This book had the rare mix of laugh out loud funny, moving and compelling. I was immediately sucked in by the originality and the absurdity of the initial premise and the slow reveal of the protagonist and her life.
I loved the unfamiliar setting which was evocative.
The handling of the themes of parenthood, choosing not to have children and of coercive controlling relationships was superb and sensitively/subtly done.
I tore through this and enjoyed it throughout. I can't wait for more from the author.

Wow. I thought that faking a pregnancy could be a good basis for a book, and Mother Faker did not disappoint in any way.
Barri Brown’s life is a mess. Her husband has left her, her finances are a mess, and she struggles with her colleagues. Barri doesn’t find it easy to fit in at the school where she teaches English, and after she misses out on a promotion and finds her colleague is pregnant, again, she comes up with a plan. Fake a pregnancy and then take the maternity pay and travel. And when maternity leave is over, Barri plans to move to Edinburgh where no one will know what she has done.
However faking a pregnancy isn’t as straightforward as she thought. And what’s worse, once she has announced the pregnancy Barri’s life begins to change for the better. Maybe she doesn’t want to leave it all behind….
This book has a great cast of quirky characters and the plot is packed with original and unexpected twists and turns. It kept me reading right through to the end to see if there really was a happy ending for Barri and her friends.

What a fabulous read. Follows the story of a woman who fakes a pregnancy. Both laugh out loud and some tears. Very well written and kept me interested right to the last word. Highly recommended. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy and leave this review willingly.

I really liked this book, it has humour, grief and some self discovery moments that made me want to get to the end to see what happened but also not wanting to finish as this is a stand alone story and I was enjoying seeing how Bari was getting more muddled in her lie. One of the joys of Netgalley is discovering new authors and I will be checking out her other books.

I read Motherfaker by Anna Brook-Mitchell in a day. I couldn’t put it down and I just had to know what was going to happen to Barri Brown! I really couldn’t guess what was going to happen.

Barri Brown is an English High School Teacher on Guernsey in the Channel Islands. She’s recently been overlooked for a promotion at work, she feels isolated and invisible at work and her family, and to top it off her husband Sean has literally left her high and dry by fleeing the island and stealing her inheritance from her father and taking a second mortgage on the house.

Barri decides that she needs a break from her life on Guernsey and as her husband has left her high and dry, she’s going to fund her extended holiday to Nashville and Dollywood with Maternity Pay! Then she’ll relocate to Edinburgh to start anew because no-one will miss her on Guernsey.

Obviously what Barri does is unethical. That said, the book is a joy to read and there are some truly laugh out moments of Barri’s fake pregnancy and the scrapes she gets into with her fake ‘bumps’. However, it’s all a journey of discovery and ironically, during Barri’s fake pregnancy, she discovers who she really is and where she should be.

There are some topics including coercive behaviour and I think the tone was right in the context of the book itself. But overwhelmingly the book is a feel-good book with humour and warmth.

I can’t wait to read what else Anna Brook-Mitchell writes!

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, Pan Macmillan, for making this e-ARC available to me in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I was sucked in right from the moment I saw the title, which is awesome! Then I opened the book and started to read and I don’t feel I like I reemerged until the very end!

Barri’s life is a mess and she has the (very genius) idea of taking a pregnancy to get some money and time off work to leave Guernsey and travel and then start a whole new life in Edinburgh after cutting ties with everything and everyone she knows. Turns out despite the fake pregnancy bumps being ways to find online that nothing else is quite as easy as she expected!

Outrageously funny in places and heartbreaking in others, this was an outstanding read!

Ladies! Are you child-free? Bored of covering for your colleagues because their kid has a cold? Frustrated at being passed over for promotion in favour of someone who's had two consecutive years of maternity leave? Then you need to meet the bold Barri Brown, teacher of A-level English, who DGAF about babies but quite wants a sabbatical.

Barri, who has the misfortune of being named even not just after a bloke but a horse, just wants the more exciting life she left behind after the death of her beloved father and abandonment by her weasel ex Sean. When Barri's attempt to break out backfires, she ends up faking a pregnancy - and she does it on the island of Guernsey, where everybody knows not just your name but what you had for breakfast.

Usually these stories end up with the woman getting up the duff, so I worried every time Barri felt nauseous, but thankfully she got her period, made some new friends and found out that, if she does have a maternal side, she'd had a more productive outlet for it all along. As a Confirmed Auntie myself, I always like when a book points out that a child can have a positive relationship with an adult that didn't give birth to them. Five stars.

If this isn’t a Netflix series one day, I’ll eat my hat! This debut novel is funny, emotional, heart wrenching and action packed, with an idyllic Guernsey location and some brilliant characters.

Barri is having the worst time ever. Her husband Sean has texted her to say he’s leaving her, her annoying boss has promoted someone else instead of her (but still expects Barri to do all the grunt work), and she feels like her family are excluding her from all the fun. She’s always been a bit of a lone wolf anyway but Barri’s brain wave is to sell her house and go on the trip of a lifetime.

When she finds out that Sean has remortgaged the house without her knowing, Barri is completely stumped and can’t see a way out. Surrounded by pregnant women who seem to have it all, in a fit of madness she decides to fake a pregnancy and disappear before the ‘baby’ arrives. But as the fake pregnancy develops, her connections to friends family and location deepens and she’s left in a bigger bind than ever.

The story is wonderfully written and structured, my heart was in my mouth at times, so nervous for what was in store for Barri, willing her on but also wanting her not to be so hasty!

The island setting is an absolute dream as well, the Guernsey tourist board should sponsor Anna’s writing- I definitely want to visit now!

I loved Loved LOVED Motherfaker. What a delightful, hilarious, and unexpectedly heartfelt read! Set on Guernsey, the setting and characters are brought to life so vividly that I felt like I was walking the streets alongside Barri and crew. The story is a bit over-the-top—but in the absolute best way—and the author’s background as a screenwriter and filmmaker shines through in the perfectly visualized storytelling. I hope this gets optioned for a series.
Barri Brown is unforgettable: clever, resourceful, chaotic, and completely exasperating in the most endearing way. The premise—faking a pregnancy to get a year off work—is outrageous, ridiculous, and yet somehow completely believable in Barri’s hands. I laughed out loud, cringed, and felt genuinely moved all within a single chapter.
This is a screwball comedy with heart, a story about family, friendship, and discovering yourself, wrapped up in a brilliantly executed caper. Clever, tender, and impossible to put down—Motherfaker is an absolute joy from start to finish.

Motherfaker - how far would you go for a year off work?
Barri Brown is a teacher, relatable and honest but down-trodden. Sick of seeing her colleagues have a paid year off, jealous even though she doesn’t want children. But she decides to go for it and fake a pregnancy to pocket the money.

The book is honestly hilarious, touching, emotional, infuriating and a bit bonkers. I loved it! Barri is such a likeable character even through her very questionable decisions.
A fantastic debut that I just wanted to keep reading!

Barri Brown is fed up. A hard-working teacher on Guernsey, she's fed up of people telling her that her biological clock is ticking. She's fed up of being told that she'll 'change her mind' when she tells her family, friends and colleagues that she doesn't ever want children and she's fed up of being overwhelmed, overloaded, unappreciated and overlooked for promotion in favour of people she's spent years covering for when they have been off on repeated maternity leave. Not only that but she doesn't really have any friends; her family is exasperated by her, despite what she sees as her best efforts to be a good Sister and Aunt (I fully empathise with her sister here), and worse still, her husband Sean has disappeared and is ghosting her, and she doesn't know why or where he is. She has had enough.

So when she stumbles, Barri-style, into a conversation that leads her colleagues to think she's expecting a baby, she starts to think...why not? As everyone seems so desperate for her to have a baby, and is insistent that she will one day she decides to lean into it. She can pull this off, right? With the help of progressive fake 'bumps' bought online and a solid game face, she can pretend to be expecting, enjoy all of the positive attention that comes with it, pop the house on the market,  pocket her share of the money, take the maternity leave and disappear. Travel the world for a while as the fuss dies down, then settle somewhere new – she thinks she quite fancies Nashville although longer term, Edinburgh has quite a pull.

Enter Trish, a new neighbour who ends up becoming unwittingly embroiled in Barri's plans and becomes her first real friend. With her support, things are going to plan until Barri discovers that Sean, the errant husband, has remortgaged the house without her knowledge and all her plans go up in smoke…but she's still there…trapped…fake pregnancy and all, but no money on the horizon. How the hell is she going to get out of this one? When one of her students gets involved with criminal activity and resorts to blackmailing her, she knows she's really messed up and the prospect of what will happen if she's outed (or indeed, if she isn't!) over the next few months is terrifying.

Motherfaker is quite unlike any book I've read before. The main character is so beautifully written that she's believable in her absurdity, but there is a serious message that underpins this book which covers societal attitudes to women and how they are so often defined by their parental status - mothers are judged on their choices in the same way that childfree women are, just in a different context. When a woman is pregnant she effectively becomes public property and her body is discussed and touched, often with seemingly little choice from her. When a woman chooses to be childfree, she is often viewed with suspicion and distrust and the perception is frequently thrown around that a woman who doesn't have children is devoid of empathy and has no idea what 'real love' is. Just look what is said about female MPs or CEOs without children - it's rarely, if ever raised by way of similar criticism for males in the same situation. This book reiterates that women are often made to feel as if they do not have a choice, and also that motherhood is not always achieved by giving birth. Women may be mothers through blended families, fostering, adoption, and some will play the role of mother many times without ever having the official 'label'. On the other side of the coin, they may decide that motherhood is not for them at all - and that's ok too. I think the really sad thing that this book exposes is that she felt left out by the women in her life until she 'got pregnant' and in reality - she was.  Once she was 'in the club', literally and figuratively, she was a different person to them. This is something that many women have felt over the years - constantly expected to have children, and then left out of so much if they don't, or can't. It's a message that really makes you think.

On a more positive note, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's one of my best reads of the year so far (and we are in November now so that's some going!). It's got so much going for it - the nervous feeling that Barri's lies are going to be exposed and the internal struggle of whether you want her to be found out or not? I mean she's doing something pretty awful here, but based on her experiences, can you really blame her? She's actually making friends for the first time in her life, she's maturing emotionally and she's opening up and making herself vulnerable. Her life is changing in a way she never expected and just when she's starting to experience real friendship, she's going to have to blow it all open with a massive expose.  Somewhere down the line, while taking on the bad guys, she has become the bad guy. The unjustness of this just emphasises her frustration with the societal expectations on women to have babies and the way attitudes change towards the if and when they do - as I mentioned earlier this will ring true and strike a chord with many women. The themes of feeling 'othered', of trying so hard to fit in, and eventually feeling that inclusion, but knowing it's all based on a lie and she'd never have experienced that warmth and friendship if she'd not deceived them into thinking she was expecting. To have Barri shoulder that burden, and the events that unfold as it all starts to unravel, with such humour and poignancy is a real triumph and I think Anna Brook-Mitchell has a big hit on her very talented hands.

Why a funny book!
Great idea/ concept, which was what made me request it.
I enjoyed the whole idea of the book from beginning to end especially being a teacher a lot of this made me laugh so much. It made me question all of my colleagues. The different names she gave for her bumps was a particular fun joke and there was lots of little jokes running throughout it like that.

Like Barri, I've often fantasised about taking paid leave from work. However, Barri takes it the extreme with her plan to fake a pregnancy for a year. I was intrigued by the premise, but the story's dry wit and heart kept me gripped.