Poppy has just found she’s pregnant. Her circumstances tell her she isn’t ready for this to be a part of her life, so she visits her local Planned Parenthood. It’s here she meets Rhiannon, an interesting woman who helps her find her way to and from the clinic through the protestors. Poppy doesn’t think she’ll ever see her again until she decides to join her local knitting group.
Bell has written this in first-person point of view, so we spend the book in Poppy’s thoughts. The writing comes across as light-hearted, with a determination and humour in the prose, however, the narrative actually deals with some pretty complex topics, and for the most part, does this well.
The narrative is mainly about the romance, and it was here I really wanted the opportunity to get more of Rhiannon’s thoughts to understand the decisions she was making. I really liked the idea of her as a character, but as we only see her from Poppy’s point of view, I found it hard to connect with her.
However, at the same time, I enjoyed getting to read Poppy’s thoughts on her pregnancy, her family, and her life in general. I thought Bell did a good job of bringing all of the secondary characters together, both in the family situations and with the knitting group. I felt I could really picture them all, which is impressive for a book with a large number of secondary characters.
Like most debut books it has its bumps, but they soon even out. There were some moments I didn’t like personally, and I did nearly put this down after the sex scene, but I think they were more a question of personal taste, and suspect others would read this and not feel the same way.
Whilst the topics are relatively common in sapphic fiction, I thought Bell did a good job of keeping it fresh and I’m looking forward to seeing what Bell does next.
I received an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
LGBTQ+ Reader 