All The Other Mothers Hate Me

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Pub Date 10 Apr 2025 | Archive Date Not set
4th Estate | Fourth Estate

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Description

'SPIKY, WITTY, A BREATH OF FRESH AIR' PANDORA SYKES

'GOSSIPY, GRIPPING, BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN' LAUREN BRAVO

'YOU WON'T SEE THE TWIST COMING' JESSICA KNOLL

Florence Grimes is a 31-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. After a dismal end to her girlband career, she's living in West London, single, broke and unfulfilled with only her son Dylan to keep her afloat.

But then Alfie Risby, the ten-year-old heir to a frozen food empire and Dylan’s school rival, mysteriously vanishes on a class trip, and Dylan becomes a prime suspect.

Florence needs to find Alfie and clear her son’s name or risk losing him forever. The only problem? She doesn’t have any detective skills, all the other school mums hate her, and she's just found Alfie’s backpack hidden under her son’s bed…

‘THE WITTY DEBUT YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT DOWN' SERVICE 95

'SPIKY, WITTY, A BREATH OF FRESH AIR' PANDORA SYKES

'GOSSIPY, GRIPPING, BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN' LAUREN BRAVO

'YOU WON'T SEE THE TWIST COMING' JESSICA KNOLL

Florence Grimes...


Available Editions

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ISBN 9780008698010
PRICE £9.99 (GBP)
PAGES 304

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Average rating from 23 members


Featured Reviews

Failed girl band member and single mum, Florence, an American in London. No friends, a son with personality difficulties, an uncaring ex partner. Then a boy goes missing on a school trip - a boy who has bullied her son in the past, and he may be the only witness. Florence turns private investigator, finds a friend and her life begins to change. Great wet day reading, hard to put down, feeling sympathetic toward Florence ,and also horror at her actions.

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After the first few pages reading about Florence Grimes I didn’t think I would enjoy this book. Florence is a nightmare! She got kicked of a girl group and gets up to all sorts of things she shouldn’t. She is almost totally selfish except in her love for her son, Dylan and even with him she doesn’t always do the right thing, leaving him on his own at home when she should be looking after him. Florence would like to have friends but doesn’t know how to behave to have anyone bother with her. Dylan is also tricky and his only friend is a retired man who collects crickets for Dylan’s turtle. When Dylan goes on a field trip and the boy he has been partnered with disappears Florence immediately suspects Dylan is involved and goes to great lengths to protect him and also to try and find Archie. This is when the story really takes off. Another mother at the school, Jenny, gets involved in trying to find Archie, little knowing that Florence’s motive for finding the boy. All the characters are larger than life and there are some very funny moments in the book. I didn’t actually want it to end and I found it a real pager turner especially towards the end of the book when Florence shows exactly what she’s made of. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me an ARC of this terrific book which was great fun.

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A really great story which you can't really predict where it is going!! Thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend highly.

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Really really enjoyed this book, not going to spoil it but definitely worth reading. I'd be interested in other books by Sarah Harman. I will be keeping this on my kindle to give it another read at a later date xx

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Brilliant! Although I didn’t love the main character, I couldn’t put it down! I needed to find out what was going to happen! Kept me entertained from start to finish and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Highly recommended.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my ARC

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It is easy to see why some of the other mothers might not like Florence- she is a flawed individual whose life is a mess and who cannot stay on top of anything, but her struggles are real and her desire to protect her child is fierce and those traits sing through all of the rest of her many and varied poor decisions to make a good page turner!

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You know you don't want to like Florence, she has so many undesirable traits. But soon you can't help rooting for her. This book is so well written, it just keeps pulling you alone. And the twists! Amazing.

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As far as debuts go, Sarah Harman's "All the Other Mothers Hate Me" is a strong one. It kind of gives Netlfix's "The Dutchess" in terms of creating the protagonist, Florence, kind of unlikable antiheroine who is not only hated by the other school mothers but probably also quite disliked by the reader. She is generally antisocial, non-committal, demand-avoidant and her mothering also leaves something to desire. The only thing that seems to motivate her to go up and beyond is protecting her son, Dylan, who seems to be involved in a classmate's disappearance.

Methods that she uses to conduct her investigation and disconnect her son's potential involvement are questionable but very realistic, considering the portrayal of the character.

What Sarah Harman does well, is taking the formulaic of a mistery thriller and having fun with it. The narrative is well-paced, the plot exciting and any additional characters have their place in the story. She doesn't leave any ends untied, which shows her literary talent in creating coherent and enjoyable stories.

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The hype on this one is SO well-deserved. I adored the premise, but the execution - couldn't have been more of a page turner and I miss these characters already as though they are my friends.

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Florence Grimes is an ex girl and member navigating life as a single mother to a 10 year old awkward, environmentalist son. Flo doesn’t fit in with the other posh school Mums. She is a loud American with a penchant for old band T-shirts. When one of the boys from school an heir to a frozen food fortune goes missing. Flo suspects her son might be involved and will do anything to protect him. She builds an adorable unlikely friendship with fellow American Jenny, and they begin to start their own investigation into Alfie’s disappearance. I adored this book. I couldn’t help but admire Flo’s dgaf attitude and her fierce protection of her son despite some of her mistakes as a mum. I loved the growing friendship between Flo and Jenny so completely different yet both had such a lovely connection. The story kept me hooked and I didn’t see the twist at end. A great read!

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I’m going to start by saying, I understand why all the other mothers hate her, because I hate her too. I don’t know if this was the authors intention, but I hated her enough to keep reading.

Florence is an ex-girlband member that is still striving for that tiny bit of success. A single mother, waking up each day to a can of Red Bull (completely relate), and taking her son to a private school that couldn’t be further from her social class.

The first part of this book reminded me of the ‘Why Mummy...’ series by Gill Sims. A mother feeling out of her depth with the other ‘yummy mummy’s’ at the school who flaunt their husband's money and thrive for PTA meetings.

However, after a classmate of Florence’s son Dylan goes missing whilst on a school trip, Florence finds herself doubting the innocence of her ten-year-old and finds herself willing to do anything to prove his innocence.

Florence is unlikeable for more reasons than just her ability to ostracise herself from the other mums. She is simultaneously both a terrible and amazing mother. I mean, I hated her, and her actions, but the lengths in which she goes to for Dylan made me doubt her poor decisions. She seems to be trying to balance her old-life of drinking and one-night stands with being a responsible mother in upper-class London.

However, the missing boy, Alfie, is the heir to a frozen-food empire, whose parents Florence seems to have a complicated past with. It isn’t until she meets Jenny, another mother who seems more relatable to Florence and a likely friend, that they decide to take the investigation into their own hands. Except, Florence is hiding her suspicions of her own son’s involvement as her and Jenny work to find another suspect.

The first part of the book was hilarious in a Why Mummy drinks way, and about halfway through I began to get bored and my hatred towards the main character became more valid. It wasn’t until the final part of the book that things started to pick up, and it became less of a comedy and more of a thriller. The plot twists and involvement of other characters as Florence spends her time investigating missing Alfie had me gripped.

This wasn’t the way I thought this book was going to go, and it pleasantly surprised me. If you like a good mystery, with drama and a character that you’re bound to hate, I’d recommend All the Other Mothers Hate Me.

Thank you NetGalley and 4th Estate for the arc in exchange for an honest review!

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Absolutely brilliant, loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

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Love the narrative voice, love the name and love the cover. Looking forward to reading more from Sarah Harman.

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OH how I loved this book.

It has a sense of humour and is very very good.

Florence Grimes son Dylan is implicated in the disappearance of the boy who relentlessly bullies him and Florence has decided to investigate what really happened.

Dylan is a complicated child and Florence is not all that serious either. She really does have some issues and I am not quite sure I liked her.

It is a brilliant read and a book I am ready for my friends to read so we can laugh and discuss..

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I really enjoyed this! This book feels like if ‘How To Kill Your Family’ (Bella Mackie) and the ‘AGGGTM: As Good As Dead’ (Holly Jackson) had a kid. I loved all the plot twists which made it impossible to stop reading. I do think that Florence is a train wreck and definitely unlikeable at many points due to her parenting choices, but she makes a great main character.

Thank you NetGalley for the early copy!

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