So Thrilled For You

by Holly Bourne

A terrible heatwave. A very tense baby shower. It will all end in tears...

Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university. Now in their thirties, life is pulling them in different directions - but when Charlotte organises the baby shower of hell for pregnant Nicki, the girls are reunited.

Under a sweltering hot summer day, tensions rise - and by the end of the evening, nothing will ever be the same. Someone started a fire at the house - and everyone's a suspect... Is it Steffi, happily child-free but feeling judged by her friends? Is it Charlotte, desperate to conceive and jealous of those who have? Is it Lauren, who is finding motherhood far, far worse than she imagined? Or is it Nicki herself, who never wanted a baby shower anyway?

In the aftermath, the police put together the facts - but the truth will shock everyone. Even you.

BIG LITTLE LIES meets REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY in the incredible new novel from Holly Bourne - it's the book you'll want to read three times, then give to every woman in your life.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Thriller, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Adult, Audiobook

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2025

About the author

Holly started her writing career as a news journalist, where she was nominated for Best Print Journalist of the Year. She then spent six years working as an editor, a relationship advisor, and general ‘agony aunt’ for a youth charity – helping young people with their relationships and mental health.

Inspired by what she saw, she started writing teen fiction, including the best-selling, award-winning ‘Spinster Club’ series which helps educate teenagers about feminism. When she turned thirty, Holly wrote her first adult novel, 'How Do You Like Me Now?', examining the intensified pressures on women once they hit that landmark.

Alongside her writing, Holly has a keen interest in women’s rights and is an advocate for reducing the stigma of mental health problems. She’s helped create online apps that teach young people about sexual consent, works with Women’s Aid to spread awareness of abusive relationships, and runs Rethink’s mental health book club.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars. Holly Bourne's latest is another juicy page turner about a group of women who've been friends since college. Now they're going off and starting families of their own (or not) and new tensions and old resentments surface at a baby shower.

Bourne is great at writing contemporaries about women and complex relationships, yet this is the first that reads a bit like a thriller. The story moves between police interview transcripts in the present and the build-up to the fire that ended the baby shower from hell. It was great (and unusual) to see a book successfully juggle four different perspectives.

It's a very compelling story, mostly because the characters are so well-drawn. Nicki, Lauren, Steffi and Charlotte are each easy to sympathise with when you're reading their POV, but it is also easy to see how you could resent them when seen from another's perspective. Bourne's characterization was so strong you could appreciate it from all sides. This is true of Charlotte, especially, who I felt sorry for at the same time as I felt sorry for all those having to deal with her.

I wasn't at all surprised to learn Bourne is a new mum herself as she so perfectly describes the horror and anxiety so many new mothers deal with, including breastfeeding nightmares, useless husbands and the feeling that your whole life and identity has been taken from you.

Alongside this, she also portrays the heartache of being unable to get pregnant and the frustrations of being a woman who doesn't want kids. She handles all these perspectives with empathy and respect.

I was excited to see how it would all play out, though I'm not totally convinced by the last chapter. Some things really cannot be unsaid and I find it hard to believe everyone would be that forgiving.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good I forgot I was reading.

[Roisin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler alert no one was thrilled for anyone

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

free birth control in book form

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another banger from Holly Bourne. Why are women friendships so messed up? I wish it wasn’t true, but your best friend can turn into your worst enemy literally in a matter of minutes. Plus, all the motherhood stuff is very raw here, definitely came from a a new mother. My only gripe is that the ending is way too upbeat for my liking.

[Áine O'Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A morality tale about the consequences of bitching about people at the same party as you

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I was just about coping, though I did spend a lot of time crying in my pyjamas"

I finished this book on Sunday afternoon, and then, while driving to work on Monday morning, I found myself thinking about the story and the characters, and suddenly, I was crying all over again. That’s when I knew this was a five-star read for me.

This story follows four friends in their early thirties, reuniting to celebrate a baby shower. They’ve been close since university, but lately, their lives have been pulling them in different directions. Firstly we have Lauren who was the first in the group to have a baby. She’s battling postnatal depression and PTSD from a traumatic birth. Nicki is currently pregnant and struggling with problems in her marriage. Charlotte has been enduring the heartbreak of several failed rounds of IVF. Steffi has a thriving career, doesn’t want children, and feels incredibly isolated in that decision. This entire book took place over the course of one day and all these friends meeting up again at the baby shower.

If you’re in your late twenties or early thirties, you’ll feel deeply connected to these girls. I guarantee you’ll see yourself—your thoughts, emotions, or experiences reflected in at least one of them. And through the others, you’ll recognise your friends and family.

What makes this story so impactful is that it reminds you no matter which girl you relate to, you’re part of a universal experience. You’re not alone. We’re all overwhelmed by the realisation that this is our one and only life. Every choice we make shapes the next, and we’re all looking around, trying to present our happiest, most confident selves—defending our decisions, justifying why our paths look different from our friends’. But the truth is, our friends are doing the exact same thing. We all fear we’re getting it wrong, and in that fear, we project our insecurities onto the people we love, convinced they’re judging us when, in reality, they’re just as lost as we are.

Each of these girls are fighting their own battle. And what this book does so beautifully is show that just because someone’s struggle looks different from yours, it doesn’t make it any less real. We never truly know what someone else is going through. But by the end of this story, one thing shines through, female friendships are a bloody beautiful thing.

“What do you want me to do, Lauren? Crap my pants in the name of equality? A literal dirty protest for feminism?”

[Liv Abrams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings. I’ve always loved Holly Bourne’s books but I found most of the main characters in this one to be unbearably self-absorbed and horrible, and the ending felt forced. That being said, I couldn’t put it down and I felt huge amounts of sympathy towards some of the characters. Unsure how to rate it!

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like the promo for this book was wildly misleading. The hype made it sound like it was going to be much more thriller-esque, and a thoughtful, gripping look at the nuances of motherhood and female friendship in the ‘have it all’ culture of society.

It’s incredibly chick-lit, and full of quite vapid, one dimensional characters and slightly ludicrous narrative arcs.

If that’s your thing then fair play! I don’t judge. I like some easy reads sometimes.

Just don’t dress a book up as something else. I would like to be able to judge it better by its cover.

[Nicola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Add it to the list of reasons why I’m terrified to birth a child

[Megan Rhodes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should come with a trigger warning 😅

[Katharina Boekhorst · Rating 2 out of 5]

A person can only read the words ‘coo’ and ‘fuck’ a limited amount of times…. reading this book I’ve had my share for life… (2,5)

[recontraluchita · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) nunca un libro me había hecho sentir emociones tan contradictorias…
salís teniendo miedo de la depresión post parto pero al mismo tiempo de ser infértil.
si querés leer una ficción sobre la maternidad, esta es perfecta porque tenes todas las perspectivas, lo lindo lo feo.
el mejor libro en lo que va del año.

[Em Lost In Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

It was thrilling to read how all the arcs converged in the end. Though a little slow to start but the tensions were really high in the final chapters.

[simona.citeste · Rating 5 out of 5]

O lectură foarte faină, i-am oferit 5⭐️
Mi s-a părut sinceră, lejeră și cu multe lecții.

Avem 4 prietene în stadii diferite ale vieții, în special la capitolul maternitate, și alături de ele descoperim perspective diverse și gânduri care însoțesc trăirile lor profunde.

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this was actually insane!

So Thrilled For You tells the story of a baby shower gone awry. It was supposed to be the perfect day: Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte, and Steffi – collectively known as the Little Women – are finally reunited. Between Nicki's pregnancy, Lauren's newborn, Charlotte's infertility struggles and Steffi's agency launch, they've all had a lot on their plates. But now, in the middle of a heatwave, they finally get a chance to catch up. Only, as it turns out, they've all been harbouring secrets – and, more importantly, resentments. As the day grows hotter and hotter, those resentments come to the surface, threatening to, quite literally, go up in flames …

I've read all of Holly Bourne's adult novels, and most of her YA, so I can safely say she really outdid herself with So Thrilled For You. Books about motherhood are no rarity, but this one navigates the topic with a complexity I've rarely seen. This is in part due to the fact that Bourne chooses to tell the story from a first-person POV while still giving each character a distinct voice. As the novel progresses, it dawns on the reader that there's much more than meets the eye: Steffi grapples with fears of being seen as selfish for choosing a child-free life and prioritizing her career; Nicki holds a grudge against Steffi due to a dark secret of her past; Lauren struggles with PTSD from the birth of her son, made worse by a healthcare system that fails to help; and, finally, Charlotte desperately tries to manage her infertility issues so much with positive thinking that she almost burns herself out in the process. All of them are filled with jealousy, rage, insecurity, and sadness. Except from Nicki, all of the characters are portrayed as complex beings, and you can't help but empathize with them even in their darkest moments.

Bourne is careful to show that's it not just the women who've failed each other – it's society that perpetuates myths like the "Cool Mum", traps men in their weaponized incompetence or fails to provide the care and support new mothers desperately need. The sharp critique, the messiness of the characters, the pacing – all of it is beautifully executed in So Thrilled For You. I only wish the novel had been longer; the ending fell a bit flat to me. After everything that had happened, I found it hard to believe that things could've been resolved so easily, and would've loved to see the characters confront their issues head-on. Nonetheless, this is a thought-provoking read I cannot recommend enough. You don't have to have children yourself to care for the people who carry them – and I think we should all make sure we provide them with all the support they need.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of the novel.

[idil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book, and I can't understand why it’s not everywhere. I INHALED it. I don’t agree with reviews that claim it portrays the "dark, toxic side of female friendships" because, for me, my strongest and most fulfilling friendships have always been with women. In my opinion, the main issue those women had was lack of communication not pure, dark jealousy towards each other. This book is a good reflection of society’s expectations on women and how those norms shape the way they treat even their closest friends.

The book felt raw and captured different phases of different women’s lives. At first, I found myself being a bit judgmental, thinking, some of this goes against my feminist values. But as I kept reading, I realized that the inner thoughts and judgments expressed weren’t just exclusive to women - they’re things that can apply to anyone, regardless of gender. Because human beings tend to feel envious of the things they don’t have. And I’ve had friendships like this before, so it felt very real.

I am not gonna lie, Lauren’s perspective scared me. I felt for her, all of her concerns and comments were so real and I am sure many women are forced to keep quiet about the problems she had. Her storyline highlighted the struggles of motherhood and how it can impact a relationship - without sugarcoating anything. (I have to tell that I did not like her husband.) Steffi’s point of view was also incredibly well-written and accurate.

As the book progressed, it became clear that the biggest issue among all four women was their fear of communicating honestly with each other. They were so afraid of ruining the illusion of “perfect” lives they had that they avoided difficult conversations. But true friendship should allow space for expressing resentment or negative feelings openly without them outgrowing your love for your friends.

And then there’s Nicki… who frustrated me to no end. Her selfishness in so many situations made me furious. She completely disregarded respect in so many situations to so many people. For Charlotte, I feel indifferent. I was agreeing and disagreeing with her time to time and feeling sad for her situation.

Overall, this was a powerful, reflective read. I love how it felt unfiltered and honest. I wish I could give 6 stars to this one. Holly Bourne, thank you so much for this book, it was my favorite read for months.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

So Thrilled For You is a book about motherhood in all it's glory. We find ourselves beginning at the wrong end of a baby shower/gender reveal party where things have clearly gone very wrong.

We then work our way backwards with all the group (who call themselves The Little Women) who have been friends since university, giving their version of what happened at that party to cause such a disaster.

This is a character led book and these women, who were clearly once friends, have lives which have diverged to the point where they have little in common and there is where the problems begin.

I enjoyed reading this novel despite it not being my usual fare and knowing precious little about motherhood but the emotions are key in this piece of work- there is new motherhood, imminent motherhood, desperate longing for motherhood and one whose choice is for a career. They are disparate characters and that is what makes the book work.

I found the end almost superfluous because it was the journey to get there that was so interesting.

Definitely recommended.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the advance review copy.

[Sandy Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great read, but not one to be read of you're expecting. The blurb itself is misleading as it's not so much a who dunnit but more a commentary on female friendships at different stages of their lives brought together by a babyshower/gender reveal. Charlotte trying desperately to get pregnant and organiser of the baby shower, Nicki, pregnant, Steffi, an internationally childless by choice who's career driven and Lauen in early motherhood looking after her son Woody. These friendships are raw, with my perceptions of them changing as i continued to read. They are being investigated as to which one of them started the fire. It's a cleverly written book, well plotted and paced with an unexpected twist. An enjoyable but potentially triggering read

[MISS RACHEL · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skimmed the last third of this… just wanted it to end.
It’s well written and intriguing but it’s mostly women being horrible. To each other. About each other. To their partners.

Yes, it makes some important points, most notably that having a baby is hard and post-natal depression is a serious matter. That being pregnant can be hard. That not being able to get pregnant is hard. That not wanting to be pregnant can be hard. But basically most of that is hard because these women judge each other and are horrid to each other.

I only persevered to see what happened.

[Alice Houghton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really torn on how to rate this. The writing is strong, and I found the plot unique and different. I also found it incredibly triggering with the dialogue around PND - it’s so raw and insightful and highlights my worst nightmares around having a child. The ending was lacking, a typical - “and everyone ended up happy” which didn’t reflect the uncomfortable and painful storylines of the characters. I’ve given a 4 as I couldn’t turn away - but easily could have been swayed lower due to the ridiculousness of the ending.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Wonderful character-driven tale about motherhood that had me hooked from the get go. Really enjoyed this.

[Gemmalee]

childbirth they will always make me form an opinion on you

[Sarah Rossi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic portrayal of motherhood, pregnancy and infertility. I think if everyone read this before getting pregnant they would be vastly more mentally prepared (if they’re not put off first..) Funny, touching, and a brilliant portrayal of female friendship. Loved it.

[Ai-sha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I listened to this as an audiobook, and usually that means I zone out, miss portions, and don’t connect with the story as much. In the case of So Thrilled For You, I think not paying any close attention actually helped me get through it. It’s an overwhelmingly generic book, frustrating to read with its poorly realised characters, soggy tension, and terrible dialogue.

It’s a promising idea of this chaotic tragedy unfurling from a baby shower. And if Bourne accomplishes one thing really well in this, it’s sculpting the setting through the themed accents and activities and so on, which get gradually more absurd throughout the book and culminate in (fake) cum-filled cupcakes, and a vulva pinata set alight. That is funny. I think it would make the bones of a successful play.

The point, I think, Bourne is trying to make is how inescapable it is as a woman from having her identity reduced to her proximity to motherhood. But in this attempt, Bourne creates four exceptionally bland middle class white women whose only significant characteristic is… their proximity to motherhood. They are flimsy puppets who represent the four conditions: with baby, baby incoming, wants baby, doesn’t want baby. There’s no exploration of how race or class might differentiate women in these conditions.

They are supposedly these great friends with long histories, but I’m not sure I saw any evidence that their friendship was ‘lived in’. It all came across rather cold and artificial. Their motivations and behaviour seemed so incomprehensible at times, completely disproportionate to the mood a page before. The big conflict should have been an opportunity to reveal the inner dynamic of the relationship: who argues the loudest, who goes quiet, who tries to appease etc. Nothing was revealed about our characters, because they don’t really have the personality, relationships, history, substance to make them human.

Everything is very heavy handed and unoriginal; the jokes and complaints of the inner monologue stuff I’ve heard a million times before. For a moment I thought that there was a very subtle parallel being drawn between motherhood and the process of creating art, through the author Rosa, who is reluctant to publish her much-desired novel as she wrote it just for herself. I thought this was going to be a revelatory moment for Steffi, her agent who is staunchly opposed to having children of her own. But it amounted to nothing. In fact, none of the characters really seem to grow or learn any lessons, and by the epilogue they have just attained the thing that they wanted, without having to live with the uncomfortable reality that many women have - we don’t always get the thing we want most.

By far the biggest issue I have with this book is its harmful depiction of Phoebe, the only queer character. She is presented uncritically as a predatory gay trying to ‘turn’ married straight women. Beyond this dangerous homophobic stereotype, she is the most egregious example of paper-think tokenism I’ve read in ages. She’s ridiculed by the narrative for being too woke and mean. She is inexplicably in love with a married straight woman, and completely receptive to this woman’s justifications for her terrible behaviour, ready to accept her apology. She is cast aside for over a year and tugged back out when it’s convenient for the story, because obviously this gay woman wouldn’t have anything better to do for over a year than patiently pine over said married straight woman. Really irresponsible cherry on the (cum-filled) cake.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t have words for how incredible this book is.

This book follows 4 university friends in their 30s at an absolutely disastrous baby shower, on their totally different journeys towards/not towards motherhood. The stories of pain, joy and loneliness they feel they are unable to share with one another made me both empathise with each character and also want to shake them all. This comes across as them resenting each other for not understanding, so at times they all seem incredibly unlikeable. It felt so innately human that this book really touched me.
Lauren is a new mum whose story really hit the nail on the head for me regarding ptsd she felt as a result of her birth experience. I relate totally to her feeling of betrayal and anger at being promised a beautiful natural birth where no intervention should be needed as ‘our bodies were designed to do this, just breathe and all will be fine’ when in actual fact, sometimes birth is incredibly traumatic and there aren’t many people who talk about that. This story made me feel so incredibly grateful to have such good support around me following a traumatic birth as Lauren had to process that alone and ended up in a depressive spiral.
A passage that particularly resonated with me regarding this was:
“The BreatheItOut account told me how essential skin to skin contact was the second a baby was born. It’s called magical hour. It needs to happen immediately otherwise the baby is so f-d up it’s likely to become the next Hitler… but it’s hard to advocate for yourself when the baby is blue, your insides are still exposed or a hospital ceiling and you hear the surgeon say they’re worried about how much blood you’ve lost”

[Liv Neale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this one… I flew through the story and overall enjoyed it but there were many parts of this that I just didn’t like. There were lots of really important topics around pregnancy, motherhood, society, choosing to be child-free etc that I liked and think lots of women will relate to. I understand that the characters were intentionally complex and real (relatable?) but the way these elements were written made each individual unlikeable. And overall the ending was a bit disappointing. What was advertised as a juicy ‘whodunnit’ was much more of a delve into womanhood and female friendships which is awesome but not exactly what I was expecting.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

convinced holly bourne can’t write a bad book, her women characters are god TIER

[Kara Babcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, a new Holly Bourne novel is an instabuy for me at this point. One thing I have loved about Bourne is how she has rigorously pursued her own eras to an almost Taylor Swiftian degree: from her young adult novels to her novels about single women in their late twenties and early thirties to this, a novel about women having (and not having) kids. While perhaps a slightly chrononormative progression, that’s the only thing normative about Bourne’s oeuvre, which otherwise attempts to subvert our expectations for what is often pigeonholed as “women’s fiction.” So Thrilled For You is about a baby shower gone horribly wrong. It’s about female friendship. It’s about pregnancy and childbirth. Yet these descriptions don’t do it justice.

Four women—Nicki, Lauren, Steffi, and Charlotte—were inseparable in college. Now in their thirties, they have found their own paths but are reconvening for Nicki’s baby shower—planned by Charlotte, who has been trying but has yet to conceive a baby herself. Lauren has an energetic and demanding baby of her own, and Steffi is childfree by choice and extremely committed to her new career establishing her own literary agency. On top of this, Bourne adds a frame story: someone sets off a gender-reveal smoke grenade at the shower that causes a devastating fire, and as each chapter switches the perspective to a different woman, a detective inspector intercedes with questions of her own for this group of so-called friends….

Part of me wishes I could say I can relate directly to what Bourne writes about here, but the truth is that I have attended precious few baby showers and none since I transitioned. So explain to me why Bourne’s depiction of these events feels so true and accurate?? It’s not that it’s stereotypical. She’s just really damn good at capturing the complexity and conflict within so many female friendships, especially group friendships, and that I can relate to.

By alternating third-person limited perspectives, Bourne helps to develop these four women into three-dimensional characters. Steffi, for example, could easily have been a caricature of a childfree woman who looks down on parents: Nicki and Lauren are, for example, pissed off at her for sharing an article that has antinatal sentiments. Yet Steffi is so much more than her identity as someone who doesn’t have kids. In the chapters from her perspective, we see her hard work and sacrifice, the way she is so laser-focused on her career but also at lifting up her author client, Rosa. Yes, there is an element of selfishness and self-centredness to it, such as the way she impatiently ponders how to extract herself early from the baby shower. Steffi is far from perfect. None of them is; that is the point. In the chapters from the other women’s point of view, we see how alienated they feel from Steffi’s life. Bourne shows us all the sides, and while individual readers might find themselves liking or empathizing with one or some of the women more than the others, at the end of the day, none of them is completely in the right or in the wrong.

(Except maybe Charlotte because she is the one who brought the smoke grenade in the first place…. Seriously, Charlotte?)

An unfortunate consequence of living as a woman within patriarchy is that you are never enough. If you have children (what some essentialists would designate as your purpose as a woman), then you also have to somehow live up to the impossible standards of being a perfect mom. If you don’t have children, then you are failing at womanhood. If you choose not to have children, then you are a monster. And while all these modes of existence should be valid and unjudged, patriarchy ensures they aren’t. Patriarchy ensures instead that we judge each other: whether pregnant, mother, TTC, or happily none of the above, we are weighed and measured.

With that being said, another notable feature of this novel is the way Bourne portrays most of the male characters. They are vestigial and somewhat useless. At the same time, Bourne is careful to ensure none of them overshadows the story by becoming an outright villain. So while Nicki’s dad might be using weaponized incompetence and Matt is somewhat of a wanker, the story’s refusal to focus on any of them for more than a few lines sends a clear message: this book isn’t about you. In this way, Bourne emphasizes that discussion of patriarchy, misogyny, and oppression need not centre men—because these phenomena are not something naturally occurring, something that only men do to women. Rather, as this novel points out, it’s something women do to each other well enough without the men involved at all.

So Thrilled For You captures the double standard of female friendship and feminine bonding rituals perfectly. From the fake niceness at the shower to the performance of gratitude for the gifts no one really cared about buying to the need to sideline all your own messy feels for the day … this baby shower is hell on Earth for every single person in attendance! Bourne sets up this clusterfuck and then points to it, as if to say, “This is madness, and we all know it’s madness, yet we keep subjecting each other to it anyway.” But again, the villain here isn’t any particular man or woman or person of any kind: it’s patriarchy. It’s the toxicity of Discourse that seeps into what could otherwise be honest conversations among friends about feelings, expectations, and never being enough.

I think it’s a good sign that her writing is so captivating I didn’t really care about the frame mystery of “who set off the smoke grenade, and was it arson?” The mystery itself is unimportant; I was more interested in the details of the day.

Chrononormativity is tough. Getting older and feeling the weight of expectations—whether you meet them, exceed them, or chuck them by the wayside as you explore different paths—is tough. It’s tough for anyone, regardless of gender; however, in So Thrilled For You, Bourne chooses to focus on some of the ways in which it’s tough for (cis) women. And as usual, she does it very, very well.

Originally posted on Kara.Reviews.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t like this as much as I thought I would. The character almost like caricatures of real people and the Cool Mom Gone Girl bit got a bit tiring. It started off as a cool mystery book but the parts with the police officer were unbelievable and the mystery of the fire wasn’t enough to justify the length of the book. The depiction of motherhood and all its facets is intriguing and the book is well written. Something was just kinda missing for it to really hit unfortunately