An exacting and brilliantly structured novel about love, grief, hope lost and then found again' MARY BETH KEANE, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

I studied English Lit at University and worked as a journalist, and then, after I’d had my children, I decided to do an MA in creative writing in the hope of getting published. Fran Littlewood has written a magnificent novel. Grace Adams is everywoman – filled with promise, trepidatious in love and eventually, a besotted mother. Amazing Grace Adams is a fully realized story of catastrophe and joy, grief and love, and the hidden chambers of the human heart that carry the best and worst of our experience. A stunning debut." I LOVED Grace Adams! With all my heart! As a woman of a certain age she was so relatable. She could have been me. I could have been her. She was funny and frank, forthright and feisty. But as the story unfolds and her layers are shed you realise that there is so, so much more to this remarkable woman. Her rivers run deep and I felt my heart breaking for her as the circumstances of her life are slowly revealed. Littlewood does do a good job with the chaos if this is what she was going for. When Grace gets up out of her car, while on the freeway, it feels like an urge to just put down the book and save it for another day, or maybe not even finish it. Fran Littlewood has written a magnificent novel. Grace Adams is everywoman-filled with promise, trepidatious in love and eventually, a besotted mother. Amazing Grace Adams is a fully realized story of catastrophe and joy, grief and love, and the hidden chambers of the human heart that carry the best and worst of our experience. A stunning debut Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Left Undone

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Littlewood does do a good job with the chaos if this is what she was going for. When Grace gets up out of her car, while on the freeway, it feels like an urge to j

A magnificent novel. Grace Adams is every woman . . . A fully realized story of catastrophe and joy, grief and love. A stunning debut' ADRIANA TRIGIANI, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Left Undone But behind the scenes, Grace's life is in freefall. Her husband is divorcing her. Her daughter has banned her from her birthday party. And Grace has just abandoned her car in bumper-to-bumper traffic.I wanted to give it a go. Creative writing was the only thing I wanted to do. I felt like if I tried, I wouldn’t regret it, even if I didn’t manage to get published,” she says.

In Grace, Littlewood says, she’s writing “the interesting and fun and funny, ambitious, nuanced woman” that reminds her of her “friends, sisters and the women (she) knows.” An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. The writing in “Amazing Grace Adams” is truly amazing, with powerful, multi-sensory descriptions of everything from blisters to childbirth. For instance, here’s how the eponymous protagonist feels as she trudges for miles through London in the heat of a summer afternoon: “she is being seared across her scalp, along her shoulders, down the front of her newly liver-spotted chest. The impression is she is being cooked alive.”

It’s the man in the Audi. He has his window down and he’s raising his voice above the blast of horns starting up. She registers the threat in the pulse of the engines around her, the angry atonal soundscape, but she has the strange sense that she’s somewhere beyond it, that it’s separate from her.

An absolute gut punch of a book that throbs with all the rage of a middle-aged woman who refuses to go quietly' REDThe problem is, Lottie doesn't want to see her mum. Lottie wants nothing to do with her and my heart just simply breaks for Grace... A gripping story of joy, grief, stress, worry, love at first sight, parenting...frank, nuanced, and evocative.” Disclosure: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Henry Holt for the opportunity to review this debut novel. Overall, Amazing Grace Adams was a fine read, with an urge to skim most of the book. Connecting with the characters is key to enjoying this book, but I didn't connect with anyone. My agent loved the idea of Grace from a very early one-line pitch, and so she was championing me all the way, which made all the difference. I wrote it pretty intensely as a result - the first draft was completed in just under nine months.