, great character. I could honestly have read this novel forever. Loved

Hard to believe this is a debut novel and especially not by such a young author. I inhaled this in a couple of days on holiday and I have been raving about it since, it deserves every bit of the considerable acclaim it's getting in advance notices. Funny, clever, empathetic and dripping in pop culture references that draw the reader in and make the novel feel like a conversation with a friend. Hard to imagine this won't be the novel of 2024 even at this stage and I couldn' recommend it more highly. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I wondered if I’d be the right age bracket to truly relate to this book, steeped as it is in pop culture references, but actually this novel perfectly captures the universal experience of being young, and so much in love you don’t know what to do with yourself.! I really loved Hera, and I think this book deserves all the positive praise it’s getting. I practically read it in one sitting

In the last year or so, it feels like I have read a lot of novels about a twenty-something woman who has gone through a breakup or crisis. Some have been brilliant reads and some haven’t - this is definitely one of the brilliant ones and, not only that, it feels fresh and original. Hera is funny and smart and completely bored in her life when she meets Arthur at her unfulfilling job. She fantasises about him long before they embark on an affair. When consumed by the affair, Hera just obsesses about Arthur and becomes a rubbish friend and daughter. Whilst this is utterly believable, there was a risk at this point that I as a reader would get fed up with Hera and her choices but Hera herself acknowledges this is how people must see her and is why she can’t face her friends anymore. At this point, I was on her side and just wanted a resolution for her. I loved the style of Gray’s writing - so witty and razor sharp - and I cannot recommend Green Dot enough.

I LOVED this book. Bridget Jones meets Fleabag, it was so funny yet so sad in places and I didn't shut up about it for a good two weeks after reading. I can't wait to see all the noise that will be made about this one next year, where I'll be able to say 'I told you so' as everyone raves about it!

All the blurbs are right in about this one - I loved Green Dot and devoured it in one night. If you’ve ever been young, in a dead end job and in a relationship you know isn’t the right one - but you just want to live…this book will speak to you.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher!

Hera, a bright 24-year-old with three arts degrees, is absolutely dissatisfied with her life until she takes a new job and falls in love with her much older (and considerably more married) coworker, Arthur. We follow her as she initiates an affair with him, fantasises about a future with him, and deals with the consequences of their affair.

I truly enjoyed this book. I was pretty sure I could foresee the finish (we all know how these stories go), but I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it.

This is such a refreshing take on a familiar topic, one that has Fleabag overtones and will keep you in the sweet place between laughter and tears the entire time.

Babe! Your new favourite Sad Girl™ lit just dropped!

Huge thanks to NetGalley for the E-ARC of this gorgeous book. Green Dot finds Hera, a protagonist in her mid-20's, being sucked into an unfortunate affair with a married man, who also happens to be her (senior) colleague. Hera is flawed and complicated, and I related heavily to her throughout. Gray explores the darker underbelly of being in your mid-twenties; isolation, hopelessness, obsession, the doom and monotony of the workplace — whilst also offering a fresh perspective on 'the other woman', a topic she handles with nuance, intelligence and comedy.

Gray's tone is so smart and assured, it was sometimes hard to believe that this is her debut novel. One for the chronically online girlies, with dry humour, excellent dialogue, and culture references that landed with pinpoint, yet casual accuracy. Gray perfectly captures the complexity and mess of adult relationships, with particularly great commentary around power imbalances (Hera constantly tries to convince herself that she is the one in control), and the increasingly online nature of today's relationships, the 'green dot' that people are reduced to. There were many pages that had me laughing out loud, and some that totally gutted me.

Overall, an excellent read that I flew through. — I highly recommend! Very excited to see more from this author.

I love, love, loved this!

So smart and funny and painful and true.

A really interesting portrayal of 'the other woman'. This other woman is so witty and relatable and loveable and yet she is doing something so wrong. She knows it's wrong but she's compelled to continue.

An intimate journey exploring love, youth, friendship, sexuality and relationships.

This book was a bit of me and I absolutely cannot wait to read more from Madeleine Gray. She is one to watch.

I had seen so many mentions of Green Dot on Twitter, raving about how wonderful it was so I was thrilled to received an e-arc on Netgalley and it shot to the top of my reading list.

Set in Sydney, Australia, Green Dot follows Hera as she enters the world of work after delaying it as long she can by staying in education. Her first job is as an online content moderator at a newspaper where she meets older journalist Arthur and begins an affair.

From the start I was completely captivated by Hera's voice and world. The parts when she begins work are so relatable and humurous as she builds relationships with those she works with and contemplates the soul crushing tiredness of the daily commute. As her affair with Arthur begins and continues throughout the book, you, like Hera's friends, know it isn't going to end well.

This is the kind of book where you want to be back in its world when you are not reading it. I read it over 24 hours, I couldn't wait to get back to it. I'd recommend it if you have read and enjoyed Love and Virtue by Diana Reid, it reminded me of that whilst having a unique voice.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

I love messiness, I love drama, I love humour. In Green Dot, where 24-year-old Hera embarks on an affair with a 40-year-old married man Arthur, I get all of this. I was reading this obsessively, and flew threw it in about two days. This was really well written, and the dialogue was so good - the relationships in this novel felt so real and I loved that! I'm also very impressed that if the author wanted, she could have made this dark and sad because the plot is very dark and sad, but the writing was really funny and light that I just had a lot of fun reading it.

Loved, loved, loved Green Dot by Australian author, Madeleine Gray! Green Dot is a highly nuanced love story told from the perspective of Hera, who is the ‘other woman’, the mistress, if you will. It’s the first book I’ve read with a lead character giving this POV, so it was really interesting. But I mainly loved it due to the fantastic dry, witty writing style of Madeleine Gray.

Green Dot has one of the most succinct opening sentences I’ve come across in a while in terms of plot summary. The above is indeed what this story is all about: Hera Stephens, our narrator, and her relationship with Arthur. Her older, married colleague. She often talks directly to us through the story, which really works to draw you right in.

Set in Sydney, Australia (and a little in London) in 2019 and later 2020 where the pandemic is woven really effectively into the story (something Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld also did so well – and yes, if you enjoyed that book, you’ll love Green Dot). We first meet Hera when she is job hunting after her PHD. Having rinsed academia for as long as she can, she now has to face the horrors of finding a job to pay the bills.

Hera’s world consists mainly of her dad, her dog, Jude and friends Sarah and Sophie. When she does get a job as a comment moderator on a newspaper, she ends up sharing a bank of desks with Arthur, a journalist. Due to the aforementioned forced nature of her taking this role, she looks for anything to make the days more interesting and sparks up (mainly through the internal message system) a friendship with Arthur.

Their friendship develops and while her move into mistress isn’t unwitting – she finds out Arthur is married and still continues – she is in too deep when the truth is revealed to her, so you can see why she keeps believing Arthur when he says he will leave his wife.

The reason Green Dot works so well is that you are so invested in Hera. Despite her character being in morally ambiguous territory with a lot of her actions, how she flexes her behaviour – love delusion, basically – for Arthur, and is so aware of the insanity of what she’s doing but does it anyway, is actually such a relatable trait. And the reason you are always on her side. She finds herself in this situation but it is ultimately a cumulation of all areas of her life.

Side note: I love that Green Dot has a pop-culture reference to the Murder on the Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis-Bexter video which is amazing timing as surely this would have been written way before Saltburn made the song viral? I also think if you enjoyed Saltburn, you will love Green Dot. There are lots of other great pop-cultural refs scattered throughout too, case in point: 'I’ve been re-watching Fleabag but haven’t we all'.

I laughed so many time when reading, this is such a funny, clever, heart-warming and heart-breaking book. You’ll fall for Hera’s story – you’ll be so frustrated by her, want to help her, want her to stop and want her to succeed in equal measure. She is absolutely someone I would love to go for a drink with. Green Dot is a fantastic exploration of a complex love situation. And a woman working out just what she really wants from life. Loved it!