Roisin and Red meet as teenagers in a small town in Ireland and become unlikely friends. Their connection remains even when he is thrown out by his family and flees to England, and eventually she follows and they live a life of decadent sqalor for a while in a squat. Roisin wants a deeper relationship than Red seems willing or able to give, and eventually their paths diverge and they lose touch, but she can never forget him, and as time passes the past begins to catch up with her. Raw and emotional, this novel really brings to life what it was like to be young, troubled and Irish at the end of the twentieth century. Parents struggle and fail, angry children lash out and forgiveness and understanding are hard won, and sometimes come too late. The demons of drink and drugs are ever looming, pride and shame lead to bad choices, but still in this world there is beauty and reconciliation. Red seems to personify the misery of previous generations through history; showing Roisin an old part of London, he asks her, “ ‘Can you not feel it? All those wretched lives layered up underneath us.’ Can you not, because he knew she wouldn’t understand.” Exquisitely written and often heart-wrenching, this second novel from Kennedy more than lives up to the promise of the first, and will surely be one of the best books of the year.

Categorically one of the best books I’ve ever read. Compelling, empathetic and pin-sharp this is a heartbreaking trip back to 1980s south London squats, but with just enough hope to keep you afloat.

Yet again, Louise Kennedy knows how to capture her reader's attention and keep them there, preferably until they've finished the book in one go because it's just that compulsively readable. Any time I looked up from the text (which wasn't often) and checked my progress, I was surprised by how much I've read, as it felt like mere minutes to me.

I really admire the way Kennedy wrote Róisín - the awkwardness of teeenage years, the anger and wit of her early twenties, the world-weariness of her later years - and let us grow up with her. So much of Róisín's story is shaped by her relationship with Red (his presence and his absence), yet it does not feel like a book about a woman who's defined by a man, and that is down to Kennedy's skill with making her characters into complete human beings, rather than gender stereotypes.

And Red! Oh, Red. I would have loved to read the story from his point of view; the portrait of him we have through Róisín's eyes is a compelling one, but nevertheless I feel like Red deserved the space and time to tell his own story.

Really looking forward to seeing the hundreds (thousands, lets be honest) of book reserves that are going to be put on this book in the Irish library system - and smugly letting the patrons know that yes, I did read this book, and yes, it is just *that* good.

Another gorgeous read from Louise Kennedy! I was eagerly anticipating this book ever since I devoured Trespasses some years ago and really tried to manage my expectations for her follow-up novel, Stations. I needn't have worried, I was enraptured from the opening pages and completely absorbed by Roisin and Red's story, it was beautifully tragic and the array of supporting characters helped to enrich the story and help the reader understand the main character's backgrounds and why they behaved in the way that they did. For me, the writing was incredible, and the pacing was perfect, the slow drip of information which was teased in every chapter helped to keep you guessing about what really happened those two - the dual timeline was another great element which just worked so well in this book.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this ARC.

I am a big fan of Louise Kennedy’s previous novel Trespasses and short story collection so couldn’t wait to read Stations. The story begins in the 80s and follows Róisín and Red from their small Irish town as teenagers, to London and into their adult lives. I found the book to be a great read, Louise Kennedy is a fantastic writer who creates intriguing characters and stories that are subtle and that slowly creep up on you. Read it if you loved her previous work or if you just love a great story, it will not disappoint.

I loved Trespasses so had to read this asap.

In 1982 Róisin and Red meet as teenagers, both are outsiders in their small town in Ireland. Róisin is a recent arrival from the North, while Red already has a reputation for trouble. An unlikely close friendship blossoms.

Stations follows their friendship through the years, sometimes close, sometimes miles apart, to a London squat and beyond, through drink and drugs. It’s often fairly bleak and really quite moving.

Louise Kennedy’s prose has that same natural flow that you loved from Trespasses. It pulls you into the page and carries you along.

If you enjoyed Trespasses you won’t want to miss this. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ)

Couldn’t have loved this more. Enjoyed Trespasses but this was next level… frequently hilarious, moving without giving easy answers, characters you’ll want to follow anywhere. She pulls you into a scene and the mapping of the human heart like very few writers can. It had everything, for me. Louise Kennedy is a genius. If it doesn’t win prizes I’ll kick off.

What a book! Opens in the early eighties in County Kildare, Ireland. Roisin lives alone with her Mum after their Dad had a breakdown and has left the family. She is a teen, struggling at school, can't fit in and feels low and depressed. Red Camelin is the boyfriend of one of the school's cool girls. Roisin ends up befriending him and falling into unrequited love. Something is off with Red and his family, his Dad in particular. Red leaves for London at 16, and circumstances soon lead Roisin to the same city.

The novel moves through time with each chapter, up to 1989 and then moves to 2007. I don't want to say too much about the plot as the joy of reading was wanting to know what would become of Roisin, Red and the other characters. I was very impressed with how Kennedy manages to keep the reader engaged with a main character who is low, quite unhappy and often depressed. It could be said, too, that she doesn't really drive the action, things seem to happen to her, I felt. The pacing helped, as did the Irish humour. By the end, I was desparate for all to have a happy ending, but of course this wasn't a fairytale. I loved my time with Roisin, and highly recommend Stations.

Absolutely exceptional storytelling. Loved following the ups and downs of Ro and Red. Incisive dialogue and complex characters.

I mean, I'd have loved a neatly wrapped up ending... but I'll take it. Still thinking about the characters... and perhaps that's the power of the ending!

Well this book has got to be one of my 2026 favourites! I felt so attached to the characters in this book and all that they had been through in their young lives. It doesn't paint the prettiest picture of 1980s Ireland and the drinking culture that affected the characters in this book. Without giving any spoilers the ending isn't what I was rooting for or expected but it was hopeful.

If you are looking for an uplifting read then this is not it but if you like an emotional read that you can become truly invested in then Stations is a must read!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Set in the early 80s, Stations is the story of Roisin and Red, two teenagers from Ireland. It is a coming of age story, a tale of regret, unrequited love, trauma and healing. Beautifully written and engaging, hard hitting but with tenderness.

Stations is a spectacular coming of age story similar to Normal People but with more darkness, grittiness and a lingering mysteriousness, which added a permanence to my thoughts days after finishing reading.

Its a very bittersweet, heartbreakingly sad story of Róisín and Red's unlikely friendship formed in the 1980s and travelling across time, an ocean, addiction, scandal, love and regret. It's the type of friendship that impacts you so greatly but never reaches a resolution, becoming a ghost to Róisín as she battles her vague memories and navigates through her losses to try and reach a semblance of letting go.

This was my first Louise Kennedy, and I honestly don’t know why I’ve waited so long to read her. I’ll definitely be reading her backlist now.

Stations is a heartbreaking book about friendship, love, addiction, and shame, and about how well we ever really know the people closest to us. There’s so much here about the things people hide, even from those who love them, and the ways shame can slowly become destructive.

I loved the span of the novel, following its characters across decades, and getting a glimpse into life for Irish people in London in the 1980s and ’90s. And yes, there’s plenty of that particular kind of suffering that Irish literature does so well! This is a sad, tender, powerful book that left me feeling like a very sad girl by the end, but I really loved it.

I really enjoyed Trespasses and this has confirmed for me that Louise Kennedy is a great writer. "Stations" is beautifully written and full of flawed characters, trying their best to love each other in different ways, often unsuccessfully, but the author has the reader still rooting for them to find peace and happiness. The Irish migrant experience in London in the 1980s is vividly drawn along with the need for Home and family
Thank you to netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an advance copy of this book.

Getting deeply intertwined with someone before you’ve even developed a personality is so dangerous, and Stations clocks it perfectly.

Roisin and Red met as teenagers in 1980s Ireland and immediately locked in their “we are codependent for life” lore. Red fumbled so hard he had to flee to London just to become a ghost and hard-reset his life. Roisin eventually follows, but changing your location doesn’t delete your character history and packing up your life doesn’t mean you actually escaped the plot. That specific part of Stations really hit different. It literally made me sick to my stomach that fake-out “fresh start” era. You can change postcodes and cosplay as new people, but the history, the class disparity, the shame always follows. You cannot escape yourself.

Kennedy really drags Roisin and Red’s choices; she doesn’t romanticise them. I respect how real she keeps it. She really says loving someone will NOT fix them. Sometimes “love” is just handcuffs keeping you stuck in a version of yourself you should’ve outgrown.

Her portrayal of the Irish community in London was a masterclass in writing diaspora trauma. It broke my heart. She captured that displacement perfectly. There is a distinct, heavy sadness in people who leave home chasing a new life, only to end up permanently suspended between two places. They can’t go back to who they used to be, but they never fully belong where they landed either. They are just culturally stranded. It’s a specific kind of grief I recognise firsthand in the older generations of my own family, which made the book hit entirely too close to home.

No melodrama allowed, Kennedy’s writing is dialled back, and she completely trusts the reader to fill in the blanks and silent spaces. The result is messy, agonising, and deeply human. This is a soul-shattering book about first love and exile. It really forces you to face the horrible truth that you can leave a place behind, but the trauma is still staying in your head rent-free.

Leaving gave them distance. It didn’t give them freedom.

Thank you @NetGalley @Bloomsbury for the advance copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

This one is officially living rent-free in my mind permanently.

This book is heartbreaking, deeply sensitive, and beautifully written. It explores pain, love, loss, and the complexities of human emotions with a tenderness that stays with you long after you turn the final page.

Stations by Louise Kennedy

In 1982 in a small town in Ireland, teenagers Red and Roisin become best friends. Red goes to London and lives in a squat and when Roisin drops out of college, she follows. The novel follows Roisin until 2007 and moves between London and Ireland.

Wow, surely this will win prizes and be a book of the year! An absolute masterclass in storytelling, characterisation and emotion, and compelling from the first page - wow! Louise Kennedy is an expert at showing the yearning, sadness and humour in peoples' messy lives. I particularly loved how she portrayed Roisin at different ages - brilliant! Very VERY highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

A perfect novel

I could not out this book down,
I could not stop thinking about Ro and Red
I was obsessed from the outset
Its a perfect story about imperfect people.
Absolutely adored it. Won't get over that ending for a long time

I started reading this eARC on Thursday night and could hardly make myself stop to take breaks (and work!). I was either reading it or thinking about it for 3 days straight and finished it very fast.

Stations was a heartbreaking read - but in the best way! 💔❤️‍🩹

📖 Synopsis: Róisín and Red become close friends as teenagers in 1980s Ireland. Red soon leaves for England, and when Róisín visits her estranged father in London, she meets Red again, but discovers that his life has taken a darker turn. Their intense but complicated bond continues to shape Róisín’s life long after they drift apart, as she struggles with longing, and the consequences of their earlier choices.

There are some other excellent characters throughout the novel as well.

👏🏻 I would highly recommend pre-ordering Stations; and hope the book gets adapted into a movie/series.

Stations is a wonderful follow up to Kennedy's last novel Trespasses and is stronger than that debut. The characterisation, period detail and sense of emotion are wonderfully conveyed in a book that is as much about relationships (particulaly when young) as it is about the emmigrant experience. Highly recommended.

What a beautiful, tender and sometimes harrowing book this was.

I loved trespasses and was so glad to get accepted for an advance copy of Louise Kennedy’s second book. As with Trespasses, the book is slow and steady but in the best way possible. You grow with the characters and you even just live with them.

Kennedy paints a very vivid picture of what it must’ve been like to grow up in Ireland in the 80s and she tackles the darker, more serious and sensitive themes beautifully.

This was a gorgeous book about friendship, love, loss and the various paths that life might lead us into depending on our own decisions.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy. This gritty literary novel was the first I've read by Louise Kennedy and she's clearIy extremely talented. I sometimes found the style of writing without speech marks harder to follow than a more conventional format (this is a "me problem', not the book). I am intrigued to read more by Kennedy and will try her short stories.

A really great story exploring friendship, love and loss. Set in Ireland and London, we follow Roisin as she grows from a teenager to a young adult and then into adulthood. Roisin and her friend, Red, develop into more than friends but things aren’t straight forward and eventually they grow apart. Fast forward 20 years and Roisin is in London searching for her lost love.

I really enjoyed this book, it’s very emotional and dark at times, but the characters are very well written and the story captivated me instantly. If you enjoyed Kennedy’s previous novel, Trespasses, then you will undoubtedly enjoy this too.

One chapter into Stations and I was already completely smitten.

After loving Trespasses, I went into Louise Kennedy’s second novel with very high expectations, and thankfully they were more than met. Kennedy has such a distinctive way of writing about people: spare, unsentimental and incredibly observant, yet somehow still full of warmth. She can create an entire emotional world with just a few carefully chosen details.

Stations begins in 1980s Ireland, where Róisín and Red form an unlikely friendship as teenagers. Róisín is the sensible, good-girl type, struggling in her own way with school and a complicated family life, while Red already carries the reputation of being trouble. Their friendship begins almost by accident, but it quickly becomes clear that they understand something in one another that other people do not.

From there, the novel moves between Ireland and London, following the pair through different stages of their lives and eventually returning to them many years later. What Kennedy does so well is show how decisions made when we are very young, often without fully understanding their consequences, can reverberate through decades.

There is something incredibly tangible about her writing. At times I genuinely felt as though I were sitting beside Róisín and Red by the river, standing in a dingy London squat, or watching from a railway platform as one life moved further away from another. Kennedy captures not only place but atmosphere: 1980s Ireland, the rough edges of London in the 80s and 90s, family homes, pubs, streets and all the small, ordinary spaces where life quietly changes direction.

I also really appreciated the slight vagueness that sometimes surrounds events. Life rarely makes perfect sense while we are living it, and Kennedy does not over-explain her characters or force every experience into a neat conclusion. People make bad decisions, fail each other, love one another imperfectly and sometimes simply disappear. That messiness makes the novel feel all the more truthful.

There are difficult themes here, including addiction, alcoholism, abuse, loneliness and grief, and watching Red repeatedly drift beyond Róisín’s reach is heartbreaking. Yet I would not describe Stations as bleak. There is humour, tenderness and an enormous amount of love throughout, even when that love is unable to fix what is broken.

Róisín and Red are both wonderfully drawn characters. I spent much of the novel wanting to reach into the pages and give the pair of them a hug. Their relationship is complicated, sometimes frustrating and often painful, but that is exactly what makes it so compelling. Kennedy understands that some of the most important relationships in our lives are not easily labelled. Some people pass through briefly, some remain physically present, and others stay threaded through us long after they are gone.

The title feels increasingly poignant as the novel unfolds. These different places, moments and stages of life become stations in themselves, points at which people meet, separate, wait, move on or occasionally find their way back to one another.

This is a beautifully written, quietly devastating novel about friendship, love, family and the long shadow of the choices we make when we are young. It is gritty and unvarnished without ever losing its humanity.

I could already see Stations translating wonderfully to the screen while I was reading, and I would be very surprised if it does not become every bit as widely discussed as Trespasses.

Irish literature fans will not be disappointed. Louise Kennedy has done it again.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy. All opinions my own.

I absolutely ADORED this book, the sad tale of Red and Roisin and their heart breaking friendship. Dramatic irony at its best. This book has emotionally ruined me, I need time to recover, possibly counselling, and thus it is possibly my favourite book of 2026. All the stars.

I started this book and a few pages in I was thinking hmm, I'm not sure , am I in the mood for a book that seems well a bit depressing .... A few days later I picked it back up when i knew I was in the mood for a deeper book and it hit the spot perfectly. It's a slow burn, it did take me a while to warm to these characters but Kennedy has a way of creating such a vivid backdrop that I honestly felt I was part of these Peoples lives . We start in 80s Dublin where we see the roots of the friendship between Red and Roisin , the book moves to London and then we meet the characters again 20 years later and then start to see how decisions made earlier in life have affected their lives throughout this time .
It feels quite heavy in parts yet something keeps you invested and despite quite difficult themes throughout you can't stop reading . I am already seeing this on screen and I just know it is going to be as big as Trespasses.
Irish lit fans , you will not be disappointed !

This is a review of Stations by Louise Kennedy. Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for ARC.
Centring around the friendship of Roisin and Red, the two meet in 80s Ireland. Always hoping for more between them, Roisin follows Red to London when he leaves under a cloud. In the years that follow, the two are inexorably drawn together among a cast of similarly troubled and drifting characters.
The zippy dialogue, in a vernacular familiar to readers of Trespasses, is entertaining and masks worlds of hurt and pain endured by the protagonists.
A worthy follow up for Louise Kennedy.

This book is unique.. I don't usually this genre but for my luck I have the privilege to read this book.
Louise Kennedy you are my my new discovery of the year for sure. Her writing style: harsh but intense gives to the narration something more..
I was astonished when I finished it becasue in her hard edges I found a interesting narration and the story is so wonderful.
With some themes that can be hard to digest you will be punch in your gut when you finish this book!

Louise Kennedy can write misery with astonishing precision. Stations follows two Irish school friends who move to England, and what unfolds is a bleak, compelling story of unrequited love, alcohol, and drug addiction.

If you like your fiction gritty and unvarnished, this one delivers.

oh Louise sure knows how to get her books deep in my gut. and i mean that as a compliment! this book just took over my afternoon and im not sad about that at all.
this is a story that revolves around your heart and brain long after you have finished. you will ignore people and life to read this book!
the story follows friends Roisein and Red. the timeline take us all throughout decades of their lives and how they join and how they dont. along the way our characters move, shift and grow. sometimes together and sometimes very much not. but always a tethering together, somehow or some when.
those first school days together feels like they could be our yesterday. they both find something to cherish in the other. we learn and we dont of their lives together and their lives apart. something are kept guarded particularly red. the silence there felt like it was telling Roisin and us much of what that was about.
there is something heartbreaking about her devotion to him. but also something that clearly settled in him via her. and actually vice versa. the balance somehow works and somehow doesn't. they move together and apart as both tackle life in different way moving from Ireland to London, again in their own and different ways.
we learn more about their family and the dynamics within and you see how this effects them both. i love how Louise brings others into the light, we get to see other characters that are in the scenes with our main characters. and never do we shift too far from Red or Roisin.
you see how both our pair have their challenges. sadly this comes in the form of their home life or family man times. i felt so much on these parts. right in the chest. and even though we shift in time and place it is woven seamlessly around and together.
i felt so much for Roisin. this connection she feels in those younger years. the joy of him choosing her time and time again in the only ways he felt able. there was surely always going to be something more between them. there already was. so when his life is shattered and he leaves it also breaks something for her too. life goes on and then somehow she on his doorstep. she is needing him. and yet somehow she needs to know also what changed,what wasn't or isn't between them. he continues to play such a big part in her life, heart and soul.
in books like this you might think why is she with him. leave him he doesn't care. its not balanced etc etc. but i was like Roisin! because there is something there, this boy, this man is the only way he can be. many of those way he is is because he has had to be. its how hes gotten through just like Roisin has her ways. some might not be right or even rational. but these are two people at different ends of many lines but somehow still n the same one. i felt their connection. and this made it even more emotional to read. i wanted them both to somehow get this happy ending. but the rawness in my heart also told me this couldn't or might not be. because we understand, i understood where and how life had shaped Red. why he self destructs. and you still see that goodness. you still hold out for it to be ok for him. i felt the thread that still binds them as if it was this shimmering thing we could all see.
i didn't want this book to end until i had scooped both our characters up and made them safe, happy ok. i really wanted them to be ok! that ending. it was all the more real and had to be written like this.
i haven't wanted an epilogue the showing of two very happy people, to be written in such a long time from my reads!
i was taken right into the centre of this book and didn't want to crawl out. i wanted to cry, smile and be there for these two and the others they bring into our lives throughout. a book written like magic from an author that buries herself into your heart and emotions with her books.

📖 Stations
🖋️ Louise Kennedy

My Rating : ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5

Where do I begin? I absolutely loved this book. It's beautifully written and incredibly thoughtful, with characters who felt completely real to me. There were so many moments that made me stop and reflect, and I find myself thinking about this story often. It's a beautiful novel and it carries so much emotional weight. One of my favourite reads for 2026!

I absolutely loved this. The writing is incredible, I loved all the characters, I didn’t want to put it down. I thought the imperfect ending was perfect. Will be recommending!

3.5☆

i love literary fiction, irish authors, and a story that spans years, so this was right up my alley.

stations begins with ró and red’s initial friendship in a small town in ireland, and follows them to london in the late eighties/early nineties. what shines through is kennedy’s descriptive writing, it never feels like she’s ‘ telling rather than showing’ and i could vividly picture every setting and could sketch the squat from memory.

i liked the direction the story took, and the ending. their were a few reasons i didn’t rate it higher. the first being the central friendship. as it’s the foundation of the novel, i would have liked a stronger sense of their emotional connection, besides circumstance.



*the smallest spoilers below that aren’t really spoilers but i’m being extra cautious as this book isn’t out yet*

secondly - and why i took a while to rate this - is because this book is too ‘irish’. i know that sounds funny, especially considering my first sentence of this review, but it leans so heavily relies into the aesthetics of irishness that it made me think the author was afraid you would forget the characters were irish. examples include; crying about an irish artist’s immigration book, shamrock tattoos, celtic wedding bands (all things i actually like), planning to visit the grave of an irish character in march to leave shamrocks (st patrick’s day - get it?), the phrase, “insanely cool for an irish mammy,” and despite, living in london, seemingly only reading the irish times.

one one hand, it makes sense for irish characters who were living in england during the 80s and 90s, during significant anti-irish sentiment, to latch onto their culture and each other, given the political climate. on the other hand, it also seems to be written as “irish for the international audience”. i havn’t read trespasses yet but wonder if the international success of that influenced this approach.

overall, i liked it, i’m excited for when it’s released so i can discuss it with my friends, and as a result, kennedy’s other book is creeping up my tbr.

a gritty read, set in the 1980s London. I felt really invested in all the characters, despite their flaws. Great writing. I wanted the happy ending, don't think it was that, but it was satisfying.

It's 1982 in Kildare, Ireland, and Roisin McCaffrey is the 'go-between' for Tina Doyle and Red Camelin. She delivers letters to Red, even though he doesn't seem that interested in Tina Doyle. In fact, he spends a lot more time talking to Roisin about books and music, and smoking cigarettes by the riverbank.

At a school dance months later, Red drinks too much and ends up being taken home by Roisin and the local policeman. Except when they get close to Red's home, he doesn't want to get out of the car. He begs them not to leave him at the fancy house everyone knew the Camelins lived in. That night, he comes home with Roisin, sleeps on her couch, and becomes a fixture in the humble home she shares with her mother, Una. Roisin's father left them a long time ago, and Una quickly warms to the troubled Red.

In 1984, Roisin has finished high school and catches a train to London to visit her father for Christmas. At the front door, she's greeted by his new young wife, Lynn, and their baby daughter. Instead of being delighted, Roisin can't face any of it and runs off to stay with Red.

Red has been living in London for a few years in a squat with a few roommates. They are all drinking and smoking a lot, and it seems Red has been selling drugs to make ends meet. Since her school days in Ireland, the drugs have gotten stronger, and the squat is a dismal existence. Roisin stays a lot longer than she means to—and falls more in love with Red every day. But Red has fallen in with a crowd that includes a young, wealthy socialite, and so our heroine finds herself falling into the arms of Barry Doyle, the very same brother of Tina Doyle—the reason Roisin was once a 'go-between'. Whilst in London, she makes up with her father, falls in love with her baby sister Mary, and finds that Red is becoming more and more lost to her. Her father's alcoholism causes a great many hardships for Lynn, who struggles to parent Mary on her own.

It's suddenly 1988, and Roisin is working as a filing clerk, has long since left the squat, Red, and Barry Doyle, and is now in a fairly normal relationship with a young man named Guy.

In 1989, Roisin sees Red at a train station in London begging for money.

Twenty years later, Red's mother comes to Roisin and begs to see her son one last time. His father, whom Red famously hated, is dead, and she is not long for this world either. Roisin hasn't seen Red Camelin since that day at the station, and starts to track down parts of the life she lived during her time in that dirty squat, hoping to catch a glimpse of the boy she once loved. In 2007, even Roisin's sister Mary is a grown-up, and the world is a very different place to the one it was in the 1980s.

Stations is a heartbreaking, achingly beautiful story of life and the transitions we go through. The loss and grief of addiction and abuse is very present in this novel, and even though Roisin is the main character, and it's through her eyes that we see the world, Red's influence in her life is never far away from the main stage. This is a story about friendships, connections and relationships that we have in our lives that are sometimes fleeting, and sometimes forever. Both have the power to have the same impact, and it is these places (or stations) that we find ourselves in, briefly, that can be the most impactful of all.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I want to start by saying that I've finished this book and I still don't know how I feel. Am I happy for the FMC? Was that really a HEA? Do I feel satisfied with the ending? I'm genuinely conflicted, and I think that's exactly what makes this such an incredible read.
Stations was an instant 5 star book for me, but one that took me through every possible emotion. As someone born towards the end of the Troubles in the North of Ireland, there was a strange familiarity in each person's childhood story. The trauma surrounding families at the time, whether through religion, social divides, or simply the fear and anxiety of where you lived, felt incredibly authentic and echoed so many of the stories I grew up hearing.

Louise Kennedy's writing is beautiful. She captures both the quiet moments and the heartbreaking ones with such skill that every emotion feels palpable. Red and Róisín's relationship always felt as though it was destined to end in heartbreak, and the ripple effects it had on their families and friends felt painfully real. There were moments when all I wanted was for Róisín to go home and find comfort in her mam.

Louise Kennedy is a fantastic author, and I'll be eagerly waiting to see what she writes next. If you haven't read any of her previous work, I wholeheartedly recommend Trespasses while you wait for the release of Stations.

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read the ARC of this book

Stations by Louise Kennedy.  Thank you to Bloomsbury for this eARC which I received as part of the 6 books discussed at the Bloomsbury Big Night In this year.  This was the last of the 6 books that I read.

Set between 1982 and 2007 we follow teenagers Ro (Ròisín) and Red (Redmond) as their friendship develops and evolves over time.

Ro has recently moved to the small Irish town from the North so is already an outsider and one of the unpopular girls.  Having to deliver a letter to the bad boy Red by one of the popular girls, fate turns them into unlikely friends.

The book moves from small town Ireland to squats in London. We come to understand what absent parents do to children, deal with addiction in different forms and see how people deal with it in their own unique ways.  It's a bleak book written in a beautiful way.

The Stations was such a nostalgic read. I have not read this author before but she reminded me of the Irish fiction I have read by Maeve Binchy and Maggie O'Farrel as they all have a similar lyrical feel to their stories. This one did not disappoint. I found the story to be engaging and it kept me up way past my bedtime reading because I wanted to know what happened. I did find the main female character, Róison to be quite annoying but to me that just means that the character has been written well.
The story follows her and Red's relationship across Ireland and London in the eighties. While I grew up in South African, the feeling of the eighties was so encompassing I could feel the time period through the pages. The themes include changing landscapes, addiction and how the past informs the decisions we make.
Read it, its great.

Thank you to Bloomsbury, Tandem Collective Global and Netgalley for my review copy

Interesting and emotional character led novel about life in Ireland and London in the 80s and 90s. Beautifully written but I felt it only touched the surface of some of the characters. I was also frustrated at the ending, I like stories that tie things up neatly!

This was a powerful and emotional read that stayed with me long after I turned the last page. The writing was beautiful and every emotion felt genuine. It explored relationships, grief, and the complexities of life in such a thoughtful way. It wasn’t always an easy read, but it was incredibly rewarding. Some books entertain you, and others make you feel something deep. This was definitely one of those books.