Yours Truly - Kirsty Greenwood
Published: 21/11/13
Published: Pan Macmillan
Pages: 390
Let’s just take a cover appreciation moment *appreciate*.
I haven’t stopped hearing things about Kirsty’s debut novel and when a copy arrived in the post from Pan I was so excited. The cover is just beautiful and I was really excited to see how Kirsty had gone from a self-published author to a traditionally published one.
Yours Truly is a novel about Natalie Butterworth. She is about to get married to Olly, her one true love but her mum and sister, Dionne, are planning everything and Natalie’s not so sure she likes what they’re doing. However, Natalie can’t tell the truth and lies to keep everyone happy. One night during a hypnotist’s show at a local pub, she is hypnotised into telling the truth every time someone asks a question. Immediately she manages to insult her fiancée, upset her mum and lose her job. Natalie knows she needs to find the hypnotist to reverse the spell and so she heads to Little Tooley where ‘Amazing Brian’ lives. On her adventure in Little Tooley she meets a whole host of people who she can’t help telling the truth to. This isn’t good, especially when a hunk called Riley comes into her life.
I really enjoyed the idea of the story. It had a sense of almost magical realism to it. Whilst hypnotherapy is real, I don’t know how likely it is this could happen so I struggled a little with the plausibility. The other thing I struggled with was the character of Olly. To me, he was a lovely man and I felt sorry for him the whole way through the book (until there was no longer a reason for me to feel sorry for him!) which meant I didn’t connect with Riley in the way I should have done. However, this is not necessarily a fault with the writing. It could be reader interpretation and maybe my over friendly nature means I didn’t find much reason to dislike him!
Natalie was an interesting character and at points I also found it hard to sympathise with her but they were few and far between. For the most part I enjoyed Natalie as a character and you cannot fault her character development. From the woman we see at the beginning of the book to the one we see at the end, there’s a MASSIVE journey and that was fabulous. There was a rather large cast of eclectic characters and sometimes I got a little confused between who was who but again, totally reader fault.
I love Kirsty’s writing style; it is humorous in places but is then serious when it needs to be. Her descriptions are perfect and the pace of her novel was sublime. It had me turning the pages over and over and over again to find out what was going to happen next. I loved the fictional village of Little Tooley and would quite happily live there myself!
For a debut novel this was impressive and I am excited to see what comes from Kirsty next because if this is anything to go by then we’re in for a treat! I can totally see why Pan Macmillan snapped this book up!
A fast paced, funny novel about the problems you face when you can’t help but tell the truth…!
Published: Pan Macmillan
Pages: 390
Let’s just take a cover appreciation moment *appreciate*.
I haven’t stopped hearing things about Kirsty’s debut novel and when a copy arrived in the post from Pan I was so excited. The cover is just beautiful and I was really excited to see how Kirsty had gone from a self-published author to a traditionally published one.
Yours Truly is a novel about Natalie Butterworth. She is about to get married to Olly, her one true love but her mum and sister, Dionne, are planning everything and Natalie’s not so sure she likes what they’re doing. However, Natalie can’t tell the truth and lies to keep everyone happy. One night during a hypnotist’s show at a local pub, she is hypnotised into telling the truth every time someone asks a question. Immediately she manages to insult her fiancée, upset her mum and lose her job. Natalie knows she needs to find the hypnotist to reverse the spell and so she heads to Little Tooley where ‘Amazing Brian’ lives. On her adventure in Little Tooley she meets a whole host of people who she can’t help telling the truth to. This isn’t good, especially when a hunk called Riley comes into her life.
I really enjoyed the idea of the story. It had a sense of almost magical realism to it. Whilst hypnotherapy is real, I don’t know how likely it is this could happen so I struggled a little with the plausibility. The other thing I struggled with was the character of Olly. To me, he was a lovely man and I felt sorry for him the whole way through the book (until there was no longer a reason for me to feel sorry for him!) which meant I didn’t connect with Riley in the way I should have done. However, this is not necessarily a fault with the writing. It could be reader interpretation and maybe my over friendly nature means I didn’t find much reason to dislike him!
Natalie was an interesting character and at points I also found it hard to sympathise with her but they were few and far between. For the most part I enjoyed Natalie as a character and you cannot fault her character development. From the woman we see at the beginning of the book to the one we see at the end, there’s a MASSIVE journey and that was fabulous. There was a rather large cast of eclectic characters and sometimes I got a little confused between who was who but again, totally reader fault.
I love Kirsty’s writing style; it is humorous in places but is then serious when it needs to be. Her descriptions are perfect and the pace of her novel was sublime. It had me turning the pages over and over and over again to find out what was going to happen next. I loved the fictional village of Little Tooley and would quite happily live there myself!
For a debut novel this was impressive and I am excited to see what comes from Kirsty next because if this is anything to go by then we’re in for a treat! I can totally see why Pan Macmillan snapped this book up!
A fast paced, funny novel about the problems you face when you can’t help but tell the truth…!
Laura