I’m starting off the new year by writing my first blog post on the last book I read in 2018. Upon finishing this novel, I felt like I really enjoyed it but thinking back I think I just enjoyed the simplicity of this easygoing book.
The F Word by Lilly Pebbles is a very wholesome book describing the many types of friendships she’s had throughout her life highlighting the good and bad parts of friendships.
I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t followed Lilly or aware she was a blogger before reading this book. My favourite blogger, Hannah Gale posted a photo of it on Instagram and I bought it because I liked the look of it.
I was hugely pleasantly relieved when I read the back to see it was about friendship, because I hadn’t read anything like this before. It is such an interesting topic that could have had a book with such amazing depth covering it.
When I first started the book and Pebbles was discussing her long standing friendships with the girls she was friends with when she was 4, I didn’t think I could read on. I had to take a break from the book and think, “is this for me?” purely because it just made me sad thinking of all the friendships I had when I was younger that have fizzled out.
Friendships fizzle out all the time, and thinking back to when I originally read those pages, I was most likely just having a super emotional time. I can now say after completing the book it made me think back to all of my friendships, new and old, with fond, warm memories which is always a nice feeling.
The book offers a lot of advice about how to handle situations within friendships. The photo above which gives advice on how to handle friendships whilst either being single or in a relationship. This could potentially be useful to younger readers who maybe need advice on situations like this, but not adults as we have all likely navigated our way through situations like this before.
Overall, I’m not gonna say this book is a must-read because your life could probably continue to function if you didn’t, however, it was fun and nice to read. This is a book I would read on a Sunday afternoon with a cup of tea purely because it’s nice and not serious. It’s not hugely serious and doesn’t take a lot of effort to get on board with which I think is something the author was perhaps going for.
There has been a lot of mixed reviews on this book, some loving it whilst other disappointed fans of Lilly Pebbles were not impressed. I had no expectations coming into this which is perhaps why I’m left with a more positive impression of this. Despite my enjoyment, I would like to add this book is definitely for a primarily younger audience of teenagers and young adults who would probably appreciate the content more. It’s slightly insulting to assume women in their late 20s and thirties don’t know how to act around their single and non-single friends.
I can understand why fans would be genuinely disappointed by this book, as it has such an exciting premise (to me, anyway) because I really didn’t feel any wiser or better after reading it.
I don’t really like leaving negative reviews on things, but honesty is always the most important thing.
Have you read this book? What was your thoughts?
Siobhan x
siobhan Macdonald 